Turning Cartwheels as Sexual Display

Discussion in 'The Cesspool' started by River Ape, Sep 1, 2015.

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  1. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    Let me get this right. You are suggesting that watching adolescent girls doing cartwheels is or could be sexually stimulating?
    Perhaps in a way that watching girls skipping would probably not be?
    I don't think that runs exactly counter to what I was suggesting.
    Whose side are you arguing for?
    (As a matter of fact the YouTube videos I have seen are very proper and non-pornographic and would be unlikely to be a turn-on for anyone.)
     
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  3. Oystein Registered Senior Member

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    I see what you mean.
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Athletics in general tend to give an impression of youth and vitality. It doesn't matter at all if you also turn upside down.
     
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  7. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    Could it be possible that handstands and cartwheels and such, are just play behaviours like running around? Nothing more than a form of physical exercise, and that anyone who reads sexuality into them is just projecting?

    When I was little I often liked to run around and try handstands and cartwheels and things like that. It wasn't a case of "look how sexual I am", it was a case of "look how coordinated I am".
     
  8. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    What the hell have to do a bat , In Europe or south America kids don't use baseball bats.
     
  9. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Are you a female or a male ?
     
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  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Makes as much sense as cartwheels as sexual displays.
     
  11. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    Gay male.
     
  12. Oystein Registered Senior Member

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    While this was directed at Daecon and he answered you, this is one of those times when ignoring the poster is warranted. The sex of the poster is none of the questioner's business. You sir are way too nosy.
     
  13. Oystein Registered Senior Member

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    Except you apparently. You've watched more than one? How many? My weirdo monitor has just moved into the red.
     
  14. Bells Staff Member

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    Kids are kids and girls play football and boys do cartwheels. It's called playing and having fun.

    Or she is just playing and having fun.

    If you are trying to insinuate something else, then you will need to provide scientific evidence that girls do cartwheels to sexually attract boys.

    Cartwheels is part of doing gymnastics and girls and boys often try to perfect them because it requires a lot of balance and strength to be able to do it properly.

    Girls and boys also do headstands, handstands, swing upside down on monkey-bars, wrap one leg around a monkey-bar and swing around and around with their arms locked around their knee so they are literally flipping over and over again from one knee, they also run, jump, ride bikes, climb trees, roll on the grass, roll down hills, do somersaults, etc.. It's called playing. There is nothing "particular" about doing cartwheels.

    And unless you are able to support a claim that it is somehow particular with scientific studies, then your claim will be dismissed and this thread closed and sent to the cesspool.

    Please provide evidence to support this claim.

    I have read and re-read your sentence. And it is still unfounded and unsubstantiated and completely unscientific and not backed up at all in any psychological or evolutionary literature.

    If you have something to support your claim and "it's meaning", then please post it.

    Let me reassert something.. Your watching girls do cartwheels at the local park and attributing it to sexualised behaviour is not evidence, nor is it scientific. What it is is downright creepy.

    False.

    Our human ancestors were first thought or believed to have worn 'clothing' around 170,000 years ago and the reason was not for modesty, but for self-preservation and to keep themselves warm.

    "Modesty" did not enter the fray until only fairly recently.

    Please support your contention that little girls performing cartwheels are doing it to attract a sexual partner.

    You have not presented a thesis.

    What you have presented is that awkward feeling one gets when one feels that something is seriously wrong with another person and the wonder of whether they should be allowed to go and sit in parks to view children playing as being sexual beings.

    As a female who spent a childhood and a half doing cartwheels, I can assure you that you are completely wrong.

    No.

    He is suggesting that if you are going to parks and watching little girls doing cartwheels and finding it sexually stimulating, that you are a creepy dude who probably needs to go and see a doctor and inform them that they see little girls doing cartwheels and they feel sexually stimulated.

    Hence the "eewwwww"..

    So why are you trying to inject sexual components into normal child behaviour and why, pray tell, are you trying to suggest that they are somehow doing it for sexual reasons or practicing for such a reason.. Especially by saying that you know an adult male who saw little girls in Africa playing and doing cartwheels and that he sexualised their play in such a way?

    Stop right there..

    Please. Just stop right there.

    Why are you watching little girls doing cartwheels on youtube and why are you judging them to see if they are sexual displays or not? Actually no, do not answer that.

    You have a limited amount of time to support your argument that little girls do cartwheels as a sexual display and that this is supposedly practice for attracting men when they are older. Failure to support your contention will see this thread closed and sent to the Cesspool so that the forum can be spared the horror of imagining you sitting there watching these videos or going to parks to work on your 'thesis'. A word of warning, don't post videos of little girls doing cartwheels here. They won't be welcome.
     
    origin likes this.
  15. Oystein Registered Senior Member

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    Thank you! BTW, here is one instance where ignoring someone can have bad results for the OP (if River Ape ignores your request) .
     
  16. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    I feel that I have failed, to a degree, to make myself clear and will try to clarify. But it may be a while before I can find time for a matter which will require careful thought. Although well past retirement age, I am not retired. So I ask for patience.

    One question is very easily answered:
    Finding that others did not agree with my opinion, based on observation, that turning cartwheels was "a girls thing", I decided to search for "cartwheels" on YouTube. I did not know what I would find. The result was to discover that adolescent girls featured very prominently among them. In fact, to a degree that exceeded my expectations. (Others may make the same experiment.)

    Clearly, those who disagree with this initial observation are not going to accept my thesis. Where this has caused them to indulge in personal abuse, I trust the rules of this forum will be enforced and that they will be banned.
     
  17. Oystein Registered Senior Member

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    On the contrary, you should be ashamed of yourself and you should be banned.
     
  18. Bells Staff Member

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    Have you ever paused to consider that cartwheels is a prominent aspect of girl's gymnastics? Ever?

    It is one of the basic fundamental abilities that girls must be able to master in gymnastics.

    It is not sexual and has no sexual component to it.

    Girls who are interested in gymnastics or like it or participate in it always do cartwheels or try to (I say try to because the school grounds and parks often have girls and boys doing that legs squat 'I think I am doing a cartwheel' thing, that isn't a cartwheel, but a bizarre drop and roll procedure to anyone watching). This is part of play. My sons do it all the time. Youngest currently has this whole kung-fu thing going on where he thinks being able to 'roll on his hands and feet' (ie doing cartwheels) is "super cool!" and would make him a ninja (refer back to the trying to do a cartwheel).

    Declaring such forms of play is sexual or practicing for sexually attracting a boy or man is an extraordinary claim that you must support.
     
  19. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    I realise in retrospect that I have made my case badly and blame myself. I put this down to my failing to take into account that I was addressing an audience of non-psychologists, but above on a desire to be reasonably brief. I now abandon that desire and shall be expansive and digressive.

    Evolutionary Psychology
    It is now widely realised that humans have had relatively few generations to evolve since the dawn of civilisation. This applies equally to human psychology (though not to human culture). We are essentially the same sort of beings as our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Therefore, human psychology still remains wedded to what was favourable to survival in eons past. Psychologists who study human behaviour, motivation, outcomes and benefits therefore need to do so in the context of lifestyles most humans have left behind. (For this reason, psychologists love studying primitive peoples.) This is widely accepted in the psychology community and one may, without preliminaries, frame a proposition in the basis of this common understanding.

    I do most of my summertime reading (for both business and pleasure) in my local park. If I went there to look at cartwheeling girls I should be sadly disappointed; they are not to be observed on an hourly basis. But if I look up on occasion and see someone turning a cartwheel, it is almost invariably, a young(ish) girl. And this, mind you, in spite of the fact that most energetic play is by boys.

    Psychologists are People Watchers, and since no aspect of psychology is more important than developmental psychology we are Child Watchers. Only those with addled minds should be upset by this. Only addled feminists should be upset by the fact that boys and girls show different natural preferences in play, which do not derive from enforced stereotyping.

    No one has challenged me to explain why skipping is more prevalent among girls than among boys. This is a shame because the answer is interesting. Well, I am coming to that.

    We tend to speak about the Victorians as a very proper, straight-laced or stuffy people -- but they were generally people who well understood the realities of life. The three bedroom house, with the privacy it offered, was a generally a novelty for the emerging middle class of literate people. They cherished the love that flourishes within a strong family union, and wanted to lead moral lives that set them apart from the slum dwellers among whom sexual promiscuity and incest were rife.

    Skipping ropes were not a Victorian invention. The use of skipping ropes by boxers seems to go back a long time, and I believe they were also used in the Royal Navy. Victorian matrons were anxious about the behaviour of their daughters. Of course, they wisely insisted upon the presence of chaperones when the occasion demanded it. And they wished to prevent their daughters from “cavorting” -- an expression that encompassed turning cartwheels or somersaults.

    Periodicals that offered advice to Victorian mothers began to advocate skipping ropes as presents for girls. Perhaps the silent hand of a skipping rope manufacturer was behind this. Skipping kept girls upright in both senses, and provided healthy exercise that did not involve cavorting. Schools approved skipping for girls whilst boys played football, etc.

    Well now, when I see that it is adolescent or pre-adolescent girls who are the cartwheelers, I ask myself for an explanation. I do not set that explanation in the present day, but look for it in the context of the life of a hunter-gatherer tribe -- where knickers (if we keep to the English English word) were an unknown.

    It is my thesis 1: that in the competition for mates, girls who inverted themselves, legs splayed cartwheelstyle, before a selected prime example of youngmanhood made themselves objects of sexual interest. 2: they thereby gained an evolutionary advantage. 3: thus leading over time to a widespread unconscious instinct for this form of behaviour. 4: this primitive instinct to perform cartwheels continues to exist, even though usually/largely devoid of conscious sexual motivation or outcome.

    That seems to me a reasonable proposition which deserves to be taken seriously. I would be grateful if criticism were precise rather than abusive. What would most likely persuade me that I was wrong would be an alternative evolutionary explanation for the benefit of cartwheeling as a very specific form of exercise.

    Please note that I have never suggested that little girls doing cartwheels were consciously trying to make themselves attractive to grown men, or even succeeding unconsciously. I will try to find time to respond to some varied points which have been raised, e.g. about when people began wearing clothes.
     
  20. Oystein Registered Senior Member

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    Ah Jeez . . . a thesis on little girls doing cartwheels. Did you get a grant for this?

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  21. Bells Staff Member

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    You have tried to posit a thesis with no basis in evolutionary behaviour whatsoever. By asking if girls do cartwheels to attract boys, or potential mates, based off your having seen little girls doing cartwheels at the local park or in youtube videos, you are not exactly posting a thesis.

    Not only that, but you have attempted to pigeonhole certain aspects of play and more worryingly, turned it or see in it something sexual.

    The fact that girls in parks, playgrounds and school grounds tend to do cartwheel or practice aspects of gymnastics with other girls, and comparing their strengths and weaknesses in such fields appears to have escaped you.

    It isn't a case of you not making sense to everyone because we are apparently not evolutionary psychologists and thus, cannot understand what you are talking about. It is simply a case that your thesis and proposition sounds like bunk.

    The cartwheel is a prime part of girl's gymnastics, even dance and stuff like jazz ballet.

    A boy kicking a ball to practice football is no different to a little girl practicing doing cartwheels.

    You misunderstand. No one here is saying that it isn't more often then not a little girl thing.

    You are attributing the precursor to sexual behaviour in children, worse still, by using an example of naked African tribal children (who in some tribes are usually naked anyway) doing cartwheels in front of a stranger, and attributing something sexual to it. The reality is they were probably showing off just because that is what children do.

    If you are a "child watcher" as a developmental psychologist, this would become clear to you in about 5 seconds. You would have also noticed that as girls hit puberty and their interests in boys or girls increase, they actually stop doing cartwheels if they are not into gymnastics.

    What is to challenge?

    You were talking about cartwheels.

    Considering skipping rope existed for hundreds of years, and date back to pre-BC, which would be clear if you had done some research instead of doing whatever it is you are doing now... Do you have anything to back up these claims?

    What periodicals? Can you link these periodicals where Victorian mothers were advocating skipping ropes as presents for girls? Are you aware that the reason skipping ropes became so popular is because it was so cheap and anyone could play? And that was why it was so popular? But most importantly, it has a long history and it had a revival in the 1950's and then the 1970's?

    Known as jump rope, skip rope, rope jumping, and skipping, the activity dates back to ancient civilizations.

    The Egyptians used to jump over vines, aborigines jumped over bamboo, and paintings from the medieval period show images of children jumping hoops. Many people associate jump roping with girls’ play, but history indicates that jump roping was originally a man’s game.

    What?

    There is no basis whatsoever for this.

    You claim to be a psychologist, yet this is what you come up with? You are spouting absolute rubbish. What? You think girls were splaying their legs to boys while doing cartwheels to make themselves objects of sexual interest?

    They aren't baboons!

    This sort of behaviour is what baboons, for example, exhibit.

    Have you ever actually studied primitive tribes and how mates are chosen? I'll give you a hint. There are no cartwheels involved at all. In fact, there are no splayed legs and flashing of their vaginas to prospective mates.

    Historically, women and girls were often traded with other tribes to prevent inbreeding. This was known to happen in Aboriginal cultures, for example. They rarely had a choice. Those decisions were made for them.

    Or capture brides, where women are kidnapped by neighbouring tribes. In others, the parents would arrange the marriage or partnership or select a mate for their off-spring. No cartwheels.

    Others, like Native Americans, had a more intricate and indepth ritual, more often then not, involving lots of dancing while wearing bright coloured clothing and decorations. No cartwheels.

    From an anthropological point of view, your thesis and what you are positing is absolute rubbish. It flies in contravention with everything we know about tribal groups and there is no evidence to support it. It also flies in the face of the fact that gymnastics, which included doing cartwheels, was invented in ancient Greece. And no, it wasn't for women, but was aimed at men.

    If you have evidence of what you just claimed, now is the time to provide it. Otherwise I will simply treat this as another crank thread.
     
  22. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    In the context of this particular discussion, which hinges on sexuality, it is not unreasonable for the members to identify their gender and/or sexuality, so it is also not unreasonable to ask. However, everyone has the right not to answer the question.
    The date I have is 70KYA, and as I noted this was calculated from the DNA divergence of body lice (which live exclusively on humans because we have almost no hair on our bodies and instead wear clothes that protect the body lice from the external environment) from head lice (which are the lice that live on virtually all terrestrial mammals, including the hairy heads of humans).

    Clothes don't fossilize well so we have no actual remnants to carbon-date.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2015
  23. Bells Staff Member

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    As such, Reed and his colleagues investigated when the parasites first began evolving to see when people started clothing themselves. This data would be virtually impossible to find with archaeological digs, since early clothing would almost certainly not have survived up to now. [The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites]

    The researchers sequenced the DNA of clothing lice to see when the bugs began diverging genetically from head lice, which would suggest the lice were adapting to life on cloth rather than skin and hair. Their findings suggest modern humans started wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago, 70,000 years before we began migrating into colder climates and higher latitudes in our spread across the world.

    [Source]


    The full study can be found here, in the Molecular Biology and Evolution journal:


    Clothing use is an important modern behavior that contributed to the successful expansion of humans into higher latitudes and cold climates. Previous research suggests that clothing use originated anywhere between 40,000 and 3 Ma, though there is little direct archaeological, fossil, or genetic evidence to support more specific estimates. Since clothing lice evolved from head louse ancestors once humans adopted clothing, dating the emergence of clothing lice may provide more specific estimates of the origin of clothing use. Here, we use a Bayesian coalescent modeling approach to estimate that clothing lice diverged from head louse ancestors at least by 83,000 and possibly as early as 170,000 years ago. Our analysis suggests that the use of clothing likely originated with anatomically modern humans in Africa and reinforces a broad trend of modern human developments in Africa during the Middle to Late Pleistocene.


    The study was also discussed in Discovery in their news section: "Humans first wore clothing 170,000 years ago"
     
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