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Sex censorship killed the internet we love

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Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#351

Post by bouncycastle »

beobab wrote: post #205
marcus_holmes wrote: post #127

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…

Enjoying sex isn’t a sin. Sex is supposed to be held in the highest regard. It’s a wonderful and joyous thing. The point is, I believe, to avoid cheapening it, making it less than the truly awesome thing it is. It’s supposed to be a priceless gift shared with your true love. Packaging it and selling it makes it less valuable. I believe that if you approach the subject with that mindset, a lot of the decisions that so…

This is a meme I've heard before. From an anthropological view, I think sex (or the restriction of it through memes like this) is used as a way for one group to dominate over another group. Usually, a tool user by religion, especially around the dogma of marriage, where religious have the authority. This meme is so effective and convincing that it's often propagated without much thought.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#352

Post by DSingularity »

Juliate wrote: post #342
crazygringo wrote: post #329

Again and again I see the comments of how crazy it is that we allow violence in films/TV/anywhere, but not sex which is peaceful and harmless -- as if this were some kind of idiocy or hypocrisy. There's a good reason we try to draw lines between areas where sex is "allowed" and "not allowed" -- because it's arousing and has the potential to be greatly embarrassing . It's private , in a way that violence isn't. I seri…

> because it's arousing So is violence. Not arousing in the same way, we are imitating animals. > and has the potential to be greatly embarrassing. That is also a social construct. Why should sex be embarrassing that violence wouldn't be? That's the very definition of being prude.

What? Violence is embarrassing -- not arousing. And like sex, I wouldn't be comfortable to casually snack on popcorn while watching movies which present detailed re-enactments of people murdering each other. And I certainly wouldn't be comfortable to watch it with anyone else either.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#353

Post by meruru »

rootusrootus wrote: post #194
mirimir wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is this the same Japan that blurs out genitals in porn films? Even in puritan America that doesn't happen.

I heard the genitalia censorship is a western influence, but I haven't found a really solid source. This is from a Cracked article:

>Despite what the censored porn might imply, nudity has never been taboo in Japanese culture. Not only were women used to walking around topless, but what we call porn was just another common genre of books, like cooking or travel. Japanese porn, or shunga, was a traditional form of visual media that had no stigma attached to it. Most artists created it without violating any type of social code. They were just making pictures of people fuckin'.

>It was only in the 19th century, when Western morality came to Japan, that the Japanese government decided to crack down on such traditional practices as public nudity, in order to make the case to the West that Japan was totally a civilized country. By the time World War II rolled around, Japanese porn had gone from an everyday part of Japanese culture to a demonized art form that, as the Pulitzer-winning expert John W. Dower noted, now inexplicably valued idealized Western versions of beauty, like long legs and big tits.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19098_6-wtf-japanese-trends-y...

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#354

Post by marvin »

With all this censorship, isn't there now a massive unmet demand for a service that allows uncensored distribution of relevant, sex-related content? Necessarily located in a European country and avoiding any US-based platform that censors such content.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#355

Post by mberning »

Juliate wrote: post #346
mberning wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know in which cultures a teenage son watching soft core porn with their mother is perfectly comfortable or possibly even celebrated.

That's not the point. The point is about the disconnect of a society that protects/promotes speech/messages/images/behaviour about violence while refusing the same for sex. While one is deadly and the second is not; while one can be a great resource of connection and pleasure, while the other is the exact negation of it.

I’m pretty sure that is exactly the point the op was making when they said “Plenty of cultures have much looser taboos around this than yours, its not how human beings are wired.”

All I am asking for is an example of such a culture. A mother and teenage son watching some film with nudity and simulated sex and neither of them is uncomfortable at all about it.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#356

Post by zapita »

Zelphyr wrote: post #314
marcus_holmes wrote: post #127

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…

> several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions At the risk of opening that particular can of worms; I'm curious to know if you can provide more details on this? As an American I suspect I am perhaps too close to the problem and unable to see it but most of the well-educated, intelligent people I know harbor little to no racial opinions.

You are asking in good faith, so please don’t take this the wrong way.

I can give you one clue: from your comment I already know that you are a white American, and that the “well-educated, intelligent people [you] know” are also overwhelmingly white. Ask yourself: how do I know this? It’s because never in a million years would an African-American, or Muslim American, or Native American, say something like that. Non-white Americans experience racism, both overt and subtle, every day. Most White Americans are oblivious to it because they live in a highly segregated society, and they don’t have any close friends or family experiencing it. So they perpetuate the myth of a “colorblind society” - the idea that race doesn’t matter in America anymore. And by denying the problem, we are doomed to perpetuate it.

I recommend reading White Rage by Carol Anderson, it’s a good introduction to the topic. Every American should get educated on race relations 101. You can’t understand the USA without understanding the role racism plays in its history and institutions.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#357

Post by Juliate »

DSingularity wrote: post #352
Juliate wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it's arousing So is violence. Not arousing in the same way, we are imitating animals. > and has the potential to be greatly embarrassing. That is also a social construct. Why should sex be embarrassing that violence wouldn't be? That's the very definition of being prude.

What? Violence is embarrassing -- not arousing. And like sex, I wouldn't be comfortable to casually snack on popcorn while watching movies which present detailed re-enactments of people murdering each other. And I certainly wouldn't be comfortable to watch it with anyone else either.

> Violence is embarrassing -- not arousing.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arouse - you have no idea.

But great, you'll learn something fundamental about a human construct we devised to help us cope with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#358

Post by bagacrap »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #127

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…

> Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject

Yes, it is, unless your subject is bashing Americans.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#359

Post by staticautomatic »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #310
GuB-42 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor quality food never was illegal in France. For a time, fast food joints avoided France because they thought there would be no market. There were wrong, and they are everywhere now. It doesn't mean the value of good food has cheapened. If anything, now that there is a point of comparison, the opposite is true. Good restaurants, from Michelin 3-star to inexpensive "plat du jour" lunches, are still there. So are lon…

There’s even a McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées now.

To be fair, if a McDonald's was going to be placed anywhere in Paris the Champs Elysees in its current form is a pretty good choice.

Re: Sex censorship killed the internet we love

#360

Post by lenticular »

microcolonel wrote: post #317
beobab wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoying sex isn’t a sin. Sex is supposed to be held in the highest regard. It’s a wonderful and joyous thing. The point is, I believe, to avoid cheapening it, making it less than the truly awesome thing it is. It’s supposed to be a priceless gift shared with your true love. Packaging it and selling it makes it less valuable. I believe that if you approach the subject with that mindset, a lot of the decisions that so…

Well, while not a sin, it also isn't a panacea. We get it, you like sex, you think it's great. Lots of people who agree with that also think that having quite so much of it everywhere cheapens it and gives it outsize control of people's desires.

Closed attitudes about sex lead to more teen pregnancy, less opportunities for women, etc. I don't see where it is beneficial. The arguments for sexual prudishness always seem to revolve around "cheapening it" with a heavy subtext of expecting women to maintain sexual purity especially.

Most of Western Europe is quite progressive about sex, but yet I can't see how that has been a problem for them. While you may have these beliefs about sex, many people do not. It shouldn't be imposed on everyone.

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