[Spoke]

No offense intended but Omera has shown in this thread why I think it is not a good idea, in general, to include explicit sex/sexual references in MUDs whose main topic is not explicit sex/sexual exchanges.

He has declared himself to be 13 years old, and he has approached the subject as I would guess most 13 year olds would, making fun of it, using words like 'boob' mockingly etc. It is not that there is something wrong about it, or that it is immoral that a "poor 13 year old" is being exposed to this immorality, it is just that when explicit sex is added to the equation, it tends to become the focus of what happens.

I think the argument about causes is valid, but in a more practical sense, knowing that MUDs in general do not have enough voice/impact to change the way society sees things, I do believe that because of the existing social rules in most cases restricting the language to a less explicit one would do the overall player population more good than bad. At the end of the day, we all belong to a society and when we bring ourselves to a text game we bring with ourselves part of that baggage we carry from our social rules and experience.

[Omera]

Originally Posted by Spoke No offense intended but Omera has shown in this thread why I think it is not a good idea, in general, to include explicit sex/sexual references in MUDs whose main topic is not explicit sex/sexual exchanges. He has declared himself to be 13 years old, and he has approached the subject as I would guess most 13 year olds would, making fun of it, using words like 'boob' mockingly etc. It is not that there is something wrong about it, or that it is immoral that a "poor 13 year old" is being exposed to this immorality, it is just that when explicit sex is added to the equation, it tends to become the focus of what happens. I think the argument about causes is valid, but in a more practical sense, knowing that MUDs in general do not have enough voice/impact to change the way society sees things, I do believe that because of the existing social rules in most cases restricting the language to a less explicit one would do the overall player population more good than bad. At the end of the day, we all belong to a society and when we bring ourselves to a text game we bring with ourselves part of that baggage we carry from our social rules and experience.

I wasn't making fun of it. I even offered my opinion (sp?) in a previous post, although the opinion wasn't as long of a post as most of these posts.

[shadowfyr]

Originally Posted by Spoke I think the argument about causes is valid, but in a more practical sense, knowing that MUDs in general do not have enough voice/impact to change the way society sees things, I do believe that because of the existing social rules in most cases restricting the language to a less explicit one would do the overall player population more good than bad. At the end of the day, we all belong to a society and when we bring ourselves to a text game we bring with ourselves part of that baggage we carry from our social rules and experience.

**Practicality** is why until people like Richard Dawkins started to publish some real seriously, "Why the heck do you people believe this BS?", type books, in the US, 90% of the agnostics and atheists hid under desks or pandered to the religious. Appeasement doesn't work. If a social concept is wrong, its wrong, and the consequence of telling people, "Oh, well, yeah... I supposed that since, for now, society can't handle it, I will bow to your wishes.", is how we got in this mess in the first place, not the cure for it. 13 year old stupidity on the subject is just a) a symptom of how scared to death some people are (especially kids) to talk about it, and b) the usual teen angst, where everything from boobs to dirt has to be joked about, for no rational reason or purpose, if it makes them the least bit confused or uncomfortable.

But seriously, look at just the history of curse words and bad language:

1. First case said ***very clearly*** in the Hebrew that only trying to coerce their god into giving them stuff, or punishing others, was "cursing". There was no such thing as "bad language" otherwise.

2. Some fool translated that stuff into Latin and some other languages, which lost the original meaning of the terms. Lots of English words, for example, can have 3-4 different meanings, some of them bent off at a 90 degree angle (and some really odd one, 180 degrees the opposite) of the "intent" of the writer. Context isn't always sufficient to figure out which of those meanings was intended.

3. A lot of, "You can't say this, or that, etc.", followed, but most of it was acts against authority, or especially the church (which in a lot of cases was the same thing).

4. Enter the Protestant Revolution. Some good ideas, lots of really stupid ones. One of the stupidest was that their priest looked around at all the various definitions of "cursing" or "taking gods name in vein" and reached two 100% dead wrong conclusions. 1. It meant you couldn't even use his name at all, except in prayer, and especially not as an invective to express frustration or anger. 2. There was no reason why one couldn't tack on words considered "vulgar" due to their use in context of describing other people, actions or ideas, instead of merely naming body parts/functions, as they did originally.

The situation has imho been going down hill ever since, even going so far that some nuts today would like to expand the "official" list to 3-4 times its size, and then replace all of it with "nice words, so you can express your frustration without saying the bad ones!" But seriously, what the frack is the different between saying the F word, for Frack(ed/ing), Frell(ed/ing), or just making up some random nonsense like, "Fizzlebop you!"? The Protestants missed to point that banning language doesn't really alter, fundamentally, what people feel, their intent, or what they might do after screaming some made up word at you. All it does is make anger, fear, hate, or rage **sound** better.

Frankly, I would love to see the news report, if these sort of people got their way, where someone told the reporter, "He kept saying shazbot over and over in an angry sounding way, then just attacked me!" Insert any one of the "normal" bad words in there and what, suddenly its not the same thing? No, but its certainly a whole lot damn funnier when bad things happen *despite* the fact that no "bad words" where exchanged imho (even if one does otherwise sympathize with the victim).

Yeah, to some extent we do bring the baggage with us. Part of the point of muds though is to **try** to leave some of it at home. The people that can't, and need to whine about things that they don't like, in a context where they are "not" supposed to include all the stupid baggage, shouldn't be playing there.

[tricky]

Originally Posted by shadowfyr Primer snipped... Yeah, to some extent we do bring the baggage with us. Part of the point of muds though is to **try** to leave some of it at home. The people that can't, and need to whine about things that they don't like, in a context where they are "not" supposed to include all the stupid baggage, shouldn't be playing there.

Unfortunately it isn't as simple as that. Well before the advent of muds, well meaning groups of people have always objected to the immorality of free speech, whether it was in print or audio-visual format, and have insisted on trying to protect the young and the innocent, whether or not they wanted or even needed protecting.

No matter how much you point out to someone that doesn't like the theme of the mud, "they can quite simply not play there and find a more fluffy mud", they insist that they have a right to be there. In fact they do have a right to be there, as do other people. In effect, a mud is a virtual society, and in a society people have to get on with each other. In a virtual society everyone is effectively anonymous and as such we can say what we like to whom we like and not have to live with the consequences.

The irony of all this is that it leads to a rise in the freedom of speech.

Tricky

[Ilkidarios]

Originally Posted by Molly That leads to another question that has bothered me for years: Why are all sex Mu*s furry?

I don't want to deride any of our members who partake in that pastime, but that particular branch of sexual deviancy is one of the few remaining things in this world that makes me uncomfortable.

I'm perfectly fine with gay people, inter-racial couples, what have you, but people in costume animal suits practicing some sort of "human bestiality" is disturbing. That's one of the reasons I prefer MUDs with VERY limited races, because it eliminates the occurrences of players who are attracted to ANYTHING OTHER than human beings.

I don't want to drag this post off-topic, so PLEASE nobody start an argument here, just throwing in my two cents.

[Ilkidarios]

Originally Posted by shadowfyr and probably less than 30-40 years in its worst idiocies. Wookstock came as a real shock to a lot of people that wouldn't have had a second thought letting their kid go to a local pond, strip naked, and swim around, in mixed sex company.

Now see I think that the issue of childhood nudity (unless there's an adult getting enjoyment out of it) has never really been that big of an issue, but what I'm really getting at here is adult nudity and sexual perversion

You're held to different standards when you're a child than when you're an adult. At Woodstock, it was a very prominent example to the GI Generation of just how depraved their children could be.

There you had an entire generation of adults and teenagers tripping out on acid and busting out to some crazy music. Some didn't wear clothes and others didn't really see an abject reason to bathe. They opposed the war, but they also opposed society in general. They were virtual opposites of everything their parents had tried to instill in them.

I think this can teach us a lesson in all of this:
No matter WHAT you teach your kids, or how good a person you are, they could turn out to be the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what you wanted them to be. You've got to find a middle ground. My father was a Vietnam veteran, he was opposed to his drafting into what he thought of as a "white man's war" and raised me to distrust and function almost completely seperately from white culture.

However, now that I'm an adult, I realize how ridiculous this was. I have a few white friends, and I've been known to listen to rock music every once in a while. I mean, here I am on a MUD discussion board!

My point is that ultimately you really don't know how much an influence you'll have over your children. You can try to keep these things out of sight and out of mind, but it's their choice whether they do it or not. They're probably gonna hear about it somewhere, and at that point, it's all on them.

[shadowfyr]

While I don't completely agree with you on some points (not the least being that furry is somehow worse than being gay.. Its just the same, and why it would be a surprise that humans have such fantasies, when you can find interspecies stuff happening in other animals too, however rare, is just a matter of social perspective, not realistic views of the subjects). However, I do agree on on point absolutely. Kids **will** find out about things. There are only two solutions:

1. Stop them from making choices. Indoctrinate them into a system of fear, hate, anger and delusion, so deep, that only the truly brilliant among them can ever hope to escape from it. This is what fundigelical types try to do, and what they **want** to see everyone else do. That it never works is, to them, just a sign of how much harder they need to try. Its the same mind set as the people that show up some place, insist they *deserve* to be there, but that since they do, everyone else needs to bow to their nonsensical standards. The only thing you get by bowing to "any" of those standards is some worse nut, with an even crazier standard, who insists that since you catered to the last delusional half wit, you should cater to them too.

2. Come of some reasonable agreement on what is dangerous or abnormal, based on real evidence that its harmful, then set some sort of rules that curtail those things when they happen, along with some means to "correct" the problem people, in an equally socially acceptable way, when they behave that way.

The problem is, we have people from category #1, claiming they are doing what category #2 requires, while really acting only on dogmatic assertions (half of them often contradicted by what they claim they are based on). There are also people that are in category #2, in principle, but who have founded some ideas of what is normal, based on the some sort of emotional appeal in category #1, and thus not only can't prove harm, they can't addequately describe what "problem" they think they are solving, let alone how anything they are trying to do "will" solve anything.

The silliest thing about someone starting in *either* category, then stumbling into the other to justify it, is that they *usually* use the same arguments, the same ideas and the same methods that have been tried 5000 times before, and always failed to fix anything. Most people react to things they don't like by either a) making some emotional leap to an invalid conclusion, or b) looking for an authority to tell them what to do. Its quite literally impossible for the average person to say, "I don't know anything at all about this, so I guess I need to look at what is **really** going on, then figure it out." Its either - "I don't need to know nothin!" or "So and so in smart and claims to have all the answers, so being dumb, I am going to go with so and so."

There are many paths of both right and wrong answers. Problem is, most people are poor map readers, and even more of them, won't, mentally or physically, go farther than the edge of their own town to look for them. Worse, they are distrustful of people that *have* gone farther. In that respect, humanity hasn't changed much since 90% of it lived in one room thatch roof huts and never left the village their entire lives. Its depressing sometimes, being one of the people that actually wanders the dark woods. lol

[scandum]

Originally Posted by Ilkidarios I'm perfectly fine with gay people, inter-racial couples, what have you, but people in costume animal suits practicing some sort of "human bestiality" is disturbing.

There was a time, when I was still a little guppy, when it was alright to display your disgust toward homosexuality, and inter-racial relations were considered a form of bestiality.

However, times are changing and it shan't be long till people realize ones love for little ponies is as real as the love between a husband and wife, and misguided people will measure up their company twice, and probably look over their shoulder, before displaying their prejudice toward inter-special erotica.

Once that day has come moderators will swiftly remove hate speech toward those that go beyond the restrictive boundaries drawn by long dead bigots and embrace diversity wholeheartedly.

[Jazuela]

I'll take the bait and get graphic, heh. See, when daddy punches Junior in the face, it's -obvious- that there's "hurt" going on. Blood, bruises, broken bones - all UNfun and obvious and common consequences of violence. They're obvious, so they can be learned easier. Gee, pouring battery acid on Billy's sister was probably a REALLY BAD THING TO DO because she started screaming until her tongue blistered up and fell out of her mouth. I guess my lesson is, violence hurts, violence bad, violence no. I don't really need someone to explain that - I can see it myself - every time someone gets shot in the head, the fall down dead. Every time someone breaks someone else's arm, there is crying and excruciating pain. It's an immediate consequence of an action.

Now with sex - hm. Not quite so obvious. When daddy says "here son, play with Mr. Snake, it's fun." you do want to have fun, right? And you do love your daddy, don't you? And no one is crying, and no bones are sticking out of skin, and there's no blood, and no pain. It isn't obvious that playing with daddy's snake is probably not a good idea, even if daddy promises ice cream when you're done. It isn't obvious that sex can create disease or babies. This has to be taught, because those consequences aren't *obviously* immediate.

So in society, we leave it up to the parents to determine when their kid is ready to hear certain lessons. We can only hope the parents know their kids, understand and appreciate childhood curiosity, and have a healthy attitude themselves toward the subject matter.

A child doesn't need to be taught that violence = pain. He only need observe it once, and he knows. Sex = potential for serious consequences is not readily observable, therefore society has placed a different set of values on the approach to teaching about it.

[Threshold]

Originally Posted by Jazuela A child doesn't need to be taught that violence = pain. He only need observe it once, and he knows. Sex = potential for serious consequences is not readily observable, therefore society has placed a different set of values on the approach to teaching about it.

That's a really interesting way of looking at his issue. I had never thought about this, but it does make sense.

It still shocks me sometimes how people seem more offended by nudity than violence, but in the context of what is appropriate for children I think you make an excellent point.

Perhaps that is why even children's shows (like many Disney movies) have death or violence and yet children seem to handle it just fine.

[shadowfyr]

Originally Posted by Jazuela A child doesn't need to be taught that violence = pain. He only need observe it once, and he knows. Sex = potential for serious consequences is not readily observable, therefore society has placed a different set of values on the approach to teaching about it.

This would be a *very* healthy attitude, save that we try to put sex ed in schools, but ironically have to cater to the values of the ignorant who have "theological" objections, because it just doesn't work that way. Case in point, just within my mothers generation is was simply **not** talked about. In fact, it was so not talked about that my mother thought she was bleeding to death when she had her first period, she pretty much had no clue about anything, and she even freaked the first time my dad tried to French kiss her. She also got married before she got out of high school, and never went on to college.

See, the problem is, the same clowns whose dangerous and absurd views on the subject we cater to, by letting them keep their kids out of the class, are also trying to gut the classes, and replace them with ones that leave **all** kids as ignorant as my mother was. Sadly, so long as parents are so indoctrinated into ignorance and focused on how they must be right, because it just seems icky and anti-Jesus to do it otherwise, then the rest of us have to a) force *real* education to happen, and b) hope that most of the parents of just as ignorant, but less stupidly ignorant, and won't notice that we are actually teaching their kids anything. If they do notice.. Sadly, they are bound to side of the loonies, on the grounds that its OK to teach A, B and C, but never D, because D is just *wrong* somehow to talk about. Sadly, that can be used to describe damn near "anything" you teach. Reading? Well, book A, B and C are OK, but, "How dare you let my kid read 'Catcher in the Rye'!?!" Name a subject, and I am sure there is "something" in it that one or both parents, of some kids, would irrationally object to, on no better grounds that what they either imagine it promotes, to if they think its "appropriate" for a girl/boy to be doing "that sort of thing". Gives me a headache sometimes just thinking about some of the blatant stupidity I have seen better parents and some school, over some of the most ludicrously silly nonsense or delusional projection of motives/imaginary consequences.

Oh, and BTW, just to clear something up. 99% of furries are just as anti-bestiality as normal people. Its play acting, or personal association with the traits of some animal species, or one of a variety of other things, none of which really have anything to do with wanting to mount a horse the wrong way. Most of them, even if they where willing to consider going beyond what they think, would reject it on the grounds that animals are not, as a rule, sufficiently sapient to be equal partners in such a relationship. That is in fact almost a direct quote of the conclusions reached by the majority on a furry news server I posted on for a while. I left mainly because almost no one posted any good art to the server and the only other thing anyone ever did was 1-2 people who constantly trolled for political discussions, in which they showed a **completely** and total lack of ability to learn anything, but just repeated the same silly assertions every time they brought some subject up. I got tired of the intellectual leftist equivalent on there or going to a right wing website. Same inability to learn, same refusal to acknowledge any point made by the other side, same sort of, "This is true.. is true.. true.. ue... e...", posting. Only difference was, on usenet, they can't just delete posts by people that don't pander to their viewpoint. lol Still, it was only one constant fool, and one guy I 90% agreed with, but liked to go all, as he called it, "Radical Deconstructionist" on me, when ever certain subjects cropped up. It just wasn't worth sticking around for the rare times someone posted good art.

In any case, of all the posters, probably 20 regulars, only two suggested that, in principle, there wasn't anything "wrong" with sleeping with animals, other than some drastically overblown odds of disease, etc. (which are probably lower than contracting one of several types of herpes doing it with a human. After all, cold sores "are" a form of herpes, and that effects like what 25% of the populous or something?), but that they wouldn't personally do it themselves either. That is kind of a far cry from the idea that furries are all closet animalphiles.

[Muirdach]

Originally Posted by Threshold Perhaps that is why even children's shows (like many Disney movies) have death or violence and yet children seem to handle it just fine.

Well, and for decades, the "traditional" kid's hero has been Batman, Superman etc. Even the old cartoons are full of fighting, albeit less graphic than today. Sure, a few kids may not understand that it isn't acceptable to mimic, but then a few kids also try to wear capes and jump off the roof.

[shadowfyr]

Precisely. The problem **is** the few that don't get the difference. In most cases, that can often be traced back to parents that don't let the kids imagine in the first place, trying to make them mini grown up, or who don't explain things, just tell them its bad, or well, I think you get the point. If you don't provide a framework to understand something, kids won't just miraculously learn to understand it. If you teach them to think about it in a way that inadvertantly, or intentionally, promotes the idea that hurting people is OK, then they are not going to just wake up one morning and suddenly think that its bad to hurt people. Not without a long internal struggle and lots of other input that suggests that their learned preconceptions are wrong. Isolation produces isolationists, who lack the knowledge and broad exposure to idea that **allow** them to form rational opinions about other people and things, let alone form well developed moral codes. This is imho, why you are more likely to find someone who spent the first 20 years of their life inside a cultish environment telling you, "If the FSM didn't exist, the first thing I would do is kill you for annoying me, then I would find some things to steal and some women to rape.", while you wouldn't *ever* find anyone else making such a statement. To anyone any with breadth of ideas, exposure to differences of opinion and who has has the chance to form a moral code, without referring "only" to some groups dogma, such a statement isn't just bizzare, its scary, irrational and one strongly wonders why the person stating it isn't in a padded room.

The problem is, we have two sort of "over protectors". One group would like to shield kids from all bad stuff, because they don't want the risk of any of them getting hurt. This is completely unrealistic, even if it is an understandable impulse. The others... Think they have an "edge" over everyone else on what the real risks are, can't or won't see that they are wrong, and are only "partially" interested in limiting risk. They are more dangerous because they are not wrong for the right reasons, they are wrong for self interested reasons, believing that somehow, by putting as many road blocks in the path of kids, to limit risks, both real and imaginary, they will ***personally*** gain something from doing it. That they are usually the first ones to tell you that its not their own selfish need to gain something is beside the point (if not a blatent lie). And it really doesn't matter what the source of this nonsense is, be it unsupported enviro-lunacy, religious craziness, economic wackoism, UFO abduction risks, or what ever else you can name. Its all based on some fringe group coming up with some real, but overblown, or completely made up, risk, then working to convince everyone else to "make changes" to "fix" it.

But yeah, Disney movies are a good example. Tell me why again alligators trying to eat some kids is more socially acceptable than the coincidental inclusion of a famous nude painting in The Rescuers? Wish I still had the originals of those, or Disney would release a, "For non-prudes.", version with original art, including things like original cover art. You know, like the Lion King version that some idiot found the word "sex" in, or the supposed phalic image on the cover of the Little Mermaid.

[Jazuela]

Sorry Shadowfyr, I didn't understand your reply to my post and so can't respond to it. I was able to get about how generations ago womens' menstrual cycles weren't discussed, and something about Jesus, in the same paragraph.

It has nothing to do with Jesus though; I mean sheesh, Jesus's primary play-mate was a whore. I'm sure he wouldn't have let a little blood get in the way

Except - in Judaism (not Christianity), menstruation is considered - well basically what it actually is. Which is - getting rid of the dirt. A man, being a holy creature, would need to avoid dirt. So in Judaism, a woman and man are not allowed to get cozy while she's menstruating. Of course the fundamentalist christians in their usual "wisdom" took it out of proportion and turned it into some freaky thing, and gave birth to the fetishists. But it has nothing to do with whether or not kids today are being exploited with violence while the natural act of sex is taboo.

On the other hand, the Old Testament was about as graphic a violent fable as anything written since, and in the epic tale, God was downright extreme in his violent cruelty. He wouldn't let two men kiss, but he had no problem stoning those two men to death. He wouldn't let a man -want- his neighbor's wife, but he was fine with flogging the poor guy for the wanting until he had no skin left on his back. If you think about it, this -could- be where all the S&M stuff comes from. The natural need and desire for sex, combined with the righteous punishment of god, and you've got - the holiest of all possible sexual fetishes.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything, but since I couldn't understand much of what you were talking about in your posts, I figured I'd ramble a bit.

[shadowfyr]

Its about **modern** reinterpretation of religion, not what is in the Bible, or any other holy book. Your average fundie cherry picks it the same way they cherry pick other people's statements, to support their nutty interpretations of how reality should work. That hating gays is called OK by the *same* passages that list about a dozen other things which they would consider morally reprehensible and illegal doesn't matter, because they only care about the one line about gays. The fact that its full of violence doesn't matter either. I have had them say, straight to my face, that while the murder of jews by Hitler and things like Durfar are wrong, the same things in the Bible are right, because *god* commanded it. That Hitler thought Aryans where gods chosen and blamed jews for undermining them, or that Durfar is a case of racial cleansing, driven by the same, "God wants us to have everything.", mentality doesn't matter. They first will insist that Hitler wasn't a Catholic (or a *true* Catholic, or some variation of that theme), and then insist that Durfar and other similar stuff doesn't count, because well.. its the wrong god...

The can't even get their facts straight about nudity. One group will insist on quoting passages that show a prophet going nude to his people to preach to them (it not being wrong if done in humility) and point out how the there is no case, even back as far as Besthebda (or how ever it was spelled) where the victim, no matter how nude, was ever the one punished for someone else's sexual deviancy. The fundie will just ignore these passages, make up some radical interpretation of some other passage, insist that a thousand years of Catholic prudery (its really quite recent prudery) can't be wrong, well, except for the fact that Catholics are not, according to them, true Christians, then dare you to contradict them.

Fact is, you can't talk about nudity and sex, and our reaction to it, without bringing up the fact that 90% of the people that object to both are people that have a personal Bible they read all the time, but who, as a rule, never read it cover to cover, never read other historical works about the events in it, never read more than one version, and probably have an annotated version, with convenient explanations for why the interpretation rational people have of it is all wrong, and only the wacko one counts. They are precisely the people that will read about god hating gays (but apparently not lesbians, if you interpret the passage literally lol), while insisting that the fact that the same section of the Bible is filled with stuff that would get you arrested in even the most fundie areas, (well, maybe not among the severe nuts...), is all irrelevant today. Not too many of them would let their daughter be sold off to pay their own debts, or stone their son to death for failing to behave them. But hating gay people, that's just fine. They are the ones that will gloss over historical facts about baptism, where you where "required" to be unclothed before god, the passages where his prophets humbly preached to his people in the nude, etc., and insist that nudity was always bad, will always be bad, and they are sure it says so "someplace" in the Bible.

And they are not even the only ones doing that stuff. Ever hear the phrase, "God helps those who help themselves."? Well, its not anything Jesus ever said, and the entire OT is a laundry list of people being helped "only" if they did what god com