Hey, Martin, didya have any luck decoding the procedures for creating new newsgroups? I'm thinking of making another attempt at starting an Involuntary Celibacy club, and alt.involuntary.celibacy would be great.
Anyone who wants to join can either e-mail me or respond to this thread.
Name, Age, and Gender are required, or aren't. Cause this isn't a dating service. Or it is. Whatever. ___ Kyle ICQ #12773280
And the women you wed Just seemed better in bed When there wasn't a ring on her finger.
And your life was all right When you partied all night Those days are gone, does the flavor still linger?
And your life was just great When you were reprobate And your friends were all losers and dweebs?
You have a family, a wife And everything's right But your still living on yesterday's dreams.
alt.involuntary.* would be an interesting tree: what would the other branches be? alt.involuntary.bankruptcy alt.involuntary.celibacy alt.involuntary.hiccups
alt.involuntary-celibacy would not imply other alt.involuntary.* groups.
Or how about alt.celibacy.involuntary? Then there could be other alt.celibacy.* branches in time, if anyone creates them: alt.celibacy.chastity alt.celibacy.involuntary alt.celibacy.involuntary.medical-reasons alt.celibacy.lifestyle alt.celibacy.voluntary alt.celibacy.voluntary.lifelong-commitment
If you don't succeed in creating a ng, you could always go for a mailing list. Since you're thinking about starting a club, this might be a better way to begin. Especially if you didn't want would-be Lotharios and Sirens posting lame "I can help you end your celibacy" messages, or pimps and pornographers treating the ng as a marketplace for their services (which could chase away some of the people who may otherwise join your club).
Perhaps we could start the Celibate Pride movement! Or Celibate Quiet Self Esteem movement. Or (for those under peer pressure at school or college) the I Don't Need Someone to Shag Me to Validate My Existence movement.
Martin. (Who can't join the Involuntary Celibacy Club -- no, not for that reason! <g> I qualify under "celibacy", but since I made a public commitment to celibacy I can't qualify under "involuntary")
IC Club Rule Book, January 2003 edition ======================================= ... Rule 453: Anyone attempting to impose structure on this unstructured club will be dealt with in accordance with the Standing Orders, section XLVII of appendix "h" below, pp 1187-1343. (Historical Note: until the reorganisation of the Rule Book approved by the Main Committee on the recommendation of the "Recovering Informality" Working Party appointed at the 2001 Conference of Sub-Regional Convenors, this rule was rule 1.) ...
Say, that DOES have a nice ring to it. BTW... 1999, everybody! I'll say "Happy 1999" for those of you who want it (hell, I'll take it), but since this is a Daria newsgroup, I'm sure there are some of us who would rather setlle for just "1999". (And the next person who says, sings, or plays "Party Like It's 1999" gets a belt in the mouth.)
On Thu, 31 Dec 1998 10:22:39 -0000, "Martin Sylvester" wrote:
Of course this would leave the door wide open for alt.celibacy.involuntary.medical-reasons.farming-accident.
I was suprised to see that there aren't any newsgroups dealing with the topic of celibacy. If there can be an alt.tv.alf there can be alt.celibacy.*. I know I said that yesterday... who cares! it's new years eve and I got a buzz going.
On 31 Dec 1998 04:55:33 GMT, [email] (Kyle) wrote:
Judging by what I have seen in alt.config, they aren't thrilled with the idea of adding a new hierarchy to the alt newsgroups. They may recomend alt.support.involuntary.celibacy or alt.support.involuntary-celibacy instead. But since the newsgroup alt.tv.alf was recently created (and has quite a bit of traffic already), I'd guess that alt.involuntary.celibacy would be possible and I would love to see it created.
I choose to resist the temptation to quote "Ill" and say, "Of course." <g>
Excuse? No excuse required! I'm saddened by the pressures that people of your age have to put up with. Glad I'm not sixteen, and glad that I was brought up in an alternative subculture (ie Catholicism) where "virgin" wasn't an insult.
Just a reminder that "I don't need shag someone to validate my existence," formatted for T shirts, is at: http://www.sylvesternet.freeserve.co.uk/members/cclub/ 8-)
Yes, I just about remember that <g>. But ISTM that people seek excuses for things they're ashamed of, and I don't see why people should be ashamed of being celibate. That can't be a result of oestrogen pressure or testosterone pressure, but of peer pressure, or the pressure of other people's expectations.
One of the things I like so much about Daria is that she's willing to defy peer pressure (Peers? Daria?), and doesn't allow her opinions and behaviour to be decided for her by other people.
I am perfectly willing to defy peer pressure, but I can't totally stop it affecting me. For example, I listen to the music I like instead of what's fashionable, but I can't stop feeling slightly lonely when all my friends go off to see the Corrs and I don't go with them. Similarly, when everyone else seems to have lost their virginity, I can't help feeling slightly jealous! :)
Yes, I'd see you more as a Daria than a Fashion Club Member. I think that what you say about not being unaffected is true for everyone. Even the fact that we recognise that a choice we've made is in defiance of peer pressure is an effect of that pressure.
Understood. At my sort of age, the jealousy I have to fight against is more about having someone intimate to share my troubles with (and hers with me) at the end of each day, or about having the joy of watching a child of mine grow up, than it is about the actual act of intercourse.
In your situation, it's hard to factor out the effect of those who *pretend* to have lost it because they don't have the strength of character to admit difference. Among those who really are sexually active at your age, it's impossible to factor out the "and it did us no harm" attitude. How many will say, "Yes, and boy, what a mistake that was!" even in something as trivial as buying the keyboard, or outfit, or whatever, they've chosen? We have a tendency as human beings to avoid identifying our mistakes as mistakes, and we may even like others to share our mistakes; it makes us feel less bad about them.
What bugs me the most is the unspoken assumption that a girl (or boy) needs to shag someone to prove something; that to be a virgin, or to have no partner at the moment, is to be some sort of failure. It's not new; in many ancient societies the assumption was that the purpose of a woman was to bear children and give men pleasure, so if you're not doing that you're by definition a failure. There was an analagous view about men without a partner. This attitude had been slowly undermined, over centuries, by Christianity (how can you honour the Virgin Mary and at the same time despise virgins?), but it looks as though it may be making a comeback. Gloomy thought.
It may well be that the couplings of "everyone else" are not worth envying, of course. It's wrong for them to look down on those of us who are celibate, and it would be wrong for us to look down on them. How often people's desire for a cuddle ends up in something else, especially if a need to do what "everyone else" does combines with raging hormones.
One of my favourite books on sexual ethics is by Andr� Guindon (_The Sexual Language_). I agree that the sexual act by its nature implies total, mutual, self-giving, and needs a context of a lifelong, irrevocable, exclusive commitment for it to be honest. In the interests of full disclosure <g>: I also believe that marriage is the proper context for sex, and that married life is not more or less valuable than celibacy, but is a different vocation.
Another complication is people's nosiness, fed by those daytime studio talk shows that you know I despise. Our voyeuristic taste for others' intimate secrets has been so indulged that we assume that anyone who chooses not to answer must have something to hide. I think a perfectly valid response to "Are you a virgin?" or "Are you sleeping with him/her?" is "Why is that information important to you?"
I find that as well to some degree, maybe not the bit about children, but about having someone to share troubles with and stuff. But I think that's something different, not having someone for that is, in my mind at least, due to me being weird rather than me being ugly which is why I'm a virgin!
You're right there. Noone wants to admit that they regret it.
"Gloomy" is a bit of an understatement! :)
Hehehe. A conversation overheard in Art class a while ago: Nick - "Hey, Ian, are you a virgin?" Ian - "Yeah, why?" Nick - <laughing> "Ian's a virgin! Hey, Ben, are you a virgin?" Ben - "Yeah." Nick - <laughing more> "They're virgins! Hahaha!" Debbie - "Shut up Nick, you're a virgin yourself!" Nick - <going very red> "I am not!"
You make a good point about people's confidant(e)s not always being their partner. When partners stop communicating (or never did communicate, perhaps because they had a relationship that was based entirely on physical stuff), the loneliness can be intense. But obviously if someone lives with a partner who is their confidant(e), it's a big advantage, in terms of availability if nothing more.
Now you've done it. We'll have the atd "Is Alli ugly or is she being modest?" debate <g>. Email me a picture and I'll put it on the web, and you can then offer a questionnaire. "'Alli is ugly.' Do you (agree stongly) (agree) (neither agree nor disagree) (disagree) (disagree strongly)?" I suppose you could always ask for the addresses of those who disagree strongly.... 8-)
[...]
<chuckle>
Do you think that the way a lot of sexual health awareness education (or whatever it's called this week) is presented actually makes things worse? "We know you teenagers are all at it, so the best we can do is show you how to use a condom." It strikes me as insulting and condescending, as well as patronising, and it invites ridicule of those who choose not to be sexually active (or who are involuntarily celibate).
I'd love to see Daria vs The Travelling Sexual Health Awareness Worker, but it'd be a tour de force of writing to tackle that topic and get it screened uncut at 1100 on a Sunday morning!
No, that's not a good idea at all! I don't want my ugliness confirmed!
LOL.
It does kinda tell you that you should be having sex, in a way. It sort of makes it obvious that other people are. What I found really patronising was sex education in primary school. I was 9 and I'd known where babies come from since I was 3. It was like, I know, it's embarassing, can you teach us something we haven't already been told?!?
LOL. There'll be fanfics about that by next week. :)
Wow. That doesn't sound as bad as ours, we had this girl who played in "Annie" talking about starting to get your period. That was 5th grade I think. Wheeeeyah. Maybe I got out of learning about division though, that'd be worth it.
Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony
Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche
Oh, we had these videos with teenagers talking about it all. You just knew they'd been told exactly what to say, IIRC they appeared to be reading it off an autocue thingie or something.
Ha! We didn't even learn division in primary school, hardly! We had this dumb system where there were all these worksheets for different levels, and you'd just do all the work for one level and move on to the next. You got no help at all from the teacher, you'd just have to figure it out yourself if you didn't get what was on the sheet. As we weren't really supervised (there'd be a teacher somewhere in the building, probably) noone did any work anyway, so noone learnt anything.
Fun! I think that's one of the school system's big problems with math. I got stuck in this stupid Honors Geometry program in which you weren't told the conjectures you were supposed to base your work on, you were supposed to "figure them out" based on just like looking at triangles and stuff. Which I suppose some people can do, but I'm not one of them, as I'm one of the least visual people there is, which is also why I hate English teachers who make you draw and make posters and crap like that, but I digress...
Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony
Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche
It was fun then, but once we got to secondary school not knowing the multiplication table it stopped being fun and started ensuring that no ex-pupil of Lowbrook County Primary School got any more than 20% in the weekly tests we had (we had to answer 100 basic multiplication questions in 2 mintutes or something)
I hate being made to draw posters in English, but because I think they should teach us English in English lessons rather than because I'm not a visual person (because I *am* a visual person!). I don't think I could cope with all that triangle shit, though. I hate doing Geometry and stuff, it's so boring!
On 2 Jan 1999 23:34:04 GMT, [email] (Eccles9697) wrote:
Sounds like heaven. I have a pretty good relationship with my teachers. They know that if they let me read my books and sit me in the back of the class, I'll look up in the book those rare tidbits I don't already know (has only happened once this school year), and I won't show them up in class.
___ Kyle ICQ #12773280
Uh-oh, someone just put me in a position of responsibility! The day has suddenly turned sinister....
Another Nugget Of Wisdom from the Wonderful World Of Kyle(TM)
My teachers all hate me. I don't spend the whole lesson talking or throwing things around the room or causing class riots or anything, but I don't do anything else either. I am notoriously difficult amongst my teachers because I make sure there's nothing they can/will actually punish me for, but I manage to piss most of them off anyway.
That's pretty much my status in school. I get yelled at for not paying attention, but I never make a disturbance. Although I think my American Lit teacher would rather I not pay attention since I sit by her desk and make snide comments. Mostly when we're reading some dumb stuff, like "I Hear America Singing". Which I didn't like. She asked what it was talking about I said "Up with the proletariat" like communism that annoyed her. Wheeyeah. My teacher last year got in a huge argument over the interpretation of something, I think it was something out of "Of Mice and Men" and her lovely argument was that she was a teacher and had these sheets and was threfore the world's foremost expert on Steinbeck.
Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony
Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche
LOL. I get into most trouble for just not participating in lessons. In Spanish, especially. The teacher will ask a question, I'll know the answer, she'll know that I know the answer, and I will just sit there waiting for her to say something or ask someone else. :)
Oh yes, that happened to me, too. We were doing some Gillian Clarke poem (for those of you lucky enough not to know of her, she's this insane conservative old Welsh woman) and I disagreed about some part of how the teacher interpreted it, and she just said "no, that's wrong," and when this other girl dared to agree with me and not with her she launched into this half-hour rant at us for being so rude and for daring to interpret a piece of writing in a way we could understand and for having the ability to think for ourselves, or something.
Geez, I'm sad to hear about these horrible teachers. Personally, I would like to have students that thought enough about the literature being read to challenge interpretations (and yes I often disagree with those Steinbeck sheets and notes given to the teachers and often do so publicly to the class as well as various other 'notes' that I've come across for texts). That being said, it is nice when people participate, but with the teachers you've described, I wouldn't blame you for a second, those were the exact same teachers I blew off in H.S. too.
Back in my early schooling I got a D in French because the teacher said I didn't participate enough. She asked me something, I answered it. I'm sorry, I thought that was the point and that speaking out of turn was wrong. It's interesting to note that she still had to give me the classes top honor award for having the highest marks in that class.:)
How many of us got one of these kooks, anyway? My grade 10 English teacher was like that, except it was on Hemmingway's "Old Man and the Sea", which she claimed was some kind of biography of Christ's life (????) and "The Lady of Shallot" (sic) which I have yet to fathom. Sure, I had an idea of what it was about, but I've yet to comprehend it in any way that would have given me a better grade on the five-page paper I had to write on a one-page poem. Thank goodness I shall never need to pick up a book and be forced to understand it the way someone else understands it, at least until the exam's over.
On Mon, 04 Jan 1999 03:01:05 GMT, [email] (Len Pitre) wrote:
My highlight of the school year so far was when my English teacher had us read Lord of the Flies (the best novel I've ever read, IMHO). The teacher went into this thing about how great the ending was and how Simon was a symbol of Christ.
I calmly but rationally spent the next 3 days of class trying to make her realize that the ending totally sucked and that there was it's pointless to base an entire comparison on one similarity.
And I succeeded.
___ Kyle ICQ #12773280
Uh-oh, someone just put me in a position of responsibility! The day has suddenly turned sinister....
Another Nugget Of Wisdom from the Wonderful World Of Kyle(TM)
I was an English major in college, and all of this reminds me of a saying we had-- "When in doubt, find a Christ figure." <g> The sad thing is that some people apparently took the advice a little *too* literally. I guess some people just can't take a joke.
But, yeah, I've heard the Old Man And The Sea/Christ comparisons before. I haven't read Lord Of The Flies, so I can't say about that one. All of this reminds me of a very old lit theory I learned in my Chaucer class, called "Five-Fold Scriptural Exegesis." It was a popular way of looking at literature in the 13th-14th century, IIRC. Ask your teachers if they can explain it to you. (Grins Evilly.) Of course, I can't for the life of me remember exactly what it is, but it has something to do with a progressive search for deeper layers of religious meaning in literature. (E.g., first, Good vs. Evil, then you take it a number of steps further along to deeper levels of meaning, and only after that can you try to start plucking Christ out of a fishing boat.)
Of course, some authors deliberately use Christ figures. But I never could compare Oliver Twist with Christ with a straight face... well, okay, I did it once-- but I was stuck in the middle of an exam, and I'd run out of ideas. I panicked-- I was young and reckless and I swear I was only experimenting-- I was only a college student-- I succumbed to peer pressure and attempted to use illicit literary theories. I didn't inhale. And if I did, I surely didn't enjoy it. I swear.<g>
rich.
Quinn: I can't be a brain! My friends will hate me!
Hehehe. My Spanish teacher did actually admit once that there was no real point in me putting any more effort into anything as there's not much more I could acheive. I'm getting highest in the class, I got 2 points away from an A* in the mock exams, so what else should I do?
I hate my English teacher. She spends most of most lessons shouting at me. What I find most irritating about her is her constant mispronounciation (or whatever the word is) of words that are not all that hard to say. Anorexia becomes "anorexa," the name Dubose becomes DuBois, barbiturate becomes "barbitury." Oh yeah, and she has to ask this girl called Danielle how to spell things all the time, as if Danielle would know. She's supposed to be teaching us English and she doesn't know it herself! One final thing: she insists on giving us photocopied sheets of her handwritten notes. She says "I wrote these out in neat" and it's a load of scribbles. She won't use a computer or even a bloody typewriter 'cause she can't even work a TV remote! </rant> :)
Wow, I think you get the prize for worst English teacher! The only person I know of that bad is only a substitute thank god although I ended up having her several days in a row once. She tells these really pointless stories and explains things that have been explained already and when the AP English class was watching Hamlet she had to point out obvious things (he's slipped him the poison! did you all see that?) and she absolutely hated my German class, Frau left her a note saying she didn't expect us to get anything accomplished (knowing our class...) and she yelled at us anyway and she wears these really ugly shoes that look like ballet slippers with heels and in Forensics she goes around telling us all what we should do for our sales speech.
Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony
Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche
Consider yourself lucky! I've had that English teacher for four years in a row! :)
That sounds more like my Biology teacher. She tells the class to shut up with four or five long-winded explanations of why we should shut up, and by the time she's half-way through that everyone's so bored they've started talking again.
Oh, my English teacher wears those ones with the really high and pointy heel. We used to have English in this mobile-home-type thing because there weren't enough classrooms, and one time, she stamped her foot and her heel went through the floor!
That is really funny, I can see her saying "Some people don't know when to stop talking" (yep there's one up there telling us to shut up)
Hehehe... we used to have those... then the built us a brand new school with 2 gyms a gigantic swimming pool and a cafeteria waaaay too small. Had to cut back somewhere you know and students being able to sit down at lunch isn't nearly as important as an olympic size swimming pool is it?
Dagny misery chick, cynic, general loony
Visit the Parsley Firefly http://members.aol.com/Eccles9697
"One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you." Friedrich Nietzsche
No, it's more like: "Shut up! Everyone, quiet! OK, well, if you can't keep quiet I'll have to keep you in after class for as long as you keep me waiting because this behavior is just not acceptable for a year 11 set 1 class. It's not my time you're wasting, it's yours because I'm going to keep you all in after class. If you don't shut up this minute I'm going to start giving out detentions. Chris, James, Steven, you're all in detention *again*, and the lot of you are staying after class for as long as you keep me waiting, so this isn't my time you're wasting, it's your break-time, so I think you'd better shut up and listen now or I'll have to give out more detentions because this behavior just isn't acceptable for a year 11 set one group....." <continues for rest of lesson.....> You get the picture? :)
LOL. Us too...... The things had two rooms in each, and we had to move from one room into the other at one point because one room was declared unsafe for people to go in. But the other one was fine, apparently, despite the stiletto-heel-holes in the floor and *ahem* gaps in the wall. Of course, someone wisely questioned this logic: "If that half collapses, won't this one go too?" The answer was yes, obviously, but they had nowhere else to put us and this room was, according to them, more safe. The entire thing's been destroyed now, but I don't know where all the rats went.....
We don't have a swimming pool at our school, which is good because I hate swimming. I don't even think I can swim. There's not enough room in our canteen, so they have provided picnic beches for us to sit at outside and allowed us to eat in the main assembly hall, the lower school hall, the Art department, or the playgrounds. All of these places are totally full of people every luch time because there really isn't enough room to fit everyone in at this school.
Everyone is expected to get at least 3 points more in the exam. Most teachers will never predict A*s for the GCSE grades unless they are absolutely certain (I was predicted one in French!) but for anyone who got less than 3 points below an A*, the predicted grade will be 3 points more than the mock grade. So that means I'll probably get an A*. And if I don't, I'll be brutally murdered by my parents.
She was probably modelled on my English teacher, come to think of it. She's a bit old now, but about 50 years ago they probably looked pretty much the same.
Yes, like every past year when my grades got sent home and it turned out I'd got F for PE or something.......I never understood why it is my dad gets so annoyed about my low PE grades. If I was getting Fs in Maths I could understand him being not entirely happy, but PE? Who gives a shit? I'm not doing GCSE PE or anything, it's just something I am forced to do once a week that they give us a grade for. But anyway, my parents will murder me if I get anything below an A for any of my GCSEs. Except maybe Electronics because our teacher's got cancer and we've been having supply teachers who are graphic designers and stuff and don't even know how to wire a damn plug.......but that isn't the real reason I'm getting bad marks in Electronics, it's just a good excuse. :)
Well, the Es and Fs for PE are a pretty good contrast to my other grades. Except pre-year 10 ones, when I would always have a D in Music and an F in Drama.
In the first year I got D for RS, and in the second year I got A. And third. And forth..... I never worked out how anything I do in RS could possibly get me an A. I don't do anything! Nobody does anything!
I have absolutely no idea what this newsgroup is about. I was doing a search on deja news on my handle just to see where on earth messages were going, and of course see your post.
The lady of Shallot was considered to be Elaine of Astolatt, who was in love with Lancelot, when she realised Gueniviere was his true love, she died of a broken heart. She floated down on a boat towards Camelot and died.
On Sat, 02 Jan 1999 18:51:16 +0000, "endless, nameless" wrote:
Web polls are hardly accurate. I'd vote disagree strongly no matter what you look like.
Not a chance. Paris, Illinois, USA is as specific as I get.
Horrible story alert:
Our sex-ed was taught by a female phys-ed teacher named Mrs. McFatridge. Her nickname of Mrs. McFatBitch tells you all you need to know about her looks. Her basic strategy was to show us graphic pictures that would shock us into not having sex. Her descriptions of the size and texture of genital warts was so bad that any member of the class of 99 will literally turn green at the mere mention of the word "cauliflower".
___ Kyle ICQ #12773280
Uh-oh, someone just put me in a position of responsibility! The day has suddenly turned sinister....
Another Nugget Of Wisdom from the Wonderful World Of Kyle(TM)
True. And ugliness would have been selected out over the generations (unless the genetic component of ugliness is not significant). Celibacy, of course, *is* hereditary. 8-)
I'd really prefer not to, if it's all the same to you, Bob.
Virginity has too many emotional and social dependencies to point to anything as "the" reason. A lot of ugly people feel they have to shed their virginity as soon as possible because everyone will assume they couldn't get laid because they were ugly. "Pretty people" don't have this concern so that motivation isn't there for them to lose their virginity. I think a better indication is how many MOS have they "been" with. I think you will find that pretty people outdistance their ugly counterparts by a wide margin in this case.
The easiest way is load the Stop Press newspaper off the cafe noticeboard and select the "Daria tv testcard" link in the 12th Dec. entry. Then click on the picture of Daria in the middle of the testcard to load her page. (The scenic route is to click on the TV testcard in the cafe, then cycle through the testcard gallery until you reach the above Daria card.)
I guess I should try and figure out how to add a voting form to the page. Demon don't support user cgi scripts but there's probably some fudge I could use, a mail form or something.
"The scenic route." Whenever my dad is driving me somewhere and tells me he's going to take the scenic route, I decide it's a better idea to walk; "scenic route" usually means it's going to take 50 times as long and you're going to get lost along the way. Don't bother. :)
Well there is the little matter of continuing the species - the only reason living creatured even exist in male and female forms is for the purpose of having sex. There are one or two species that are hermaphrodite or reproduce by budding but the rest of us will eventually have to come to terms with the fact that without sex we will go extinct.
Fair point. But in many people's consciousness, sex has become almost detached from reproduction. Many sex education programmes seem to be directed at helping people experience sex without the risk of disease or the chance of parenthood, (and often, by implication at least, outside the context of mutual commitment). I'm not saying that reproduction is the only end of sex (to use the jargon, I recognise that it also has a "unitive purpose"), but in response to your comment I'm making the point that not having a child, and not having sex, are different things. ISTM that the "preservation of the species" drive would lead more directly to classifying as failures people of a certain age who haven't produced a child, rather than classifying as failures people in their teenage years (or older) who are still virgins, or people who don't have a partner just now. Of course you can't have a child without a partner, in the ordinary course of events, so there is some spillover, and I agree with you that there is an evolutionary element to people's scorn of the unpartnered (and their scorn of homosexual people, too).
I don't agree that the *only* purpose of gender is sex. I think that, in humans, it serves a spiritual purpose too, in giving us a sense of incompleteness, a yearning for another person, and a sense of the complementarity of human beings.
Just to restate something else I said, I don't see marriage and celibacy in terms of one being superior to the other. In the original context, I'm saddened by the social pressure on young people to have early sexual experience; while I take your point about the survival of the species, this pressure seems to me to be only remotely related to motherhood or fatherhood.
<digression> Have you ever read Vance Packard's _The Hidden Persuaders_? He wrote it when ad & marketing agencies were still willing to talk about their methods and aims, and he noted how the aim had shifted from merely persuading people to use this product instead of a competitor's, to changing people's behaviour to create a need for the product. Who sponsors many sex ed resources? How fortunate for some that the shift in mores has created a huge market for condoms and other similar products. And I'd better not get started on what I think about the most intimate act of two human beings becoming a marketplace for a manufactured product, or being turned into entertainment. </digression> (And </rant>, you might think: I recognise that this is not a commonly stated observation!)
Most of us grow up expecting to marry and start a family; I did. But if we end up in the celibate state, whether by choice, by religious vocation, or by chance or misadventure; for the time being, or for life; we are still valuable human beings with as much dignity and worth as people who do have a partner.
Brittany has Kevin, Quinn has a rota of guys, but Daria has nobody. What a loser. ;:-)
I'd expect a robust response from Daria to a sentiment like that.
(No, Shez, I'm *not* under the illusion that this is your attitude!)
There's a discussion going on on the Manic Street Preachers' newsgroup about starting up alt.music.space. It would seem that they aren't having much success, so I don't know how easy it is to start up a newsgroup.