Author Topic: Sex in SF and Literature  (Read 32336 times)

Scattercat

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Reply #25 on: July 12, 2010, 10:50:58 PM
Who are you disagreeing with?  That is not what I said.  What I said was:
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If 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.



Seraphim

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Reply #26 on: July 12, 2010, 10:57:24 PM
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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.

I agree here. To move the discussion a little further along if we broaden the scope a little with respect to categorization, what we are ultimately talking about here are questions of taboo in a culture that has shed many and grown generally ambivalent to the very notion of taboo. Consider for example the types of things we protect our children from in order to shield and preserve their innocence.  Remember the movie Paper Moon with Tatum O'Neil, how much surprise and shock it caused to put a four letter word in a little girl's mouth.  Compare that tiny breach of the cultural envelope then with the potty mouth on the little hit girl in the recent movie Kick-Ass.  It caused a similar is somewhat smaller shorter lived stir. The idea that there are parents who would condone such language from a child for pay still dumbfounds me...but obviously they are out there. And many of those who "celebrate" the artistic freedom of the film would stand aghast to hear such a stream of profanity issuing from the mouth of their own nine-year olds.  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.

We tend to feed giddy and sophisticated when we get by with breaking taboos...especially the "sexy, adventurous" ones, especially if our daring garners any sort of admiration. Those rules are for the others, the social hoipoloi, not for us, the sophisticates, who have special needs and refined pallates.  But when enough people want to be sophisticated too (monkey see monkey do) the taboo falls, the society changes, and I would argue generally for the worse...the decadent little pleasure of the few becomes the wallow of the many...and for those living socially downwind it's like having a pig farm in the neighborhood, the stink just permeates everything. Now I suppose like anything else one can get used to pig stench and not notice it anymore...however, going away from it into the fresh air and coming back to it makes it very noticeable again.

Now there are some people in the world, like me, who have rethought certain notions of personal freedom, artistic license, and individualism and have come to the conclusion our old social traditions have value. They answer a number of questions we have forgotten to ask. There are things that are rightly for all and for all time taboo, forbidden, off limits, not our business. For the purposes of this aspect of our discussion it doesn't matter so much which particular things are considered taboo, but rather that taboo's exist in a society which should be respected and maintained except for the most necessary and compelling of reasons. Just because I like it, and just because no one is gonna tell me what not to do if I wanna is not compelling.

The taproot of this discussion though is not a question of taboo, but a question of human freedom.  There is an innate desire in humans to be free from any constraint. It is part of us. It's in our very bones. Even suicide is ultimately negative expression of the desire for freedom, "I didn't ask to be, don't want to be, so I choose not to be." But we all know we do not possess the wisdom and intelligence to permit complete unfettered freedom. That is a recipe for chaos, for the predation of the weak by the strong.

Recall the scene from Lord of the Flies where Roger is throwing rocks at the small boy, Henry...Roger's native penchant to sadism is held in check by an invisible army of parents, teachers, peace officers, doctors, and ministers whose social mores form a protective ring about the child so that Roger always throws wide of the mark. Once he loses this inhibition at the end of the book then any evil he delights in is open to him as is evident when he kills Piggy and later tortures Sam and Eric.  

We know instinctively if we were all generous and loving, then there would be no need for any restraints on our freedom, but alas we are not so uniformly generous and loving, and so we do accept that in society our personal freedom is restrained for our good and the good of society as a whole.  Taboos are part of the fabric of that restraint, and we pick at their threads at our peril.  If we continue, the day will come when we will not even have the rags of civil behavior left to us, and we will all stand naked and vulnerable to the whims of the strong and cunning among us.  Our freedom of self expression is important and precious but it is not all that must be weighted in the balance.  We have a responsibility not to let our lives, our free expression become the pig farm next door stinking up our neighbors' yards. If we must raise pigs then at least be generous enough to take the enterprise far outside the city limits, don't demand the stink be celebrated because pig is delicious and barbecues are fun.  

There are long standing social taboos against promiscuity, against explicit sexual depiction/description, and against coarse discourse. In the early 20th century a breed of artists arose who chaffed at the old standards and set their genius and their will against those old taboos and were celebrated sooner or later for their forward thinking and sophistication which paved the way for others to follow. This is not to say conventions were never broken before...but never before on such a wholesale scale. Want to see what we've gained "culturally" just tune in to MTV's Spring Break or peruse some of the up and coming hit videos....a long and winding road from Shanananah and I wanna Hold Your Hand to I like Big Butts and I Smell Yo ****.  

We are so careful to preserve the innocence of our children, why are we so eager to throw our own away? It baffles me.








« Last Edit: July 12, 2010, 11:07:22 PM by Seraphim »



eytanz

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Reply #27 on: July 12, 2010, 11:16:50 PM
Seraphim, before I respond to the above - or more accurately, before I decide whether to respond - I'd appreciate it if you clarify something.

There are two possible interpretations that I can take from your response, and I would like to know which you meant:

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.

Which of these two is it? Or is it neither and I misunderstood you?



Seraphim

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Reply #28 on: July 12, 2010, 11:21:30 PM
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That'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.



Sandikal

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Reply #29 on: July 12, 2010, 11:28:14 PM
May I just ask why this thread it pinned to the top?

I usually don't mind sex in literature if it fits.  So few people write it well though and I think it's often better left out. 



eytanz

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Reply #30 on: July 12, 2010, 11:28:35 PM
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That'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.

Above and beyond the other issues in the thread, I have to point out, as others have done, that you are committing the fallacy of generalizing over your own personal experiences, tastes and biases. I have never, in my 33 years of life, encountered an orange that didn't cause me to break up in hives. Am I to assume that just because I am allergic, oranges are toxic to all men?



Seraphim

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Reply #31 on: July 12, 2010, 11:34:59 PM
I don't see these options as mutually exclusive.

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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.

Most of this I tend to agree with but I think the last sentence needs to be considered with some caveats, namely that these taboo choices in times past were not some arbitrary on a whim kind of thing. These things were decided against with carefully considered purpose.

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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.

I would modify the first sentence to say "taboos are important and some core ones are not arbitrary.  The last sentence I do not think is true in all respects, different societies have and can existed that have different sexual mores and survived a very long time. I would say such things change the nature of that civilization, and not necessarily for the better. And I would say the particular taboos you mention guard from what not just is damaging to civilization but damaging to a person as a person, for personhood is by nature relational, and those particular things very much influence the ideation and behavior a person brings to relationships of any sort.



DKT

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Reply #32 on: July 12, 2010, 11:45:25 PM
Who are you disagreeing with?  That is not what I said.  What I said was:
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If 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.

Yes, apologies if I confused anyone, but Scattercat has the right (or at least the intention) of what I was saying. I pulled DToland's quote because I think that particular stance is fine. But I don't believe it's exactly what Seraphim was suggesting.


Seraphim

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Reply #33 on: July 12, 2010, 11:46:04 PM
No, because I'm sure you've seen numerous others eat oranges to no ill effect and often to their health and refreshment. Your experience directs you to avoid oranges because they hurt you. I avoid sexually graphic materials because I know they hurt me. But this is not the same thing though it seems so on the surface.  Had you said just because every time you eat rat poison it makes you sick should you believe that it makes every man sick that would not be unreasonable.  You are reasoning from your humanity to the humanity of others.  What harms you as a human being might well harm others and unless given reason to think otherwise, it is better to err on the side of caution.

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.
« Last Edit: July 12, 2010, 11:48:56 PM by Seraphim »



eytanz

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Reply #34 on: July 13, 2010, 12:01:48 AM
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.

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.

Furthermore, regardless of whether you are correct or not about the influence of sexually explicit art on my nature, we have the other gulf between us, that of our values - while I think we would use a lot of the same words to describe what we each think of as laudable qualities in ourselves and our fellow men, I am not at all sure we would mean the same thing. As long as you view some things I consider to be positives as negatives, and as long as I view some things you consider to be positive as negative in turn, we are hardly going to agree on the relative merit of art or anything else for that matter. And I have little reason to believe either of us will be likely to change our values.



FireTurtle

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Reply #35 on: July 13, 2010, 12:15:47 AM
I am not chiming in with an opinion. I have one, as does everybody else, regarding this topic but I don't see anything positive coming from me throwing in my two cents at the end of a very long and ultimately stale-mated discussion.

I just want to say that I have enjoyed reading this thread as much as I have enjoyed reading anything about humanity in the past year or so. The opinions expressed were well thought out and ultimately, for me, very affirming. (Some more so than others  :) )

I am glad to see so many people digging deep into our literary past to find such fabulous examples and generally proud to be part of such an awesome community where such a discussion is possible.


“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”
Ursula K. LeGuin


eytanz

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Reply #36 on: July 13, 2010, 12:16:38 AM
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.



Scattercat

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Reply #37 on: July 13, 2010, 12:37:05 AM
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. 

And by the way, Seraphim, if you ate rat poison and got sick and concluded rat poison is bad for everyone, you would be just as wrong as eytanz believing oranges are toxic because he's allergic.  To reach a conclusion based only on personal experience is not a sound logical progression.  As eytanz said, you dislike sexual representations, and that's fine, but you're generalizing from that to say that EVERYONE is harmed by exposure to sexual representations, and that's illogical.  I've certainly not been harmed by my consumption of a variety of literature of a vast range of content levels.  I read, I consider, and I render a judgment afterward as to whether it was worthwhile.

I actually agree that most portrayals of sex in literature and movies are not necessary in and of themselves, and probably a majority are just there for the titillation value.  But I do NOT extrapolate from that that ALL such scenes are worthless, and thus I am able to read things like "Spar" that use explicit, coarse, and shocking language to make a tremendously deep and emotionally valuable point.  Any decision that shuts off entire avenues of thought or action are troubling. 

Take something else that I violently dislike: torture.  I cannot abide things like "Saw" and its ilk, and I find the portrayals of gruesome imagery to be almost completely without value other than shock and titillation.  But I do not dismiss a story or movie or what-have-you solely on the basis of it containing gruesome violence.  I watch/read/listen to it, I consider how it used the shocking material and what purpose it served, and THEN I decide if it was worthless or not.  I am personally unlikely to ever be convinced that torture is a good or useful tool in the real world, but I am willing to listen to arguments to the contrary and view art that uses something I regard as deeply taboo in order to judge it on its own merits.  Just because most of the time I am disappointed, disgusted, and dismiss the item afterward doesn't mean that there aren't stories like "Sultan of Meat" or "The Sounds That Come After Screaming" that really make me think and consider my own positions.



ElectricPaladin

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Reply #38 on: July 13, 2010, 01:35:26 AM
Wow. A lot happened while I was driving my fiancée around and picking up a couple of new books. That's the internet for you. There's so much to respond to!

First of all, I'd like to respond to Seraphim's assertion, which I'll just quote in full:

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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

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's not to say, by the way, that I view it as foolish to adopt the view that certain rights are inherent and inalienable. That's a very useful and productive worldview. I'm just saying that it's foolish to assume that your framework is universally true when a broad view of space and time show you that it isn't. The point is that all lines are arbitrary and it's frankly foolish to argue "oh no! We can't move the line! We might move it more in the future!" because you or your ancestors were the one who invented that line in the first place.

Anyway, I'm digressing. My point is this: we (in [parts of] America) are moving (right now) in a direction of being more permissive. Is this good or bad? While Seraphim is eager to point at profanity and NAMBLA, there are other benefits of the future we may or may not be towards such as...

  • A society that is more open to people of variant sexualities and gender identities, and hopefully, a reduction of homophobia and homophobic violence.
  • A society that is able to look past skin color, and hopefully, a reduction of racism and racist violence.
  • Increased freedom for women and a reduction in the violence towards women.
  • Increased religious freedom.

Let's not forget that the same glorious past Seraphim is talking about, a time when certain things were seen as "taboo" and "private," was a time of great oppression and suffering. This was a time when if you were a woman who was oriented towards other woman, your sexuality was "taboo" and you would be expected to suffer in "private." This was a time when if you had the misfortune to be born a Jew, you would be expected to keep your religion "private" because acknowledging it in public was "taboo." This was a time that speaking out and demanding equal rights and equal opportunities as an African American was "taboo."

And let's not forget that "taboo" is often enforced with either formal violence (the law) or informal community violence (the mob).

I'm not saying that putting the word "fuck" in a science fiction story is on par with the struggle of gay rights, women's rights, racial rights, or religious rights activists throughout history. I'd just like to put our "deplorable" modern world in context here. We are currently living in a world where a Jewish man (myself) can get a job teaching at a public school. We are currently living in a world where a gay man (my best friend) can someday hope to live openly with a partner he loves. We are currently living in a world where a female (my fiancée) can work outside the home without social stigma. All of these things are thanks to the same social forces that Seraphim decries - a change in what is seen as "right" and "proper," an alteration in what is "taboo" and what is accepted.

So don't tell me - a Jew, a woman's partner, a gay man's best friend - that we can't change where we draw the line between right and wrong. Don't say that unless you're willing to back it up.

Wow, that got vehement :-\.

Anyway, my opinion? We live in a world of constant change, both good and bad. Take a stand for the world you want, but do so by pushing the merits of that world, not decrying the very concept of change.

What are the merits of the world I want? I'm afraid that will have to wait. My fiancee and I are having a logistics kerfuffle and I need to put the internet down for a while.

To be continued...

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Seraphim

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Reply #39 on: July 13, 2010, 03:12:31 AM
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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.

Why does this make the conversation necessarily futile? Are you out to change my mind? I'm not out to change yours, though I would welcome it if you came to change it on your own. I am out why I feel as I do on this subject, but not to change anyone's mind. When was the last time you ever encountered any argument however correct that actually changed someone's take on an issue important to them? Not many I bet. But I would wager you might have encountered a person here or who found some substance in some point you made, and in time it made a difference in how they thought or acted on that subject.

Consider this "story" from the life of Madam L'Engle. Back in the 70s she and her family moved to a small town in New England, they ended up running a mom and pop store for a while and had gotten involved in the community, which was very old...one of those places you sort of had to be from there four or five generations back to ever be from there in any meaningful sense. So this new family moves to town, very brassy in their manners, very "in your face" with there money and urbanity...never quite finding the knack of fitting in.  One of the old members of the town, a cigar chewing old codger who was on the volunteer fire department and who never had a kind word to say about spoke openly (out of the other family's presence) how he would gladly let their house burn to the ground just to get them out of town they were such an annoyance.  Now, Ms L'Engle found this man's overt hostility very off-putting though she largely share his opinion of the new family.  Well, not long before this family did move, despairing of ever fitting in their house did catch fire in the middle of the night. The same old man who had nothing good to say about them, risked his and badly burned his hands rescuing their two children from a back bedroom.  That taught Ms. L'Engle a very important lesson in judging people's character.

I learned a similar lesson from my grandfather, a man for whom the "N" word was common part of his speech, as it was for pretty much everyone else of his generation and that of my parents. He even had a little black dog called "N"boy. Now his use of the term was rarely what might be called hateful...but in my teen years I found it increasingly embarrassing. One day during the heights of the civil rights controversy, desegregation of the schools and all that a group of black people showed up at our community's little white Baptist Church and at the end of the service came forward and asked to be received as members.  An emergency meeting of the deacons and men of the church was instantly called. It looked very much like they were there just to make some kind of scene or social point, and the potential for community scandal was very great. Some thought they were just trouble makers and didn't "N"s in church with them anyway, but my grandfather argued that if they were Christian, and sincere in their desire to be part of our fellowship we had now moral or scriptural grounds to turn them away if we considered ourselves to be Christian as well. If we did then we would be guilty before God. If however they were there as a matter of show and not in sincerity, then there was likewise no harm since if they could not create a fuss then they would go away. The vote was then put to the congregation with the recommendation they be accepted. Most in the congregation voted to accept them into fellowship.  The aftermath was interesting to watch. They came back for one or two more Sundays and then were never seen again.  The deacons who voted against them all died of cancer within 4 years. My grandfather lived well into his 80s.

What's my point...conversations, even disagreements do not need to be about convincing anyone of anything...that's just old time Puritan missionary zeal in secular drag. A conversation...even where there is strong disagreement can be a way to get past the labels we wear and paste with such liberal abandon, and actually get to know one another. How else to we learn that our vile tempered neighbor will risk his life for us or the old racist redneck is actually a man capable of great reason and kindness.  You say I don't know...well you don't know me either...so far all we have are a few words of disagreement between us.

There is another old story, told by Elder Piaisius that there were once two friends, a honeybee and fly.  One day the fly came to the honeybee and told her about the marvelous farm she had found. There was a compost pile by the back steps and a chicken coop and barn full of fresh poop, a dead rabbit at the fence and a jug of sour milk out on the back porch. There was all kinds of glorious crap everywhere. The honey bee followed her friend back to the farm, and immediately she saw the roses blooming next to the chicken coop, the daylillies in the border, the peonies and clover blossoming in the pasture and she agreed with her friend that truly this was a place of great abundance, a feast for the eyes and body. The Elder went on to say these two friends are like the two kinds of people in the world, those who can only see the garbage in other people's lives and those who only have eyes for the beauty.  Which kind are we?  I rather think I am too often inclined to see through the eyes of the fly...but every now and again I find the grace to see through the eyes of the bee.  But how will any of us get to be the bee if we never allow ourselves the opportunity to discover the flowers blooming in the manure.

So while arguing in an effort to convince one another is doubtless futile...getting to know how each other thinks and creates however I think is quite the opposite.



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Reply #40 on: July 13, 2010, 03:34:04 AM
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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. 

The question I have about such things is how often do you remain open before you feel you have sufficient information to make an informed judgment.  Do you test every lit match and glowing range to see if fire is still hot this time around?  It's not magic that fire is still hot after at least a 1000 trials. Why should it be different for other things? Making generalizations is part of how we reason...how we survive. If we approached every experience as unique, disconnected, uninformed by any other experience we would never make it out of diapers. Certainly we test the new, we give something different a chance by such lights as we have, but at some point our evaluation ends and a conclusion is made, a judgement is reached and the issue is closed unless there arises some compelling cause to revisit it.  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.  As for the claim about magic corrupting actions...let's take for an example some other types of actions.

Let's say your kid is a sugar junkie...ice cream, cookies, sodas, cake, pie, candy...yum yum yum yum yum. Every time that child has opportunity he's reaching to shove more sugar in his face.  You say honey, too much sugar is bad for you, it will make you sick.  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." Or if he sits in front of his first person shooter computer games all day. "Honey you will warp your mind with all that violence, go out and play in the yard."  "Oh mom, its not hurting me a bit.....one sec while I blow the crap out of these villagers...there...mom get with the 21 century, you and your magical thinking, geez."



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Reply #41 on: July 13, 2010, 04:05:42 AM
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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.

I would not agree that every standard is invented. I will agree that life is unfair, unsafe, and often uncertain.  I do not agree that we have no inalienable rights. The rights are not inalienable because others may exercise such power over us as to preclude their expression...if you follow the reasoning of the Declaration of Independence they are inalienable because they are inseparable from our humanity as given us by the Creator.  It was because those rights were being trodden upon wholesale that the founding fathers of the U.S. thought they had just cause to declare their independence from Great Britain.  When the exercise of these inherent rights are frustrated then we as human beings are frustrated and seek remedy. 

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.



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Reply #42 on: July 13, 2010, 04:18:50 AM
I just want to go on record as saying that I like sex.  It's a lot of fun and is an essential component to deeper relationships.  I also feel that, for the most part, it should be private.  I don't feel, however, that sex should be stricken from books, or other media.  In general, I try to filter what images and content I fill my brain with; and I wish it wasn't the prevading facet of most media.

I don't plan on debating much in this discussion.  I will say that while I don't agree to the full extent of which Seraphim has been saying, I agree with the sentiment behind his words.  As a religious person, I don't believe that most moral lines are artificial, or contrived.  Many of them are eternal in nature.  I believe it is morally convenient to say there is no standard.

Do I believe pornography (or sexually explicit content) is spiritualy harmful?  Yes.  Do I begrudge people their oppotunity to partake of that if they want to?  No.  Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.  It is becoming so invasive that one cannot escape it without becoming a shut-in.  Partakers say "Good.  It's about time those sexually repressed moralist grow up and face their fear of sex."  I don't fear sex.  I don't run from any mention of it.  I read and watch most things, but if it's obviuosly explicit, I try to avoid it.

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Reply #43 on: July 13, 2010, 04:41:45 AM
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.

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.

You see, I agree that there are certain extremely common moral standards. They are extremely common because they are generally good ideas. They usually amount to some variation of the sentiment: "you are only on this world for a short time, so play nice." We all agree to this general standard, at least in theory, because it's a good idea. It greases the social wheels, makes fights less common, makes the world a better place. I think we agree that these common moral standards exist, though we have different ideas about where they come from: I think they're just good ideas, and therefore common, while you posit an external, nonhuman source.

To bring the conversation full circle, however, where exactly do these basic moral standards - play nice, don't kill people unless you really have to, don't take what isn't yours - relate to the degree of sex found in fiction?

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.

Yes, it's true. Lots of - though not all - cultures adhere to the standard of the sacred guest.

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.

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.

This is a content-free statement.

HOW are they useful?

I assert that they are not useful, and here's why: a slippery slope argument means standing against change for the sake of stasis. It means saying "change shouldn't go further because it might eventually go to far." That's what you were saying when you said: profanity is bad because it might some day lead to the acceptance of something really terrible, like NAMBLA. THAT is why slippery slope arguments fail. If you want to successfully argue that slippery slope arguments don't fail, you need to say why.

A little personal revelation. I am also a religious person; as I wrote earlier, I'm a Jew. However, I have accepted that the revelations that are the basis of my people's religious law are not universal. I don't have the power - much less the right - to make anyone else accept them. I think the sooner members of other religious communities stop pretending that their values are universal - that the revelations that form the bases of their values - the sooner we can stop fighting over stupid stuff and get down to building the world that we deserve. If you want to argue a point to a diverse audience, you need to make it based on something truly universal, or at least common - language, argument, rhetoric - not something specific to your individual or group/cultural experience.

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.

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Reply #44 on: July 13, 2010, 06:23:48 AM
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. 

And it can BE offensive to you.  But just because you find it offensive doesn't make it inherently harmful.  That's the central point that I keep trying to make here.  Look at Swamp's post; no one's arguing with him.  He doesn't like to read/watch explicit material, so he doesn't, although he's a little worried about it being forced on him by society.  (Rather needless, really; society is always forcing everything on everyone anyway.  Some centuries you get the b'ar, etc.)

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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."

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.  (Though one might argue whether or not it harms the participants.  Annie Sprinkle is worth a read in that arena.)  And that's pornography, which is specifically sex and nudity with NO other purpose than titillation.  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.

Eating sugar to excess does indeed lead to obesity, diabetes, etc.  Does that mean one should avoid eating any sugar at all?  Given that sugar is one of the things our bodies run on, that would quickly end up in an equally harmful place.  You'd either have to find some sort of nutritional workaround or justify the eating of "some" sugar, the "right kind" of sugar.  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.


Also, eating sugar -> obesity/diabetes is not magical thinking.  Characters saying "fuck" -> the end of civilization is.  The former has proof.  The latter, not so much.

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.



Seraphim

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Reply #45 on: July 13, 2010, 07:06:01 AM
Ok EP...I was trying to avoid this particular line of conversation, but it seems you are pressing for it so here it is.

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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.

Very simply stated, God, in whose image we are created, unto whose likeness we are called.  In short Truth is a Person not an ideation.  Truths are particular expressions of the person and character of The Person as filtered and understood within the context of human experience.  

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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.

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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.

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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?

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.

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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.

I'll try, but if you a priori exclude the pool cues you can't expect much of a game of billiards.  Some preconditions are biased against useful answers, like proving one is not a witch by a the sustained evidence of not floating.  Let me begin by referencing a passage from the New Testament. "...whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."  But why such an admonition? Let me extend my reference by another quote, "When we see Him we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

I know you regard such references as non universal and hence out of play, but bear with me because I think they point to something observable about humanity beside the narrower reference of these passages themselves.  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.



Seraphim

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Reply #46 on: July 13, 2010, 07:50:04 AM
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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.
 
Does "harm" have to rise to that level to be harm. Smoking one cigarette does little harm, harm easily gotten over if it is only once or twice in a lifetime...but not if it becomes a habit...then the harm eventually becomes apparent in illnesses like emphysema or lung cancer. But to say one cigarette causes no harm is not true. It does cause harm that is just not easily perceptible in small doses. So it is with porn or other less explicit types of erotica.


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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.

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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.

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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.

What...no mention of the Amsat culture...just more reference to dead white males. So are you making the argument that the standards of the ancient Greeks in this regard are perfectly acceptable.  Are you ready to put an add up on Craig's list to help find a special tutor for little Jimmy? Or is this still a taboo consideration for you? If so, why?  We can't have our cake and eat it too.  Apparently somewhere along the way a different morality with regard to buggery took root and flourished even to our own day. It's still a pretty strong one too.  If we can respect the wisdom of this cultural taboo...why be so quick to demean or overthrow other similarly rooted taboos with respect to human sexuality?  Are we actually so much better and wiser human beings than our ancestors?



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Reply #47 on: July 13, 2010, 12:57:04 PM
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.



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Reply #48 on: July 13, 2010, 02:06:30 PM
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.



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Reply #49 on: July 13, 2010, 02:38:39 PM
I'd argue that the naughty, sweaty, bestial, naughty bits are a proud part of the Western literary tradition. Let's see...

You didn't mention the Canterbury Tales!  Particularly the Reeve's Tale.  The kissing scene in that story would not make it past the ratings boards these days.