You're a wise man.
Scifi with aggressive sexuality
- Thread starter JirinPanthosa
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You're a wise man.
In terms of agressive sexuality it is hard to beat Farmer's "hard-shelled, hilltop living, female-only womb aliens who fertilize themselves via roving mobile “male” objects whom they capture and thrust into their womb-spaces"
https://sciencefictionruminations.w...ew-strange-relations-philip-jose-farmer-1960/
Then too--it isn't really all that certain that Giger's ALIEN was eating his victims.
Still, the worst offender of all time was Rod Steiger's character Komarovsky from Doctor Zhivago:
"And don't delude yourself this was rape. That would flatter us both."
https://sciencefictionruminations.w...ew-strange-relations-philip-jose-farmer-1960/
Then too--it isn't really all that certain that Giger's ALIEN was eating his victims.
Still, the worst offender of all time was Rod Steiger's character Komarovsky from Doctor Zhivago:
"And don't delude yourself this was rape. That would flatter us both."
Exactly. It's all just excuses. Everybody does it for god, mother, and country-- or so they claim.
Thank you...Except I'm not a man.
You are a wise hu-man.
Are you being ironic, or did you not see that all three of us are disagreeing with you?
I'm just pointing out that the victim politics narrative that women are in constant danger of being violently assaulted is hogwash. The media is peddling a false sense of insecurity that doesn't match up to reality. Violence, like every other shitty thing in life, happens and everyone is pretty much equally at risk regardless of gender.
We're getting a bit off the mark here because we're not talking about a 1:1 correlation. We're not talking about depicting rape in media. We're talking about portraying women in a sexualized way. It's more like, if you were in a car accident and then you said that people should stop going to auto shows because it's glorifying cars.
I don't understand this idea in our culture that depicting a fictional woman in a highly sexualized way is inherently demeaning to all women.
I can understand why heterosexual women would not want see that because it doesn't cater to their tastes. But while I may roll my eyes at the gratuitous beefcake shots of Chris Hemsworth in Thor, I don't see how emphasizing another man's sexuality has anything to do with my own self worth as a man.Women are more likely to be the victims of sexual violence, though.
Eh, It's thread drift. It's what happens. I was replying to a comment specifically about depictions of sexual violence, not sexualization in general -- and reacting with disbelief that anyone would seriously compare freakin' auto accidents with rape, which the person pretty explicitly did.
I don't understand this idea in our culture that depicting a fictional woman in a highly sexualized way is inherently demeaning to all women.
But nobody's painting with that wide a brush? People are saying *certain types* of sexualization are demeaning.
I'm saying that beauty and sexuality are not harmful, that women don't need to be protected from it, and that we live in a religious culture with a negative attitude toward sexuality-- which part or parts are you disagreeing with? Or are you just taking my sarcastic response to post #93 literally?
Whether or not it's true, and it is true to a certain degree, my point is the Guardians of Public Morality have always used that as an excuse to suppress sexuality in the arts (and in general).
And that's the point I keep illustrating: That the religious tradition has trained people to accept that there is a complete separate, and nonsensical, set of rules for anything even vaguely sexual.
The same magical way that Gay marriage is harmful to Straight marriage. Ya gotta have faith.I don't understand this idea in our culture that depicting a fictional woman in a highly sexualized way is inherently demeaning to all women.
Some species use love darts to penetrate their mate as part of selection. SF needs to get more inventive.
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I don't understand this idea in our culture that depicting a fictional woman in a highly sexualized way is inherently demeaning to all women.
Beefcake is relatively new. If you went to the movies and had no choice but to sit there and see scene after scene of Chris Hemsworth (or men like him) running around shirtless for no real reason you'd probably complain about it. No it wouldn't affect your 'worth' as a man but at the same time you probably wouldn't like it and for some men, it might.
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I don't live in a religious culture with a negative attitude towards sexuality.
Cologne is like the complete opposite of that.
And sexual objectification isn't some sort of rebellion against anti-sex attitudes.
The problem isn't the occasional objectification of women but the constant and casual sexual objectification women face in almost every media and almost every aspect of life almost every single day.
There is nothing wrong with an individual instance of portraying a woman in a sexualized way.
But when women are objectified to such a degree (both in media and in real life) that men struggle to see us as more than sex objects without agency, that creates the rape culture we're currently trying to fight.
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I'd have to say, having actually watched it, that both the video and the song -- while affecting to peddle the Female Body as Expected Product -- are both self-aware and subversive in a lot of interesting ways. (For instance, if you're listening, the lyrics explicitly reference self-hate as the source of the imagery being peddled.) It intrigues me that Fergie is a common target of what I usually think of as Beyonce Syndrome, meaning faux-iconoclastic commentary whose basic premise is that she's some kind of mindless sexbot bimbo when she's extremely obviously the precise opposite of that, and in full command of the tropes she's exploiting / playing with / subverting.
Of course, the flipside of all this is that the value of "subversiveness" is itself questionable. "Subversiveness" is like Aesop's Fables, the structural compliment that oppressed and repressed people pay to the forces oppressing and repressing them. You know the people who rule you when you know who you cannot openly mock. The Simpsons got by for ages on being "subversive" of the happy-family Americana tropes it trucked in. It's worth wondering what that really added up to, in the end.
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If you live in Western Civilization, you do.
Although some places are undoubtedly better off than others.Cologne is like the complete opposite of that.
More of an enforcement than a rebellion. The establishment doesn't rebel against itself. And, again, the point is that the concept of objectification runs contrary to every other human activity.
Okay, so we agree that there's nothing wrong with sexuality, you just object to the volume. That's kind of subjective, but it's better than the usual tropes of characterizing sexuality as pandering or "dirty."
I think the fact that the rape culture meme has been brought back and mainstreamed is enough to demonstrate how politicized sexuality has become in our Age of Extremism. But if there is a problem with men who see women as sex objects without agency, wouldn't it be better to actually deal with that? Traditionally, the Left Wing has always been in opposition to the Right Wing position of blaming the arts and media for perceived problems-- video games cause violence, horror movies incite murder, erotica promotes promiscuity (oh, no!)-- why are they now in agreement when it comes to sexuality?
1) You're acting like the mainstreaming of what you dismissively call the "rape culture meme" is a problem. Rape culture is the problem. Referring to rape culture as "the rape culture meme" is, at best, unfortunate.
2) Sexuality is part of society and thus becomes part of public discourse. Sexual objectification and violence are used to strip women of their agency. And as long as a regrettably big number of men are okay with that, there's good reason to politicize the whole topic.
When sexism and sexual objectification are a perfectly normal part of our everyday lives and of pop culture, it normalizes sexist behaviour and objectification. When pop culture keeps portraying women as sex objects, it reinforces male belief that this is perfectly normal.
Our perception of reality is an ever-changing construction and everyhing we consume, every conversatiton we follow, every experience we make, informs that construction. By making sexism and objectification look and feel "normal", we're reinforcing that "construction" of reality in people.
I think you need to work on developing a more nuanced view on these things. Whenever the topic comes up you're all "Sex is good, why does everybody hate sex?!" when this is totally besides the point. This isn't about "Sex is good" vs "Sex is bad". It's not adequate to the complexity of the situation. I'm very sex-positive but I'm often critical of the portrayal of women in culture.
And I'm not critical because women are sexualized. Quite the opposite. I think female desire is something that is vastly under-explored by mainstream media (which explains the strong reaction to 50 Shades of Grey) and female desire can (if you take agency seriously) also involve liking to be objectified once in a while.
So the problem is not sex or sexuality. The problem is the way media deals with agency and the fact that sexual objectification isn't the exception but the norm.
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I personally believe that religion has long ceased to be any kind of influence when it comes to the overall popular culture in American. For individual groups in certain places perhaps (I am a southerner and will pick on the American south) but I believe it's influence has greatly waned.
There used to be a 'shaming' when it came to things like pre-marital sex,divorce or out of wedlock children but any sort of 'punishment' for such things has greatly lessened if it exists at all anymore with the except of the very hardcore groups but most of those are largely separatists. It is the opinion of many that they will always be with us but will eventually go the way of the Amish. There are also a lot of things that people will no longer put up with. Spousal abuse, cover-ups of misconduct by clergy etc.
I'm not talking about just me and my personal experience. I belong to a loose informal network of people who are escapees and survivors of strict fundamentalist upbringing that has contacts across the country. We are not professionals and we are simply drawing our own conclusions. There is a definite shift in attitude.
That is not to say there are not left over attitudes. I don't like calling them 'Puritan'. I know what people mean when they say that but the Puritans and their influence never really got out of New England. I think what we see in American is probably left over Victorian attitudes but I'll let the historical sociologists debate over that one.
(I want to make it clear when I speak of fundamentalists that the majority of them are not part of any sort of crazy cult. Most of them just want to live their lives and be left alone like most of us. The problem is a lot of these churches don't have any kind of hierarchy in place so their leaders are not accountable to anyone so it is easy for one person to take over a church and dictate what goes on according to his own whims).
There used to be a 'shaming' when it came to things like pre-marital sex,divorce or out of wedlock children but any sort of 'punishment' for such things has greatly lessened if it exists at all anymore with the except of the very hardcore groups but most of those are largely separatists. It is the opinion of many that they will always be with us but will eventually go the way of the Amish. There are also a lot of things that people will no longer put up with. Spousal abuse, cover-ups of misconduct by clergy etc.
I'm not talking about just me and my personal experience. I belong to a loose informal network of people who are escapees and survivors of strict fundamentalist upbringing that has contacts across the country. We are not professionals and we are simply drawing our own conclusions. There is a definite shift in attitude.
That is not to say there are not left over attitudes. I don't like calling them 'Puritan'. I know what people mean when they say that but the Puritans and their influence never really got out of New England. I think what we see in American is probably left over Victorian attitudes but I'll let the historical sociologists debate over that one.
(I want to make it clear when I speak of fundamentalists that the majority of them are not part of any sort of crazy cult. Most of them just want to live their lives and be left alone like most of us. The problem is a lot of these churches don't have any kind of hierarchy in place so their leaders are not accountable to anyone so it is easy for one person to take over a church and dictate what goes on according to his own whims).
True enough. When we get to deep into the abstract, we can lose grip of the subject entirely. To use a general kind of example, let's go back to a post that Christopher made on a previous page:
What Christopher seems to be saying is that, in an action scene, if a female character is being depicted in an implausibly sexual manner for a character going into battle, that is immoral and "inappropriately voyeuristic."
I would argue that, while unrealistic action sequences are often undesirable from my personal artistic standpoint, that there's nothing immoral about emphasizing the female or male form. After all, if we're talking about comic books, this is already a genre with a tenuous grasp on realism. And while it may be chock full of busty women in ridiculously skimpy outfits, it's also full of men wearing spandex that shows off the full definition of their rippling muscles underneath (which spandex does not do in real life).
Now, it's hard to do a 1:1 correlation here because the masculine ideal & the feminine ideal are so different. Feminine sexuality tends to have an independent element. There are things that a woman can do and things she can wear that serve no purpose other than to make her more sexually attractive. There is an entire industry of magazines filled with fashion tips to make women more sexually attractive. On the other hand, masculine sexuality tends to focus on non-sexual things like being strong & rich & other things that could make him a good "provider." It's the reason why Lois Lane can just get captured every week but Wonder Woman's boyfriend has to be useful.
I agree that there could be greater parity in the action genre as far as catering to female audience members. But I believe there's also room in the marketplace for art that caters primarily to the heterosexual male perspective and I don't believe that the people who read/watch it should be chastised as immoral.
Have you tried it the other way around? I'm just curious. I'm assuming you're a woman. I'm just wondering if you've ever tried objectifying men the way that you've felt objectified? How does that turn out?
The problem with lumping "objectification" & "violence" into the same category is that they're very different. In particular, because sexual violence IS A CRIME! People who commit violent crimes, including rape, should go to jail!
So, it's no wonder it raises the hackles of men when the ones who enjoy sexy drawings of female comic book characters are put into the same category as violent criminals. You'll probably tend to see more of this reaction in geek culture since that traditionally includes a lot of men who themselves feel marginalized, often sexually marginalized by women because they don't fit the "masculine ideal."
Rape culture started out as a fringe element back in the 70s. It was kept at arm's length by Women's Libbers and liberals because, aside from being demeaning to both men and women, it gave ammunition to the Right Wingnuts. It seemed to disappear for a few decades until it was revived and mainstreamed by the Millennials. The unfortunate thing here is that our society has come to the point where something that ugly can fit right in.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by agency in this context. It sounds like some kind of insider language. Are you suggesting a conspiracy? And the equating of sex and violence is another Right-Wing meme.
A mature approach to positive change is the opposite of a lack of nuance. I absolutely do promote a positive attitude toward, because there is so much sex negativism-- that's the reason threads like this are started. Sex is lowbrow, pandering, adolescent wish fulfillment, inappropriate, and so on. This all stems, as I said, from those deep-rooted religious paradigms that can be traced back to a bunch of Medieval monks with mommy issues. Historically, Feminist movements have always opposed this, with the occasional exception.
We're mostly in agreement, except I oppose the religious concept of objectification. Where we disagree is that censorship in the arts or manipulation of the media is in any way beneficial to women (or anyone).
A huge amount of progress has been made toward equality over the past half century, but you are absolutely right that we're not at the end of the road. And that this century has seen some backsliding. I would suggest that the extremism and divisiveness of Millennial-era Feminism (and this is true of the nuLeft in general) are more responsible for the current atmosphere of alienation than are beauty and sexuality in the arts, and that a more positive approach would be more constructive, as it was back in the days of Women's Lib and the Sexual Revolution.
Oh, I don't know about that...what was Kirk getting his shirt torn all the time on TOS about?
(The rest of this is not directed at anyone in particular, just a bit of musing prompted by this thread in general.)
I think a certain degree of objectification is integral to the natural way humans process their surroundings and interact with others, much in the same way that a certain degree of stereotyping is. It's when this tendency runs amok and isn't mitigated and compensated for by other factors (empathy and a sense of mutual respect, for example) that it becomes a problem. I'm reminded of something Hugh Hefner once said:
"I think the whole controversy related to women as sex objects strikes me as being very, very strange, because, obviously, women are sex objects. They are a good deal more than that. But if women weren't sex objects, there would not be a second generation. It is what makes the world go around, the attraction between the two sexes."
Now, before you jump all over me (no pun intended) take note of a key phrase there: they are a good deal more than that. Sexual objectification can be highly problematic if it defines the limit of our perception of others. As individuals and as a society, we must foster and nurture that crucial mutual respect and empathy for others—whether they are like us or not—and take care to define clear boundaries when it comes to external behavior (i.e. don't put your hands on anyone without their consent, don't make even non-physical sexual advances when they aren't desired or are otherwise inappropriate to the context, don't stare/catcall/otherwise harass people on the street or at work, etc.) and emphasize that it is everyone's responsibility to observe and abide by these, and enforce them where people refuse to. But it's pure hubris to think that we can socially engineer this internal aspect of sexuality out of the human race, or that we should try.
It should also be recognized that historical and ongoing imposition of heteronormativity and (often related) gender roles is likely a key player in women being saddled (again, no pun intended) with being objectified disproportionately to men. This context obviously colors that Hefner quote considerably. I doubt very much that women inherently objectify men less than the reverse. Similarly, I doubt that lesbians objectify other women less, or gay men objectify other men less, and so forth. But these points of view have been severely marginalized in overall representation in society and media until very recently, and to some extent still are in many contexts.
I have a sneaking feeling that if it became well and truly clear to everyone—and in context of the present that particularly means men, since women are obviously pretty acutely aware of it already—that they stand an equal chance of being objectified, it might have the effect of making everyone a bit more conscious of how it feels and a bit more careful about doing it to others. So maybe in a perversely paradoxical way part of the answer is actually encouraging more objectification as much as discouraging it.
(Or maybe that's a terrible idea, I don't know. I guess it is a bit like saying the answer to racism toward non-whites is reciprocal racism toward whites, which doesn't sound right, yet sometimes this almost seems like the tack some are taking, and for all I know maybe it ultimately will work, even if it seems a vicious circle that leads to more rather than fewer victims in the interim. I guess the cynic in me suspects that if equality is the desired result, maybe equal mistreatment among all groups is a more realistic goal than is eliminating such mistreatment altogether. I mean, this is humanity we're dealing with here, after all!
)Less cynically and more positively, I'd say that in general the best answer to art that one considers problematic is to make better art! Criticism is healthy and valuable of course, and I suppose in a way could be considered an art itself, so I'm not, err, criticizing anyone for that. But I do think that if art should have "safe spaces" then it should have them as much so for negative, offensive, threatening, unhealthy, and unrealistic points of view as for others. Far better to have such views represented through artistic expression as fantasies than through more harmful physical behavior. (Of course, the importance of teaching people to distinguish fantasy from reality in the first place should be emphasized here.)
Put trigger warnings on things if you like, fine by me. Exercise your right to be a discriminating consumer, support what you like by watching it and oppose what you don't by not watching it. And say what you like (or dislike) about either in response. But even where well-intentioned, attempting to actively shame or browbeat anyone on the basis of art they make or enjoy doesn't sit well with me, in principle anyway. Standing up for your own views and expressing a strong opinion with strong rhetoric is fair, but telling someone that they are a bad person for having a different preference is not, would be the distinction as I'd broadly cast it.
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