this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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As much as X can get bent The eradication of human sexuality from mass media culture is a clear sign of intense rot at the heart of our civilization. How can such a fundamental element of thr human experience can be so conspicuously absent for almost all art and media. A clear sign of the omnipresent censure and purge of dissenting opinion in our supposedly "free" society.
What are you talking about? Heaps of movies have sex scenes. Heaps of songs are about sex. There are heaps of books and other stories about sex. The internet is packed with sex stuff of all kinds. Advertisements in the street are obvious implicitly or explicitly about sex. So how can you say that sex is 'conspicuously absent from almost all art and media'? Are you looking?
Allowing explicit porn on twitter doesn't make it ground-breaking in any way. It just changes the tone and target audience of the site, such that you will now see porn inserted into basically any conversation or topic.
I should have clarified, freely available mainstream media and art. I don't watch ads so I can't say for sure, I don't consider advertising to be part of art and media, more like a form of pollution on top.
From what I've senn tge most you might get are suggestive allusions to sex. It's just not treated as the everyday part of life that it is.
By comparison, it is entirely overshadowed by violence and gore.
Every new game that is released with a character dressed in even a slightly sexually suggestive way results in a rabid meltdown from braindead Twitter users. Payment processors like PayPal are forbidding the use of their services for NSFW content due to pressure from fundamentalist christian organizations like Exodus Cry, under the guise of "child safety"
Religion is the word you're looking for.
And why religion? The answer is: control.
I mean they did have religions in greece and rome, yet it's full of nude art
Yea but Greco-Roman paganism didn’t treat women as owned property of men like the Abrahamic faiths do. It’s not necessarily religion in total, it’s that the current dominant religions are extremely controlling and more about self-oppression for eventual reward than guidelines for a good life like most pagan sects
Yes they fucking did lmao. Greek women had absolutely no rights
right, which means it isn't "religion" as a concept which is the problem.
Also, sexuality is pretty commonly open in Hinduism, which is a pretty huge current religion.
It isn't a problem with "religion".
I was going to say, isn't the Kama Sutra a Hindu text? We have a bunch of sex positions that may have been lost to time if it weren't for the Hindu religion.
So maybe just an old tradition that hasn't died out yet ? A sharp edged piece of societal flotsam that we're still dealing with ?
Is muskrat religious?
His only religion appears to be financial technofeudalism. I guess the religious fundamentalists aren't lucrative enough for him to enforce their commandments.
Yeah, I'll always give credit where credit is due, and no matter how much I detest Musk, this is a legitimately good move and I fully endorse it.
On the other hand it means no more browsing X at work. NSFW is aptly named.
Another arbitrary imposition.
it’s not arbitrary… there’s this whole thing with sexual harassment and a hostile workplace that makes porn a bad idea for a large diverse team….
some reactions definitely go too far but it’s not arbitrary
You make a good point, it"s definitly part of the outline of that social wound.
Some people are so fragile and the topic that they consider mere exposure as an attack or harrasement.
And whoever is most fragile seems to the decider for everyone, of what is forbidden.
Really a powerful position to be in ...
i don’t really see being too fragile as a powerful position….
it has definitely been abused by people pretending to be fragile… but the amount of very hostile, sexually aggressive people at many workplaces has made it this way, not the fragile people.
work is a place people are dependent on to make money to survive, with people they have to see every day.
a good friend of mine was a manager and very mildly cussed at a worker when they made a mistake… not even at her but just cussed as he was walking off….
she went to h.r., said it was because he hated lesbians (he doesn’t, has a lesbian aunt and several lesbian friends).
they fired him after ten years of being a good worker, working overtime or filling in whenever asked… never being late….
just fired him over one person saying one thing.
everyone else backed him up, but they didn’t care.
….
unions are pretty good, btw.
anecdotes aren't data. even if this is true, which i don't believe it is to be honest, it pales in comparison to the innumerable discriminatory practices towards women and all sorts of minorities. also even in your own friend's probably distorted version of the events he's in the wrong.
my point is sometimes it does get abused…. but it’s in place for good reasons
and the fact that you think you know whether my friend was in the wrong or not means that you’re not worth talking to
anything can sometimes get abused. that's what abuse is; it's different from use.
what do you mean i think i know your friend is in the wrong? i said he is in the wrong even if you take him at his word. that's not me thinking it; it's him admitting it.
you’re just boring concern troll trying to argue with everyone… i see your comment history.
every single comment is some condescending argumentative bullshit….
i’ll be blocking you and moving on to actual conversation
you don't even know what the word you use mean. what concern trolling?
wow my comments are argumentative‽ it's almost like I reply to a comment i disagree with and argue against it, maybe I should post more comments that say "this" instead so you can feel more in good company.
let me guess, you're not a woman.
The fact that someone's gender makes a difference is part of that "social wound" they mentioned.
of course it makes a difference. that's how power dynamics work. i think it's very rich to complain about people being fragile while demonstrating peak fragility that you can't just show porn to people who don't consent to it.
Where did I advocate for open porn in the workplace? My only point was that it's a sign of societal issues that there would be a gender based difference in how people see the issue. That's not anti-woman, it's just pointing out broader issues.
i didn't say you were doing it. i was talking about the comment you referenced. seemed obvious.
Some workplaces do allow showing tits at work, but It's not arbitrary. It's imposed by societies norms.
Aren't society's norms arbitrary? There are certainly societies where showing tits is normal.
I know what you are saying but usually "arbitrary" is at the individual level, not at societal level.
E.g. laws being arbitrarily enforced but you'd never describe the law itself as arbitrary.
Your point is well illustrated with the Joseon trend in Korea in the late 1800's. But that was more societal than individual.
While you’re not wrong, there’s a time and place for everything
In what way though? We see all kinds of sexual and suggestive displays everywhere in media because “sex sells”. I guess you and the people up voting you don’t use Instagram, which is essentially what Twitter is now trying to emulate via this rule change.
But it’s not? Every visual form of art has some kind of sexualized content. Go literally anywhere (online or off) and it’s there. The reason why the more overt and pornographic content is behind NSFW is because it’s titillating. Experiencing prolonged bouts of arousal is mentally exhausting and often leads to depression or worsens it, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10813043/#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20a%20higher%20and%20hyperstable,3%2C7%2C8%5D.
It’s why looking at porn all day is not mentally relaxing, necessarily. Some people also find overt sexual displays distracting as all they want to do is focus without being stimulated into another direction. That said, there are plenty of video games, movies, art forms, music experiences which explore human sexuality. They’re fun because it’s stimulation at a time when you’re in the frame of mind for it.
I feel a lot of times when people talk about “something is like this” what they’re really saying “my experiences show that something is like this”, and that to me just indicates they need to broaden their experiences.
We’re missing sex positivity in modern US society with respect to women’s reproductive rights and acceptance of different sexual orientations or gender identities. We’re not missing sex or sexualized content.
You are misunderstanding the meaning of the paper you linked; it is not referring to sexual arousal but rather the psychological state of hyperarousal aka the fight-or-flight response. These are two very different meanings of the term "arousal" and are not at all interchangable.
I am not misunderstanding it, heightened emotions = arousal, and sexual stimulation leads to heightened emotions
You are misunderstanding it. Don't worry though, yours is a common misunderstanding! So common, in fact, that the Wikipedia article on arousal starts with, "not to be confused with sexual arousal".
In psychology, "arousal" is a technical term and not all arousal causes harm. In fact, many forms of arousal are quite healthy. Being awake, for example, is a type of arousal and most people stay awake for 16+ hours per day without issue.
Now, you are correct that sexual arousal is a type of arousal, but there is no reason to believe that sexual arousal would cause the pathology of arousal that is discussed in the paper. In fact, the specific section you linked refers to "hyperstable arousal regulation" which refers to a tendency for a person's level of arousal to remain too constant over time rather than varying appropriately to the situation they are in. And on top of all that, causation is not indicated. There is no reason to believe that the arousal is causing the depression rather than the other way around.
I know :) I’ve done research in affective psychology. I was connecting the thread from arousal (in general) to sexual arousal. I think my follow up post shows that logic in a pithy one liner
Got it and thanks for clarifying. I also amended my last comment since I had a bit of extra time to read the study more thoroughly. I'd be quite interested to see which way the causation goes. Although I suspect that hyperstable arousal may be a symptom of depression rather than a cause of depression, I have heard that the intense adrenaline rush of skydiving may alleviate depression for some people. To me this suggests there may be a way to break out of that hyperstable arousal state by intentionally reaching a state of extremely high arousal, perhaps ending a bout of depression early.
As a foreigner, this is more of a US (maybe England?) thing in my perception (together with some Muslim and East cultures). The US was always a bit strange with sexuality themes.
The UK* is waaaaaaaaaaaay more open about sex and nudity than the US
yup especially in the usa. Violence and blood is okay but god forbid if u see coochie or cock.
Remember the nipple that ruined a household name celebrity's career? Despite the cover being removed having more to do with the actions of another celebrity whose career wasn't ruined rather than her, adding a layer of misogyny to what was already puritan stupidity?
Even if kids saw it, so what? I can't see any harm resulting from telling a child of any age that women have breasts for feeding babies, that it is done through the nipple, and that women without babies still have breasts and nipples because the body prepares for maybe having a baby later. And men have nipples because that part of the body doesn't get different until puberty. And that it can be rude to ask or talk to someone about theirs, and it is very rude (and illegal) to touch them without permission.
exactly its bizzare how the usa has tabooed breasts so hard especially in non sexual settings like a women having to cover herself or go in the bathroom to breast feed. Yes boobies are fantastic and erotic but at the same time not that a big deal and people should be able at the very least tolerate their barren presence.
Eradication? If anything, streaming services turn the sex dial to 11 for a while now. It's as if they won't greenlight a new show unless it has a certain amount of sex and nudity scenes.
I'm not really including paywalled media in this. I'm not subscribed so I really don't see any of what you mention. What I'm seeing in my browser windows is almost completely sterile. The only place I see sex, is places that are ONLY about sex. There is no meaningful mixing.
Yeah which creates a division where all sane and sensible visions of sexuality are forbidden leaving only more extreme depictions from porn focused sites which race to extremes.
I think it's an unhealthy approach, we need sensible and loving eroticism to serve as a good example otherwise all we have is the absurdity of porn - I'm no prude and not al all against fetish porn or whatever as long as it's consensual and safe but objectification and extremism don't make healthy relationships or happy lives (not say they can't be part of a great relationship but they dont work as the basis for it)
Yes, you get, tge few depictions tgat remain are either empty allusions to sex or grotesque, farcicsl refetences.the real thing is absent. It ends at, largely inaccessible movies almost only about love and then nothing and then parody like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_qj8cSk38o&t=210 And we know the people who excised that middle portion and I don't understand why we let them get away with it.