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Sex censorship killed the internet we love

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211–220 of 520 posts

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, from my experience, Germany (my new country of residence) is extremely open about nudity while at the same time being similarly repressed about sexuality. It's notable that younger people have a way more repressed sexuality than folks which are in the 35..40 to 60ish age bracket currently.

Ok that's actually very interesting. I noticed a similar pattern but didn't want to put too much to it.

A large contributing factor is probably that younger people have a lot less sex and start to have sex much later than e.g. their parents.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#212
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prostitution is not illegal in many parts of the world, and even decriminalised is some parts. Nitpick: decriminalization means that something is still illegal, but it's not a crime.

What's the difference?

Decriminalisation means relaxing the penalties so you get a civil fine, not a criminal charge. Jaywalking may get you a ticket, but it doesn't make you a criminal. Many people advocate for the decriminalisation of many drugs, including hard drugs; the idea is that even if we don't think heroine use is okay, locking someone up for using heroine isn't solving the problem.

Legalisation means making it actually legal, as many US states have now made marijuana, or as NZ has made sex work. It can still be regulated or taxed, but in general its fine.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#213
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly? I'd expect any cultural shift to take place among young people. Older people already have their culture.

I guess you’re right, just weird to see young people turn to a form of conservatism.

Rebelling against the rebels?

How apt. :-)

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#214

I find the US prudishness thing so fascinating. I'm travelling at the moment, and meeting lots of Americans (and Europeans for contrast). There's definitely a huge difference in tolerance for swearing and blasphemy. Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject. I guess it all comes down to the religion. Americans do seem to be more religiou…

>I guess it all comes down to the religion. Americans do seem to be more religious, specifically more Christian, and the Christian Church has always taught that sex should only be for procreation.

Yes, but that religious attitude also goes through the whole culture, so the puritanical / prudish attitude ends up in the minds of atheists and the public in general, even if they haven't stepped into a church in their life. So you get the phenomenon in all ends of the spectrum, from the Hayes code, CD "parental advisory" and moral panics of the right, to the political correctness and moral panics of the left.

At the same time, the are religions like catholicism that can appear similarly reserved, but in social practice the majority of their adherents can be more open to sex, partying, and all kinds of moral ambiguity. There are exception in close knit communities under perceived attack (e.g. Ireland), but in the main they tend to be more open to "sin". That's because protestantism emerged as a fundamentalist "back to the original morality" sect, where strictness was its main thing.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#215
post #183

I find the US prudishness thing so fascinating. I'm travelling at the moment, and meeting lots of Americans (and Europeans for contrast). There's definitely a huge difference in tolerance for swearing and blasphemy. Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject. I guess it all comes down to the religion. Americans do seem to be more religiou…

I would also blame religion if not that here in Sweden we went from accepting sex and censoring violence to accepting violence and censoring sex, within about the span of almost just 10-20 years. The norm just changed and its very noticeable in movies if one compared those made before 1990 and those made after 2000. There is no corresponding change in the religious demographic. If anything that demographic went down…

That's the Americanization of the world. If most of one's movies, songs, tv shows, social media control, search engine biases, etc, come from a single country, with its cultural stickups, that's what you get.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#216
post #184
post #172

In general, superstitious behavior tends to win over non-superstitious behavior, even if it is a small minority . For example, say there are two communities in a given town; one of the community has decided that black doors were evil, and won't go through them. The other community doesn't care. Shops that have black doors lose the business of the superstitious community; even if that community is small, it simply mak…

I don't buy this argument. It works for things like "unlucky" numbers others mention, where there is basically no economic side effect (outside superstitious group no one cares about their seat number) Shops that didn't sell black doors would be losing business from non-superstitious people looking to buy black doors, which might be a bigger factor if superstitious group is relatively small. I think adult content is…

They mean the entry door of the shop, not what the shop sells.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#218
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the most frustrating thing about being an european in a internet dominated by American "puritan" tech giants... Linguistic and cultural imperialism are a thing. I don't know how to fight back. Those companies have a lot of money.

It's even harder for old-school Japanese norms. What used to pass as mildly titillating in Japan is XXX porn in the US. And some of what's shocking there is easily child porn in the US. That's even so for some German naturalist stuff, and that was never even intended to be shocking. For example, one of my favorite Miike films ("Visitor Q") begins with sex between a guy and his teenage daughter, who has been working a…

I just read a plot summary of Visitor Q… seems completely and utterly ridiculous. Who even comes up with such grotesque stuff?

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#219
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prostitution is not illegal in many parts of the world, and even decriminalised is some parts. Nitpick: decriminalization means that something is still illegal, but it's not a crime.

What's the difference?

Crimes go through a criminal justice track, and outcomes may include jail time.

Illegal actions go through a civil justice track, and typically result in fines and/or some sort of civil restitution for victims.

If you ignore building codes you're acting illegally. If you ignore building codes and people die you're a criminal.

Which is fine as far as it goes. But criminality is often defined politically, not empirically in terms of outcomes.

Sex work is complicated precisely because it's on the edge of consensus morality. It has so much moral and political baggage, and for those who care it's so difficult to manage in ways that minimise harm for all involved, that it's almost the definition of a political football.

It doesn't help that authoritarians are invariably utterly hypocritical about it. Sex workers know that business is going to boom whenever a convention of self-styled moral hawks hits town.

So there's always political pressure to keep that hypocrisy hidden, which makes the criminal/civil line even more of a hot-button issue than it would be anyway.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#220
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot say fuck or shit on tv What TV shows are you talking about? Kids shows? American television in general is full of profanity. Some shows have way higher profanity content than what’s observed in real life, they always makes me wonder if certain demographics really fucking talk like that all the time.

Beeping away words is something you will never see/hear in European productions. "What the beep are you talking about you son of a beep ". Jerry Springer comes to mind. European movies also have no trouble showing fully nude males, something you will never see in Hollywood. The sensoring in texts like f*ck is also seen a lot online.

You’re right, some cable networks do the beep thing, others don’t. Guess I’ve been self-selected to be biased towards the latter category; I haven’t heard a beep for quite a while.
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