Suffice it to say such material is a modern penchant of which I want no part either as a reader or writer. But, as I said, that's just me.
Putting a sex scene in your work automatically reduces the quality and corrupts everything around it.
So I would counter while our literature does have a history of sexual reference, the more explicit and graphic literary forays have tended to be sources of long standing public disdain regardless of their other literary merits.
The whole notion that art needs to shock the sensibilities or challenge tradition, or the common cultural mores never had much traction with me. I'll admit there are limited occasions when use of the arts to challenge some conventions are warranted but that would be more when dealing with some entrenched injustice like Jim Crow laws, or filthy meat packing plants, hence works like To Kill A Mocking Bird, Invisible Man, the Jungle, or the children's books Beautiful Joe.
As for what I don't like about it...its simple, it is a very private, and dare I say holy congress that is simply inappropriate to put in the public eye. Other human beings come from that act. Turning it into a mere voyeuristic entertainment trivializes it, degrades it. In short such use of it is shameful...an antiquated conceit in an age where shame is reserved for smoking, wearing fur, voting republican and eating nonorganic tofu, but there you have it. It's not quite as bad as snuff films, but then what is?
Beyond that I really don't like foul language...to read or to hear. I will endure a very little knowing what times we live in...but only a little and it is a little that I do not like very much at all. The combination of foul language (which to me is just crude and impolite) and graphic sexual depictions is more than I am willing to endure. Others can read it if they like. I don't.
I know this view is a little narrow-minded by today's standards, but as I once heard it explained I try to treat my mind like a living room and not a junk yard. A living room is narrow minded. Some things are permitted in...if they meet a certain standard, but not just anything. The junkyard on the other hand admits anything without any discernment or discrimination. There are images, thoughts, ideations that I simply do not want in my head. One cannot unexpose oneself to things that are inherently corrupting...sort of like pee in the pool, there's no getting it out once in. But with enough time, and chlorine, and sunshine, and great care about who you let swim in your pool...the effect of pee past can fade away....but that will never happen if you keep giving the peeers free access.
At least in part you make my point.
1984: sex scene mercifully short, and not really necessary, the story point was sufficiently made without it.
Brave New World: Not so far back in time as not to be "modern" in its sensibilities. Never read it, so I don't know how explicit it is, but I did see the old movie, and have read about its place in literary history.
Lader Chatterly's Lover: as you say the book was banned at a time when public standards were a little higher than today. Never read it, never wanted to...and from what I've read about it even if all the explicit sex were not in the book would not want to...romantic story stuff bores me. Not a flicker of interest.
Tess: Saw the movie I think, hard to recall...may have read some of the book a very long time ago...if I did my memory of it is so faint is probably because it bored me and I put it down. Given that it was written by Sir Thomas Hardy it is no wonder...the man could bore the bark off a tree. He's the only person I've ever read who literally caused me to weep his writing was so tediously boring. Had Return of the Native not been required reading for a class I would have returned his book to the soil so that it might at least do a little good as rich life giving humus.
Women in Love: Never head of it.
Shakespeare: yes he got a trifle bawdy in his references, but mercifully spared the stage their acting out so far as I know...and if he didn't...well beyond being a little surprised such things would have been allowed then, I've primarily read his plays and have only had opportunity to see a very few of them performed.
Bible, yes, I've some familiarity with it, and with the Song of Soloman...as for the supposed intentional mistranslation assertion, I'll have to have more substantive authority on that. Still there's ample talk about kisses and breasts and the like, I'll grant you. But such talk as there is does not descend into to anything more than the language of admiration...no "action" beyond kissing.
I think it's interesting that sex appalls you and romance bores youSex doesn't appall me...making a spectacle of it does. And romance as a story...yeah it bores me...If I've got a choice to see Sleepless in Seattle or Saving Private Ryan... I'm not picking the one about "soul mates" finding each other via call in radio shows.
There will be no golden future of sexless literature.Maybe not...but wouldn't it be wonderful it there were...as Hamlet might say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." ...anybody else hear Louie Armstrong singing "what a wonderful world?" No? Must be just me then.
hmmm never intended to start a whole new thread...just chiming in on why I didn't want to read or listen to Spar...or anything remotely like it. Maybe better not to chime in on some things.
Yes, reading a sex scene in a story specifically about the alienation of sex and how disconnected it can be from anything like a relationship is just like peeing in a pool. Putting a sex scene in your work automatically reduces the quality and corrupts everything around it.
hmmm never intended to start a whole new thread...just chiming in on why I didn't want to read or listen to Spar...or anything remotely like it. Maybe better not to chime in on some things.We like chiming in on things around here. Don't worry that it was split off, happens all the time, like Talia said. Actually, I would be proud. With a new thread, this topic has much more room to breathe and expand and grow. That is, as long as it remains civil :)
Hey, I could be wrong, but I read Scattercat's post as sarcastic, not serious (correct me if I'm wrong, Scattercat).Yes, reading a sex scene in a story specifically about the alienation of sex and how disconnected it can be from anything like a relationship is just like peeing in a pool. Putting a sex scene in your work automatically reduces the quality and corrupts everything around it.
I disagree strongly.
QuoteThere will be no golden future of sexless literature.Maybe not...but wouldn't it be wonderful it there were...as Hamlet might say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." ...anybody else hear Louie Armstrong singing "what a wonderful world?" No? Must be just me then.
Hey, I could be wrong, but I read Scattercat's post as sarcastic, not serious (correct me if I'm wrong, Scattercat).Yes, reading a sex scene in a story specifically about the alienation of sex and how disconnected it can be from anything like a relationship is just like peeing in a pool. Putting a sex scene in your work automatically reduces the quality and corrupts everything around it.
I disagree strongly.
...Granted, I'm 19 with loose morals (much stronger morals than many of my peers, however) and I'll take my sex wherever it might come...
Hey, I could be wrong, but I read Scattercat's post as sarcastic, not serious (correct me if I'm wrong, Scattercat).Yes, reading a sex scene in a story specifically about the alienation of sex and how disconnected it can be from anything like a relationship is just like peeing in a pool. Putting a sex scene in your work automatically reduces the quality and corrupts everything around it.
I disagree strongly.
Upon reread, yeah, I see it as sarcastic too. Ah well. I still stand by my point and will make it to anyone who says that stuff non-sarcastically.
However, there still is a large portion of sex that IS a moral issue. In the natural sense, yes, it is an activity. But in the societal sense, it is very much a moral decision. The degree to which it is a moral decision varies culturally. Religion has seen to that, especially the Judeo-christian morality, and even more so the conservative side to it. Promiscuity is immoral, waiting till marriage is moral, etc. I am not saying, however, that these are the morals to live by. But the fact of the matter is that where I live, America, sexuality and morality are connected. There is nothing I can do about that. If I want to have sex, I have to find someone else with the same moral standpoint as I in regards to sex. That being, it's not a moral issue for me. But to society as a whole, it IS a moral issue.
To play devil's advocate for a moment, you are basically asking everyone else (i.e. those who don't automatically categorize sex as special among other activities) to assume their views are false and engage with your point of view on your terms. ;)
However, I think it's a very important point; some assumptions simply shut down discussion. If you assume certain basic premises, then there will be some conclusions you cannot avoid. Chief among those assumptions that most shut down discussion are variants of "God told me so," in which some outside authority decrees things to be a certain way, but there are others. This is all rather tangential to the point of the thread.
So doesn't it come pretty much full circle back to what Seraphim said in the first place? That he didn't care to read (or listen to) predominantly sexual stories?
I'm glad this one had a warning. I've no interest in any of the territory this story is purported to explore. To this day I've never encountered any sex scene in any book or story that had any serious purpose beyond titillation I could discern. I found if I read them anyway I could not see what those scenes added and was generally disgusted by having let those images inside my head. Since then whenever they occur, I skip ahead and apparently miss nothing of substance to the rest of the story. So if a story such as Spar is so heavily invested in sex and blue language about sex then it is one that I might as well skip from the get go. I tried the first few lines of this story...just to be fair, but my reaction was (as expected) yuck, yuck, and yuck and that was all I could stand and I was sorry I had even bothered at all. Stories about sex, with sexually graphic scenes, with scads of obscene reference and a vocabulary seldom untethered from the scatological...just leave me reaching for a handy gallon of Purell. It grosses me out every time and not in a good way.
If the focus is sexual titillation or voyeurism, not to mention defense of less savory sexual behavior, I will generally avoid it.
If the focus is sexual titillation or voyeurism, not to mention defense of less savory sexual behavior, I will generally avoid it.
Who are you disagreeing with? That is not what I said. What I said was:QuoteIf the focus is sexual titillation or voyeurism, not to mention defense of less savory sexual behavior, I will generally avoid it.
"If" is such a small word, it is easy to overlook. But it's probably the largest concept in science fiction, so give it its due. :)
To play devil's advocate for a moment, you are basically asking everyone else (i.e. those who automatically categorize sex as special among other activities) to assume their views are false and engage with your point of view on your terms.
However, I think it's a very important point; some assumptions simply shut down discussion.
That's what we're arguing about; that sex scenes can and do have purposes other than titillation.
QuoteThat's what we're arguing about; that sex scenes can and do have purposes other than titillation.
I'm no spring chicken, and I've read a lot of books...if this statement is so I've not encountered it yet. As I've said, every such scene I've encountered has done little or nothing of great importance vis a vis the plot, and even the few such as in 1984 that do contribute a little it's not enough they would really be missed if their point was made with exposition and otherwise just deleted. The moment people start shucking cloths I can flip over a page or two and have missed nothing...the story picks right up where it was otherwise interrupted. The only reason I can see for those types of passages is a moment of purulent titillation because they tend not to advance the plot or character development any other way.
Option 1. The existance of taboo is important for the preservation of society, and without it society cannot function. To avoid descent into chaos, we need to set up a system of boundaries that civilized people shall not cross. The nature of those boundaries is secondary; historically, it happens to be the representation of sexual activity, but it could easily have been, say, the consumption of alchohol (an activity we protect our children from, but do not shy from representing). What is important is not so much what our taboos are, but rather that we have them, as they are basically an outer shield that protects the inner core of what society is really about. Perhaps, if history had taken a different path, then we would have had different long-standing taboos protecting us; but as the society we live in happens to have chosen promiscuity, explicit sexual depiction/description, and coarse discourse as its outer protection, we should respect that.
Option 2. Taboos are important, and not arbitrary. There is something inherently wrong about the representation of sexual activity, such that it follows that once it is allowed, we have started on a path that leads directly to chaos and corruption. There cannot be a society that is founded upon different taboos, as promiscuity, explicit sexual depiction/description, and coarse discourse directly challenge the very essence of civilization.
Who are you disagreeing with? That is not what I said. What I said was:QuoteIf the focus is sexual titillation or voyeurism, not to mention defense of less savory sexual behavior, I will generally avoid it.
"If" is such a small word, it is easy to overlook. But it's probably the largest concept in science fiction, so give it its due. :)
...he did. No one's arguing about your point or your decision.
If you look at what you quoted from S-dawg, it reads "To this day I've never encountered any sex scene in any book or story that had any serious purpose beyond titillation I could discern." That's what we're arguing about; that sex scenes can and do have purposes other than titillation. One can even acknowledge that while admitting to a personal distaste for them, if one is so inclined.
We all reason from our experience. If over my years I had noticed that while I was injured by my contact with explicit materials others suffered no ill effects then our conversation here would be different. But my own experience leads me to regard such things more as rat poison to my fellowman and not just oranges. I've never seen anyone made the better, more noble, more gracious, wiser, more loyal or more kind because they do not refrain from such "literature." Where I've seen discernible effect it has always been to the negative. Their characters were not nourished, but rather coarsened...so I reason from this observation it is an "entertainment" best left alone.
My question is what will be the next cultural barrier to fall in the name of personal freedom and artistic expression. Anyone remember the movie L.I.E., a "heartwarming", though not graphic story of a kid in trouble befriended and helped by the local neighborhood pedophile. You love who you love, right...whose's too judge. Today's well that's just obviously wrong is tomorrow's who gives you the right to tell me how to live. How long before NAMBLA is just the next "social group" fighting for its members' "rights." Today the notion of what they stand for is still taboo. But yesterday openly gay living was taboo, and the day before that cursing children were taboo, and the week before that adultery and fornication were taboo as was divorce without substantive cause, a month ago public religious life still received at least token public respect. So will NAMBLA remain taboo tomorrow or the day after? Should they...who has the right to say? We are not a culture comfortable any longer with the notion that some things are none of our business and some things make for a better society if made taboo for all
I am afraid, then, that this is a futile discussion for us to be having - I cannot convince you that my nature has not been harmed by exposure to sex in literature and other forms of art and entertainment, and you cannot convince me that it has; if for no better reason than you haven't had the opportunity to get any direct insight to my character beyond a handful of my posts, and I lack the ability to judge myself objectively.
Personally, I prefer to be open to viewing anything, and THEN render judgment afterward as to whether it was worthwhile and whether I should incorporate any of its points or meanings into my worldview and lifestyle. To the pure, all things are pure; one can examine anything and determine if it has a value in one's own life. The claim that some actions are somehow magical and have power to corrupt in and of themselves makes almost no sense to me.
This is a very dangerous and patently false idea. It's a truism in the world of philosophy that "slippery slope" arguments - that we need to make a stand now and here because if we don't things might change even more - generally fail. This is why: every line is artificial, every standard is invented, and life is, was, and always will be unfair, unsafe, and uncertain. You have no sacred and unalienable rights; rights you take for granted are alienated all over the place, and you're just lucky to live in a relatively nice place and time, compared to elsewhere and before.
That said, it seems you reason from the perspective that all points...every line/standard is ultimately subjective and to one degree or another is ever shifting in relation to every other point and line. I do not reason from that perspective. There are absolute truths external to humanity and against which humanity can measure itself, either rising towards or falling from. How these truths find expression from culture to culture can vary...shift and change because we do live as creatures whose very existence is predicated on change else babies would never become adults.
Lets take a very old pan cultural rule...The guest is sacred. How different cultures give expression to that is varied...but hospitality making extraordinary demand is pretty near universal. For example, in one place hospitality is to give a tiny meal in the midst of precisely choreographed ritual to suggest perfection through imperfection and eternity through the ephemeral. In another place a great feast is laid. In another if they like you and want to stay your teacup will never be more than half full. Indeed in the roots of our own culture we have the expression "to give the cold shoulder" which was what was set out for less than welcome guests expecting some show of hospitality. Now the opposite of that is "killing the fatted calf"...giving the best for the most welcomed guest. Through every iteration there is the expectation that the guest is to be treated well even if in reality the guest is not necessarily wanted.
So while I might agree slippery slope arguments can be overplayed, I don't agree that they are necessarily false, indeed they are as often as not useful in setting appropriate boundaries.
I don't need many experiments with fire to know that it is hot, or poop to know that it stinks, or certain kinds of "literature" to know it is offensive to me.
He says, "Oh, mom, you're so old fashioned...as if eating cookies had some magical power to hurt me...you're not making sense mom."
I'd like to take that comment out and examine it. Absolute truths, external to humanity. That sounds nice, but what does it really mean? What are those absolute truths and where do they come from? Be specific, please.
See above, re: specificity, though. Just because a lot of cultures share an idea doesn't mean that it comes form an external, nonhuman source.The more universal ones do point in that direction though.
HOW are they useful?The same way guard rails are useful at keeping you from plunging off a cliff on a mountain road. You can choose to ignore the railing, but you do so knowing you are about to enter territory generally conceded to be dangerous if not deadly.
Think of it this way. If I told you that I'd had an experience external to humanity - an alien told me that porn is good - you'd look at me like I was a lone nut. If I and a hundred of my friends told you we'd had that experience, you'd call me a cult leader. This is right and proper, because I'm basing an argument on an experience you don't share. Why do you imagine that anyone should treat you differently just because your external experience happened a long time ago and has garnered some more followers?
So what I want to hear before this conversation ends is some content-full argument in favor of avoiding sex in literature. Not an argument that refers to a spurious past. Not an argument that falls back on a non-universal, non-human source, and not an argument that relies on a weird view of cause and effect. An argument that rests on its own merits.
Again, show me some sort of concrete evidence that the mere viewing of explicit sex scenes in movies or books causes harm to me. I say such things are harmful only when used in a harmful manner. If I watch porn until I'm desensitized and unable to interact with actual sexual partners without its assistance, then I have caused myself harm. However, viewing pornography periodically for brief pleasure causes no harm to myself.
You're arguing that ANY explicit sex scene, regardless of artistic merit, is the equivalent of a porn addiction in causing real harm to its consumers. This makes no sense to me.I would not argue that it is necessarily the equivalent of the harm that porn does. It is not equivalent in that respect, but that is not to say there is no harm of a lesser nature associated with it.
In the same way, explicit sex scenes can be used well, artistically, even brilliantly... but if you bar them all on the grounds that you might end up a porn addict hiding in the woods with a Sears catalog, then you're going to miss out.I think you might be missing something of what I'm saying...or trying to say. First I am not convinced explicit sex scenes are ever used well, artistically or not...I think the "art" argument is basically a fig leaf to excuse the "artist's" promiscuous imagination. But even if they can be, that is not sufficient reason that they should be...and it's not about risking running amok with Sear's catalog. It is about by coarsening oneself one is coarsening society.
BTW, just to add on to ElectricPaladin's point about the moving line, I'd like to point out that in ye olden times in Greece, it was considered perfectly normal and healthy for young adolescent boys to have sexual relations with older men. It was just a phase, a part of growing up and developing. So technically, the pedophiles already won and we can all stop worrying about this incipient destruction of society that will come when the boogeyman pedophiles use gay marriage sex scenes in literature dating back to 4000 BC 2000 BC 1902 1950 this year's Hugo nominations to rule the world.
Oh, I should point out that I am not, as a general rule, particularly fond of explicit sex in literature. But that's not because I feel there's anything inherently wrong with it, but because, most of the time, descriptions of sex are boring. There are certainly exceptions, but I definitely think that holds of most literary sex scenes I've read.Ditto. I don't have a problem with sex in lit as a rule, but it usually seems like a clumsy attempt to appeal to my lizard brain and gain my interest, not unlike lovely wax models of food in restaraunt windows. Doesn't that wax food always look just a little off? Likewise with sex in fiction. I've seen sex handled well, but that's certainly the exception. I don't necessarily find it offensive, usually just pointless, and mildly insulting. I certainly won't condemn a writer for trying to employ sex to move the story, but it annoys me to see sex used in a sensational or gratuitous way.
I'd argue that the naughty, sweaty, bestial, naughty bits are a proud part of the Western literary tradition. Let's see...
So the harm that sex scenes cause is only visible to you, and the rest of us are just deluding ourselves that we can see meaning and depth in things like "Spar." Oh, and we're LYING about it to you, including right now, because we're just SO horny and addicted to the sexytimes. Got it.
And I'm not advocating that we return to pedophilia as a way of life. I'm pointing out that OTHER cultures have not had our same taboos. Why are OUR taboos special and theirs just mistaken, wrong-headed, or devilish?
ETA: To clarify, I can provide a coherent argument about why pedophilia is a bad idea without just repeating "because it's wrong" until I explode in a tautological frenzy. I'm still waiting for anything like that in reference to sex scenes in literature, whether trashy or artistic.
True story. I was at Alt Ficton a few weeks ago and attended a panel discussing how well modern SF holds its own against the classics. The general feeling was 'Very Well Indeed' and over the course of the panel, Paul Cornell reminded me of the single worst sex scene I've ever read. It's in the middle of Eon by greg Bear and sees World War III break out in an asteroid with an eternal tunnel in it and at one point the hero has to do something very complicated or they'll all die.
So, as Cornell points out, to relax him, the female lead has sex with him.
In the tunnel.
Whilst the war's going on relatively nearby.
It isn't good and the reason it isn't good is it has no context beyond 'And now they have sex'. Sex in context, sex as a lens through which you can view characters and actions and consequence? Is a startlingly useful narrative tool, it's just one that's not used particularly well. For me, 'Spar' uses it in a way which is practical and Earthy and horrific and very, very honest, exploring loss and bereavement and survival through it. But, with this as with everything, different people will bring different viewpoints to the story.
Vigorous sex ensued.
My question is what will be the next cultural barrier to fall in the name of personal freedom and artistic expression. Anyone remember the movie L.I.E., a "heartwarming", though not graphic story of a kid in trouble befriended and helped by the local neighborhood pedophile. You love who you love, right...whose's too judge. Today's well that's just obviously wrong is tomorrow's who gives you the right to tell me how to live. How long before NAMBLA is just the next "social group" fighting for its members' "rights." Today the notion of what they stand for is still taboo. But yesterday openly gay living was taboo, and the day before that cursing children were taboo, and the week before that adultery and fornication were taboo as was divorce without substantive cause, a month ago public religious life still received at least token public respect. So will NAMBLA remain taboo tomorrow or the day after? Should they...who has the right to say? We are not a culture comfortable any longer with the notion that some things are none of our business and some things make for a better society if made taboo for all.
Ok EP...I was trying to avoid this particular line of conversation, but it seems you are pressing for it so here it is... Very simply stated, God, in whose image we are created, unto whose likeness we are called...
I'll try, but if you a priori exclude the pool cues you can't expect much of a game of billiards.
A valid point, but here's the tricky bit, I don't simply regard this external experience as just happening a long time ago, but rather to be extant, present, and ongoing. The larger question here though is how do you know what sets of purported experience are in fact genuine and authoritative rather either patently false or purely delusional lacking any correlative experience oneself. I'm not sure this is the appropriate sort of forum to explore that question too deeply. If though I may hint where I think an appropriate illustrative analogy abides, it is agricultural...things reproduce according to their own kind, chickens from chickens, figs from figs. What cannot reproduce itself according to its purported root and origin doesn't make a very convincing case of any longer if ever being attached to that root.
The same way guard rails are useful at keeping you from plunging off a cliff on a mountain road. You can choose to ignore the railing, but you do so knowing you are about to enter territory generally conceded to be dangerous if not deadly.
It is simply this, human beings are malleable. We become like what we expose ourselves to...sort of like food, we are what we eat. What we feed our minds and hearts effects in ways both subtle and gross...there is no avoiding it. If you live on Whoppers absent some miracle of metabolism soon enough you will be whopper yourself.To willingly countenance and take in all manner of visual and literary depictions of sexual activity that reduces sex to an entertainment, and often a warped and wanton entertainment shapes the way one understands and experiences sex, conforming one's perceptions more and more to whatever it is you are feeding that part of your soul. It changes the sort of person you are, and since you are a person, how you are effects the society in which you live and other persons whom you meet and share the world with everyday.
Consider war veterans who live years in life and death combat situations, seeing and dispensing the horror of violent death up close and personal. It effects them deeply. It is hard for many of them to every really adjust to civilian life ever again. Some get depressed, others angry, and others are all but overcome by their demons. The images of friends' bodies shattered don't go away. Crossing a line and killing a kid in a tense situation never goes away. The sound of the torture in the night of a local by insurgents for helping you never goes away. You are shaped by those things in ways you don't just get over. We are malleable. We change. We cannot help but change. The best we can do is to have some say in how we change...how we meet our lives, whatever good or bad they bring to us. Whatever we trivialize, commoditize, whatever part of ourselves we alienate from its natural and highest purpose we trivialize, commoditize and alienate to one degree or another in others. And thus we deny the fulness and dignity of our own humanity.
To think on what is honest, and true, and virtuous, beautiful, and of good report is to actually engage our humanity at its best, in the context of its greatest aspiration, to acknowledge our capacity...our need for change and to make a choice so that our change as we live and grow is constantly for the better.
And to reiterate with respect to "artistic sex scenes" that justify their presence in a story worth telling. If they exist, I've not encountered them. Every sex scene I have encountered was entirely skippable without damage to the rest of the story...unless of course the story was primarily about graphic sex and then I'm not interested a priori. Some such scenes work better, and are less offensive than others...such as the 1984 example provided by another poster, but that one was pretty clinical, and had it been absent and its point replaced by a little after the fact exposition the story would have been none the worse for it.
So with respect to such depictions in art and literature, regardless of their supposed artistic merit otherwise, I don't want those images and ideas bouncing around my head or being pondered in my heart. I am narrow minded and thus am particular about what I want sitting on the furniture in my mental living room.
So just because one old convention lacked moral justification doesn't mean the next old convention is similarly lacking...and lumping an unfashionable good together with the bad so as to make both ideas seem equally reprehensible...I believe Orwell had a term for that, Crimethink.
I'm saying envelope pushing is not always good and our ancestors didn't get it all wrong when ordering their societies and we should be very careful, reticent even to overthrow our societal taboos just because the sophisticatti and glitterati of our age thumb their collective noses at dusty old conventions of decency.
With respect to your question on gay acceptance leading to the acceptance of pedophilia, it doesn't have to, but it could, the social arguments of the gay community are largely cogent and adaptable to the arguments of those who favor more tolerance on the subject of pedophilia. As such then it is a reasonable illustrative speculation on the question of scoffing our traditional social constraints. Call it an expression of the law of unintended consequences...we don't always see how everything is connected, and if we tug at the wrong loose thread and we end up unraveling our sweaters. So just because one old convention lacked moral justification doesn't mean the next old convention is similarly lacking...and lumping an unfashionable good together with the bad so as to make both ideas seem equally reprehensible...I believe Orwell had a term for that, Crimethink.
QuoteSo the harm that sex scenes cause is only visible to you, and the rest of us are just deluding ourselves that we can see meaning and depth in things like "Spar." Oh, and we're LYING about it to you, including right now, because we're just SO horny and addicted to the sexytimes. Got it.
I don't think I said anything remotely like that. I did say, just because you do not see harm until something reaches a particular threshold does not mean no harm was being done before then...after all a bucket fills drop by drop.
.I think the "art" argument is basically a fig leaf to excuse the "artist's" promiscuous imagination
With respect to your question on gay acceptance leading to the acceptance of pedophilia, it doesn't have to, but it could, the social arguments of the gay community are largely cogent and adaptable to the arguments of those who favor more tolerance on the subject of pedophilia.
You did say that, and you CONTINUE to say that. You are saying that I am not noticing the harm because it is too small. I am saying there is no harm unless used harmfully. Ergo, you are claiming deeper insight than I into the effects of actions on my own psyche.
Are you really going to argue that Kij Johson is such a tentacle porn fangirl that her tainted imagination runs over with the stuff, and she just had to write it down and publish it to get her jollies?
you are claiming deeper insight than I into the effects of actions on my own psyche.I am not...at least I don't think I am, but that said, why is it such an impossibility that another person might have deeper insights into our own lives than we have developed ourselves? No one has ever crowned me the pinnacle of earthly wisdom...and I suspect that is true of a the vast majority of people. There is no doubt in my mind that others exist who may well have insights about me that I lack.
Adaptable, like say, arguments for civil rights are adaptable for the rights of homosexuals and their partners/spouses? How far back does this go?
The suggestion that accepting homosexuality in society could potentially lead to accepting pedophilia in society has very little merit to it, and as far as I can see, there's no scientific evidence to back it up.
And as it stands now, it's at best a disrespectful and rude suggestion.
There is limited scientific evidence that homosexuality leads to pedophilia.
Well, dang. We've already reached the Teflon incline that leads from homosexuality to pedophilia? I guess I'd better bail before Chancellor Hitler decides to drop in for a visit.
Sorry, but this is turning a bit too combustible for my taste. I guess I'll go blow up a star system.
DToland, you wrote:QuoteWell, dang. We've already reached the Teflon incline that leads from homosexuality to pedophilia? I guess I'd better bail before Chancellor Hitler decides to drop in for a visit.
Sorry, but this is turning a bit too combustible for my taste. I guess I'll go blow up a star system.
That's not was I was saying...as noted above I was taking about how the societal forces that led to more openness and acceptance towards one could easily in time lead to more acceptance/tolerance towards the other. I made no statement about homosexuality leading to pedophilia.
But I do agree, these are combustable issues and it does make at times for uncomfortable discussion.
You are supposed to be defending your assertion that sex scenes are ALL worthless and that no scenes such as the ones referenced in ElectricPaladin's omnibus assist in creating an artistic effect or can be elevating in themselves.
If you're willing to back down from that to "Most sex scenes, especially poorly-written or gratuitous ones, aren't very good or artistically necessary," then congratulations, we mostly agree.How can I back down from an assertion that has been recast so as to be unrecognizable to me as my own?
I take umbrage at the notion that ALL sex scenes are AUTOMATICALLY and UNAVOIDABLY detrimental either to health, emotional maturity, or artistic value,
You are not trying to convince us that most stories don't need graphic sex scenes, or that sex scenes that don't advance the plot or enable some sort of character advancement can be dispensed with.
"I have never encountered..." "literary unicorn..." etc. are all phrases that strongly imply that you are flatly denying such a thing can exist.
QuoteYou are supposed to be defending your assertion that sex scenes are ALL worthless and that no scenes such as the ones referenced in ElectricPaladin's omnibus assist in creating an artistic effect or can be elevating in themselves.
Am I? Besides, I recall my assertion somewhat differently, more at if there is such a thing as a narratively necessary, artistically justified, let alone elevating, graphic sex scene, I've never encountered it.
To this day I've never encountered any sex scene in any book or story that had any serious purpose beyond titillation I could discern.
I do stand by my assertion that even if genuinely possible to do such scenes with great artistry, just because it can be done is not an argument or sufficient justification that it should be done.
To this day I've never encountered any sex scene in any book or story that had any serious purpose beyond titillation I could discern.
I find it odd that society allows for nudity in art without a second thought, but it is completely different in film and writing.. To a large extent I think this is at heart an expression of our relation to sign and symbol. A painting or a drawing is ontologically much further removed from us than film or writing. As a representation it lies closer to the world of sign...this image represents a person. When we see actors or read stories we are ontologically much closer...those are the real actions of real people captured in situ sexually engaged before our eyes, their very impress on film, their symbol. We do not participate in signs...we are informed by them at a distance, but symbols are gateways to participation in the thing itself because the ontological connection is strong...so with this explicit film and its exposition of this normally very private aspect of the human condition, wittingly or not, we have ceased to be admirers/students of the human condition, but become its voyeurs. Deep inside we know that we are engaged in a kind of trespass...we may enjoy the trespass, but it is a trespass nonetheless. It is similar with writing. It is ontologically a symbol, in this case of the author's mind. We are thinking their thoughts after them, having our mental eye and ear guided by them point by point...and they are showing us the naturally intimate and private and rendering us voyeurs again...and worse, for by following their depictions, letting them guide our imagination and stimulate us as they will then we enter the realm not just of the voyeuristic, but the masturbatory...they may fondle us verbally with great art but they are for all intents and purposes running their hands down our pants while telling us a story. Maybe some are open minded enough not mind that...but, I am not one of them.
Let's say we have a meticulously crafted, artfully worded graphic sex scene. One of the things strong writing does is engage the reader drawing them into the world created by the author. So here we have a strong bit of writing that is taking a reader into a full on explicit sexual description. And being well written, the reader is engaged with the characters and the action, all the hot flushing, sweating, touching, kissing, tasting, feeling, moving etc. In measure they respond in their body and their mind to this directed fantasy. They are sexually stimulated/aroused in some degree by what they read. Whatever else is happening artistically, whatever deep thoughts they get to ponder latter, in that moment it is their libido that is being addressed...perhaps negatively in a brutal sex scene, but addressed nonetheless. That, I think, is pretty much what titillation is about. And I do not think that it is a good thing to do to anyone.
So my argument is that sex in literature is meant to do much more than simply arouse or excite, although it can do that, too.
So I'm not saying such passages have no other purpose narratively speaking but rather whatever their other purpose, explicit sexual depiction inescapably involves some significant measure of titillation, at least so far as I can tell. Speaking for myself, I am not convinced that the artistry of the other elements are ever of such significance and weight that they make the titillation aspect acceptable. Nor do I think such stimulation is a worthy end to desire in itself. That's why I prefer all sexual relations in literature to be presented at a distance, suggested, not shown.
I do not invent my own moral compass.
I think that was covered in some earlier posts. Suffice it to say its a church thing, a question of the Tradition. It informs and has helped shaped my moral compass such as it is...not that I live up to its ideals/standards with any consistency...that is a day by day thing.
We live in a more libertine and a more pluralistic time than ages past, and so less and less are such moral schemas given general credence.
Old Oscar isn't really the most uncontroversial authority on the subject, regardless of how impressive his credentials.
As a general rule, as has been cited, sex scenes in SF are rarely there to advance the plot. When I'm watching a Sci Fi movie I want Sci Fi. So please shut the door, fade to black and add in more space ships!