In this case I would argue that on the web you’re unnaturally often confronted with sexual content, much more than you would be in reality.
However I agree with you, this is kind of a delicate topic. The passive “I want to avoid” can easily be turned into an active “woman should not be allowed to wear short skirts because that is sexually attractive to me” and this is very dangerous thinking. It is diametrical to my own beliefs as I think nobody is allowed to tell anybody else how to dress in public. Your nudity example is of cause pretty extreme.
I am a feminist and an ally, but I am also a man and I struggle with the topic in general. I am easily aroused from visual stimuli, it’s nothing I can prevent. For sure I keep this in my head and I would never stare, catcall or whatever but I sometimes which I wouldn’t be confronted with these stimuli in the outside world, it is distracting.
I haven’t thought this through completely and I find it a very difficult topic to talk about. There are two sides fighting - my liberal world view and my desire to normalize nudity versus a hypersexualized web and pop culture; and I feel avoiding this stuff and blocking NSFW helps me to desensitize, if that makes sense to you.
Wouldn’t blocking anything deemed risque or deviant more sensitize you than DEsensitize you? Or are you implying like a pornography addiction or something?
Either way, I think this subject is VERY much in play in the current culture war we’re in. The normalization of mainstream language now using shame, guilt, “on GOD”, and other European Christianity masculine values like “brother” this and “bro” and “cringe” and stuff. So much of this newfound self help and what should be behavior never really gets looked at deeply, and so much of it is extremely problematic with racist, sexist, and homophobic foundational logic. So when people adapt it, like you say, it becomes a pretty slippery slope to controlling behavior that if you came out and just wanted people to stop, there would be an uprising. But because of these more insidious jumps in logic that people just assume (“naked person in public does affect me”), it becomes this slow decay that eats away at rights.
Basically, I’m saying that we just have to ACTUALLY talk about, as hard as it may be, and we must talk about it HONESTLY and OPENLY. Maybe learning how to discuss topics like these needs to be what education reform focuses more on, so that, you and I are just screwed, but maybe the next generations can be better off, aware of, and protected against giant leaps in worldview logic, and how to address them justly.
Like, I’m pan af and very sex positive, but also think safety and long term happiness for everybody should be the end goal. Let people be people, making drugs or speech illegal doesn’t fix anything, “race” is not a synonym for species or national heritage, attractive or not naked people on the street aren’t hurting anybody, the sexualization of everything actually fixes a lot of problems, and we must keep in mind that morality doesn’t exist in nature and is solely defined by humanity and is basically infinitely fluctuating and differently simultaneously across different people across time and in different places.
But, there has to be an answer to naked-person-having-a-walk-in-public.
I’ll start, with this question:
Does the context in which the decision to do that matter? Does it matter if it was a PROTEST, or, say, a FETISH exhibitionist walk?
Because, if it’s a fetish walk, a lot of people will cry out the “no consent!” thing. But then you have to ask follow up questions about what is sexual, what is public, does it affect you, what does it mean to affect somebody, what the limits of affecting others are, what about acts of violence, how social contracts are implied, who follows, how they’re changed, etc
And if it’s a protest, you basically have to answer the same questions, but just from a second perspective. And I’m sure there’s more I’m not thinking of.
In this case I would argue that on the web you’re unnaturally often confronted with sexual content, much more than you would be in reality.
However I agree with you, this is kind of a delicate topic. The passive “I want to avoid” can easily be turned into an active “woman should not be allowed to wear short skirts because that is sexually attractive to me” and this is very dangerous thinking. It is diametrical to my own beliefs as I think nobody is allowed to tell anybody else how to dress in public. Your nudity example is of cause pretty extreme.
I am a feminist and an ally, but I am also a man and I struggle with the topic in general. I am easily aroused from visual stimuli, it’s nothing I can prevent. For sure I keep this in my head and I would never stare, catcall or whatever but I sometimes which I wouldn’t be confronted with these stimuli in the outside world, it is distracting.
I haven’t thought this through completely and I find it a very difficult topic to talk about. There are two sides fighting - my liberal world view and my desire to normalize nudity versus a hypersexualized web and pop culture; and I feel avoiding this stuff and blocking NSFW helps me to desensitize, if that makes sense to you.
Wouldn’t blocking anything deemed risque or deviant more sensitize you than DEsensitize you? Or are you implying like a pornography addiction or something?
Either way, I think this subject is VERY much in play in the current culture war we’re in. The normalization of mainstream language now using shame, guilt, “on GOD”, and other European Christianity masculine values like “brother” this and “bro” and “cringe” and stuff. So much of this newfound self help and what should be behavior never really gets looked at deeply, and so much of it is extremely problematic with racist, sexist, and homophobic foundational logic. So when people adapt it, like you say, it becomes a pretty slippery slope to controlling behavior that if you came out and just wanted people to stop, there would be an uprising. But because of these more insidious jumps in logic that people just assume (“naked person in public does affect me”), it becomes this slow decay that eats away at rights.
Basically, I’m saying that we just have to ACTUALLY talk about, as hard as it may be, and we must talk about it HONESTLY and OPENLY. Maybe learning how to discuss topics like these needs to be what education reform focuses more on, so that, you and I are just screwed, but maybe the next generations can be better off, aware of, and protected against giant leaps in worldview logic, and how to address them justly.
Like, I’m pan af and very sex positive, but also think safety and long term happiness for everybody should be the end goal. Let people be people, making drugs or speech illegal doesn’t fix anything, “race” is not a synonym for species or national heritage, attractive or not naked people on the street aren’t hurting anybody, the sexualization of everything actually fixes a lot of problems, and we must keep in mind that morality doesn’t exist in nature and is solely defined by humanity and is basically infinitely fluctuating and differently simultaneously across different people across time and in different places.
But, there has to be an answer to naked-person-having-a-walk-in-public.
I’ll start, with this question:
Does the context in which the decision to do that matter? Does it matter if it was a PROTEST, or, say, a FETISH exhibitionist walk?
Because, if it’s a fetish walk, a lot of people will cry out the “no consent!” thing. But then you have to ask follow up questions about what is sexual, what is public, does it affect you, what does it mean to affect somebody, what the limits of affecting others are, what about acts of violence, how social contracts are implied, who follows, how they’re changed, etc
And if it’s a protest, you basically have to answer the same questions, but just from a second perspective. And I’m sure there’s more I’m not thinking of.