I think the permissibility of sex acts in public depends not just on ordinary questions of harm, but also on a more nuanced concept of consent. There are enough kinks that depend on watching another's sexual behavior, or being watched in the sex act, to suggest that witnessing a sex act is itself in some measure also a sex act. And if we hold that sex should always be consensual then public sex acts will potentially engage others in non-consensual sex, at least in societies where there is no collective agreement that simply going out in public constitutes consent to witness sex acts there. Likewise, if dressing in drag is construed as sexual behavior, or sexually explicit or suggestive acts happen in a particular drag queen story hour, then this can be understood as a non-consensual sex act with minor children.
This is something that also affects the online domain.
There are people who understandably want an uncensored internet and say, "If you don't like what you are seeing, get off the internet." However, being online is now sometimes a requirement to get goods and services (or at least makes it easier), so there are going to have to be some rules to protect people. Some of that is protection is naturally going to be protection from offense because, while a person doesn't have the right to avoid being offended, they do have the right to make someone stop offending them repeatedly after being asked to stop. Somewhere along the line, offense becomes harrassment, bullying, abuse, etc. I'm specifically thinking of situations where the offense is directed at an individual rather than the individual stumbles upon it (sending someone DM's that insult their culture vs a person coming across an X account which disparages their culture.)
There is also the issue of kids being online. Child safeguarding online is pathetically inadequate and has mostly been left to parents who are not necessarily tech-savvy. Even if they were, the parents can't reasonably be expected to hold the entire internet at bay. I'm curious to see how policies change to protect kids now that we know tech and access to developmentally inappropriate material is so catastrophically bad for kids.
The difference with the internet is that you decide to go to a specific website, and there's a bit of an understanding that there won't be porn on, say, CNN.com, in the same way that there won't be nudists at a McDonald's kids' playset.
There might be the occasional thing that slips through the filters on Twitter/X or Facebook or Substack or wherever, but I've found that to be fairly limited.
As for keeping kids out, back in the 80s/90s, the "adult security" trivia questions about po-culture references from 20-30 years ago that no kid knew anything about to access my dad's "Leisure Suit Larry" games worked pretty well. But, then again, we didn't have much of an internet to just look up those answers, either.
OK, I'll bite: Would this mean that owning and plowing (fvcking) a child sex doll/robot in the privacy of one's own home, with no kids around, would be OK but that doing it in public would be wrong?
Alright; good. So, basically, politicians should stop pushing to criminalize such dolls/robots but instead only focus on making their (unconcealed) presence in public spaces and public places illegal, right?
Your public/private comments are spot on and to a large degree this article is only possible due to a collapse of people being able to recognize the difference between the 2 .
The problem with those on the Left , as a recovering democrat myself that I can attest to , is that they condone behaviors they would never allow their own children to take part in.
The way they ignore going into crime-ridden neighborhoods their policies have destroyed
Hypocrisy may be the greatest luxury of them all.
I'm guessing 100 years from now, when we have more accurately mapped the human brain and how it operates we will decry what we permit to enter our eyes and ears -legally- the way we now decry cigarettes and lobotomies.
Let me give you an example.
As an American of Italian descent who despises movies like the Godfather, Goodfellas and shows like the Sopranos I can testify to how simply downloading such distorted inaccurate stories as well as glorifying them can do actual harm including death.
The small cemetery in my Brooklyn neighborhood is filled with the tombstones of young Italian boys and men in their teens and twenties who bought into those films the way people by toothpaste and insurance sold by geckos. They wanted to be gangsters ... they were just young influenceable kids.
I went to many weddings in limos with these movies playing on what was then videotapes. Gorgeous actors , hot wives and/or girlfriends , tons of money .... never had a shot .,
I'm not sure if a fundamentalist approach to the First Amendment is the way to go, not at all. Nor am I sure what the solution is .
What I do know is that when another modern technology was being advanced , the railroad , it averaged about 100 deaths a day attributed to zero regulation ie signage, speed limits etc.
Reasonable people made laws, set limits and things became much safer .
Just claiming someone is an 'adult' is a silly idea given that states define this rather loosely , just look at the age when people can get married .
And not only is it silly it's intellectually lazy .
Having a child of say 8 years old be able to click "yes I am 18 or 21 " on his IPhone and access the horrors of the internet will do more damage to America from within than any enemies abroad ..... and for what ?
To die on the infantile hill of " free speech" ?
Nah , that sounds like the cringiest fringiest Far Left excuses which just got them their asses handed to them on Election Day .
"They condone behaviors they would never allow their own children to take part in" this is precisely part of Rob Henderson's description of luxury beliefs. They receive the kudos of "being tolerant"/forward thinking - the doers pay the cost of their lives being diminished by notoriety and self harm.
"As an American of Italian descent who despises movies like the Godfather, Goodfellas and shows like the Sopranos I can testify to how simply downloading such distorted inaccurate stories as well as glorifying them can do actual harm including death."
The entertainment industry is a key player with influencing culture. Not only do movies that glorify bad behavior encourage those who watch it to mimic that behavior but it can also alter history. When Hollywood race swaps and or gender swaps characters in content based on historical events they are in a way teaching viewers history because most believe that what is shown is accurate. If Hollywood were to constantly out out historical films where, because of "Diversity" they have the wrong ethnicity and or sex in the film, once those who were young at the start, are now adults, they believe the history they saw in the movies and not real history. It is why the activists that infected public education began eliminating civics and reduced history. In order to get the next generation to make the mistakes of past generations they need to not be taught about the mistakes of the past.
I don't recall the details because this easily 10+ years ago but I read an article where some college student(s) did a study on entertainments impact on society by asking people if we actually had a zombie like outbreak and you were armed with a gun to defend yourself how would you kill the zombie and most said you had to hit/destroy the head else the zombie would keep coming. This of course is absolutely silly and it shows how impactful entertainment can be on how people think. It's not unreasonable to think we could one day have a virus get loose that doesn't make people zombies but causes them to behave similar to a zombie. It is however absurd to believe that if this were to happen the only way to stop them is to destroy the head
Another great example is how young people who live in the hood, hold a firearm. They foolishly hold it sideways because that is what Hollywood has taught them
Creating, downloading, and consuming art does not do harm. Though Goodfellas has “caused” me to gain many unwanted pounds by causing cravings to gorge on Italian-style food every time I watch it. Still, the choice to gorge and the actions I take to obtain, prepare, and eat the food are mine alone. Or, in the case of harms done to children, the harms are the responsibility of the parents.
You would be 100 % wrong . Define art, I dare you. Art is littered with nonsense . The human brain couldn't care less about your delineations . I don't think Andy Warhol is art, do you ?
For generations talk therapies and meditations were deemed 'harmless' to PTSD survivors . Now we know the opposite is true and that the worst thing these survivors could do is meditate or relive their trauma through talk therapy.
it since been proven that having these returning soldiers simply play video games helps them more than either meditation or talk therapy, which actually caused them more harm. I doubt very much that you want to take the position that art however you define it is somehow safer than talk therapy or meditation, do you because it would be ridiculous if you did. I was very clear in my post. We don't know yet, but we will know, and when we do know we will regulate, thankfully.
People like you need ankle bracelets . Your infantile definition of art would make pedophilia legal.
I cannot wait for A.I. to clean house and burn the silliness of what passes for art today . Your reification of art into a sentient life form would indicate to me that perhaps you should stop breaking your pills in half and listen to your doctor's advice .
AI will never misread a mammogram and not diagnose breast cancer as it will combine the collective talents of the greatest minds in its field and all but eliminate human error.
All technological advances are met with the same cowardly types who claim it’s the end of days .
The railroad, nuclear power, the internet etc…
I’m sure there were cavemen who didn’t think the dangers the discovery of fire presented made it worth the risk of staying warm and cooking one’s food .
Look at the state of today’s ‘art’. It’s hideous .
Truly authentic artists have nothing to fear .
The mediocre on the other hand have gotten away with peddling rubbish for far too long.
So art, like the trans movement is somehow beyond reproach ? How convenient for bad artists and pedophiles who simply need to buy lipstick and a wig to enter girls spaces unchallenged . 👎🏻
You do realize that neuroscientist have gotten animated geckos to sell us car insurance? Stick to art pal because you know nothing about the human brain.
This line "Religion further complicates what should otherwise be straightforward matters." indicates your bias. Your article is written with this bias in mind.
You define harm in a way that aligns with your morality.
You talk about nudity and sex in public. You could push it even farther.
Is suicide acceptable? Is suicide in public acceptable?
Is what happen with Jim Jones acceptable?
Is polyamory acceptable?
What about incest? Its consenting.
Then there is the age of consent.
It's not universally agreed on.
Why can you be drafted at 18 but not drink?
How is the concept even defined?
Morality is how society or better yet community works.
Suggesting that some how individual autonomy is the basis of all morality is just you promoting your religion. The UN charter on human rights includes the right to religion. That of course then gets into what is a religion.
I could reverse it "Intellectual elites further complicate what should otherwise be straightforward matters" by religions and it would be just as valid.
Don't get me wrong. I'm largely on your side on what I want as values in my community. But I acknowledge that my values are not morally superior to others including various religious positions.
I advocate a freedom to position that includes the freedom to establish communities of like minded values. Everything isn't about the individual. In fact, the community is more important than the individual.
nice discussion here! I suspect that our susceptibility to other people's actions is much graver yet less clear now that we are in a social and economic syncytium (had to look up spelling twice substack gods please dont ban my bot followers). At the same time, the death of religion and nationalism is leaving people grasping for straws. The butterfly effect of walking around with sperm on your face is as real as its ever been... just more waves and less walls in the common space.
Thank you for your brilliant take on this deeply disturbing trend. As a woman, I'm absolutely appalled that these women are blatantly displaying their sexual perversions. Yes, I'm judging because ALL women pay a MUCH greater cost when these things go on in public. Male predators and porn users feed off this as a way to justify the horrific violence, exploitation and degradation that they already inflict on the women in their lives as well as the women in porn and prostitution. It leads ALL men to question ALL women's morality when in fact, it's an exceptionally tiny minority of women who do this.
It also begs the question: What the HELL happened to these women to make them crave the money/attention that they're now receiving???
I've been observing this as a 65 year old grandmother and lifelong feminist who worked hard to establish credibility in a male dominated industry - technology - and who dreamed of a world where my daughter and granddaughter, and son for that matter would stand side by side with men earning the respect, awards, income, that their fellow male workers, partners, brothers earned and nobody would give anyone a second thought. I dreamed of a world where women's accomplishments would transform the world and create a balance between the masculine and feminine such that women choosing to raise their children at home would be not only respected, but would be compensated for the value that they created in the economy equivalent to any similar work in the workplace. I dreamed of a world where it would be UNTHINKABLE FOR MEN TO BUY WOMEN'S AND CHILDREN'S BODIES much less have women themselves actively promote their own sexual objectification.
I'm absolutely nauseous seeing these things unfolding knowing that the manosphere is going to use these perverted young women to justify the vile disgusting behaviour of these men. They will tell themselves 'See, deep down ALL women deserve to be treated this way by men. Women are ALL perverted.' Even as we see Gisele Pelicot's story about her husband drugging her and having a hundred average men in her community pay to rape her limp. unconscious body with her husband making money from this horrific abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gis%C3%A8le_Pelicot
Of course, the more we promote the stories of these young women, who in my view must have been raped, molested, abused themselves in order to do these disgusting acts in public and make money off of them, the more it becomes normalized for other desperate damaged young women.
Soon, the irony is that men will DEMAND that women's sexuality be policed and before you know it we WILL be in a Handmaid's Tale scenario. The OPPOSITE of what feminism was about. Meanwhile, women are reeling from all the sexual violence they're already experiencing at the hands of men in their lives. Men they love. Men they trusted.
Feminism has been hijacked by porn culture and predatory capitalism. What we have today is NOT feminism. Today's bastardized version of feminism has taught both young men AND young women that women's bodies are just meatsacks, sex organs, to be dumped on or in by any man who feels entitled and the average woman does not stand a chance in the face of this misogyny. Young, old, rich, poor, all will become prey for male predators even more so than is already the case.
On what planet does baby rape get normalized? Look at any dark web porn site. Read the book 'Big Porn Inc. - https://www.amazon.ca/Big-Porn-Inc-Exposing-Pornography/dp/1876756896 and you will learn just how depraved the porn industry really is and just how depraved the average porn user is because they BUY this. 80% of men consume porn. This is NOT ok.
I feel sick. Deeply, profoundly sick and I want it to stop. I want men to stop it. I want MEN to call out other men who consume this because women KNOW that men want this content and will PAY for it. That's what's driving these desperate women to behave this way. Male porn buyers. Make it stop. I don't care how. I don't care who. Women like Gail Dines, Catherine McKinnon, Andrea Dworkin have been trying for decades ever since porn magazines came out. Nobody listens to them. What happened to #MeToo??? It got relegated and dismissed because a small percentage of women had questionable claims. So now, NONE of the women are believed. It's a nightmare and it's driving women insane making them unable to function as mothers, wives, daughters, caregivers. It will leave the world a demonic place largely because of male entitlement and sexual obsession.
76 year old grandmother here. I could have written this word for word. Thank you for doing so. Coming of age in the 60’s I never dreamed that we would have such a giant step backwards in the 21st century!
You and I both, my sister! And don't mind the comments below, every time there is a woman who tells the world she is sick of the porn culture, there will be at least one idiot to scream "misandry !!!!!". Yes, the huge majority of women have had enough. Alas, most men would claim that women selling their body means "liberation".
The base underlying process here is uncoupling of sex from intimacy (ie bodies are just meatsacks). The original sexual revolution uncoupled sex from pregnancy, this is a follow-on phenomenon, but I think far more impactful - because the need for attachment and intimacy is so strong that a whole generation missing out on it can realistically lead to societal collapse. There are already distinct cohorts of men and women who display hostility and disconnection from each other.
What happened to MeToo? It was an inherently unsustainable movement because the current social norms assert two things simultaneously: commodification of sexuality paired with highly punitive repercussions for transgression in that space. The results are either: mass abuse for some and withdrawal & mass celibacy for others.
@Signme Uplease, Your rant reads as if you are channeling Carry Nation and her sociopathic desire to forcibly impose her will--and her axe--on men and their choice to drink alcohol. Her desire, motivated by sexual frustration and misandry, was to control and rule men, not so much to protect women whom their drunken husbands abuse. McKinnon and her ilk, including you apparently, motivated by their misandry, falsely claim(ed) that any peaceful, mutually consenting interaction between men and women is an act of violence against women, or that porn as such necessarily degrades and sanctions violence against women in the real world. Yes, there are male predators who target women. There are female predators, too, and sometimes they were wrongly acquitted or found not guilty because of their being "of the weaker sex" (e.g. Lizzie Borden). Yes, there are men who read all genres of porn and stupidly, lazily generalize that "all women" are like the women portrayed in those stories, and "think" that those stories "justify" them coercing their dates and spouses to emulate those fictional characters. But those who choose to initiate violence towards others because of violence-laden stories they read do not thereby negate, do not refute the rights to intellectual freedom and freedom of the press and speech that all people possess. There are many women who have rape fantasies and enjoy reading pornography involving rape. That doesn't mean that they would actually enjoy rape, and that it should therefore be legalized, and it doesn't mean that women should not be believed when they can prove that they have, in fact, been physically assaulted, sexually or otherwise. To advocate for censorship or arrest and incarceration on the presumption of being guilty of a crime absent any physical proof of harm is dangerous to everyone's liberty.
Nope. I call DARVO. Of course, the first man to reply centres the concerns of men who are victims. Nowhere in my statement do I say that men are not victims. You are not a woman and do not understand what it's like to be on the receiving end of male aggression and violence.
My entire 'rant' which you refer to in a derogatory way simply proves my point. You compare me to a 'sociopathic' woman. Insult me rather than provide any legitimate rebuttal to my points. The fact is, men cannot/will not take accountability. In truth, as a mother of a son and someone who loves and often defends men, I CARE enough about men to call them out. Not out of spite, but because I hold them to a higher standard than they seem to hold for themselves. When we look at the sheer SCALE of victimization, which is the essence of my post, men are doing the sexual violence by far. Not only to women, btw, but to men as well. At what point, will men stop defending their own male pattern violence? I beg you to consider the harm that your reply is doing by redirecting the focus to men, always men, forever men, as innocent victims. Sheesh! It's crazy-making.
Imagine that every day of your life you have to constantly be on your guard against abuse and violence from people you encounter as you move through your day, at work, at home, in social settings. Now add to that the fact that if you ARE abused YOU will be blamed more often than not. YOU will not get justice. YOU will be left to deal with the consequences. THEY will be treated as the victim because you had the audacity to report them. Then consider that the person who victimizes you is usually someone close to you. Someone you know and trust.
It's mind-blowing that men don't get this. It blows my mind every time. The entitlement and lack of empathy are deeply disturbing. Open your eyes. Please. Where is your humanity?
I couldn't have said it better! I am a mother to two sons, and I love all the men in my life (I am lucky, what can I say? Wonderful sons, perfect husband, loving dad, amazing boss, great colleagues, supporting friends - all these men make my life better!). But I am not blind! And I had my share of sexual violence from men, from the time I was a child, exposed to exhibitionists in clear daylight, while walking to school, to a few days ago, when a "transwoman" was loudly masturbating in the stall next to mine in a Whole Foods toilet (not kidding! Whole Foods!). Groped, catcalled, menaced for rejecting sexual advances, inappropriately touched, pressed against for no reason, cyber flashed, stealth victimized, exposed to sexual jokes and innuendo, victim of sexual rumors, upskirted, almost every single thing men have invented to make our lives a hell. Thank God, I was never raped, but what society is that where women call themselves lucky for not having been raped? I am sick to my stomach to hear men call us "men haters" simply because we want to be safe.
Interesting comments, I appreciate you taking the time and effort to articulate all this.
Apologies I won't be digging into your actual points and the value you brought, due to my own current limitations in energy. Please accept my thanks and respect for engaging in the dialogue to such a degree. Keep trying to move things forward.
I am responding to make a counterpoint. I hope you'll not use that to draw erroenous or sweeping generalizations about me. I'm attempting to expand the scope to *all harms people cause each other*.
You clearly see a world of toxic patriarchy and misogyny.
I'm writing as a fellow human being, transcending the Man-Woman dichotomy. As far as possible. Because I love humanity, men and women.
As a single father I've been the victim of horrific psychological/emotional/social abuse by my ex. I've been blessed and fortunate to get my daughter back into my care and raising her as a single father for 7 years now. But the legacy of the abuse has caused me to be tortured by physical illness & psychological wounds for years. And the impacts on my daughter and immense: both through my own limitations and challenges and suffering, the resultant behavioral failures, and overall the severely diminished extended family life and adversarial relationships (and many other factors).
You write "The fact is, men cannot/will not take accountability. In truth, as a mother of a son and someone who loves and often defends men, I CARE enough about men to call them out. Not out of spite, but because I hold them to a higher standard than they seem to hold for themselves."
There is 100% equal truth in this: "The fact is, women cannot/will not take accountability. In truth, as a father of a daughter and someone who loves and often defends women, I CARE enough about women to call them out. Not out of spite, but because I hold them to a higher standard than they seem to hold for themselves."
My ex-wife, while we were still married, in her early twenties, argued - out loud, explicitly, in her own words - that responsibility, accountability, integrity, and honesty (perhaps others I forgot) are "not for women" and therefore not for her.
For trying to hold her accountable - in love, for the sake of each other and our child and our families and our dreams and everything - I was labelled toxic, and then abusive.
She begged me to beat her. She wanted choke-to-blackout kink. She wanted daily spankings, at least weekly, to the point of bleeding. I did not do these things. When we were dating she was prostituting herself - classified ads selling sex, and fulfilling on those deals at least a handful of times in hotels. In the name of "sacred intimacy" and healing. She also spoke to spirits, and identified at her core as polyamorus. I suggested these indicated unresolved psychological issues. Her parents didn't care. They are Progressive, Democrats, educated, successful, charismatic, charming, and pillars of the community.
She told me she had a hard time telling right from wrong, and she believed her conscience never fully developed.
I share all of this to make my point clear and hopefully help you bring healing to the men-women divide more than before - by trying to make very clear that your position is heavily biased. Did you already know your core position statement are equally valid for both sexes?
It became quite clear to me there was a fundamental issue with my ex around responsibility, empathy, and the moral virtues of maturity. For her, they were associated with "The Patriarchy" and the same kind of toxic masculinity you seem so focused on (and hey, don't get me wrong, it's a huge problem!). But ironically, the same kind of attitude you espouse may be the kind of thing that inculcated her and set her up to be a narcissistic, entitled and immature young woman (whom I loved deeply) who actively denied any faults, any shadow, any issues to take responsibility for; and thereby perpetuated intergenerational traumas, and in practical terms cost her family(s) tremendous, immense, incalculable devastation.
Like your closing line "It's mind-blowing that men don't get this. It blows my mind every time. The entitlement and lack of empathy are deeply disturbing. Open your eyes. Please. Where is your humanity?"
Well, on that note - I've almost given up on life too many times with a similar refrain in my heart or on my lips. But it was women who did it, primarily - my ex-wife, my mother, my mother-in-law. I didn't stand a chance with these three women arrayed against me. Power? You think I had the power in that situation? I have bled and sacrificed my life & desires & opportunities in order to be a present, devoted father to my daughter - in order to raise her into a strong, aware, caring, intelligent, responsible and capable woman.
Again, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. You're hyper-focused on one issue - men committing sexual violence, and the relevance of porn in this - and I'm not addressing that directly. I'm attempting to expand the scope to *all harms people cause each other* and deliberately sharing personal experience and insight to try to make an argument that brings men and women closer to unity on values and standards.
Clumsy writing here for sure, but I'm not at my best and wanted to take a stab at it.
Your moral framework and thus your conclusions are quite parochial. They are characteristic of a. relatively small but elite portion of the world's population and a more recent worldview. In most times and places, actions that almost universally evoke disgust are considered immoral. They are considered an affront to human dignity or to the sacred. Jonathan Haidt has written a book called The Righteous Mind which outlines various moral "flavors". He has done research on populations from different demographics around the world and come up with very interesting findings. One finding that interested me is the difference between traditional American conservatives and traditional liberals are not that conservatives have different values but that they have additional ones. Anyway, harm is only one moral value and of course what we mean by harm varies as we know when current campus definitions that define speech as harmful. Anyway, Haidt's work is quite original and will, I think, add to your understanding of moral principles. It really helped expand my thinking.
First, a question and a comment. Question: do you oppose indecency laws? Comments: Your distinction between private and public acts and the prohibitions that follow seems specious. Suppose one wished to argue as a matter of public discourse that sex should be as public as eating — that there should be sextaurants as well as restaurants and sex in public parks, etc. I think that discussion would be fine but should be limited to theaters, universities, art galleries, private publications, at least at first. Why? Because public sex not only offends deeply held moral convictions widely held by the community about what should be private; it also aims to disrupt those community standards. Doesn't Koran burning, I hear you say, meet those criteria? No (see my article defending blasphemy, "Righteous Blasphemy"). Why? Because religion is not only private, not only moral, has proven itself a vehicle for significant physical harm, and is deeply political. Blasphemy does not make public (expose, display) what the devout and the general community deeply hold on moral grounds should be private. It engages what the devout have already made public. Blasphemy is not per se indecent. Sperm walks are.
I consider blasphemy to be a category of "moral injury". It's an offense against a societies morality/beliefs that is similar to a racist or sexist statement, or walking around with sperm on your face (but I don't think any of them should be illegal) At it's heart, religion isn't much more than a way to enforce specific morals/beliefs on large groups of people. If you believe God thinks you shouldn't do something than you believe doing that thing is immoral.
I'd say your initial comment is essentially the same as saying "that's not a dog it's a Labrador".
And that's exactly why we don't have blasphemy laws in America but they have them in medieval societies, like Afghanistan or Pakistan. But, again, in the general sphere of "moral values", religion and other spiritual beliefs are a special category. This category alone is protected (freedom of religion), but also citizens are protected against it (no blasphemy laws), the way it should be. I repeat, walking with sperm on your face is not a moral value, it's just societal deviation. We can discuss, of course, if societal deviations should be punished, but that is not even the issue here. Nobody wants to "punish" people for being a deviant, but the society, sometimes, views the said deviants as a danger to themselves and/or to others, and imposes restrictions. You cannot masturbate in public. You cannot defecate in public. You cannot walk naked in public (there are spaces where you can do it, as on a nudists' beach). You cannot torture yourself in public (cut yourself, etc.). Cross-dressing was equally part of this, as it is considered sexual self-gratification. Alas, "well-intended" people have promoted it to the rank of bravery, and now we have people flashing their cocks and fake breasts during parades, and they are applauded. From what I see, the next one is cuming in public and wearing your sperm as makeup. Slippery slope. The society needs a robust discussion about this, but the "progressive" movement (there is nothing progressive about it) has forced it down our throats and has limited (or even outlawed) any debate about it.
Thankful to live in a place where I don’t have to worry about people parading around offensive things. However, I think we all deserve to have a “safe space” where kids, and others in the public are not subjected to the lost marbles of people looking for clicks and public displays of perversion. They can claim their lost marbles in their backyard, much like saying they are whatever gender they want to be.. but we in the public shouldn’t have to be subjected to it. On that note, pornography shouldn’t be accessible to kids, unless the person can prove they are an adult. Most people don’t have problems with these boundaries..
There's a big difference between stigmatizing or condemning a behavior and arresting people for it. I think BDSM is sick, but I don't think consenting adults should go to jail for it. I think what Lily Philips is doing is tragic and sick, but I don't want to see her arrested.
This is very different from the legalization of sex buying, because studies have made it very clear that legalized sex buying increases demand (how could it not?), and there is never enough willing "supply" to meet the demand; this then fuels a steep rise in sex trafficking. The price that vulnerable women and children are forced to pay for a person's "right" to buy sex is far too high - it's also too high a price for those people living in poor neighborhoods crawling with sex buyers.
This is similar to why I support the right of trans women to use whatever restroom they want, but not to compete against women in sports. The latter is a "freedom" that impinges on the rights and freedoms of others.
I think that there are also concerns with safety and dignity when it comes to restrooms. I don't think that there should be some test at the door for a person's sex (so, if a trans person has had surgeries, etc., they can go about their business in incognito mode), but there needs to be an underlying expectation that people cannot flatly identify into spaces designated for the opposite sex, since I've heard of so many cases of predatory men being allowed in women's spaces by authority figures who respond to concerns by deferring to the predators' unverifiable identity. Single-sex spaces exist for a reason - this article (https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/sex-relationships/article/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger-8lwbp8kgk?region=global) provides what seems to be pretty solid evidence against mixed-sex restrooms (which I think would necessarily include those opened up to gender identity honor codes).
In each of these cases there's at least one victim, and the fact that it seems to spread suggests that there's more than one. The idea that one can bootstrap their own morality rationally from the ground up is, and has always been, ridiculous, and something that Peter has either ignored or failed to grasp (can't tell which)
The society that surrounds a person has an influence on the sorts of decisions they are likely to make. People bandy about the phrase "consenting adult" as though each adult is sitting there in a vacuum making uninfluenced personal decisions, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
There are many examples to show how ridiculous it is to place consent über alles but the easy one is women who take part in "consensual" sexual intercourse but then later claim that they were raped. It's so easy to attribute bad motive to the woman, but what has really happened is that they've been hoodwinked by a toxic society to go along with something that they don't actually feel right about and then later deeply regret it as what's left of their conscience rebels against whatever messed up societal norms have propagated in the absence of common sense.
The victim in a toxic society, generally speaking, are agreeable people, because they will "consent" to being taken advantage of in all sorts of ways to avoid conflict. See recent allegations against Neil Gaiman for just a recent example.
You claim that there's a difference between these examples and actions done to oneself, saying, "Many on the Right failed to differentiate between defending someone's choice to engage in a victimless activity and condemning actions with actual victims, such as coercing others into sex", but the only difference I see is how easy it is to peg a single person in the situation as the "victimizer". Is there any reason to believe that a victim/victimizer dynamic only exists if the victimizer is one person? Further, you claim that in one case it's a victimless activity. Based on?
As for who decides, the important thing to understand is that no matter how liberal the society, you're never going to get even close to 100% of individuals making truly free decisions. Rather, their decisions will be influenced by various others (including tradition, local norms, and people) within that society. If that is a functional, productive society, then the influence will be positive. If it's a dysfunctional society, then the influence will be negative. In neither society will this unrealistic, idealistic notion of "consent" be the only impetus behind a given decision.
Peter: As a paying subscriber it should be obvious that I think your takes on various matters are interesting, but it often seems like you have simple answers to issues by the expedient of ignoring complexity. This is one example, but there are others. In the past I thought you were perhaps doing it unknowingly, but here you state explicitly that "These are not particularly complicated issues, and we already have well-established moral frameworks to navigate them. Still, that does not stop people from complicating what is otherwise straightforward." In this case you've simplified the situation by taking it as a foregone conclusion that these activities are victimless. Whether the activities are victimless is at the heart of this discussion, so saying that "Many on the Right failed to differentiate between defending someone's choice to engage in a victimless activity and condemning actions with actual victims" is just textbook begging the question. Any issue can become simple by oversimplifying it, but I'm not sure what the goal is by claiming without evidence that an issue is simpler than your opposition says it is, nor framing them as emotional. It goes from bad to worse when the very next topic in the article is all about nuance.
I could not agree more. This sort of rationale can only be entertained by those who have the privilege of living in "hypotheticals" where one's moral laziness has the privledge of hiding behind banal platitudes like "the independent actions consenting adults." Did you he consider that not everyone in a park or on the internet is a "consenting adult" and that inadvertently exposing minors to such content could be physchologically disturbing? Or are the debacherous activities of adults and their feelings about "free expression" which now apparently extends to anal sex for all to see (not because we all agreed that free speech should include lewd videos, but because technology made it possible to include far more than the written or spoken word) more important than a parents right to address such topics in an age appropriate manner?
As a mother of sons, I would not want any young man coming of age to be lured into participating in this. If you contract a venereal disease, you're a victim. I don't care about "eyes wide open."
There is a difference between consenting to an act and making it public. IE That woman could have had sex with 100 men and not made it public... But of course that was the whole objective. "Consent" wasn't the issue. The modern progressive-cult is actually trying to *abolish shame* - the gray area before actually transgressing into the forbidden.
Consider the recent Neil Gaiman revelations... Its easy to say "don't be a prude", much harder to say "sure go work for ND as a babysitter" to a young lady, isn't it?
I think the street persona is a choice he makes to sort of disarm the people he's questioning so he can get to the source of their beliefs before pushing back against them.
This is a classic libertarian take that I would have supported two years ago. It's the "morality vs legality" argument. Which could be fine in a healthy society. However, in a depraved and gross and mentally unhealthy society, morality can (should) actually become legality. Sure, we can all run around with sperm on our faces and eat shit until we die, but what would happen to human society in a couple of years if we ignore morality and basic human decency?
Although I agree that just "banning" stuff isn't going to solve the problem. It's a much more deeper issue and it requires education (not talking about schools) and higher spiritual and intellectual beliefs.
I genuinely wonder if you're willing to draw *any* lines. I suspect you're not. Your answer to anything aside from "this thing is bodily touching me" is something like "where's the line?"
You won't draw any obscenity lines, I don't believe. I wish you'd just cop to it.
I think walking around with sperm on your face is more a public health issue. We don’t like being exposed to bodily fluids in any form. And the phrase “Eat shit and die” might be a bit of a truism. I think the question is more about lessening the definition of mental illness in favor of a “free society” where anything goes. The concept of a private life and a public life is broken. If you want to screw 100 guys in 24 hrs., good luck to ya and your future health, it’s not my business and I’m not responsible for your behavior and I don’t need to know. By the way, not new, porns been around for a long time.
What bothers me is the insistence of making a public spectacle of oneself. If you like wearing a dog collar and walking around on all fours, there’s a club for that. If you like having sex in public, there are clubs for that too. When someone asks, “How are you?”, they don’t even want to know that. It’s a polite social convention. It’s not so much a moral issue as, again, the collapse of private/ public boundaries.
Doesn't it make sense to draw the line at public fluids?
Many of the other issues can be debated, though mostly on religious and disgust grounds. At least I'm not seeing a great logical case even though I want to.
But fluids carry disease that could be transmissible to any passerby who happened to bump the wrong person.
For the same reason, I would not be in favor of someone walking down the street covered in blood.
I can see where the same argument could be used to force everyone to wear a mask because breathing transfers germs, which I wouldn't want.
At the same time, loose fluid, even when it isn't disease-carrying, inspires significantly stronger reactions in many people, some even pass out at the sight of blood. Even the smell (or sound) of vomit can inspire others to vomit reflexively.
I've never heard of anyone passing out at the sight of someone breathing. (If you have superior knowledge here, I'm all ears.)
I also grant considerations for population density. It wouldn't matter on the Appalachian Trail, as an example. Have at it.
Yet, as animals, we do have psychological frailties that have to be accounted for as a condition for cities (large-scale cooperation) to function. And these lines may be drawn differently where cultural norms of disgust vary.
Imagine the Tokyo subway in a world with copious human juice publically flaunted.
Sure, some people would be into that, and maybe you could have a city or two where that would be the norm, but trading with said group might be a non-starter. Otherwise, juice on?
On a broader scale, I don't think flagrant human juice wearing would be functional for a large majority of people living and working in close quarters with strangers. Caveat, I haven't run the experiment, and I strongly don't want to be part of such an experiment.
Where to remove the restriction as populations dwindled? I don't know, but not too close to me personally would be great.
I only read to the part where you defended the guy who ate shit.
People should not eat shit, and if they do they should not be in charge of anything, including themselves. I don't have a philosophical defense of this point, and I don't care.
"Should society “allow” women to sleep with as many men as they want?"
ABSOLUTELY. That said, society should also be shaming women who behave this way not only because it's disgusting but because it is toxic for women; destroying their ability to find a good man , get married and have a family.
Society use to shame men and women when they behaved badly but Liberalism convinced us that this was bad; unnecessary and toxic behavior. For Liberals, it wasn't the actual bad behavior that needed to be discouraged but the act of discouraging bad behavior.
Instead of shaming unwed pregnant teenage mothers they are praised.
Instead of shaming gay men who act sexually in public they are cheered on.
Instead of shaming women for being sleazy they are told that they are stunning and brave
When a society stops shaming bad behavior it will result in an increase in bad behavior because the individual behaving badly knows there are no punitive measures for behaving badly. This isn't rocket science and yet most Liberals can't comprehend this.
When Liberal utopia's like CA stopped punishing people who steal less than $950, the result was an increase in shoplifting. Public shaming, the creation of more conservative/Christian like people, was a highly effective mechanism for keeping bad behavior at a minimum. It is a perfect example of why many who are not liberals say that [modern] Liberalism is a mental disorder
Not sure what happened to them but here are 2 response , both from a Miss Haversham, that are now missing in this post. Your guess is as good as min but definitely sounds a properly conditioned feminist responding.
Response#1:
Wrong! Nowadays promiscuity has no negative effect on a woman's prospects as long as she is relatively attractive - she will always find a man - men are just as eager to find long term partners as women, if not more so. The old puritanism died out with safe effective birth control. Having a long list of former lovers makes no difference at all. Looks, intelligence, personality and money are all far more important than virginity which is considered an antiquated and distasteful notion in modern societies.
Response#2:
Public shaming simply creates more hypocrisy - it is naive to assume everyone was much better behaved in some imaginary golden past of mom and apple pie and white picket fences - men committed adultery just as much back then and visited prostitutes and strip joints - they just hid their behaviour and went to church on Sunday with their wives to maintain a respectable facade. And if they gave their wife VD it was all handled very secretively due to shame and ostracism but it still kept happening. Women suffered in silence and often drowned their sorrows in legal addictions to tobacco, alcohol and prescription pills. There was just as much paedophilia, incest and child abuse except it was hidden and shame kept a culture of secrecy alive - nowadays it is easy to get a DNA test and discover who your family members are and these tests are revealing huge amounts of incest in family trees. There never was a perfect moment in the past when everything was wonderful because human nature never changes - it is better to have it all out in the open then the victims can come forward and seek help and protection without having to endure in silence because shame matters more than fundamental decency
Public shaming simply creates more hypocrisy - it is naive to assume everyone was much better behaved in some imaginary golden past of mom and apple pie and white picket fences - men committed adultery just as much back then and visited prostitutes and strip joints - they just hid their behaviour and went to church on Sunday with their wives to maintain a respectable facade.
And if they gave their wife VD it was all handled very secretively due to shame and ostracism but it still kept happening.
Women suffered in silence and often drowned their sorrows in legal addictions to tobacco, alcohol and prescription pills.
There was just as much paedophilia, incest and child abuse except it was hidden and shame kept a culture of secrecy alive - nowadays it is easy to get a DNA test and discover who your family members are and these tests are revealing huge amounts of incest in family trees.
There never was a perfect moment in the past when everything was wonderful because human nature never changes - it is better to have it all out in the open then the victims can come forward and seek help and protection without having to endure in silence because shame matters more than fundamental decency.
"Should society “allow” women to sleep with as many men as they want?"
ABSOLUTELY. That said, society should also be shaming women who behave this way not only because it's disgusting but because it is toxic for women; destroying their ability to find a good man , get married and have a family.
I'm sorry but this is simply not true - the most sexually promiscuous woman I ever met who not only slept with any man who caught her fancy - married or single - but openly boasted about it, was also very wealthy and successful in her career with a considerable property portfolio by the time she was 30.
She continued in this fashion with no harm whatsoever to her social standing or career - her female boss loved to hear all about her sexual conquests - she was welcome at even the most 'high class' dinner parties where she regaled the diners with juicy tales of her sexual exploits - darling of the diplomats and expats.
In time her biological clock started ticking and her pulling power began to wane as the big 40 loomed.
She promptly married a very wealthy oil engineer she met at her church - yes she went to church every Sunday and then back to bed with one or more lovers afterwards.
Within a year she gave birth to a daughter and reinvented herself as a good Christian wife and mother. This made perfect sense as she was no longer young and her beauty was slowly fading.
When her daughter was five she and her husband retired to a beautiful villa with heated roof top pool on the Cote d'Azur with a posse of servants.
She is now the matriarch of the local Anglican Church organising Red Cross parcels and Sunday lunches for the very well-heeled parishioners.
You could not find a more respectable pillar of the community!
Her sins have never caught up with her - on the contrary - she has prospered.
Citing exceptions to the rule doesn't change the rule in general. Very few rules are absolute. You are trying to normalize the outliers to justify your argument and a healthy society doesn't make rules based on teh few.
Wrong! Nowadays promiscuity has no negative effect on a woman's prospects as long as she is relatively attractive - she will always find a man - men are just as eager to find long term partners as women, if not more so.
The old puritanism died out with safe effective birth control.
Having a long list of former lovers makes no difference at all.
Looks, intelligence, personality and money are all far more important than virginity which is considered an antiquated and distasteful notion in modern societies.
I think the permissibility of sex acts in public depends not just on ordinary questions of harm, but also on a more nuanced concept of consent. There are enough kinks that depend on watching another's sexual behavior, or being watched in the sex act, to suggest that witnessing a sex act is itself in some measure also a sex act. And if we hold that sex should always be consensual then public sex acts will potentially engage others in non-consensual sex, at least in societies where there is no collective agreement that simply going out in public constitutes consent to witness sex acts there. Likewise, if dressing in drag is construed as sexual behavior, or sexually explicit or suggestive acts happen in a particular drag queen story hour, then this can be understood as a non-consensual sex act with minor children.
This is something that also affects the online domain.
There are people who understandably want an uncensored internet and say, "If you don't like what you are seeing, get off the internet." However, being online is now sometimes a requirement to get goods and services (or at least makes it easier), so there are going to have to be some rules to protect people. Some of that is protection is naturally going to be protection from offense because, while a person doesn't have the right to avoid being offended, they do have the right to make someone stop offending them repeatedly after being asked to stop. Somewhere along the line, offense becomes harrassment, bullying, abuse, etc. I'm specifically thinking of situations where the offense is directed at an individual rather than the individual stumbles upon it (sending someone DM's that insult their culture vs a person coming across an X account which disparages their culture.)
There is also the issue of kids being online. Child safeguarding online is pathetically inadequate and has mostly been left to parents who are not necessarily tech-savvy. Even if they were, the parents can't reasonably be expected to hold the entire internet at bay. I'm curious to see how policies change to protect kids now that we know tech and access to developmentally inappropriate material is so catastrophically bad for kids.
The difference with the internet is that you decide to go to a specific website, and there's a bit of an understanding that there won't be porn on, say, CNN.com, in the same way that there won't be nudists at a McDonald's kids' playset.
There might be the occasional thing that slips through the filters on Twitter/X or Facebook or Substack or wherever, but I've found that to be fairly limited.
As for keeping kids out, back in the 80s/90s, the "adult security" trivia questions about po-culture references from 20-30 years ago that no kid knew anything about to access my dad's "Leisure Suit Larry" games worked pretty well. But, then again, we didn't have much of an internet to just look up those answers, either.
This should be a double-page spread in NYT: people who are trapped into viewing public sexual exhibitionism have not consented.
It’s a catch-22. If it’s not offensive, then it’s not exhibitionistic. It’s the danger of discovery and the point of the act.
Very thoughtful comment.
Sure seems to be a lot of perversion
A very interesting take.
Pl
OK, I'll bite: Would this mean that owning and plowing (fvcking) a child sex doll/robot in the privacy of one's own home, with no kids around, would be OK but that doing it in public would be wrong?
You pick a squicky test case, but yes, I think that's right.
Alright; good. So, basically, politicians should stop pushing to criminalize such dolls/robots but instead only focus on making their (unconcealed) presence in public spaces and public places illegal, right?
Your public/private comments are spot on and to a large degree this article is only possible due to a collapse of people being able to recognize the difference between the 2 .
The problem with those on the Left , as a recovering democrat myself that I can attest to , is that they condone behaviors they would never allow their own children to take part in.
The way they ignore going into crime-ridden neighborhoods their policies have destroyed
Hypocrisy may be the greatest luxury of them all.
I'm guessing 100 years from now, when we have more accurately mapped the human brain and how it operates we will decry what we permit to enter our eyes and ears -legally- the way we now decry cigarettes and lobotomies.
Let me give you an example.
As an American of Italian descent who despises movies like the Godfather, Goodfellas and shows like the Sopranos I can testify to how simply downloading such distorted inaccurate stories as well as glorifying them can do actual harm including death.
The small cemetery in my Brooklyn neighborhood is filled with the tombstones of young Italian boys and men in their teens and twenties who bought into those films the way people by toothpaste and insurance sold by geckos. They wanted to be gangsters ... they were just young influenceable kids.
I went to many weddings in limos with these movies playing on what was then videotapes. Gorgeous actors , hot wives and/or girlfriends , tons of money .... never had a shot .,
I'm not sure if a fundamentalist approach to the First Amendment is the way to go, not at all. Nor am I sure what the solution is .
What I do know is that when another modern technology was being advanced , the railroad , it averaged about 100 deaths a day attributed to zero regulation ie signage, speed limits etc.
Reasonable people made laws, set limits and things became much safer .
Just claiming someone is an 'adult' is a silly idea given that states define this rather loosely , just look at the age when people can get married .
And not only is it silly it's intellectually lazy .
Having a child of say 8 years old be able to click "yes I am 18 or 21 " on his IPhone and access the horrors of the internet will do more damage to America from within than any enemies abroad ..... and for what ?
To die on the infantile hill of " free speech" ?
Nah , that sounds like the cringiest fringiest Far Left excuses which just got them their asses handed to them on Election Day .
It's ALWAYS the overcorrection.
Be careful what you wish for.
"They condone behaviors they would never allow their own children to take part in" this is precisely part of Rob Henderson's description of luxury beliefs. They receive the kudos of "being tolerant"/forward thinking - the doers pay the cost of their lives being diminished by notoriety and self harm.
A very interesting read. Thank you.
Thanks for your kind words.
"As an American of Italian descent who despises movies like the Godfather, Goodfellas and shows like the Sopranos I can testify to how simply downloading such distorted inaccurate stories as well as glorifying them can do actual harm including death."
The entertainment industry is a key player with influencing culture. Not only do movies that glorify bad behavior encourage those who watch it to mimic that behavior but it can also alter history. When Hollywood race swaps and or gender swaps characters in content based on historical events they are in a way teaching viewers history because most believe that what is shown is accurate. If Hollywood were to constantly out out historical films where, because of "Diversity" they have the wrong ethnicity and or sex in the film, once those who were young at the start, are now adults, they believe the history they saw in the movies and not real history. It is why the activists that infected public education began eliminating civics and reduced history. In order to get the next generation to make the mistakes of past generations they need to not be taught about the mistakes of the past.
I don't recall the details because this easily 10+ years ago but I read an article where some college student(s) did a study on entertainments impact on society by asking people if we actually had a zombie like outbreak and you were armed with a gun to defend yourself how would you kill the zombie and most said you had to hit/destroy the head else the zombie would keep coming. This of course is absolutely silly and it shows how impactful entertainment can be on how people think. It's not unreasonable to think we could one day have a virus get loose that doesn't make people zombies but causes them to behave similar to a zombie. It is however absurd to believe that if this were to happen the only way to stop them is to destroy the head
Another great example is how young people who live in the hood, hold a firearm. They foolishly hold it sideways because that is what Hollywood has taught them
Creating, downloading, and consuming art does not do harm. Though Goodfellas has “caused” me to gain many unwanted pounds by causing cravings to gorge on Italian-style food every time I watch it. Still, the choice to gorge and the actions I take to obtain, prepare, and eat the food are mine alone. Or, in the case of harms done to children, the harms are the responsibility of the parents.
You would be 100 % wrong . Define art, I dare you. Art is littered with nonsense . The human brain couldn't care less about your delineations . I don't think Andy Warhol is art, do you ?
For generations talk therapies and meditations were deemed 'harmless' to PTSD survivors . Now we know the opposite is true and that the worst thing these survivors could do is meditate or relive their trauma through talk therapy.
it since been proven that having these returning soldiers simply play video games helps them more than either meditation or talk therapy, which actually caused them more harm. I doubt very much that you want to take the position that art however you define it is somehow safer than talk therapy or meditation, do you because it would be ridiculous if you did. I was very clear in my post. We don't know yet, but we will know, and when we do know we will regulate, thankfully.
You claim gangster movies are inaccurate yet blame them for the deaths of many young, Italian boys. Is that life imitating art or vice versa?
Art doesn’t care about your opinion and you cannot legislate morality. Censorship is never the answer. Ever.
The Left are the only ones currently calling for censorship. Stop breaking your pills in half. 💊
I had an ethnic Italian roommate was obsessed with the Godfather movie
He went to visit Bari Italy and was shocked when people there told him he was not Italian
He was so shocked I still remember his facial expression
Another ethnic Italian roommate viewed it as adolescent
Bari, Italy, not Bali, Italy.
People like you need ankle bracelets . Your infantile definition of art would make pedophilia legal.
I cannot wait for A.I. to clean house and burn the silliness of what passes for art today . Your reification of art into a sentient life form would indicate to me that perhaps you should stop breaking your pills in half and listen to your doctor's advice .
"I cannot wait for A.I. to clean house and burn the silliness of what passes for art today"
—> I'm curious—but also a little bit terrified—to find out exactly what you think "AI" is or does...
AI will never misread a mammogram and not diagnose breast cancer as it will combine the collective talents of the greatest minds in its field and all but eliminate human error.
All technological advances are met with the same cowardly types who claim it’s the end of days .
The railroad, nuclear power, the internet etc…
I’m sure there were cavemen who didn’t think the dangers the discovery of fire presented made it worth the risk of staying warm and cooking one’s food .
Look at the state of today’s ‘art’. It’s hideous .
Truly authentic artists have nothing to fear .
The mediocre on the other hand have gotten away with peddling rubbish for far too long.
I don’t believe in art critics.
So art, like the trans movement is somehow beyond reproach ? How convenient for bad artists and pedophiles who simply need to buy lipstick and a wig to enter girls spaces unchallenged . 👎🏻
You do realize that neuroscientist have gotten animated geckos to sell us car insurance? Stick to art pal because you know nothing about the human brain.
This line "Religion further complicates what should otherwise be straightforward matters." indicates your bias. Your article is written with this bias in mind.
You define harm in a way that aligns with your morality.
You talk about nudity and sex in public. You could push it even farther.
Is suicide acceptable? Is suicide in public acceptable?
Is what happen with Jim Jones acceptable?
Is polyamory acceptable?
What about incest? Its consenting.
Then there is the age of consent.
It's not universally agreed on.
Why can you be drafted at 18 but not drink?
How is the concept even defined?
Morality is how society or better yet community works.
Suggesting that some how individual autonomy is the basis of all morality is just you promoting your religion. The UN charter on human rights includes the right to religion. That of course then gets into what is a religion.
A better discussion is how to live and let live.
Not define a universal morality concept.
So how is that line biased, esp given different moral systems and different edicts?
I could reverse it "Intellectual elites further complicate what should otherwise be straightforward matters" by religions and it would be just as valid.
Don't get me wrong. I'm largely on your side on what I want as values in my community. But I acknowledge that my values are not morally superior to others including various religious positions.
I advocate a freedom to position that includes the freedom to establish communities of like minded values. Everything isn't about the individual. In fact, the community is more important than the individual.
nice discussion here! I suspect that our susceptibility to other people's actions is much graver yet less clear now that we are in a social and economic syncytium (had to look up spelling twice substack gods please dont ban my bot followers). At the same time, the death of religion and nationalism is leaving people grasping for straws. The butterfly effect of walking around with sperm on your face is as real as its ever been... just more waves and less walls in the common space.
Thank you for your brilliant take on this deeply disturbing trend. As a woman, I'm absolutely appalled that these women are blatantly displaying their sexual perversions. Yes, I'm judging because ALL women pay a MUCH greater cost when these things go on in public. Male predators and porn users feed off this as a way to justify the horrific violence, exploitation and degradation that they already inflict on the women in their lives as well as the women in porn and prostitution. It leads ALL men to question ALL women's morality when in fact, it's an exceptionally tiny minority of women who do this.
It also begs the question: What the HELL happened to these women to make them crave the money/attention that they're now receiving???
I've been observing this as a 65 year old grandmother and lifelong feminist who worked hard to establish credibility in a male dominated industry - technology - and who dreamed of a world where my daughter and granddaughter, and son for that matter would stand side by side with men earning the respect, awards, income, that their fellow male workers, partners, brothers earned and nobody would give anyone a second thought. I dreamed of a world where women's accomplishments would transform the world and create a balance between the masculine and feminine such that women choosing to raise their children at home would be not only respected, but would be compensated for the value that they created in the economy equivalent to any similar work in the workplace. I dreamed of a world where it would be UNTHINKABLE FOR MEN TO BUY WOMEN'S AND CHILDREN'S BODIES much less have women themselves actively promote their own sexual objectification.
I'm absolutely nauseous seeing these things unfolding knowing that the manosphere is going to use these perverted young women to justify the vile disgusting behaviour of these men. They will tell themselves 'See, deep down ALL women deserve to be treated this way by men. Women are ALL perverted.' Even as we see Gisele Pelicot's story about her husband drugging her and having a hundred average men in her community pay to rape her limp. unconscious body with her husband making money from this horrific abuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gis%C3%A8le_Pelicot
Of course, the more we promote the stories of these young women, who in my view must have been raped, molested, abused themselves in order to do these disgusting acts in public and make money off of them, the more it becomes normalized for other desperate damaged young women.
Soon, the irony is that men will DEMAND that women's sexuality be policed and before you know it we WILL be in a Handmaid's Tale scenario. The OPPOSITE of what feminism was about. Meanwhile, women are reeling from all the sexual violence they're already experiencing at the hands of men in their lives. Men they love. Men they trusted.
Feminism has been hijacked by porn culture and predatory capitalism. What we have today is NOT feminism. Today's bastardized version of feminism has taught both young men AND young women that women's bodies are just meatsacks, sex organs, to be dumped on or in by any man who feels entitled and the average woman does not stand a chance in the face of this misogyny. Young, old, rich, poor, all will become prey for male predators even more so than is already the case.
On what planet does baby rape get normalized? Look at any dark web porn site. Read the book 'Big Porn Inc. - https://www.amazon.ca/Big-Porn-Inc-Exposing-Pornography/dp/1876756896 and you will learn just how depraved the porn industry really is and just how depraved the average porn user is because they BUY this. 80% of men consume porn. This is NOT ok.
I feel sick. Deeply, profoundly sick and I want it to stop. I want men to stop it. I want MEN to call out other men who consume this because women KNOW that men want this content and will PAY for it. That's what's driving these desperate women to behave this way. Male porn buyers. Make it stop. I don't care how. I don't care who. Women like Gail Dines, Catherine McKinnon, Andrea Dworkin have been trying for decades ever since porn magazines came out. Nobody listens to them. What happened to #MeToo??? It got relegated and dismissed because a small percentage of women had questionable claims. So now, NONE of the women are believed. It's a nightmare and it's driving women insane making them unable to function as mothers, wives, daughters, caregivers. It will leave the world a demonic place largely because of male entitlement and sexual obsession.
76 year old grandmother here. I could have written this word for word. Thank you for doing so. Coming of age in the 60’s I never dreamed that we would have such a giant step backwards in the 21st century!
You and I both, my sister! And don't mind the comments below, every time there is a woman who tells the world she is sick of the porn culture, there will be at least one idiot to scream "misandry !!!!!". Yes, the huge majority of women have had enough. Alas, most men would claim that women selling their body means "liberation".
The base underlying process here is uncoupling of sex from intimacy (ie bodies are just meatsacks). The original sexual revolution uncoupled sex from pregnancy, this is a follow-on phenomenon, but I think far more impactful - because the need for attachment and intimacy is so strong that a whole generation missing out on it can realistically lead to societal collapse. There are already distinct cohorts of men and women who display hostility and disconnection from each other.
What happened to MeToo? It was an inherently unsustainable movement because the current social norms assert two things simultaneously: commodification of sexuality paired with highly punitive repercussions for transgression in that space. The results are either: mass abuse for some and withdrawal & mass celibacy for others.
You’re welcome. There’s a lot here I disagree with. It would be interesting to analyze this reasoning in a separate post.
@Signme Uplease, Your rant reads as if you are channeling Carry Nation and her sociopathic desire to forcibly impose her will--and her axe--on men and their choice to drink alcohol. Her desire, motivated by sexual frustration and misandry, was to control and rule men, not so much to protect women whom their drunken husbands abuse. McKinnon and her ilk, including you apparently, motivated by their misandry, falsely claim(ed) that any peaceful, mutually consenting interaction between men and women is an act of violence against women, or that porn as such necessarily degrades and sanctions violence against women in the real world. Yes, there are male predators who target women. There are female predators, too, and sometimes they were wrongly acquitted or found not guilty because of their being "of the weaker sex" (e.g. Lizzie Borden). Yes, there are men who read all genres of porn and stupidly, lazily generalize that "all women" are like the women portrayed in those stories, and "think" that those stories "justify" them coercing their dates and spouses to emulate those fictional characters. But those who choose to initiate violence towards others because of violence-laden stories they read do not thereby negate, do not refute the rights to intellectual freedom and freedom of the press and speech that all people possess. There are many women who have rape fantasies and enjoy reading pornography involving rape. That doesn't mean that they would actually enjoy rape, and that it should therefore be legalized, and it doesn't mean that women should not be believed when they can prove that they have, in fact, been physically assaulted, sexually or otherwise. To advocate for censorship or arrest and incarceration on the presumption of being guilty of a crime absent any physical proof of harm is dangerous to everyone's liberty.
Nope. I call DARVO. Of course, the first man to reply centres the concerns of men who are victims. Nowhere in my statement do I say that men are not victims. You are not a woman and do not understand what it's like to be on the receiving end of male aggression and violence.
My entire 'rant' which you refer to in a derogatory way simply proves my point. You compare me to a 'sociopathic' woman. Insult me rather than provide any legitimate rebuttal to my points. The fact is, men cannot/will not take accountability. In truth, as a mother of a son and someone who loves and often defends men, I CARE enough about men to call them out. Not out of spite, but because I hold them to a higher standard than they seem to hold for themselves. When we look at the sheer SCALE of victimization, which is the essence of my post, men are doing the sexual violence by far. Not only to women, btw, but to men as well. At what point, will men stop defending their own male pattern violence? I beg you to consider the harm that your reply is doing by redirecting the focus to men, always men, forever men, as innocent victims. Sheesh! It's crazy-making.
Imagine that every day of your life you have to constantly be on your guard against abuse and violence from people you encounter as you move through your day, at work, at home, in social settings. Now add to that the fact that if you ARE abused YOU will be blamed more often than not. YOU will not get justice. YOU will be left to deal with the consequences. THEY will be treated as the victim because you had the audacity to report them. Then consider that the person who victimizes you is usually someone close to you. Someone you know and trust.
It's mind-blowing that men don't get this. It blows my mind every time. The entitlement and lack of empathy are deeply disturbing. Open your eyes. Please. Where is your humanity?
I couldn't have said it better! I am a mother to two sons, and I love all the men in my life (I am lucky, what can I say? Wonderful sons, perfect husband, loving dad, amazing boss, great colleagues, supporting friends - all these men make my life better!). But I am not blind! And I had my share of sexual violence from men, from the time I was a child, exposed to exhibitionists in clear daylight, while walking to school, to a few days ago, when a "transwoman" was loudly masturbating in the stall next to mine in a Whole Foods toilet (not kidding! Whole Foods!). Groped, catcalled, menaced for rejecting sexual advances, inappropriately touched, pressed against for no reason, cyber flashed, stealth victimized, exposed to sexual jokes and innuendo, victim of sexual rumors, upskirted, almost every single thing men have invented to make our lives a hell. Thank God, I was never raped, but what society is that where women call themselves lucky for not having been raped? I am sick to my stomach to hear men call us "men haters" simply because we want to be safe.
Exactly!
Yes! Absolutely on point!
Interesting comments, I appreciate you taking the time and effort to articulate all this.
Apologies I won't be digging into your actual points and the value you brought, due to my own current limitations in energy. Please accept my thanks and respect for engaging in the dialogue to such a degree. Keep trying to move things forward.
I am responding to make a counterpoint. I hope you'll not use that to draw erroenous or sweeping generalizations about me. I'm attempting to expand the scope to *all harms people cause each other*.
You clearly see a world of toxic patriarchy and misogyny.
I'm writing as a fellow human being, transcending the Man-Woman dichotomy. As far as possible. Because I love humanity, men and women.
As a single father I've been the victim of horrific psychological/emotional/social abuse by my ex. I've been blessed and fortunate to get my daughter back into my care and raising her as a single father for 7 years now. But the legacy of the abuse has caused me to be tortured by physical illness & psychological wounds for years. And the impacts on my daughter and immense: both through my own limitations and challenges and suffering, the resultant behavioral failures, and overall the severely diminished extended family life and adversarial relationships (and many other factors).
You write "The fact is, men cannot/will not take accountability. In truth, as a mother of a son and someone who loves and often defends men, I CARE enough about men to call them out. Not out of spite, but because I hold them to a higher standard than they seem to hold for themselves."
There is 100% equal truth in this: "The fact is, women cannot/will not take accountability. In truth, as a father of a daughter and someone who loves and often defends women, I CARE enough about women to call them out. Not out of spite, but because I hold them to a higher standard than they seem to hold for themselves."
My ex-wife, while we were still married, in her early twenties, argued - out loud, explicitly, in her own words - that responsibility, accountability, integrity, and honesty (perhaps others I forgot) are "not for women" and therefore not for her.
For trying to hold her accountable - in love, for the sake of each other and our child and our families and our dreams and everything - I was labelled toxic, and then abusive.
She begged me to beat her. She wanted choke-to-blackout kink. She wanted daily spankings, at least weekly, to the point of bleeding. I did not do these things. When we were dating she was prostituting herself - classified ads selling sex, and fulfilling on those deals at least a handful of times in hotels. In the name of "sacred intimacy" and healing. She also spoke to spirits, and identified at her core as polyamorus. I suggested these indicated unresolved psychological issues. Her parents didn't care. They are Progressive, Democrats, educated, successful, charismatic, charming, and pillars of the community.
She told me she had a hard time telling right from wrong, and she believed her conscience never fully developed.
I share all of this to make my point clear and hopefully help you bring healing to the men-women divide more than before - by trying to make very clear that your position is heavily biased. Did you already know your core position statement are equally valid for both sexes?
It became quite clear to me there was a fundamental issue with my ex around responsibility, empathy, and the moral virtues of maturity. For her, they were associated with "The Patriarchy" and the same kind of toxic masculinity you seem so focused on (and hey, don't get me wrong, it's a huge problem!). But ironically, the same kind of attitude you espouse may be the kind of thing that inculcated her and set her up to be a narcissistic, entitled and immature young woman (whom I loved deeply) who actively denied any faults, any shadow, any issues to take responsibility for; and thereby perpetuated intergenerational traumas, and in practical terms cost her family(s) tremendous, immense, incalculable devastation.
Like your closing line "It's mind-blowing that men don't get this. It blows my mind every time. The entitlement and lack of empathy are deeply disturbing. Open your eyes. Please. Where is your humanity?"
Well, on that note - I've almost given up on life too many times with a similar refrain in my heart or on my lips. But it was women who did it, primarily - my ex-wife, my mother, my mother-in-law. I didn't stand a chance with these three women arrayed against me. Power? You think I had the power in that situation? I have bled and sacrificed my life & desires & opportunities in order to be a present, devoted father to my daughter - in order to raise her into a strong, aware, caring, intelligent, responsible and capable woman.
Again, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. You're hyper-focused on one issue - men committing sexual violence, and the relevance of porn in this - and I'm not addressing that directly. I'm attempting to expand the scope to *all harms people cause each other* and deliberately sharing personal experience and insight to try to make an argument that brings men and women closer to unity on values and standards.
Clumsy writing here for sure, but I'm not at my best and wanted to take a stab at it.
Oh please!
Your moral framework and thus your conclusions are quite parochial. They are characteristic of a. relatively small but elite portion of the world's population and a more recent worldview. In most times and places, actions that almost universally evoke disgust are considered immoral. They are considered an affront to human dignity or to the sacred. Jonathan Haidt has written a book called The Righteous Mind which outlines various moral "flavors". He has done research on populations from different demographics around the world and come up with very interesting findings. One finding that interested me is the difference between traditional American conservatives and traditional liberals are not that conservatives have different values but that they have additional ones. Anyway, harm is only one moral value and of course what we mean by harm varies as we know when current campus definitions that define speech as harmful. Anyway, Haidt's work is quite original and will, I think, add to your understanding of moral principles. It really helped expand my thinking.
See Haidt’s work on this:
In most times and places, actions that almost universally evoke disgust are considered immoral.
Disgust triggers a “moral module” but it is in no way an indicator of something immoral.
Aha! I knew it! It’s ok to have sex with a grocery chicken carcass then eat it.
But not in the grocery store.
It's okay, just don't do it in front of me or we're going to have a problem.
Isn't moral injury an injury? Even JS Mill recognized that the principles of free expression do not protect obscenity.
Define “moral injury”. Burning the Koran?
First, a question and a comment. Question: do you oppose indecency laws? Comments: Your distinction between private and public acts and the prohibitions that follow seems specious. Suppose one wished to argue as a matter of public discourse that sex should be as public as eating — that there should be sextaurants as well as restaurants and sex in public parks, etc. I think that discussion would be fine but should be limited to theaters, universities, art galleries, private publications, at least at first. Why? Because public sex not only offends deeply held moral convictions widely held by the community about what should be private; it also aims to disrupt those community standards. Doesn't Koran burning, I hear you say, meet those criteria? No (see my article defending blasphemy, "Righteous Blasphemy"). Why? Because religion is not only private, not only moral, has proven itself a vehicle for significant physical harm, and is deeply political. Blasphemy does not make public (expose, display) what the devout and the general community deeply hold on moral grounds should be private. It engages what the devout have already made public. Blasphemy is not per se indecent. Sperm walks are.
Specious, I should clarify, on ur grounds, not mine.
Off point!
NO, that is simply "blasphemy". Fortunately, we don't have blasphemy laws in a secular society, and it should stay that way.
I think that's a distinction without a difference.
Not really. It involves beliefs and religion. Walking with sperm on your face is neither.
I consider blasphemy to be a category of "moral injury". It's an offense against a societies morality/beliefs that is similar to a racist or sexist statement, or walking around with sperm on your face (but I don't think any of them should be illegal) At it's heart, religion isn't much more than a way to enforce specific morals/beliefs on large groups of people. If you believe God thinks you shouldn't do something than you believe doing that thing is immoral.
I'd say your initial comment is essentially the same as saying "that's not a dog it's a Labrador".
And that's exactly why we don't have blasphemy laws in America but they have them in medieval societies, like Afghanistan or Pakistan. But, again, in the general sphere of "moral values", religion and other spiritual beliefs are a special category. This category alone is protected (freedom of religion), but also citizens are protected against it (no blasphemy laws), the way it should be. I repeat, walking with sperm on your face is not a moral value, it's just societal deviation. We can discuss, of course, if societal deviations should be punished, but that is not even the issue here. Nobody wants to "punish" people for being a deviant, but the society, sometimes, views the said deviants as a danger to themselves and/or to others, and imposes restrictions. You cannot masturbate in public. You cannot defecate in public. You cannot walk naked in public (there are spaces where you can do it, as on a nudists' beach). You cannot torture yourself in public (cut yourself, etc.). Cross-dressing was equally part of this, as it is considered sexual self-gratification. Alas, "well-intended" people have promoted it to the rank of bravery, and now we have people flashing their cocks and fake breasts during parades, and they are applauded. From what I see, the next one is cuming in public and wearing your sperm as makeup. Slippery slope. The society needs a robust discussion about this, but the "progressive" movement (there is nothing progressive about it) has forced it down our throats and has limited (or even outlawed) any debate about it.
Thankful to live in a place where I don’t have to worry about people parading around offensive things. However, I think we all deserve to have a “safe space” where kids, and others in the public are not subjected to the lost marbles of people looking for clicks and public displays of perversion. They can claim their lost marbles in their backyard, much like saying they are whatever gender they want to be.. but we in the public shouldn’t have to be subjected to it. On that note, pornography shouldn’t be accessible to kids, unless the person can prove they are an adult. Most people don’t have problems with these boundaries..
There's a big difference between stigmatizing or condemning a behavior and arresting people for it. I think BDSM is sick, but I don't think consenting adults should go to jail for it. I think what Lily Philips is doing is tragic and sick, but I don't want to see her arrested.
This is very different from the legalization of sex buying, because studies have made it very clear that legalized sex buying increases demand (how could it not?), and there is never enough willing "supply" to meet the demand; this then fuels a steep rise in sex trafficking. The price that vulnerable women and children are forced to pay for a person's "right" to buy sex is far too high - it's also too high a price for those people living in poor neighborhoods crawling with sex buyers.
This is similar to why I support the right of trans women to use whatever restroom they want, but not to compete against women in sports. The latter is a "freedom" that impinges on the rights and freedoms of others.
I think that there are also concerns with safety and dignity when it comes to restrooms. I don't think that there should be some test at the door for a person's sex (so, if a trans person has had surgeries, etc., they can go about their business in incognito mode), but there needs to be an underlying expectation that people cannot flatly identify into spaces designated for the opposite sex, since I've heard of so many cases of predatory men being allowed in women's spaces by authority figures who respond to concerns by deferring to the predators' unverifiable identity. Single-sex spaces exist for a reason - this article (https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/sex-relationships/article/unisex-changing-rooms-put-women-in-danger-8lwbp8kgk?region=global) provides what seems to be pretty solid evidence against mixed-sex restrooms (which I think would necessarily include those opened up to gender identity honor codes).
In each of these cases there's at least one victim, and the fact that it seems to spread suggests that there's more than one. The idea that one can bootstrap their own morality rationally from the ground up is, and has always been, ridiculous, and something that Peter has either ignored or failed to grasp (can't tell which)
Who’s the victim? And should a consenting adult be allowed to make that decision? If not, who decides? You?
The society that surrounds a person has an influence on the sorts of decisions they are likely to make. People bandy about the phrase "consenting adult" as though each adult is sitting there in a vacuum making uninfluenced personal decisions, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
There are many examples to show how ridiculous it is to place consent über alles but the easy one is women who take part in "consensual" sexual intercourse but then later claim that they were raped. It's so easy to attribute bad motive to the woman, but what has really happened is that they've been hoodwinked by a toxic society to go along with something that they don't actually feel right about and then later deeply regret it as what's left of their conscience rebels against whatever messed up societal norms have propagated in the absence of common sense.
The victim in a toxic society, generally speaking, are agreeable people, because they will "consent" to being taken advantage of in all sorts of ways to avoid conflict. See recent allegations against Neil Gaiman for just a recent example.
You claim that there's a difference between these examples and actions done to oneself, saying, "Many on the Right failed to differentiate between defending someone's choice to engage in a victimless activity and condemning actions with actual victims, such as coercing others into sex", but the only difference I see is how easy it is to peg a single person in the situation as the "victimizer". Is there any reason to believe that a victim/victimizer dynamic only exists if the victimizer is one person? Further, you claim that in one case it's a victimless activity. Based on?
As for who decides, the important thing to understand is that no matter how liberal the society, you're never going to get even close to 100% of individuals making truly free decisions. Rather, their decisions will be influenced by various others (including tradition, local norms, and people) within that society. If that is a functional, productive society, then the influence will be positive. If it's a dysfunctional society, then the influence will be negative. In neither society will this unrealistic, idealistic notion of "consent" be the only impetus behind a given decision.
Peter: As a paying subscriber it should be obvious that I think your takes on various matters are interesting, but it often seems like you have simple answers to issues by the expedient of ignoring complexity. This is one example, but there are others. In the past I thought you were perhaps doing it unknowingly, but here you state explicitly that "These are not particularly complicated issues, and we already have well-established moral frameworks to navigate them. Still, that does not stop people from complicating what is otherwise straightforward." In this case you've simplified the situation by taking it as a foregone conclusion that these activities are victimless. Whether the activities are victimless is at the heart of this discussion, so saying that "Many on the Right failed to differentiate between defending someone's choice to engage in a victimless activity and condemning actions with actual victims" is just textbook begging the question. Any issue can become simple by oversimplifying it, but I'm not sure what the goal is by claiming without evidence that an issue is simpler than your opposition says it is, nor framing them as emotional. It goes from bad to worse when the very next topic in the article is all about nuance.
I could not agree more. This sort of rationale can only be entertained by those who have the privilege of living in "hypotheticals" where one's moral laziness has the privledge of hiding behind banal platitudes like "the independent actions consenting adults." Did you he consider that not everyone in a park or on the internet is a "consenting adult" and that inadvertently exposing minors to such content could be physchologically disturbing? Or are the debacherous activities of adults and their feelings about "free expression" which now apparently extends to anal sex for all to see (not because we all agreed that free speech should include lewd videos, but because technology made it possible to include far more than the written or spoken word) more important than a parents right to address such topics in an age appropriate manner?
A well thought out and nuanced approach. I hesitate to think that Lily is not a victim especially when her own mother helps monetize her actions.
As a mother of sons, I would not want any young man coming of age to be lured into participating in this. If you contract a venereal disease, you're a victim. I don't care about "eyes wide open."
There is a difference between consenting to an act and making it public. IE That woman could have had sex with 100 men and not made it public... But of course that was the whole objective. "Consent" wasn't the issue. The modern progressive-cult is actually trying to *abolish shame* - the gray area before actually transgressing into the forbidden.
Consider the recent Neil Gaiman revelations... Its easy to say "don't be a prude", much harder to say "sure go work for ND as a babysitter" to a young lady, isn't it?
I don't know if anyone has told you but your writing style gives a more sophisticated and intelligent image than your podcast/street interviews do
I think the street persona is a choice he makes to sort of disarm the people he's questioning so he can get to the source of their beliefs before pushing back against them.
This is a classic libertarian take that I would have supported two years ago. It's the "morality vs legality" argument. Which could be fine in a healthy society. However, in a depraved and gross and mentally unhealthy society, morality can (should) actually become legality. Sure, we can all run around with sperm on our faces and eat shit until we die, but what would happen to human society in a couple of years if we ignore morality and basic human decency?
Although I agree that just "banning" stuff isn't going to solve the problem. It's a much more deeper issue and it requires education (not talking about schools) and higher spiritual and intellectual beliefs.
I genuinely wonder if you're willing to draw *any* lines. I suspect you're not. Your answer to anything aside from "this thing is bodily touching me" is something like "where's the line?"
You won't draw any obscenity lines, I don't believe. I wish you'd just cop to it.
I think walking around with sperm on your face is more a public health issue. We don’t like being exposed to bodily fluids in any form. And the phrase “Eat shit and die” might be a bit of a truism. I think the question is more about lessening the definition of mental illness in favor of a “free society” where anything goes. The concept of a private life and a public life is broken. If you want to screw 100 guys in 24 hrs., good luck to ya and your future health, it’s not my business and I’m not responsible for your behavior and I don’t need to know. By the way, not new, porns been around for a long time.
What bothers me is the insistence of making a public spectacle of oneself. If you like wearing a dog collar and walking around on all fours, there’s a club for that. If you like having sex in public, there are clubs for that too. When someone asks, “How are you?”, they don’t even want to know that. It’s a polite social convention. It’s not so much a moral issue as, again, the collapse of private/ public boundaries.
I will never look at a glazed donut the same way.
lol
David Lynch is quoted as saying, “Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.”
In this instance, I’m going to suggest you do exactly the opposite.
Doesn't it make sense to draw the line at public fluids?
Many of the other issues can be debated, though mostly on religious and disgust grounds. At least I'm not seeing a great logical case even though I want to.
But fluids carry disease that could be transmissible to any passerby who happened to bump the wrong person.
For the same reason, I would not be in favor of someone walking down the street covered in blood.
Why is that the demarcation?
Admittedly, it may be my disgust talking.
I can see where the same argument could be used to force everyone to wear a mask because breathing transfers germs, which I wouldn't want.
At the same time, loose fluid, even when it isn't disease-carrying, inspires significantly stronger reactions in many people, some even pass out at the sight of blood. Even the smell (or sound) of vomit can inspire others to vomit reflexively.
I've never heard of anyone passing out at the sight of someone breathing. (If you have superior knowledge here, I'm all ears.)
I also grant considerations for population density. It wouldn't matter on the Appalachian Trail, as an example. Have at it.
Yet, as animals, we do have psychological frailties that have to be accounted for as a condition for cities (large-scale cooperation) to function. And these lines may be drawn differently where cultural norms of disgust vary.
Imagine the Tokyo subway in a world with copious human juice publically flaunted.
Sure, some people would be into that, and maybe you could have a city or two where that would be the norm, but trading with said group might be a non-starter. Otherwise, juice on?
On a broader scale, I don't think flagrant human juice wearing would be functional for a large majority of people living and working in close quarters with strangers. Caveat, I haven't run the experiment, and I strongly don't want to be part of such an experiment.
Where to remove the restriction as populations dwindled? I don't know, but not too close to me personally would be great.
I only read to the part where you defended the guy who ate shit.
People should not eat shit, and if they do they should not be in charge of anything, including themselves. I don't have a philosophical defense of this point, and I don't care.
"Should society “allow” women to sleep with as many men as they want?"
ABSOLUTELY. That said, society should also be shaming women who behave this way not only because it's disgusting but because it is toxic for women; destroying their ability to find a good man , get married and have a family.
Society use to shame men and women when they behaved badly but Liberalism convinced us that this was bad; unnecessary and toxic behavior. For Liberals, it wasn't the actual bad behavior that needed to be discouraged but the act of discouraging bad behavior.
Instead of shaming unwed pregnant teenage mothers they are praised.
Instead of shaming gay men who act sexually in public they are cheered on.
Instead of shaming women for being sleazy they are told that they are stunning and brave
When a society stops shaming bad behavior it will result in an increase in bad behavior because the individual behaving badly knows there are no punitive measures for behaving badly. This isn't rocket science and yet most Liberals can't comprehend this.
When Liberal utopia's like CA stopped punishing people who steal less than $950, the result was an increase in shoplifting. Public shaming, the creation of more conservative/Christian like people, was a highly effective mechanism for keeping bad behavior at a minimum. It is a perfect example of why many who are not liberals say that [modern] Liberalism is a mental disorder
Not sure what happened to them but here are 2 response , both from a Miss Haversham, that are now missing in this post. Your guess is as good as min but definitely sounds a properly conditioned feminist responding.
Response#1:
Wrong! Nowadays promiscuity has no negative effect on a woman's prospects as long as she is relatively attractive - she will always find a man - men are just as eager to find long term partners as women, if not more so. The old puritanism died out with safe effective birth control. Having a long list of former lovers makes no difference at all. Looks, intelligence, personality and money are all far more important than virginity which is considered an antiquated and distasteful notion in modern societies.
Response#2:
Public shaming simply creates more hypocrisy - it is naive to assume everyone was much better behaved in some imaginary golden past of mom and apple pie and white picket fences - men committed adultery just as much back then and visited prostitutes and strip joints - they just hid their behaviour and went to church on Sunday with their wives to maintain a respectable facade. And if they gave their wife VD it was all handled very secretively due to shame and ostracism but it still kept happening. Women suffered in silence and often drowned their sorrows in legal addictions to tobacco, alcohol and prescription pills. There was just as much paedophilia, incest and child abuse except it was hidden and shame kept a culture of secrecy alive - nowadays it is easy to get a DNA test and discover who your family members are and these tests are revealing huge amounts of incest in family trees. There never was a perfect moment in the past when everything was wonderful because human nature never changes - it is better to have it all out in the open then the victims can come forward and seek help and protection without having to endure in silence because shame matters more than fundamental decency
Public shaming simply creates more hypocrisy - it is naive to assume everyone was much better behaved in some imaginary golden past of mom and apple pie and white picket fences - men committed adultery just as much back then and visited prostitutes and strip joints - they just hid their behaviour and went to church on Sunday with their wives to maintain a respectable facade.
And if they gave their wife VD it was all handled very secretively due to shame and ostracism but it still kept happening.
Women suffered in silence and often drowned their sorrows in legal addictions to tobacco, alcohol and prescription pills.
There was just as much paedophilia, incest and child abuse except it was hidden and shame kept a culture of secrecy alive - nowadays it is easy to get a DNA test and discover who your family members are and these tests are revealing huge amounts of incest in family trees.
There never was a perfect moment in the past when everything was wonderful because human nature never changes - it is better to have it all out in the open then the victims can come forward and seek help and protection without having to endure in silence because shame matters more than fundamental decency.
"Should society “allow” women to sleep with as many men as they want?"
ABSOLUTELY. That said, society should also be shaming women who behave this way not only because it's disgusting but because it is toxic for women; destroying their ability to find a good man , get married and have a family.
I'm sorry but this is simply not true - the most sexually promiscuous woman I ever met who not only slept with any man who caught her fancy - married or single - but openly boasted about it, was also very wealthy and successful in her career with a considerable property portfolio by the time she was 30.
She continued in this fashion with no harm whatsoever to her social standing or career - her female boss loved to hear all about her sexual conquests - she was welcome at even the most 'high class' dinner parties where she regaled the diners with juicy tales of her sexual exploits - darling of the diplomats and expats.
In time her biological clock started ticking and her pulling power began to wane as the big 40 loomed.
She promptly married a very wealthy oil engineer she met at her church - yes she went to church every Sunday and then back to bed with one or more lovers afterwards.
Within a year she gave birth to a daughter and reinvented herself as a good Christian wife and mother. This made perfect sense as she was no longer young and her beauty was slowly fading.
When her daughter was five she and her husband retired to a beautiful villa with heated roof top pool on the Cote d'Azur with a posse of servants.
She is now the matriarch of the local Anglican Church organising Red Cross parcels and Sunday lunches for the very well-heeled parishioners.
You could not find a more respectable pillar of the community!
Her sins have never caught up with her - on the contrary - she has prospered.
Citing exceptions to the rule doesn't change the rule in general. Very few rules are absolute. You are trying to normalize the outliers to justify your argument and a healthy society doesn't make rules based on teh few.
Wrong! Nowadays promiscuity has no negative effect on a woman's prospects as long as she is relatively attractive - she will always find a man - men are just as eager to find long term partners as women, if not more so.
The old puritanism died out with safe effective birth control.
Having a long list of former lovers makes no difference at all.
Looks, intelligence, personality and money are all far more important than virginity which is considered an antiquated and distasteful notion in modern societies.
Women understanding the concepts of averages and per capita challenge... impossible!