Why is sex inappropriate?

[Original Poster]

Apparently, unfortunately, we need to talk more about sex. Let me first state that I understand this forum's primary purpose is to teach lucid dreaming and collaborate fellow dreamers. Due to this, making it appropriate for 13+ is obviously important, especially considering teenagers are more likely to be concerned about dreams than adults (seems to be one of those fascinations that fades as we grow older, for most of us at least). And I'm not saying this website needs to lead the crusade to make sex an appropriate topic for teenagers. But can we at least admit to each other that it ought to be? Why is it, for example, that the show Walking Dead can show people being eaten alive but has to cut away when a woman's shirt is ripped off? I mean not only is the discrepancy between sex and violence absolutely insane, but even if they were more closely matched it still doesn't make any sense that sex is considered inappropriate. I understand wanting to avoid legal problems but as long as one is not crossing any legal lines why can't we even talk about sex? Or describe sex?

[Darkmatters]

Because America was founded by puritanical fundies and that influence is still strong bro.

[Xei]

Are you really saying that sexual taboo is endemic to America?

[Darkmatters]

I can only speak for Amercia as it's the only place I've lived - I know it exists elsewhere too, but then where do you think the puritans came from in the first place? Ok, it's a partly tongue in cheek answer and I know it misses the point. To be a little more serious, there's a difference between sex and porn, but then that same difference exists between responsible depictions of violence and 'violence porn' too, and nobody seems to mind the violence pron. But then again, and I've said this before on some buried thread - sex is super-prevalent in most every tv show, movie, commercial, song, and music video, it's just mutated into a fetishized commecially acceptable version of itself. This is what happens in decadent societies that are sliding into decline the way ours is.

[Original Poster]

Does anyone agree with a more prudish viewpoint of sex? Is there any who thinks it's even remotely healthy to make sex taboo?

[Darkmatters]

But as I just said, sex isn't taboo - media is supersaturated with it. It's only nudity that's taboo, and that only in mainstream media. It's just moved to the countless billions of internet pron sites. Which of course isn't exactly a healthy depiction of sex either - so in a sense you're right - even though the new expanded media (including internet pron etc) does include every type of 'extreme' sex and violence imaginable there's very little responsible and healthy depictions of either. It seems your focus is strictly on mainstream media? Does mainstream actually do ANYTHING well anymore? Hell, we live in a time when cable shows are a hundred times better than big budget feature films! The old mainstream is a dying relic of the past.

[Original Poster]

I'm concerned with the law, which dictates what the mainstream media is allowed to show. The FCC doesn't fine Walking Dead for it's gore and violence, but they would have been fined if they didn't cut away from the breast shot. Likewise, nudity requires an 18+ content warning and even if you are over 18, you stand to be fired from your job for NSFW content, even if it's nudity for a different sake than to cause arousal, which is essentially what porn is. But not all nudity is porn. And no, actually I'm not just talking about nudity. I added a poem about cunnilingus to my poetry thread in the artist corner and it was moved to SB. Apparently if you talk about sex you're automatically not talking about art. At least in some people's minds.

[Darkmatters]

Oh well that one's easy - the government has to strictly control all expressions of sexuality in order to establish the coming totalitarian regime. As for DV - who knows, maybe they're gearing up to do the same? (Or maybe your drunken poetry was pretty senseless?)

[Xei]

Isn't sex and nudity a medium taboo in most cultures..?

[Original Poster]

Oh well that one's easy - the government has to strictly control all expressions of sexuality in order to establish the coming totalitarian regime. As for DV - who knows, maybe they're gearing up to do the same? (Or maybe your drunken poetry was pretty senseless?) The thread title (and zine title of the same name) is facetious. The vast majority of my poetry is written while sober but I often have to go through a certain amount of senselessness to get ink on the paper. I don't expect everyone to fall in love with it, but you have to make the bad art before you can make the good art. The cunnilingus one is hardly senseless though. It's mostly just vulgar, which is why the staff decided it's not art, I guess. But I depict sex tastelessly, not to propagate porn or be offensive but simply because I think human beings are disgusting animals and the drive to portray sex and bodies as beautiful is... well, the same losing battle as advocating the reason in the face of the absurd.

[JoannaB]

DV is not totalitarian about sex and such! It is actually really liberating after the online forum I came from. People don't you realize how free speach and liberating this forum is? <\rant mode> When I was 10 years old, I really enjoyed reading mystery novels, and my dad was ok with that. You know the type of book where there was a murder, and the book was about who done it. One time I found a book on my father's shelf, and asked if I could read it, and he said yes. As I was reading it I realized that he probably did not remember some parts of it: there was the making of a porn movie, a teen girl climbing into the hotel bed of a grown man to seduce him, and there might have been more. Sure the book also was a mystery, and I kind of bet that given how puritanical I think my dad is, he had probably skipped "those" pages, and read the mystery parts, and thus did not realize that this book may have been a bit objectionable to his ten year old daughter. I did not skip those parts. LOL. I was smart enough to realize that I should not say a word about this to neither my dad nor any other adult though. Just like I knew that I should not tell anyone when I was five or six that I liked climbing that little hazelnut tree in my grandma's back yard which adults would think was dangerous and too weak to bear my weight and some such. I don't think that I was deeply and irreversibly harmed by that book at ten, and neither was that hazelnut tree when I was five or six. And if you are reading this and you are a minor, please don't turn me in to the proper authorities.

[Darkmatters]

I was KIDDING!!! (Didn't you see the ??)

[JoannaB]

Oops, I guess the problem was not whether you were kidding or not, the problem is that I still expect a nasty gram from a moderator telling me that I am unworthy of being a human being let alone a member of this forum because I used the word "poop" or "fight" - sorry, still getting used to the free Speach here. I feel a bit like a first time lucid dreamer on dream views: a bit disbelieving, figuring that this is too good to be just a dream, and that any time now reality will arrest me for traspassing.

[Original Poster]

Yeah it's certainly not totalitarian, though I love giving the mods shit for even the slightest hint of a power-trip (one must remain ever vigilant). What's really getting at me is how quick people are to say something is pornography and not art. Art and porn appear to be mutually exclusive, and the distinction is helpful. Regarding the music industry, it's safe to admit Justin Bieber, et al is pornography in that it's tasteless. But art doesn't necessarily have to be beautiful, either. Art is about conveying an emotion, porn is about creating a reaction that promotes consumption. So when a musician sells-out and effectively becomes a pornographer, you could say they've stopped creating music that captures an emotional message and instead have began creating music for the sole purpose of getting their beats stuck in the heads of 10-15 year old girls. I'd better stop now or I'll really begin to ramble. But yeah, here's my follow-up questions: What is the difference between art and porn, and are the two mutually exclusive?

[JoannaB]

I think one persons porn can be another persons art, and vice versa. But on both sides of the spectrum there will be fanatics who insist that this is art or porn, and that anybody disagreeing with them is tasteless, shameless, base, and stupid. Also what is so wrong with porn anyway, enquiring minds want to know. No, not all of it is art, and not all of it appeals to the intellect like at all, but neither does football which is about overweight man using a ball as an excuse to beat the crap out of each other - and nobody claims that is art or intellectual, but nobody finds it objectionable either. Another thing that occurred to me is that I still remember vividly as a teen thinking how grown ups don't get it, and as a grown up I try to be one who gets it though I may not always succeed, and some of the restrictions we impose on teens the teens would never understand why that is objectionable and would just roll their eyes on how puritanical we are. I remember how I hated hearing the phrase "when you are my age you will understand" and so I shall try hard not to use this phrase. On the other hand, when my mother wants to talk with me about sex (and I am almost 40 now and know about the birds and the bees, and age restriction is not an issue) but when my mother wants to talk with me about sex I wish I could rewind time and take a different path and forget that this conversation even could have happened.

[AURON]

Paint a nude, and it's art. Photograph that same person, and it's porn. Paint a sunset and it's art. Photograph that same sunset, and it's art. Pay a person for sex, and it's prostitution. Pay a person for sex, and film it, and it's porn. Even rating systems are jacked up. PG-13 movie gets to show and say more than a TV-13 rated show (sex and violence wise). GTA: SA got an adult rating because it had hot coffee. I'm not sure how fully clothed sex garnered that rating when a fully clothed blow job in GTA IV only landed them MA. To answer the topic....I really don't know other than what Darkmatters stated. But I'm pretty sure sex is overall jealous of violence. EDIT: What about rape versus an act of violence like hate crime or murder? Who recovers quicker (lol obviously the murder victim doesn't, but like an act of hatred)? Which guilty party is blackballed longer?

[juroara]

What you're talking about is ANCIENT, seriously seriously ancient. Let's take free loving hippies as an example. Hippie groups tried so hard to rid themselves of cultural limitations they even banished the ideas of relationships entirely. They encouraged group orgies not as a fun freaky friday night, but as a literal way of life. Well, it didn't work! Hippies fell in love and jealousy set in quickly. Those same hippies got married and admitingly have no desire to have their lover be with anyone else. This very human need for relationships to be intimate makes a very real desire for our sexual lives to be a private affair. In other words, most people do NOT want their sexual lives to be public. This is virtually universal across all cultures. Well this legitimate human desire eventually formed a taboo - that sex should never be public ever!! Religions then stepped in and confused everyone with shame. The problem is youth want to know what sex is all about. Were only know considering that like other animals, we literally have an evolutionary need to watch sex to know what sex is. Nudity, jeez. Our relationship to nudity is even more confusing. We've literally have been wearing clothes since the first humans. We, modern day homo sapiens, didn't invent clothes. We inherited it from the earlier human species. There are very very very very few actual nude cultures in human history. Most of the nude cultures were only MOSTLY nude and still covered up below. (probably because we didn't want to sit on anyone elses butt wipes) But of course the taboo of showing breasts is stupid. Plus its such a masculine thing to say that boobs are explicitly sexual. My boobs are not sex organs, lol, :b sorry. Men have boobs too....and they can lactate (scary)! Yes I get it, boobs make men happy (a mans chest makes a woman happy too you know). Still functionally breasts are for babies. There is something wrong if a mother feels like she's disgusting people if she wants to breastfeed her baby in public. Then we've really lost all sense of body. But violence? Humans have a very different relationship to violence then sex or nudity. Even today we pay men to kill other humans and they come home with badges of honor. That's why, violence is okay on tv but nudity and sex isn't. Maybe the human race needs therapy.

[juroara]

What about rape versus an act of violence like hate crime or murder? Who recovers quicker (lol obviously the murder victim doesn't, but like an act of hatred)? Which guilty party is blackballed longer? There is something about rape, rape and murder and especially human trafficking, that just mortifies me. I can stomach murder in a movie but once you add rape..... One time in a lucid dream I ran into a pitch black backyard. It was scary, but I was lucid and I told myself "Nothing can hurt me. Its just a dream and Im safe in my bed". Then I thought, but other people aren't safe in bed. That there are women, right now, just like me, sound asleep, who are about to be raped and butchered by some damn psychopath. Suddenly I was slammed into a false awakening as clear as day. Its dark and I don't recognize the bedroom. This isn't my bedroom and this isn't my bed, this is someone elses life. The door creeks open. I was flooded with immense emotions, the absolute realization of suffering and death and it was going to happen to me. I couldn't bear it, I woke myself up with the sickening realization that somewhere out there, a woman just like me was raped and murdered. =X So yeah, for me at least, I can't handle it in the entertainment business at all

[Shrek]

Would you watch porn and/or nudity with your family? Could you imagine what kind of family would want to watch porn and/or nudity together? Would you want young children to watch porn and/or nudity try it with themselves? Could you imagine a society that encourages this? Your philosophy revolves around yourself and what society wants to limit you personally from seeing. Of course if we are all adults there is very little reason to hide nudity unless the person who is nude wishes to hide themselves. But with certain people we do not wish to see nude bodies because it is just not the right setting, and we want to make it ok for families to spend time together in public. You don't want to be strolling around town with your parents and have people having sex on billboards and in public, its just not right. Of course people should not restrain sexuality, and in private rooms and settings by all means have group orgies with any willing participants that would like to be involved. But for showing things in the general public just make sure that children and families don't have to witness these things together.

[Original Poster]

Porn =/= nudity. I see nothing wrong with my imaginary children seeing a naked body. As far as porn is concerned, I'd prefer they were exposed to porn before they were exposed to Modern Warfare. But that's just me, and I'm not really opposed to violence either, but consider what you just said. How many depictions of violence are considered good family fun while a pair of breasts would suddenly make it inappropriate?

[AURON]

Yeah, I think other factors play a roll into how everything is viewed. The other question is when will society get over it? Not rape or murder, but consensual sex. There are so many constituents that will always make it a bigger deal than it actually is. Lets face it.....once the internet came about, EVERYONE had access to porn, and if anything more laws have been added against acts of sexuality. I find it hard to believe that there some scientific research that proves a 17 year old isn't ready for sex, and is considered raped if they engage in intercourse with someone older than them, but they can enlist in the military, and buy NC-17 movies.

[Original Poster]

Exactly, why is it a 17 year old is raped if they have an 18 year old partner but they can legally murder someone?

[Shrek]

Porn =/= nudity. I see nothing wrong with my imaginary children seeing a naked body. As far as porn is concerned, I'd prefer they were exposed to porn before they were exposed to Modern Warfare. But that's just me, and I'm not really opposed to violence either, but consider what you just said. How many depictions of violence are considered good family fun while a pair of breasts would suddenly make it inappropriate? You're right, neither of those are appropriate for good family fun. I am not a father, but I can tell from most parents that they would rather their kids see death than sex. It's just a much bigger worry for a parent to worry about if their 12 year old daughter is talking about sex or blow jobs than if she was talking about a pirate dying in pirates of the Caribbean or something. Of course on the other extreme you should educate your kids about sex but at the same time you don't want it to be everywhere, like it seems to already be doing in the mainstream media. Just take for example in the 1950's and 1960's, arguably one of the most productive era's of America's history. There was absolutely no talk of anything near sex on tv, in fact couples were shown in separate beds on tv when they went to bed. There was also constraints on violence as well, in fact the movie Frankenstein was banned in many countries just by showing Frankenstein push a girl in a lake, even though she climbed right back out. After time shows that showed more sex or violence became more popular, and it became less about the quality of the show and more about the quantity of sex and violence. I guess one way to stop that would be just to remove all bans, and that could have two effects. It may make shows more about quality of a great show, because people would realize shows with 100% porn and gore are either getting boring or are just down right wrong. Or people may grow to be comfortable with that and society becomes more and more like the movie Idiocracy. Either way, If you are really that set on seeing breasts and sex on tv, just get HBO or Cinemax or something..... lol. Those channels have plenty of it. Also, you were talking about the taboo on sex, so i think that makes your statement of porn =/= nudity irrelevant. Besides the fact I already knew that.

[Darkmatters]

the 1950's and 1960's Interesting linkage of decades - the hippie revolution of the 60's was a reaction against the hypocritical conservative prohibitions of the 50's. Obviously neither prohibitive restrictions or decadent oversaturation of sexualized/violent imagery/ideas are good for a society. But once the society tips over that line of decadence you tend to get both.

[Original Poster]

My concern is not my ability to see what I want so much as my ability to publish what I want. But I'll get back to that later. Right now the mainstream media is sexualized, but sex itself remains pretty taboo. It's all revealed through innuendo. And music videos are allowed to arouse and confuse the fuck out of kids without actually being pornographic. That doesn't seem healthy to me, either. Death certainly comes before sex, but there are plenty of ways to explain death to a child that is not violent, such as the death of a pet or a grandparent. Violent death is a different story, because we as a society are desensitized to violence. I'm not saying violent imagery should be banned, of course, I'm simply saying it's a lot less healthy to become desensitized to violence as it is sex and nudity. MTV does not actually desensitize kids to sex, anyways. It arouses them but keeps it just taboo enough to remain arousing through seeming dirty and forbidden. And it becomes a forbidden fruit. I don't think that being more honest about sex means automatically that families have to watch porn together. I simply think the taboo is causing a mental illness. And you can't exactly cite the 50s as a healthier time and place. The more forbidden it's been to talk about sex, the greater the mental illness has been. Why do you think table legs from the victorian era all looked like penises?