Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

worldofmatthew.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 192 posts

Re: What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

#81

Post by Cthulhu_ »

AdkamEup wrote: post #31
laurent_du wrote: post #21

> The image attached to this blog post is a stock photo of a nude pregnant woman. Absolutely nothing sexual. How is this not sexual? The fact that it's a stock photo, or that the woman is pregnant, is irrelevant. It's very clearly a sexual picture.

Wow, you've gotten downvoted. I came here for your comment. That stock photo is strikingly sexual; it immediately makes me horny. (I'm a cis-het guy nearing 50 years of age, I have an active and satisfying sex life with my wife, and I've not looked at porn, or engaged in self-pleasing, for several years now. The reason I find the photo sexual is not that "I'm not getting any". I've been getting plenty, thank you very…

That's you though (also you're oversharing a bit lol), everyone will respond differently to the picture, mostly depending on culture and associations. The question then becomes, who gets to decide where the boundary lies? Anthropologists, mixed sauna-goers, nudists, hippies and gynacologists, or prudes, christian/muslim fundamentalists, Victorians and payment providers?

Re: What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

#83

Post by nemomarx »

AdkamEup wrote: post #68
laurent_du wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be real, everyone feels nudity is inherently sexual, except on HN and probably on reddit where men love to claim that it's not. I don't know if it's virtue-signalling, sexual frustration, or something else. It does sound weird and creepy to me - grown up men who claim that naked women are not arousing, the same men who rally en masse every time pornography censorship is discussed, to complain about freedom of e…

> I don't know if it's virtue-signalling, sexual frustration, or something else. I think de-sensitization [*] may play a big role here; I'm convinced that the more porn you look at, the higher your threshold goes. I've not consumed any porn for years now (as I write in my other comment), and I find the lady in the picture extremely sexual. Yes, she's not suggesting / soliciting / provoking; she is just standing there…

I think I would agree that she's sexy / attractive depending on terms, but I don't think that makes it a suggestive or sexual photo strictly I guess. I can be turned on by a partner fully clothed and showing a little shoulder, if I'm in the right mood! But that wouldn't make it a sexy outfit, I'm biased by my emotions about her.

I think this is why there's a lot of pedantry and "know it when I see it" to the discussion

Re: What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

#84

Post by nemomarx »

salawat wrote: post #80
Lockyy wrote: post #62

Adult content is whatever is deemed to be objectionable and abhorrent to the dominant social group within a culture and that which needs to be censored and hidden from public view. Beyond a desire to "protect the children" from sex, violence, and drugs. It is a desire to hide and suppress dissent around major social issues. It is a desire to label representation of trans liberation and queer lives as adult, obscene.…

>And it is a desire to label realistic representations of history such as Maus Dare I ask, wtf is Maus representation of history??

It was an autobiographical comic about the Holocaust? How's that not a representation of history?

Re: What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

#85

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pmlnr wrote: post #7
oliv__ wrote: post #2

Could use a NSFW warning tag

So could a lot of classic art, right?

Sure, unless your job is in a museum.

Thing is though, if you can get in trouble for browsing the internet while at work looking at anything at all, you probably shouldn't.

Re: What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

#86

Post by Lockyy »

salawat wrote: post #80
Lockyy wrote: post #62

Adult content is whatever is deemed to be objectionable and abhorrent to the dominant social group within a culture and that which needs to be censored and hidden from public view. Beyond a desire to "protect the children" from sex, violence, and drugs. It is a desire to hide and suppress dissent around major social issues. It is a desire to label representation of trans liberation and queer lives as adult, obscene.…

>And it is a desire to label realistic representations of history such as Maus Dare I ask, wtf is Maus representation of history??

Maus is a depiction of Art Spiegelman's father's experience as a Holocaust survivor.

Re: What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

#87

Post by jeroenhd »

laurent_du wrote: post #50
macintux wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question comes down to: is nudity inherently sexual? Not everyone feels it is.

Let's be real, everyone feels nudity is inherently sexual, except on HN and probably on reddit where men love to claim that it's not. I don't know if it's virtue-signalling, sexual frustration, or something else. It does sound weird and creepy to me - grown up men who claim that naked women are not arousing, the same men who rally en masse every time pornography censorship is discussed, to complain about freedom of e…

Plenty of "normal" people outside of HN visit saunas, nudist parks, and nude beaches. It's perfectly alright not to be comfortable with doing so yourself, but other people feel differently.

Then again, there are societies that will shame (and do worse things to) women for showing their hair or skin to strangers.

If you're (un)lucky, your innocent holiday pictures may make the front page of Wikifeet, but that doesn't mean you're a creep for posting your holiday pictures online. There's a spectrum here and claiming to know the absolute truth and branding everyone else as perverts is silly.

Personally, I find the puritan idea that any nudity is sexual to be quite childish and immature.

Re: What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

#88

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pmlnr wrote: post #6
homeonthemtn wrote: post #5

This is a relic mindset from the start of the Internet. The website itself even visually reflects that. Is there a marginal grey area around adult content? Yes. But beyond that margin is a vast ocean of explicit, intentional adult content. As someone who grew up in both the decentralized "new" era of the Internet, and now lives in the hyper localized algo driven version of it... It's all shit. And I'd never want my k…

> hyper localized algo driven Maybe this is an even bigger problem.

For sure; viewing adult content is one thing, radicalization causing large political and societal shifts is a much bigger issue. Objectification is one thing, going back to an idealized version of the 50's where women were (in the idealized version) subservient to men is another.

Re: What even is 'adult' content? [NSFW]

#90

Post by danbruc »

Why is this discussion always about nudity and sexuality? Would it not be much better if children see people having fun fucking each other than seeing people murder each other in countless ways? Why is it more acceptable to show Wile E. Coyote trying to murder Road Runner by dropping anvils onto him than showing Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny fuck each other? Ignoring for the moment that children probably find the former much more funny than the later.
Post reply on HN