I think it's worth looking at the desire for privacy and the encouragement of privacy as two different things (if not unrelated), as there are many people who themselves are not especially concerned over privacy, but instead the consequences of crossing the people who encourage privacy.
Privacy with anything involving bodily functions is generally valuable for sanitation reasons - even eating in public could increase your risk of ingesting or transmitting infectious agents.
Beyond that, privacy with sexuality is valuable for the myriad reasons that privacy is valid in general, including avoid the following:
* Revelation of weakness
* Comparison of self to others
* Interference from hecklers, rivals, or other negative presences
* Distraction from the task at hand
* Revelation of secret knowledge
* Unintended actions (more people, bigger chance of accidents)
* Complicating relationships
Basically, having your boss laugh at the freckles on your ass while you're trying to get it on is a serious mood killer.
Enforcing privacy comes at least partly from a very different perspective.
Love-hotels are considered kind of weird. Just not "let's freak about it" weird.
Sexy religion is historically pretty common, not only in the nebulous zone from India to Japan. Bunch of weirdos around the mediterranean, even.
Love hotels aren't weird, I'd say. Quite mainstream. And the 'nebulous' zone from India to Japan comprises most of the world's population.
As for Japan generally, nudity in private is very much not taboo, and not sexualised. Sex is private, as are many other things that would not seem private to a westerner, but there is no sense of shame/dirtiness associated with sex. So many Japanese people would not be comfortable with public kissing, but would be comfortable with just about anything privately.
I figure I could take a bear.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
I'm guessing it's from years of living in and consuming media created in America, but seeing violence against women flips a switch in my head that makes me seethe with anger, in a way I do not feel at all when I see similar levels of violence against men. I recognize the inherent sexism in this statement, and intellectually I know violence against both women and men is a terrible thing, but emotionally I feel much more intense feelings over the brutalizing of women.
Nah. It's one thing to have the feeling. But so long as you realize the potential problems with it and understand it's irrational on some level you're fine.
I'd actually be quite interested if anyone has another explanation. I've been trying to figure out "Why is sex naughty?" since undergrad, and the best I can do is Augustine.
It's the common factor between all these different Western cultures.
It's pretty damn explicit.
Are the central and south and east asians really open about sex?
My understanding is that Islam has hangups similar to the Judeo-Christian hangups.
The "far" eastern religions have far fewer hangups, but I don't know much of the specifics. Like, they have Love Hotels, which are common knowledge and not considered weird. I don't know the history of what myth founds their acceptance of hotels explicitly for bonin'.
Meanwhile, you have street names in the UK like Gropecunt Lane or variations on Bordel Lane (where bordel is an archaic term for brothel).
Many of the prostitution houses that led to these names were operated directly by local governments. In at least one region - 12th century Canterbury or so - the whorehouses were openly and explicitly operated by a bishop of the Church.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
There should be a colloquial name (a'la Godwin's Law) for when somebody assumes that Victorian era sexual mores extend further back historically or outward geographically and goes fishing for reasons to justify that assumption.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I think that violence is acceptable in the media because you don't expect anyone in the audience to ever engage in the behavior. We can watch movies about shooting and blowing up hundreds of people, but most people who watch will never shoot or blow up anyone.
Contrast sex, where the expectation is that at some point almost everyone in the audience will have sex. I can understand the fear that showing sex in media could make the viewer more likely to have sex earlier in life or more likely to engage in the (potentially deviant) sex act on display.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I can't imagine its just the christian faith perpetuating this myth though. People who are atheists still believe in sex being some kind of hidden shameful thing, and not just for ugly people!
Specifically, it's puritanism.
This country was built pretty much on top of what constituted an Australia-like penal colony for Europe, except instead of sending prisoners here against their wills, they sent religious undesirables here of their own volition. These people were so out of step with the religious norms of the day that no one wanted to be neighbors with them, and they didn't want any neighbors with mainstream views polluting their cultish ideas.
The Founders may have been all heady with Enlightenment-era thought and philosophy, but the actual public was not. We've never shaken off our puritanical roots, and that is the base cause of why we are so comfortable with violence and so uncomfortable with sex.
I can't imagine its just the christian faith perpetuating this myth though. People who are atheists still believe in sex being some kind of hidden shameful thing, and not just for ugly people!
Specifically, it's puritanism.
This country was built pretty much on top of what constituted an Australia-like penal colony for Europe, except instead of sending prisoners here against their wills, they sent religious undesirables here of their own volition. These people were so out of step with the religious norms of the day that no one wanted to be neighbors with them, and they didn't want any neighbors with mainstream views polluting their cultish ideas.
The Founders may have been all heady with Enlightenment-era thought and philosophy, but the actual public was not. We've never shaken off our puritanical roots, and that is the base cause of why we are so comfortable with violence and so uncomfortable with sex.
I'd actually be quite interested if anyone has another explanation. I've been trying to figure out "Why is sex naughty?" since undergrad, and the best I can do is Augustine.
It's the common factor between all these different Western cultures.
It's pretty damn explicit.
Are the central and south and east asians really open about sex?
My understanding is that Islam has hangups similar to the Judeo-Christian hangups.
The "far" eastern religions have far fewer hangups, but I don't know much of the specifics. Like, they have Love Hotels, which are common knowledge and not considered weird. I don't know the history of what myth founds their acceptance of hotels explicitly for bonin'.
No myth - just the simple fact that, with the sort of density that urban Japan has, people do want someplace private to boink. Plus, the concept is interesting from the standpoint that you can rent rooms with specialized gear if you wanted to try something. (Besides, I got a kick out of squicking my kinkster friend out with the Hello Kitty BDSM room.)
Personally, if you want to look at where Japanese sexual culture is fucked, look at things like "paid dating" (basically a culturally acceptable form of prostitution.) Or that Viagra was legalized before the Pill.
I'd actually be quite interested if anyone has another explanation. I've been trying to figure out "Why is sex naughty?" since undergrad, and the best I can do is Augustine.
It's the common factor between all these different Western cultures.
It's pretty damn explicit.
Are the central and south and east asians really open about sex?
there are intense cultural rituals and taboos around it everywhere because jealousy, romantic relationships and childbearing are a complicated and potentially dangerous thing.
margaret mead made a name for herself documenting the free-loving sexually unashamed polyamorous samoans - feted by cultural libertines as a an example of a pure race uncorrupted by puritanical & christian prudity - but then it turned out that much of what she observed was just samoans putting on a show for the white woman and showing her what she wanted to see.
I'd actually be quite interested if anyone has another explanation. I've been trying to figure out "Why is sex naughty?" since undergrad, and the best I can do is Augustine.
It's the common factor between all these different Western cultures.
It's pretty damn explicit.
Are the central and south and east asians really open about sex?
there are intense cultural rituals and taboos around it everywhere because jealousy, romantic relationships and childbearing are a complicated and potentially dangerous thing.
margaret mead made a name for herself documenting the free-loving sexually unashamed polyamorous samoans - feted by cultural libertines as a an example of a pure race uncorrupted by puritanical & christian prudity - but then it turned out that much of what she observed was just samoans putting on a show for the white woman and showing her what she wanted to see.
Agreed. Pretty much every surviving society is going to have a framework for these issues just on the basis of stability.
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
i mean it's not to say that our attitudes toward sex aren't mixed in with all our thinking about gender and family and control, or that evolving attitudes and philosophies might help to encourage different outcomes. but i don't think that american attitudes are somehow egregious when it comes to attitudes and views about sex.
like when it comes to sex we are about at "like europe, but maybe a little pruder about some things" and "way less sexually domineering, gender-essentialist, sexist, and rapey than pretty much everywhere else"
i don't really see a surfeit of violence in foreign media either, for the most part.
I'd actually be quite interested if anyone has another explanation. I've been trying to figure out "Why is sex naughty?" since undergrad, and the best I can do is Augustine.
It's the common factor between all these different Western cultures.
It's pretty damn explicit.
Are the central and south and east asians really open about sex?
My understanding is that Islam has hangups similar to the Judeo-Christian hangups.
The "far" eastern religions have far fewer hangups, but I don't know much of the specifics. Like, they have Love Hotels, which are common knowledge and not considered weird. I don't know the history of what myth founds their acceptance of hotels explicitly for bonin'.
No myth - just the simple fact that, with the sort of density that urban Japan has, people do want someplace private to boink.
I doubt that any culture deals with sex as a "simple fact", independent of some myth of human nature. Sex is how we get babies. The process of acquiring babies usually plays into a culture's origin story.
Myth plus all the things Will mentioned: jealousy, romantic relationships, childbearing, gender, family, control, power dynamics. And all the stories we tell about those are based in myth.
The U.S. just happens to lean heavily on a very Augustinian myth.
I can't imagine its just the christian faith perpetuating this myth though. People who are atheists still believe in sex being some kind of hidden shameful thing, and not just for ugly people!
Specifically, it's puritanism.
This country was built pretty much on top of what constituted an Australia-like penal colony for Europe, except instead of sending prisoners here against their wills, they sent religious undesirables here of their own volition. These people were so out of step with the religious norms of the day that no one wanted to be neighbors with them, and they didn't want any neighbors with mainstream views polluting their cultish ideas.
The Founders may have been all heady with Enlightenment-era thought and philosophy, but the actual public was not. We've never shaken off our puritanical roots, and that is the base cause of why we are so comfortable with violence and so uncomfortable with sex.
And where did Puritanism come from?
Puritanism <- Calvinism <- Augustine
So like I said, more specifically, puritanism.
Augustine would be less specific, and less recent, and, I think, less helpful.
We could say it all came from some ancient tribe of wandering jews but I don't think that's actually a useful observation!
I'd actually be quite interested if anyone has another explanation. I've been trying to figure out "Why is sex naughty?" since undergrad, and the best I can do is Augustine.
It's the common factor between all these different Western cultures.
It's pretty damn explicit.
Are the central and south and east asians really open about sex?
My understanding is that Islam has hangups similar to the Judeo-Christian hangups.
The "far" eastern religions have far fewer hangups, but I don't know much of the specifics. Like, they have Love Hotels, which are common knowledge and not considered weird. I don't know the history of what myth founds their acceptance of hotels explicitly for bonin'.
No myth - just the simple fact that, with the sort of density that urban Japan has, people do want someplace private to boink.
I doubt that any culture deals with sex as a "simple fact", independent of some myth of human nature. Sex is how we get babies. The process of acquiring babies usually plays into a culture's origin story.
Myth plus all the things Will mentioned: jealousy, romantic relationships, childbearing, gender, family, control, power dynamics. And all the stories we tell about those are based in myth.
The U.S. just happens to lean heavily on a very Augustinian myth.
...
The reason that love hotels exist is for privacy, which tends to be in very short supply in some of the most densely populated terrain in the world, in contrast to the US, where density is low enough that most people can assume a modicum of it in their own domicile. (That's not to say that they don't serve the same purpose that the classic "no-tell motel" - it's pretty well known that this is the reason that Nintendo owned a chain of them back in the 60s.) But they don't have the same (well, they somewhat do, but it's not quite as bad) stigma, primarily because the public sees a legitimate value to them.
People have to remember that for most of human history sex for women was extremely risky behavior. Getting pregnant was something really dangerous and dying in childbirth was the number one cause of death among women.
That and diseases like Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Herpes where the AIDS epidemics of their day. People that slept around where real hazards to the public health or at least to their wives health. Imagine having child birth while suffering from a syphilis outbreak.
Sex=Death is a lot older then we think and it wasn't all patriarchal culture holding women down.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I'd actually be quite interested if anyone has another explanation. I've been trying to figure out "Why is sex naughty?" since undergrad, and the best I can do is Augustine.
It's the common factor between all these different Western cultures.
It's pretty damn explicit.
Are the central and south and east asians really open about sex?
there are intense cultural rituals and taboos around it everywhere because jealousy, romantic relationships and childbearing are a complicated and potentially dangerous thing.
margaret mead made a name for herself documenting the free-loving sexually unashamed polyamorous samoans - feted by cultural libertines as a an example of a pure race uncorrupted by puritanical & christian prudity - but then it turned out that much of what she observed was just samoans putting on a show for the white woman and showing her what she wanted to see.
It is a mistake to conflate the sexual norms of Samoa with those of America or any other nation.
For example, one of the arguments against Mead is that Samoans prized bridal virginity highly. How could a culture that prizes bridal virginity be rife with premarital intercourse? Mead's own conclusions didn't add up.
Samoans had a role called "taupou," which can be loosely thought of as a princess - the daughter of a high-ranking family. The taupou would be assigned to marry the son of another important family to seal political alliances. Prior to Christianity, persisting (though dying out) into the 20th century, the taupou wedding ceremony included an explicit public defloration. One of Mead's most important detractors, David Freeman, described the defloration ritual thusly:
The young woman was then taken by the hand by her elder brother or some other relative, and led toward her bridegroom, dressed in a fine mat edged with red feathers, her body gleaming with scented oil. On arriving immediately in front of him, she threw off his mat and stood naked while he ruptured her hymen with two fingers of his right hand. If a hemorrhage ensued the bridegroom drew his fingers over the bride's upper lip, before holding his hand for all present to witness proof of her virginity. At this the female supporters of the bride rushed forward to obtain a portion of the smear upon themselves before dancing naked and hitting their heads with stones until their own blood ran down in streams in sympathy with, and honor of, the virgin bride.
Try to imagine that on prime time TV.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
If you really want to stare into some madness inducing shit, try to find the actual letter of the rules for the FCC and the MPAA concerning the actual particulars of nudity and sexual references
They get pretty insane with how specific they are.
Like how much the MPAA hates boners is sort of mind-boggling. There ain't nothin' more terrifying to the MPAA's ratings board than an erect penis, shown in all its glory. You can show sex, you can imply penetration (you can't show the penetration itself, of course, but you can imply it by showing naked people in the correct position as to make it clear he's puttin' it in someone), and you can show penises but for god's sake they better be flaccid.
This goes so far as to when movies actually want to have an erect penis on screen for any reason they have to use a rubber cock (Wolf of Wall Street is a recent example) and the MPAA has to be specifically told "Yeah, that's not a real erect penis, it's a fake erect penis, it's okay" so they don't freak out and give the movie an automatic NC-17.
I'd actually be quite interested if anyone has another explanation. I've been trying to figure out "Why is sex naughty?" since undergrad, and the best I can do is Augustine.
It's the common factor between all these different Western cultures.
It's pretty damn explicit.
Are the central and south and east asians really open about sex?
there are intense cultural rituals and taboos around it everywhere because jealousy, romantic relationships and childbearing are a complicated and potentially dangerous thing.
margaret mead made a name for herself documenting the free-loving sexually unashamed polyamorous samoans - feted by cultural libertines as a an example of a pure race uncorrupted by puritanical & christian prudity - but then it turned out that much of what she observed was just samoans putting on a show for the white woman and showing her what she wanted to see.
It is a mistake to conflate the sexual norms of Samoa with those of America or any other nation.
For example, one of the arguments against Mead is that Samoans prized bridal virginity highly. How could a culture that prizes bridal virginity be rife with premarital intercourse? Mead's own conclusions didn't add up.
Samoans had a role called "taupou," which can be loosely thought of as a princess - the daughter of a high-ranking family. The taupou would be assigned to marry the son of another important family to seal political alliances. Prior to Christianity, persisting (though dying out) into the 20th century, the taupou wedding ceremony included an explicit public defloration. One of Mead's most important detractors, David Freeman, described the defloration ritual thusly:
The young woman was then taken by the hand by her elder brother or some other relative, and led toward her bridegroom, dressed in a fine mat edged with red feathers, her body gleaming with scented oil. On arriving immediately in front of him, she threw off his mat and stood naked while he ruptured her hymen with two fingers of his right hand. If a hemorrhage ensued the bridegroom drew his fingers over the bride's upper lip, before holding his hand for all present to witness proof of her virginity. At this the female supporters of the bride rushed forward to obtain a portion of the smear upon themselves before dancing naked and hitting their heads with stones until their own blood ran down in streams in sympathy with, and honor of, the virgin bride.
Try to imagine that on prime time TV.
Now that's a goddamn party. I want to hang out with these people.
If you really want to stare into some madness inducing shit, try to find the actual letter of the rules for the FCC and the MPAA concerning the actual particulars of nudity and sexual references
They get pretty insane with how specific they are.
Like how much the MPAA hates boners is sort of mind-boggling. There ain't nothin' more terrifying to the MPAA's ratings board than an erect penis, shown in all its glory. You can show sex, you can imply penetration (you can't show the penetration itself, of course, but you can imply it by showing naked people in the correct position as to make it clear he's puttin' it in someone), and you can show penises but for god's sake they better be flaccid.
This goes so far as to when movies actually want to have an erect penis on screen for any reason they have to use a rubber cock (Wolf of Wall Street is a recent example) and the MPAA has to be specifically told "Yeah, that's not a real erect penis, it's a fake erect penis, it's okay" so they don't freak out and give the movie an automatic NC-17.
Because somehow that makes it different.
It's completely fucking mental.
One of the big points of This Film Is Not Yet Rated is how utterly heteronormative the MPAA is. Any sort of sex that can be seen as abnormal tends to be scored "higher" than more traditional types.
The MPAA is pretty much run by the major studios and theater chains. Its values reflect the kind of movies they make.
I have heard people claim its a way to keep newcomers and outsiders from breaking into the american market by punishing movies that depart from the Hollywood tentpole action films. Since such movies are expensive the pressure to give them the pg-13 is high.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
People have to remember that for most of human history sex for women was extremely risky behavior. Getting pregnant was something really dangerous and dying in childbirth was the number one cause of death among women.
That and diseases like Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Herpes where the AIDS epidemics of their day. People that slept around where real hazards to the public health or at least to their wives health. Imagine having child birth while suffering from a syphilis outbreak.
Sex=Death is a lot older then we think and it wasn't all patriarchal culture holding women down.
I agree (mostly). In addition, any society in which possessions or titles are passed down patrilineally is going to be threatened by questionable claims of patronage. Discouraging extramarital vaginal intercourse (possibly even by threat of stoning) is one way to deal with that.
I chose my words there carefully, though. The risk of pregnancy and the complications of patrilineal succession naturally lead to precepts against uninhibited vaginal intercourse. They don't necessarily lead to precepts against nudity, or sexual exhibitionism, or artistic depictions of sex, or frank discussion of sex, all of which are tightly regulated in the media. Diseases like syphilis lead to precepts against oral and anal sex; but there are or were a lot of places and times where precepts against non-vaginal sex were much looser than the standards that guide TV and movies (and, I'm not sure, but I wonder if that looseness might inversely correlate with the prevalence of syphilis - which was unknown in the western hemisphere until introduced by Europeans).
To be glib, we don't see many Sheela na gigs displayed on modern churches.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
People have to remember that for most of human history sex for women was extremely risky behavior. Getting pregnant was something really dangerous and dying in childbirth was the number one cause of death among women.
That and diseases like Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Herpes where the AIDS epidemics of their day. People that slept around where real hazards to the public health or at least to their wives health. Imagine having child birth while suffering from a syphilis outbreak.
Sex=Death is a lot older then we think and it wasn't all patriarchal culture holding women down.
I agree (mostly). In addition, any society in which possessions or titles are passed down patrilineally is going to be threatened by questionable claims of patronage. Discouraging extramarital vaginal intercourse (possibly even by threat of stoning) is one way to deal with that.
I chose my words there carefully, though. The risk of pregnancy and the complications of patrilineal succession naturally lead to precepts against uninhibited vaginal intercourse. They don't necessarily lead to precepts against nudity, or sexual exhibitionism, or artistic depictions of sex, or frank discussion of sex, all of which are tightly regulated in the media. Diseases like syphilis lead to precepts against oral and anal sex; but there are or were a lot of places and times where precepts against non-vaginal sex were much looser than the standards that guide TV and movies (and, I'm not sure, but I wonder if that looseness might inversely correlate with the prevalence of syphilis - which was unknown in the western hemisphere until introduced by Europeans).
To be glib, we don't see many Sheela na gigs displayed on modern churches.
You have the arrow backwards on syphilis there, Feral - it was unknown in Europe until brought back after contact with the Western Hemisphere.
The MPAA is pretty much run by the major studios and theater chains. Its values reflect the kind of movies they make.
I have heard people claim its a way to keep newcomers and outsiders from breaking into the american market by punishing movies that depart from the Hollywood tentpole action films. Since such movies are expensive the pressure to give them the pg-13 is high.
Claim?
You should watch This Film Is Not Yet Rated - it pretty much shows how they do it.
I not entirely convinced that the inability to display erect penises is what's holding back the American movie-going public from really loving non-actioney lower cost films.
This is not to say that I don't want more wang in film.
I just think america needs a more positive view of sexuality. Having casual nudity on tv/movies, and not having it be something you are ashamed of or get all red in the face would be a big step.
It reminds me of the big shock in the scene from Eastern Promises is not Viggo Mortensen literally eye gouging a man to death, its the fact his flopping penis was in the shot.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I just think america needs a more positive view of sexuality. Having casual nudity on tv/movies, and not having it be something you are ashamed of or get all red in the face would be a big step.
It reminds me of the big shock in the scene from Eastern Promises is not Viggo Mortensen literally eye gouging a man to death, its the fact his flopping penis was in the shot.
Expecting to change the speed or direction of such a shift in cultural mores is just too much.
Yeah, I'd love it if we were less inhibited, puritanical, sex-negative, and generally stupid about all things sexual in this country too. But history shows us making a slow halting progress down that road in fits of liberal change followed by bouts of regressive reactionary feedback for 200+ years.
It's funny how one type of change (acceptance of gays or realization that anti-miscegenation laws are evil or women's suffrage) is relatively rapid and other types are doomed to be slow.
I'm pretty sure the collective loosening of America's metaphorical corset ranges from slow to backwards.
Just look what we have accomplished in the past 20 years: We have managed to transfer our body shame to other countries which have adopted our intense fear of the speedo bathing suit.
That's not forward progress, it's reverse progress and we are exporting it like so many Big Macs.
People have to remember that for most of human history sex for women was extremely risky behavior. Getting pregnant was something really dangerous and dying in childbirth was the number one cause of death among women.
That and diseases like Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Herpes where the AIDS epidemics of their day. People that slept around where real hazards to the public health or at least to their wives health. Imagine having child birth while suffering from a syphilis outbreak.
Sex=Death is a lot older then we think and it wasn't all patriarchal culture holding women down.
I agree (mostly). In addition, any society in which possessions or titles are passed down patrilineally is going to be threatened by questionable claims of patronage. Discouraging extramarital vaginal intercourse (possibly even by threat of stoning) is one way to deal with that.
I chose my words there carefully, though. The risk of pregnancy and the complications of patrilineal succession naturally lead to precepts against uninhibited vaginal intercourse. They don't necessarily lead to precepts against nudity, or sexual exhibitionism, or artistic depictions of sex, or frank discussion of sex, all of which are tightly regulated in the media. Diseases like syphilis lead to precepts against oral and anal sex; but there are or were a lot of places and times where precepts against non-vaginal sex were much looser than the standards that guide TV and movies (and, I'm not sure, but I wonder if that looseness might inversely correlate with the prevalence of syphilis - which was unknown in the western hemisphere until introduced by Europeans).
To be glib, we don't see many Sheela na gigs displayed on modern churches.
You have the arrow backwards on syphilis there, Feral - it was unknown in Europe until brought back after contact with the Western Hemisphere.
durf
you're right
it was unknown in polynesia until introduced by Europeans
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I just think america needs a more positive view of sexuality. Having casual nudity on tv/movies, and not having it be something you are ashamed of or get all red in the face would be a big step.
It reminds me of the big shock in the scene from Eastern Promises is not Viggo Mortensen literally eye gouging a man to death, its the fact his flopping penis was in the shot.
They had that film on TV, and cut that part out. Just cuts to Viggo being rushed through the emerg. Not sure if the eye gouging or the penis was the reason it was cut. All I know is that I was a rather dissapointed viewer.
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Privacy with anything involving bodily functions is generally valuable for sanitation reasons - even eating in public could increase your risk of ingesting or transmitting infectious agents.
Beyond that, privacy with sexuality is valuable for the myriad reasons that privacy is valid in general, including avoid the following:
* Revelation of weakness
* Comparison of self to others
* Interference from hecklers, rivals, or other negative presences
* Distraction from the task at hand
* Revelation of secret knowledge
* Unintended actions (more people, bigger chance of accidents)
* Complicating relationships
Basically, having your boss laugh at the freckles on your ass while you're trying to get it on is a serious mood killer.
Enforcing privacy comes at least partly from a very different perspective.
a lot of religions are pretty clearly fitting onto a lot of social tendencies that predate religions, so you get a lot of commonalities
I tend to think of Confucian family-first, father-most-firstest as the platonic ideal of what conservatism is all about
obviously women are the most subjugated, but in families with a strong conservative core everyone is subjugated by the father
consider Tywin Lannister
Love hotels aren't weird, I'd say. Quite mainstream. And the 'nebulous' zone from India to Japan comprises most of the world's population.
As for Japan generally, nudity in private is very much not taboo, and not sexualised. Sex is private, as are many other things that would not seem private to a westerner, but there is no sense of shame/dirtiness associated with sex. So many Japanese people would not be comfortable with public kissing, but would be comfortable with just about anything privately.
Does this make me a bad person?
I have strong feelings on this, for obvious reasons.
Meanwhile, you have street names in the UK like Gropecunt Lane or variations on Bordel Lane (where bordel is an archaic term for brothel).
Many of the prostitution houses that led to these names were operated directly by local governments. In at least one region - 12th century Canterbury or so - the whorehouses were openly and explicitly operated by a bishop of the Church.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Contrast sex, where the expectation is that at some point almost everyone in the audience will have sex. I can understand the fear that showing sex in media could make the viewer more likely to have sex earlier in life or more likely to engage in the (potentially deviant) sex act on display.
I'm not sure what the obvious reasons are, but I spent an uncomfortably long time staring at your avatar trying to find out.
Specifically, it's puritanism.
This country was built pretty much on top of what constituted an Australia-like penal colony for Europe, except instead of sending prisoners here against their wills, they sent religious undesirables here of their own volition. These people were so out of step with the religious norms of the day that no one wanted to be neighbors with them, and they didn't want any neighbors with mainstream views polluting their cultish ideas.
The Founders may have been all heady with Enlightenment-era thought and philosophy, but the actual public was not. We've never shaken off our puritanical roots, and that is the base cause of why we are so comfortable with violence and so uncomfortable with sex.
Sure, but he felt bad about it.
And where did Puritanism come from?
Puritanism <- Calvinism <- Augustine
No myth - just the simple fact that, with the sort of density that urban Japan has, people do want someplace private to boink. Plus, the concept is interesting from the standpoint that you can rent rooms with specialized gear if you wanted to try something. (Besides, I got a kick out of squicking my kinkster friend out with the Hello Kitty BDSM room.)
Personally, if you want to look at where Japanese sexual culture is fucked, look at things like "paid dating" (basically a culturally acceptable form of prostitution.) Or that Viagra was legalized before the Pill.
there are intense cultural rituals and taboos around it everywhere because jealousy, romantic relationships and childbearing are a complicated and potentially dangerous thing.
margaret mead made a name for herself documenting the free-loving sexually unashamed polyamorous samoans - feted by cultural libertines as a an example of a pure race uncorrupted by puritanical & christian prudity - but then it turned out that much of what she observed was just samoans putting on a show for the white woman and showing her what she wanted to see.
Agreed. Pretty much every surviving society is going to have a framework for these issues just on the basis of stability.
like when it comes to sex we are about at "like europe, but maybe a little pruder about some things" and "way less sexually domineering, gender-essentialist, sexist, and rapey than pretty much everywhere else"
i don't really see a surfeit of violence in foreign media either, for the most part.
I doubt that any culture deals with sex as a "simple fact", independent of some myth of human nature. Sex is how we get babies. The process of acquiring babies usually plays into a culture's origin story.
Myth plus all the things Will mentioned: jealousy, romantic relationships, childbearing, gender, family, control, power dynamics. And all the stories we tell about those are based in myth.
The U.S. just happens to lean heavily on a very Augustinian myth.
So like I said, more specifically, puritanism.
Augustine would be less specific, and less recent, and, I think, less helpful.
We could say it all came from some ancient tribe of wandering jews but I don't think that's actually a useful observation!
...
The reason that love hotels exist is for privacy, which tends to be in very short supply in some of the most densely populated terrain in the world, in contrast to the US, where density is low enough that most people can assume a modicum of it in their own domicile. (That's not to say that they don't serve the same purpose that the classic "no-tell motel" - it's pretty well known that this is the reason that Nintendo owned a chain of them back in the 60s.) But they don't have the same (well, they somewhat do, but it's not quite as bad) stigma, primarily because the public sees a legitimate value to them.
That and diseases like Gonorrhea, Syphilis and Herpes where the AIDS epidemics of their day. People that slept around where real hazards to the public health or at least to their wives health. Imagine having child birth while suffering from a syphilis outbreak.
Sex=Death is a lot older then we think and it wasn't all patriarchal culture holding women down.
It is a mistake to conflate the sexual norms of Samoa with those of America or any other nation.
For example, one of the arguments against Mead is that Samoans prized bridal virginity highly. How could a culture that prizes bridal virginity be rife with premarital intercourse? Mead's own conclusions didn't add up.
Samoans had a role called "taupou," which can be loosely thought of as a princess - the daughter of a high-ranking family. The taupou would be assigned to marry the son of another important family to seal political alliances. Prior to Christianity, persisting (though dying out) into the 20th century, the taupou wedding ceremony included an explicit public defloration. One of Mead's most important detractors, David Freeman, described the defloration ritual thusly:
Try to imagine that on prime time TV.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
They get pretty insane with how specific they are.
Like how much the MPAA hates boners is sort of mind-boggling. There ain't nothin' more terrifying to the MPAA's ratings board than an erect penis, shown in all its glory. You can show sex, you can imply penetration (you can't show the penetration itself, of course, but you can imply it by showing naked people in the correct position as to make it clear he's puttin' it in someone), and you can show penises but for god's sake they better be flaccid.
This goes so far as to when movies actually want to have an erect penis on screen for any reason they have to use a rubber cock (Wolf of Wall Street is a recent example) and the MPAA has to be specifically told "Yeah, that's not a real erect penis, it's a fake erect penis, it's okay" so they don't freak out and give the movie an automatic NC-17.
Because somehow that makes it different.
It's completely fucking mental.
Now that's a goddamn party. I want to hang out with these people.
One of the big points of This Film Is Not Yet Rated is how utterly heteronormative the MPAA is. Any sort of sex that can be seen as abnormal tends to be scored "higher" than more traditional types.
I have heard people claim its a way to keep newcomers and outsiders from breaking into the american market by punishing movies that depart from the Hollywood tentpole action films. Since such movies are expensive the pressure to give them the pg-13 is high.
I agree (mostly). In addition, any society in which possessions or titles are passed down patrilineally is going to be threatened by questionable claims of patronage. Discouraging extramarital vaginal intercourse (possibly even by threat of stoning) is one way to deal with that.
I chose my words there carefully, though. The risk of pregnancy and the complications of patrilineal succession naturally lead to precepts against uninhibited vaginal intercourse. They don't necessarily lead to precepts against nudity, or sexual exhibitionism, or artistic depictions of sex, or frank discussion of sex, all of which are tightly regulated in the media. Diseases like syphilis lead to precepts against oral and anal sex; but there are or were a lot of places and times where precepts against non-vaginal sex were much looser than the standards that guide TV and movies (and, I'm not sure, but I wonder if that looseness might inversely correlate with the prevalence of syphilis - which was unknown in the western hemisphere until introduced by Europeans).
To be glib, we don't see many Sheela na gigs displayed on modern churches.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
You have the arrow backwards on syphilis there, Feral - it was unknown in Europe until brought back after contact with the Western Hemisphere.
Claim?
You should watch This Film Is Not Yet Rated - it pretty much shows how they do it.
This is not to say that I don't want more wang in film.
Because that would be false.
It reminds me of the big shock in the scene from Eastern Promises is not Viggo Mortensen literally eye gouging a man to death, its the fact his flopping penis was in the shot.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Expecting to change the speed or direction of such a shift in cultural mores is just too much.
Yeah, I'd love it if we were less inhibited, puritanical, sex-negative, and generally stupid about all things sexual in this country too. But history shows us making a slow halting progress down that road in fits of liberal change followed by bouts of regressive reactionary feedback for 200+ years.
It's funny how one type of change (acceptance of gays or realization that anti-miscegenation laws are evil or women's suffrage) is relatively rapid and other types are doomed to be slow.
I'm pretty sure the collective loosening of America's metaphorical corset ranges from slow to backwards.
Just look what we have accomplished in the past 20 years: We have managed to transfer our body shame to other countries which have adopted our intense fear of the speedo bathing suit.
That's not forward progress, it's reverse progress and we are exporting it like so many Big Macs.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I haven't paid for a ticket to a Mark Wahlberg film since he decided that he was too serious to take his shirt off.
durf
you're right
it was unknown in polynesia until introduced by Europeans
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
They had that film on TV, and cut that part out. Just cuts to Viggo being rushed through the emerg. Not sure if the eye gouging or the penis was the reason it was cut. All I know is that I was a rather dissapointed viewer.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
I think we may be talking past each other. Yes, love hotels exist because they provide privacy.
The question I'm addressing, and that the thread is addressing, is: Why do the people having sex want privacy?