Fuck all that mass-media social programming propaganda. Murder and violence are "okay," while sex and sexuality are "bad."
I'll walk around naked, look at women, and hookup whenever I damn well please. Sex is awesome, bodies are beautiful, and no shame is necessary for either.
Films that cannot be made in modern America:
- Laura, les ombres de l'été (1979)
- Lolita (either)
- Pretty Baby (1978)
- Caligula (1979)
- Rocky Horror Picture Show
- Monty Python and The Holy Grail
- Nymphomaniac I or II
Partially, there is great sanitization of Western films to be accepted by foreign censors.
Scarcity increases value. We often artificially enforce the scarcity of things in order to preserve its value. That's the reason why patents, IP and copyrights exists, for example. "Marriage" and "fidelity" are a means of artificially enforcing scarcity on sex, in order to increase the value and likelihood of partners bonding for life, which in turn improves the child-rearing situation for society, as single parents fare worse in general. "Marriage", according to anthropologists, is a universal human construct found in all human societies, ancient and modern, and many aim for it as the "ideal" or "perfect" human condition especially in old age. Hence "prudeness" is a well-founded desire to continue enforcing the scarcity of sex to increase its value and enjoyment, not to decrease it.
I think this is an accurate summary of certain conservative or puritanical stances on sexuality. Of course there are also decades of progressive literature that argue why this is essentially bullshit. Also, if you follow this line to its logical conclusion, you end up with inceldom.
I think there is also another mechanism at work in why many modern societies seem at the same time oversexualized and prude: By raising and restricting sexual desire you end up with some very effective carrots and sticks to control behaviour: You can sell the promise of sexual fulfillment directly (porn), you can link it to completely unrelated products through advertising (scantily-clad women that advertise cars, mattresses or mortgage contracts). You can also use it as a stick by either presenting unrealistic beauty standards ("You look unattractive! What is wrong with you?! Buy product X to fix that!") or by declaring the very desire that was raised before as immoral and therefore shaming people into compliance.
> I think this is an accurate summary of certain conservative or puritanical stances on sexuality. Of course there are also decades of progressive literature that argue why this is essentially bullshit.
Those ideas served civilization for thousands of years. But after just two generations of “progressive literature” western countries have literally ceased to be self-sustaining, becoming reliant on importing the next generation from conservative Latin (in North America) and Muslim (in Europe) countries. Victory!
Meanwhile, literature piles up about the “epidemic of loneliness” and deterioration in quality of life since the 1960s. Suicides increase, etc. Many people seem unhappy. They eagerly blame anything we changed in the areas of economic or welfare policy. We need to go back to 1960s top tax rates! But the “progressive literature” is supposed to be beyond question. All that had to be a good idea. It couldn’t be that any of those changes was misguided overreach in the same way as trickle down economics or financial deregulation.
> Those ideas served civilization for thousands of years.
Civilisation also had wars and famines for thousands of years to manage population and "cull off the weak". Do you want to go back to that?
> western countries have literally ceased to be self-sustaining, becoming reliant on importing the next generation from conservative Latin (in North America) and Muslim (in Europe) countries. Victory!
And yet the same people who argue like that are also usually worried about overpopulation of the planet.
> those changes
What do you mean by that? Allowing people to be in charge of their own sexuality?
Was it not always prohibitively expensive to raise children? Seems to me that the main thing that has changed is the invention of (modern) contraception, making not having children but still having sex an option in a way that it wasn't in the past.
I have never understood how people separate emotions from sex (i.e. changing/leaving partners). I always thought the act itself is strongly emotional, isn't it? Will it be correct to say that cost of sexual freedom is emotional detachment from it?
If you make sex too difficult to attain you get frustrated people who give up and stop participanting and become vulnerable to things like the propaganda of certain ideological cults that provide promises of controlling women, for example.
Monogamy should actually decrease sexual scarcity. There are a lot of sexual topologies out there, but let's compare two historically common ones: monogamy and polygamy.
Boys and girls are born in equal proportion, and monogamy pairs them up. If nobody died before old age and everyone were adequately paired up, monogamy would mean that every couple that wants sex could have it, a certain shade of zero scarcity.
Historically, polygamy meant that attractive or powerful men could have multiple wives. So again, given our sexes' equal birth rates and assuming nobody died before old age, a polygamous society must leave some men without a committed partner for sex.
Monogamy increases sexual scarcity for the highest value males, while decreasing it for almost everyone else. I would argue that's actually an ideal situation for everyone, a progressive tax.
There is a very interesting discussion about that in "Sex at dawn". Shortly put, anthropologists are very biased, and they will use their data selectively.
Today, there are people that live wholesome lives with multiple consensual sexual partners, search for polyamory.
IMHO, there simply is a lot of residual prejudice coming down from old religious dogma.
It wouldn't at all surprise me if human sexuality adapted flexibly to the social environment. Both can be true. Marriage might be a natural and ubiquitous response to the pressures of living in settled relatively highly communities, while flexible relationships might be common in societies of small loosely associated nomadic groups.
Show me evidence of this. Blaming all the anthropologists for being prudes and suppressing the data that everybody wants to hear and that would make them famous is just not even remotely believable.
I suspect that it was the advent of agriculture that led to monogamy as we know it. Now that almost nobody works in agriculture any more we are reverting to the relationship styles we evolved with.
Prejudice is inertia. It muffles your decisions. It can be stabilizing and it can drive you off a cliff even though you're flooring the breaks. A truly stable system is flexible and always has inertia under control.
It is indeed the best argument for conservative social values.
But we also have xhamster, xvideos, pornhub and so much more. It doesn't make sense to have fake, sterilized characters in one show, and then have fake sexualized characters in another if you care about the effects on society.
At that point it makes more sense to show how sex can be integrated healthily into a normal human life - neither fucking step-sis because she is stuck in a washing machine nor being superbuff and not even looking a women seems the ideal for society.
Scarcity mindset, fear, adds undue pressure onto natural mechanisms - adding the whole pressure of the Disney Princess story to find your "one true love;" which eventually you do but that won't be until you've figured out yourself, the more you've figured out yourself, the better you'll match with someone and grow old together.
From written record. We know for sure, since Old Egypt/bronze era, marriage was almost universal.
Heck, we even have tablets of workers that built the pyramid that were writing about how they think they made a mistake marrying their wife, as she is miserable and complains all the time, and suspicion of her cheating.
It is a story that could have been written today, but it was written 4800 years ago
There's a decent argument that marriage came about as a consequence of agriculture, where paternity suddenly mattered when it came to inheriting property. Of course, this predates writing, making it hard to definitively prove one way or another.
I'm not implying you don't find marriage in ancient times that resembles modern marriage. I'm pointing out the bold generalizations.
> We know for sure, since Old Egypt/bronze era, marriage was almost universal.
For sure almost. Earth's experienced a larger number and variety of cultures than some people give it credit for. Let's not make generalizations about human nature based on someone else's generalizations about human past. Noone owes a justification for acting the way they do. When you introduce justifications, you enter the realms of dogma.
Not universally-true. Contrived scarcity is bullshit and reduces enjoyment for me.
I don't subscribe to monogamy or closed relationships. Regularlly, I'm with 3 bi/pan females who would all eagerly have my children whenever I wanted. They sleep around primarily with women, as do I. It's way more enjoyable than the "waiting until marriage"-types and virgins who I actively avoid because they're dull.
Civilization cannot exist without promoted monogamy.
Q. Do you believe polygamy in the Middle East hurts women or men more?
A. Men. Young, poor, men. You have tens of thousands of young, poor men with zero prospects of having a mate. That translates into a thousand suicide bombers. To a man that desperate, that 60-odd virgin fantasy starts to hold far more meaning.
I'm always skeptical about claims that $MOVIE couldn't be made today that was made in a past decade. Lolita's title character was 3-4 years older than the character in the book in both films. Pretty Baby was very controversial when it came out. (ADDED: And I'd entertain the thought that it might be even harder to make today/be even more controversial.Might be more like HBO material.) Nymphomaniac is a European art film. Whether or not Rocky Horror and Holy Grail would be appealing to modern audiences I don't know but I see no reason they couldn't be made.
In another vein, I've also seen the claim made that Heathers couldn't be made today because of school shootings, yet it was made into a Broadway musical within the past decade.
> Partially, there is great sanitization of Western films to be accepted by foreign censors.
It's min/maxing, optimizing for the biggest revenue, and it's paying massive dividends. Film projects produce record breaking amounts of revenue. If a blockbuster film passes the Chinese censors (and/or is made with Chinese cooperation), it will produce hundreds of millions more in revenue.
But that's the blockbusters. At the same time, the movie industry is booming with independent and original films. Joker is one example, it's not a Hollywood blockbuster, it's not 'sexy', there's no overblown action scenes, it's not targeting a PG-13 audience (it's an R rated film), and yet it still broke all records, earning over a billion in revenue with at a 55-70 million budget.
A live remake of Rocky Horror Picture Show aired on Fox in 2016 during normal viewing hours with Frank N Furter played by a trans actress. I disagree with your general point, but also, you're explicitly wrong on that front.
Sex is not harmless. While it is one of the great human joys, it is also the source of some of our deepest despairs, intractable conflicts, and personal tragedies. This free-for-all free love ethic that you celebrate, which erased almost all of the previous social restrictions on sex, inevitably created the discontent that boiled over into the #metoo phenomenon. It is also fueling the growing incel phenomenon.
It is not just out of backward thinking that every single human society has seen it fit to strictly control sex. The last half century, where your attitude largely reigned in Western Europe and almost the same extent in America, is an extreme aberration and it is ending rapidly before our eyes.
Sex is not harmless. While it is one of the great human joys, it is also the source of some of our deepest despairs, intractable conflicts, and personal tragedies.
A grand, sweeping statement that's true for quite a few things (wine, fashion, love, child rearing, freedom, your home). All the while nobody claimed that sex is harmless. Whatever that means.
This free-for-all free love ethic that you celebrate, which erased almost all of the previous social restrictions on sex, inevitably created the discontent that boiled over into the #metoo phenomenon.
You think that Western attitudes towards sexuality of the second half of the 20th century caused sexual harrassment and rape, or you think it empowered women to talk about and fight against it? There's plenty of evidence for the latter; rape within a marriage was legal until the 70s.
It seemed a big jump by the GP to conflate free love with a lack of consent. And what "boiled over?" There is NC/CNC but ultimately that starts from trust and consent.
The idea that large numbers of opposite sex are available for casual sex is a modern idea. Not hard to see how that leads to lots of unwanted and harmful sexual attention.
You said that people not being shamed enough about sex and their bodies leads to people speaking up when they are the victims of sexual violence, and that you view that as a problem.
I agree with the gist of the post expect walking around naked. I don't know if its a right thing to be naked around children. I am too biased to be brought up growing with clothes on, haven't thought or heard the argument of the other side.
You don't know if it's right to be naked around children? How are they supposed to learn about normal bodies?
Here in the Netherlands a new children's TV program started: [0], kids ask naked people questions. I applaud it, finally, a source of naked that is not porn, The kids ask stuff like: "What are you most ashamed of about your body" and things about new hair growth they are about to experience, not even sex so far. And they get to see realistic penises and breasts while they are learning.
I guess I'm finally starting to understand why I like old Dutch movies like "Turks Fruit" [1]. Or modern non-US series for example from Spain, where people have sex (even in their 40's omg!) and go to the toilet, and where women are strong. I like Casa de Papel for example, Raquel is very sensual, intelligent, funny, flirty and strong, and usually fully covered in clothes, perhaps the antithesis of this new asexual trend. It's refreshing and normal and liberating. Of course it helps that she like's the nerdy "Professor" ;). Although this nerdy professor can, in contrast to all stereotypes, flirt quite well ("Intelligence can be very sexy") and knows how to engage with her. Also: refreshing.
I can assure you that kids raised around parents who are naked constantly is perfectly normal and healthy. I was raised in the 70s and my parents were constantly naked. We all sat in the backyard hot tub naked. Not a thought was given to it.
I now do the same to my kids. The key is to do it from day one, so there is never that first memory of “when did you first see your parents naked”. There is no first because it’s been always. There is no shock because it’s perfectly normal.
Growing up in Finland it is also perfectly normal to be with friends and family naked in sauna, and between it while you chill out on the balcony or take a break.
Because you don't look at your family in a sexual way. Similarly in Renaissance, for example, we had some nudity going on in art, but it was done in a tasteful and non-sexual fashion. That's different from outright pornography or erotica, which is what children should not be exposed to.
Like the parent commentor said, it's probably about experiencing nudity from day one. I grew up in a family where you'd never see someone naked, but then, as a teen, was exposed to a family that's comfortable with being naked around each other. I had some readjusting to do, because for me nakedness had become something super private, dirty and sexual. Now that I think about it it makes me kind of angry that I grew up with such a stupid outlook on the human body.
Cool. I grew up amongst neighbors who were Danish and hippie nudists (12' / 3.5m fencing in their backyard). I only wear clothes or conform to most societal expectations to not shock the 98% of people who are normies and/or uncool.
Kids don’t know if something is good, bad, weird or whatever until they’re told. If you are fine not wearing clothes, and do it in your home, your kids wont think anything of it.
Yes. Kids are taught to be ashamed of their bodies by their parents and society. And then teenagers are taught to be ashamed of sex. Some societies inculcate even more shame than others.
It's one tactic to try and avoid them 'accidentally' having sex at a young age (and getting pregnant and everything). I can kind of see everything, I mean on the one side sex ed is important, but if they can avoid attempting it for a few years until they're more well-rounded individuals it'll be a double bonus.
Mind you, I've very much been a late bloomer so my perspective is probably not representative.
Not true. It’s not uncommon for a toddler to find a private place to defecate without being told. There is an innate sense of a need for privacy for some things.
I will now point you towards mainland China, where kids as old as 90 will shit in the streets. I’m not kidding either (although this is changing in the larger cities.... slowly)
A private place is often a good idea, so predators wont eat you when you are so vulnerable. There are many places where nakedness is the norm and the naked people will probably still search for private places when defecating.
Are you sure that's not learned behaviour? I've only ever seen it in older kids. I'd hypothesise it follows "expert" advise that suggests what I consider very late potty training.
I've spent time around more babies & toddlers than most people see in a lifetime (sometimes >50 per day; probably no more than 2000 per year though; for >decade; [working at baby & toddler groups]).
Could you say if this was a fixed behaviour (ie they always sought a private place to poop), had a fixed location (eg always behind the couch), if you used a potty at the time, and exactly which month it appeared at so I can note it with my own observations. Cheers.
haven't thought or heard the argument of the other side
I think this is a (the?) fundamental issue here; you're beginning from a place of needing to be told its OK to be naked near a child. That there needs to be a strong reason, a defensible argument just to have no clothes on near a child. There's an assumption in this thinking that by default, it's simply bad to be naked near a child - an assumption that's entirely cultural and learned. Cultures that don't have this hang-up don't have a strong argument for it - they just think it's crazy that your culture is so weird ("WEIRD", one might say) about it for no good reason.
I'll walk around naked, look at women, and hookup whenever I damn well please. Sex is awesome, bodies are beautiful, and no shame is necessary for either.
Films that cannot be made in modern America:
- Laura, les ombres de l'été (1979)
- Lolita (either)
- Pretty Baby (1978)
- Caligula (1979)
- Rocky Horror Picture Show
- Monty Python and The Holy Grail
- Nymphomaniac I or II
Partially, there is great sanitization of Western films to be accepted by foreign censors.