Sex & Violence
 

Ok, this could fit in MUD Administration but as it's also a very general topic I decided this would be a better place for it.

Why is it, exactly, that we deem it perfectly acceptable for a child to play a game that involves maiming, killing, dismembering, or possibly all of the above, yet a huge amount of fuss is kicked up if there's the slightest hint of nudity? This mainly seems prevalent in the US but applies elsewhere too. How come we're happy for our children to see the inside of someones body, but not the outside? Why are we so averse to letting people see a natural body? In a graphical game you don't put clothes on a wolf, so why do people get all incensed when you don't put clothes on a humanoid?

I've seen it in MUDs too. Games that allow you to run around wantonly slaughtering things are considered child-friendly, but if a description mentions breasts, nipples, vaginas, or penises it suddenly becomes adult-oriented. Are we really that hypocritical? Is it some weird consequence of the strange prohibition many religions seem to place on sex that has filtered down over the centuries?

Could it even be that putting such things in games would HELP the world in general? The vast majority of children who play violent video games do not go out and commit violence, except for those rare cases that are blown up by the media. I'd be willing to postulate that the vast majority of children DO end up experimenting with sex at an earlier age than we'd like precisely because they haven't come across it so much.

For the record I'm not a nudist, just curious! I'm also talking about descriptions of the human body being naked in general, not necessarily MUDsex/cybering (is it possible to separate the two?).

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I believe it's because that way is safe. There's violence everywhere, even directly targeted at children - most superhero comics and TV shows are often excessively violent or in some way glorify violence as having good outcomes, such as fighting crime. Like you said, society is desensitized towards violence. People, for the most part, are very clear about the distinction between game and reality, as far as violence goes (there are exceptions of course). I would say that it's a given that a teenager would play a violent game with friends and know that it's unacceptable to act out something similar in real life - society has drawn the line very clearly. Would "but I can do it on CounterStrike!" be a useful defense in a murder trial? Could the makers of that game get dragged to court over it? Of course not, and society as a whole would laugh at that kind of thing. People are expected to know the difference.

Sex, on the other hand, is much less clear. Like you said, society doesn't want to talk about it. In many cases, society just doesn't want to know - "don't ask, don't tell". It is only a recent phenomenon that people have been able to be more open about it, generally. Maybe it is something that will take time. In the meantime, is it possible that a game that allows or encourages nudity or sexual contact get into trouble if one or more of its players took it "beyond the game"? I'd say that's more likely.

So, could games help society by changing? It's possible. But they don't want to. They don't want to take the risk and anger a still somewhat-conservative society, or even land themselves in court. It's safe to glorify violence because the average joe knows that you're not trying to challenge society's views. Even a very detailed and controversial game like Grand Theft Auto - the vast majority of people don't believe that the game designers are trying to encourage crime. When the topic shifts to something a lot more blurry, I don't think many developers would want to put their reputation on the line and risk being accused of supporting something that they really don't.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I've often made the same reflexion myself. Nobody even bats an eyebrow over the most explicit violence, but any implication about sex and nudity in the zones requires a disclaimer in the log-in sequence.

It always amazes me how totally bigoted some people can be about it too. I once made a joke in a zone about a virgin and a unicorn in the first Mud I built in, and very nearly got banned as a result. The same imm that got her knickers in a knot over my rather innocent quip used to cyber male players in her private quarters and quite frequently advanced them to imm level in return for their... umm... services.

Which is one reason of course why mudsex is not always a good idea.

Personally I've always found cybersex really cheesy, but my Mud permits it, as long as they are reasonably discreet about it and keep it to confined quarters. It would be hard to stop it really, unless it's in one of those Muds that constantly snoops their players. To me player privacy is important, so we don't meddle in private affairs.

However, there are times when I believe that mudsex is at the root of most player conflicts in a Mud. There is always that type of player - (usually female, I regret to say) - who cannot separate RL from the game, and will start getting hysteric or downright nasty when their partner breaks up the relationship or shows some interest in others.

Also mudsex in any form is something that imms should avoid, since it will always cast a doubt on their impartiality. Their intentions may be honest and their judgement flawless, but fact remains: If there is a conflict between a male and a female player, and it is commonly known that the imm who has to judge in the conflict cybers the female - (or of course the opposite) - would anyone really trust him/her to be totally unbiased?

Anyhow - here's a link to my favorite cybersex file: It had me in convulsions on the floor the first time I saw it. I doubt that cybersex will be the same to anyone who's read it.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Actually, something that really jumped out at me when I first moved to Germany (from the UK) was the differences in censorship; excessive violence gets chopped out of movies and computer games, while sex and nudity are mostly ignored.

I bought an imported version of GTA3 at great expensive, because the version here had no blood, no rewards for killing pedestrians and several death animations had been removed. Perhaps a more interesting example is Carmageddon - in the UK the pedestrians were replaced with zombies, while the German version replaced them with robots.

On the other hand, nobody over here bats an eyelid about nudity. One of my favourite Cinema adverts here was for a gym - they showed a naked woman walking into her living room and cracking a walnut between her buttocks (the idea being that she was in very good physical shape). It was funny rather than crude, but still a bit of a shock when I first saw it (there's no way they'd get away with something like that back in the UK).


To stay a bit more on-topic, has anyone else had trouble trying to decide what rating to give their mud? I went for "Game Rating Adults only - strong language, sexuality or violence" based on the graphic nature of my combat system, but it was more of a guess than anything.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

While my MUD isn't adult orientated I list it as such because I hate little kids.

It's a poor imitation of the originals:

Re: Sex & Violence
 

While we're on funny fake logs, this is pretty old now but still one of the funniest things I've ever read. Called "If World War II was an MMORPG":

Re: Sex & Violence
 

stfu u n00bs b4 i mod u :p

Xerihae will return with his regularly scheduled reply shortly...

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I believe that the aversion to sex and not violence is a very, very old standby. It's definitely not a new idea, think about the Middle Ages, if you were a soldier it was fine with the church but being sexually promiscuous would cause you to burn in a thousand hells. I think that these values are simply imprinted into the Western mindset.

Now certain places in Europe (Germany as mentioned earlier) certainly do seem to have recently (I.E. mid to late last century) changed their views, I'm not sure what the cause would be, but they definitely have an almost reversed view of these concepts than we have in America.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Heh, those were some funny links, Scandum and Lasher. Thanks a heap, I'll add them to my collection.

What's also funny is that I tried to read up on this thread while visiting my uncle a couple of hours ago, and was stopped by a filter, claiming the link to be unfit for minors due to the content of sex and violence. That never happened to me before while browsing a Mud related discussion board. Guess it must have been the title of the thread. :D

Re: Sex & Violence
 

There are places in the US like that too. They are called Nudist Colonies, or Naturist camps. The fundgelicals get their panties in a wad over them so much that, in Texas at least, and probably other places, they have actually passed laws "prohibiting" camps for children that involve Naturism preemptively, just in case someone **might** one day consider opening one there. Though why any one would, given that the reaction of people in those places is one step away from calling for a lynching due to a persons ankles showing.

See, in their minds, **violence** is a consequence of loose rules and immorality. Sex however, and even nudity, ***lead to*** loose rules and immorality. It therefor follows that the later is more dangerous than the former, which is just a symptom. This isn't surprising thinking really, statistically 90% of murders are either a relative killing there kids, wives killing husbands, husbands killing wives, lovers killing their loved one, etc., and when you also have the statistically the highest rates of teen pregnancies, rapes, incest, and so on, in the nation, it kind of unhinges the mind. It can't ***possibly*** be the rampant bigotry and ignorance in the areas where hatred of nudity/sex, advocacy of guns and warmongering, and "abstinence/say no to <fill in blank>" programs are most prevailent, so it must be the fact that the rest of the world isn't as bigoted and ignorant. Facts also don't matter. We are dealing with cranks here, and by definition, a crank sticks with a theory, even if 50 other cranks are insisting that the real cause is everything from not enough sex to children wearing Spiderman underwear. What matters is that all the cooks agree the problems are the fault of the other 90% of the country, who don't pass preemptive laws to prevent non-existent people from mooning dukes on the shore of some lake some place.

There is no rational basis for it, and there is even one Christian group that advocates for Naturism that flat out argues, based on Biblical passages, that not only is going nude in humility OK, that nudity was **required** for baptisms until a few centuries ago, and that God **never** punishes anyone for such an offense any place in the book, including the one women in a passage who gets raped while bathing by the river. She became a major political figure, her sons the rulers of the nation, and the idiot that raped her get his head stuffed on the end of a pike in a war, soon after the act (or something like that). Trait number 2 of cranks - No matter how much history, psychology, logic, statistics or basic undeniable facts you drop in front of them, they will do what Dembski did at the Dover trial. They will look at your mountains of data, facts and evidence, turn and stare dumbly at you and say, "All that stuff is meaningless nonsense. I don't see any evidence here."

Anti-nudity and the absurd idea that what "does" work for violence (making sure the kid knows the difference, which a lot don't bother to teach them in the first place) is entirely a relatively new phenomena, less than 200-300 years old in its less extreme absurdities, 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. It sent whole segments of the US right of the deep end from general prudery into abject insanity imho. Kind of like the nut I ran into recently who just **knew** that the real danger wasn't a bunch of religious nuts in the ME that already once overran most of Europe all the way to like France or so, before being pushed back, but rather those "damn commies" in China. Times change, but some people not only can't adapt to the pace, they calcify in their thinking, like mud turning to sandstone and go completely irrational.

Worse, what they completely fail to see is that, where ever bigotry, obsession and grandiose causes abide, more than half the people defending the cause are little more than leeches, sucking on the suckers, who get drawn in by the idea that all the worlds problems can just be solved if they throw another $2,000,000 at, "getting the message out to the heathens", and passing laws designed not to "inform", but deny information. The theory being, much like security and virus protecting on all those companies that keep "losing track of" huge databases of user information or having their networks compromised, the *best* defense again bad behavior is to not tell people all the things they could do that would be bad... A theory that plays right into the vultures nibbling the edges of the carcass of their ethics and morality. The last thing a con artist wants is for people to start thinking, "You know, this really isn't working... Maybe we should try giving people real information instead?" Informed people don't send entire paychecks to some huckster that promises them that God will rid the world of gays, cure cancer and stop all abortions, if they just send enough cash to help them sell a $5 book about, "abstaining from sex", (final price $50), to every school in the country. Ignorant people will send their life savings in to such crackpots.

And, while they have always been among us, its only now that they have 3-4 national TV stations dedicated to their BS, billions of dollars in funding, and direct access to nearly every fool on the planet to dupe into handing them more. Whose biases do you think they are going to latch onto, the guy that thinks safe sex ed is the best way to solve teen pregnancies, or the half wit, who has had 11 kids, starting when the first born when she was 14, and probably by her own brother, and who just *knows* it was the pictures of women's bras in the Sears catalog that caused him to rape her at 13?

Ironically, its the very separations we have, which most of Europe never implemented as strictly as the US, which led to them a) being able to do something about this kind of BS and b) figuring out, a lot faster than we have, that people mucking around in politics or law, based on ideology and dogma, should be **embarrassing**, not mandatory (as it virtually is now) for a stable country. Note, I said, ideology and dogma. Religion can, by itself be harmless, sometimes helpful, if it pushes people to do good, an occasional annoyance, where it interferes in things it doesn't apply to very well, but when you add in radical ideology and the dogmatic assertions that everything the ideology says "must" be true, even when, as in most cases, their personal source book doesn't even agree with them, it becomes **dangerous**. This is as true when some nut like Stalin warped the concepts of communism, which its author merely said was the "logical long term consequence of capitalism, not a direct replacement for it" (How much 'pure' capitalism do we really have now? Consider why the next time you pay a bill for a small sum to one of several companies, instead of one megacorporation, which owns the entire industry...), into an ideological dogma about how *his* world was going to work. Mind you, communism was naive, but bore no more resemblance to what some turned it into than fundigelical groups bear to early Christians (or just early Americans). Fact is, its is just as true when some dipstick with a Bible in one hand and a list of, "naughty things I don't think people aught to know about", in the other, insists that he needs to win more points before the end of everything, by "uncorrupting" the world using some crackpot mix of ideology and dogma that leave Biblical scholars, most Christians, biologists, geologists, heck 90% of the scientists in general, and everyone from any other religion, lacking religion, or just from a less nutty country, scratching their heads and trying to figure out what drugs they had to be taking while making it all up. lol

But yeah, in short, I sort of understand how they come up with the screwy idea that sex/nudity is worse than simulated murder, but it makes about as much sense to me as the concept that there are people dumb enough in the world to **need** labels, like, "Not for internal use.", on a bottle of shampoo. The idiocy of it is just mind boggling.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Wow, did you just write that? If you did, it is wasted here. It needs to be an article somewhere it will be widely read.

Then again, no point, the people that will really appreciate it don't need to read it. Catch-22.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Yeah, unfortunately, in the deepest dens of the liars and charletons where such information and ideas could do good, the moderators wouldn't make it past the first suggestion that nudity wasn't a negative, before deleting the entire post, then permanently banning the poster. Its strange how the "godly", who insist their faith is so strong, unshakable, inerrant and uncorruptable shrink like vampires in day light the moment "facts" as presented, and must paint over all the windows with the darkest black, to prevent the slightest hint of light from getting through. Its **almost** like they aren't actually sure their god is really out there, and they "faith" is as fragile and easilly disrupted as sugar glass in a summer heat (Sugar glass being the fake stuff they use in movies, to make breakable bottles, etc. Made of actual sugar.) lol

I can imagine a cartoon, a bunch of thugs beat on a rock wall, while someone on a glass throne tells the guy standing next to him, "We should be through any day now." Someone calmly walks up the road, stops, calls him a fool, then throws a rock at the throne. The guy on the throne screams, all the thugs run over to protect the throne with their bodies, then, when the assailent runs out of rocks, the thugs go back to hammering on the wall, while the king of cranks tells his companion, "Yep, any day now we will get through. And how dare that 'coward', who wouldn't even show his face, try to scratch my unbreakable steel throne!" ;)

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Amazing post, Shadowfyr. I couldn't agree more.

The really disturbing thing is of course that the people who really should will either not read it or not understand it. And - as you pointed out - also do anything in their power to prevent others from reading and understanding it.

Ignorance, stupidity and fanaticism are at the root of all evil.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

That's very insightful.

If you look at the statistics it's not as clear cut as that. There's a strong indication that intelligence controls impulse control, and intelligence being roughly 80% genetic for adults (less for children) it's ridiculous to blame environmental factors alone.

Though not as ridiculous if you consider that liberals tend to believe two things about IQ:

* First, that IQ is a meaningless, utterly discredited concept.

* Second, that liberals are better than conservatives because they have
much higher IQs.

Fortunately for you I can't address this issue as my post would be deleted. It will suffice to say that there are other aspects that better explain the correlation than that gun possession, a dislike of nudity, addressing people like adults (don't do drugs, don't have promiscuous sex), somehow lead to murder, rape, and war.

Not that I disagree that jesus freaks aren't cranks, but the US has been taking the liberal course for the past 50 years and things have only gotten worse, and banning guns, clothing, and bigotry, though surprisingly successful efforts have been made in that direction, aren't going to help.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Umm. Sorry, but for about 30-40 years things got more liberal in the US, then the far right got panicked and in the last 10-20 they have made a concerted effort to undermine our trust in science, paint everyone on the left as immoral and blame all the problems in the world on not having enough churches. Its bull****. Europe took the opposiote approach from the US, going ultra conservative for the first few hundred years (even mandating specific religions as the official state religion), and they ****have**** gone so liberal since then that they make the most liberal areas in the US look like strict authoritarian traditionalists. Only, to recognize that fact, you have to realize how screwed up our views of what "liberal" means are, when compared to nations that actually have true liberal parties.

Point of fact, there is, in the last 15-20 years, almost *no* difference between the right and the left politically, other than a few differences on where to waste money, and the fact that both sides paint the other side as filled with nothing but the most insane self-claimed members of the other side. Sure, there are cranks and freaks on both sides. But, as a rule, the *politicians*, who make policy for the right and left are both on right of center on virtually *everything*, when compared to Europe.

There was an article a while back that presented this fairly clearly. It showed nations in terms of two axis map of where views fell on individualism vs. traditionalism on one axis, and government control vs. freedom on the other. 90% of Europe was a blob in the "individualist + freedom" zone, with some cross over into "individualism + control". Other nations tended to fall all over the place, but Middle Eastern nations tended to all cluster in the "traditionalism + control" area. The US was a fracking blob in the middle, with one huge tendrel stuck into the middle of the ME cluster like a huge scar, just barely coming short of the most extreme versions of that view. The rest **failed** to be as pro-freedom, pro-individual, or pro-control as "anyone" else. We overlapped European countries only 50% into the "invidualism" category, and half of the blob that represented the US was on the wrong side of the line from Europe, with respect to government control.

The simple truth is, the left has done three things that are unbelievably stupid:

1. They have assumed that no one listens to liberal nuts. After all, they are nuts, and anyone with half a clue should be able to tell that they are nuts. Problem - Most people don't have half a clue how to program their VCR, let alone figure out that people like Deepockets Chopra are full of it.

2. They have assumed that most people understand issues well enough to trust someone telling them the truth, over someone lying to them. Problem - This only works if people are telling them the truth in the first place. Case in point, polls have shown that 80% of the US can't answer "basic" science questions and get the answers right, and that is **using multiple choice questions**.

3. Providing information in a way that isn't confrontational and which requires others to "look for it" is sufficient, since only the people that are well enough informed to look for the information are likely to be in a position to make critical decisions. Problem - This is just wrong. One of the basic principles of management is, "Unless you are careful, most people will tend to be promoted upward, until they reach a point at which they are completely incompetent at their jobs." This is called the Peter Principle. 90% of the people making decisions don't even know the information is available, and a lot of them have been told by an endless stream of flunkies and special interests that they "can't trust" the sources in the first place.

The bigger issue though, for all three mistakes, is that the cranks, especially religiously driven cranks, have no ethical qualms or moral issues with 1 - Insisting that the nuts on the left "are" the left. 2 - Doing everything they can to make sure that polls provide either a) no correct answer in the first place, or b) always include the one people are most familiar with, and thus likely to choose, even if wrong. 3 - The don't sit around going, "I have more important things to do than spend hours trying to convince people to believe me." The cranks have all the time in the world. They don't do reseach, they don't build anything, they don't create anything, they don't **do** anything, other than spend 90% of their time telling other people what, how and when to think things.


Until the last 5 years or so, the only thing anyone has *ever* heard from our side has been from politicians, who don't care any more about liberalism than the conservatives do, they just want to kiss the ass of the people that they think are going to elect them, and the nuts. The rest of us have kept quiet, ignored the loons, gone on with trying to change things slowly, all the while "sure" that the public would *eventually* wake up and figure out whose side they should be on. The result is a nations full of people that don't know something as basic as if a proton is bigger than an atom, think liberalism means a whole list of insane BS that it doesn't, actually think that the Democrats *qualify* as liberal, fail to understand that, on some levels, key aspects of the democratic and republican positions have *actually* flipped 180 degrees, making the Democrats weak, and the Republicans dangerously unstable, etc. We are a clueless, ignorant, self important, delusional, over weight nation, who once believed that, "what my neighbor believes doesn't hurt me.", but now thinks two entirely insane things:

1. We have a right to stop other people from annoying us, through censorship, declaring some ideas unamerican, or insisting that you can't be one, if you don't believe the right things.
2. The US is always right, about everything, and the entire rest of the world, when ever it manages to avoid the pitfalls, idiocies and social problems we have (while often doing 180 degrees the opposite of us, which BTW, usually means being ***more*** liberal than we are. How many cell networks in the US are dedicated to people actively finding people the sleep with, like the do in Japan, where STDs are like 20 times lower, as one example?) are all either a) lying about it, or b) are just some odd fluke, which doesn't count, because, well.... They're not Americans!

We are ripping apart because one side knows we can't *fix* problems by arbitrarilly mandating moral standards on people, which don't make sense, *especially* when there are numerous examples of it failing, and even more examples of other countries that have gone the opposite direction, with 10 times greater success, but *that* side is full of lots of people that have wacko ideas about how to really solve the problem which are, if anything, even less rational than the authoritarian stance of their opposite. On the other side, we have people that **actually** think that doing the same thing over and over again, for like... 1,000 years at least, possibly longer, and refusing to learn from their predicessors mistakes, is a sign of profound trust in moral literalism, (never mind how often you can use their own arguments to rip appart their logic), and not, as more commonly expressed, "a sign of insanity".

Its this conflict that is dragging the two sides that *need* to be working towards a common goal, of the betterment of the nation, instead into vocal opposition. The **problems** you talk about are a symptom not of liberalism, but one of the guards to the warehouse standing around a corner arguing about the meaning of "guard", while every fool, nut case, intentional thief or mobster walks in and out the front door, mostly unhindered. Bad neighborhoods get worse, because neither side wants to admit that its "partly" their fault. Neither side wants to call out the complete loons on their side, because they are all scared (probably rightly) that exposing the real dangerous nuts might open "them" to examination too. And, as a rule, the people trying to hold the whole thing together, instead of just taking advantage of all the cracks, or widdening them, are too busy to do anything else.

The ones that do? At least on the left, they get labelled "militant", "too aggressive", "as bad as the people they are challenging", and a whole list of other things, even in the worst cases, actually having prominent politicians say, "Such people shouldn't be Americans". Guess all those people that signed something called the Declaration of Independence, who tended to be **very** vocal, strident, militant and agressive about their views shouldn't have qualified either... No, according to a lot of people, the only way to "change" things is to kiss the ass of the enemy, like the "nobles" in Braveheart did, instead of, you know, being an overly loud, actively agressive, and uncompromising fool, like that William Wallace person. And you know what happened to him!

You want to impress me. Don't tell me that my side is the only one steering us into the fracking walls, and therefor its all our fault. It isn't. At best, both sides often overcorrect, slamming society, unintentionally into the opposite wall. Only problem is, both sides also have way to many backseat drivers, who think, "Ooooh! I liked the sound we made when we hit the wall, lets do it again!", which is why we are constantly overcorrecting in the first place.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I know it had very little to do with the original topic (especially since it mainly deals with the US) but...

Dayum...

Now for the original topic!

I've seen what KaVir mentioned regarding the reversal of censorship in Germany, as most of us who follow the game industry probably have. Continental Europe has always been a bit more relaxed about things like sex and nudity compared to the traditional British "stiff upper lip", but we're gradually getting more relaxed about it too. I see adverts for shampoo that feature naked women who are just turned to a slight angle and cover their nipples that are considered perfectly acceptable these days, whereas 20 years ago they would have been decried as indecent. I guess it's just societal conditioning (regardless of source) as we've been watching violence as entertainment since the gladiatorial days of Rome and no doubt before, but why did sex and nudity become so "immoral" in comparison? Yes, promiscuous sex can lead to problems with unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, but you could also argue that trying to hide the facts just means everyone is ignorant of the dangers. Plus, are we not by very nature somewhat promiscuous? We have evolved from other creatures over the millenia, some of which formed partnerships like we tend to do now, some of which didn't. The genetic imperative for males to "spread their seed" is still in existence even if society right now frowns on it, just as the genetic imperative for women to get pregnant (we call it being broody these days) is still in force.

People will then argue that we should fight our baser desires and nature, like we restrain our urge for killing (although not very well it seems), but to that I counter WHY is sex and nudity so base and immoral? Who are you to decide that? Where's the evidence that having lots of sex and enjoying looking at naked bodies makes people extra bad/evil?

And shadowfyr, I'd love to see you go up against the likes of Ann Coulter! The only thing I'd say is be careful of your audience, because I believe the "right/left" terms you use are reversed in Europe so the article might not make so much sense to someone not familiar with US politics.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

wow... those are some long ass posts...
back on topic!
Being what some retards would describe as a "corrupted 13 year old" (when in reality my parents don't hide every bit of nudity or violence from my eyes which leads me to be more open minded and unbrainwashed (was that a word?) ), I agree with everybody on this forum unless there was a post that said something like "Bu-bu-bu-bu-but nudity is bad mmkay?".
I support boobs.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I think we need our children to be exposed to less violence, not more nudity.

-Also, I don't think the issue is really nudity, but a sudden seeming prevalence of child predetors. By saying don't show our kids nakedness, I think what we're really saying is it's not ok to think of our children as sexual beings. We are trying to safeguard their innocence. -Maybe not in a way that makes rational sense, but I don't know that we're always rational beings.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

People... Don't protect your kids from ANYTHING except from people like Michael Jackson... or Jason Vorhees.
But yes it is more retarded to shield your kid's eyes from nudity, yet let them see all of the violence they can handle.
Once again...
Support our boobs!

Re: Sex & Violence
 

On a more serious note, it's interesting that the idea of "losing innocence" is somewhat linked to learning about (vs being active in) sexual issues.

My daugther is 3 years old. Every stranger is a friend and as she never does anything without us, someone we trust or her school we're fine with that. Every animal is a friend too. She believes everything you tell her.

Losing her "innocence", the way I see her innocence, will take place when we have to start teaching her that every stranger isn't a friend, every stranger is a potential pedophile/child abductor. It will happen the first time someone steals something from her, the first time a dog bites her, the first time someone tries to pick on her at school, the first time she learns about lying beyond "No I didnt eat that cookie", the first time someone she loves dies, when she realizes we lied to her about Santa Clause (what else did they lie to me about?) and a multitude of other things. It will not happen because she sees someone naked in a movie.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

off topic sort of...
When I was 3, I was watching that naked red head chick dance on a grave in return of the living dead.
back on topic again...
I agree!

Support Nakedness in Movies!
The first time I did that i thought it was funny...
Now it's just a little less funny :D

Re: Sex & Violence
 

When I was younger (6-7ish) I found some porn mags my parents had and read them. Well, looked at the pictures mostly. I could read the articles but didn't understand the concepts at the time. Once my parents found out, they let me carry on. I even embarassed my mom once by running down the garden whilst she was talking to a neighbour over the fence clutching one and yelling "I've finished this one, can I have another?". My parents explained to me what sex was as soon as they figured I was old enough to ask about it and understand what they said, which for me was around 7 or 8 I think.

Why do I tell you this? Because I find it interesting that these days I have little interest in porn, have never bought a magazine, and don't watch much of it, whereas people I know who didn't read the things when little have huge collections. I also don't understand the obsession some people have with stopping kids from seeing naked bodies. What do you think they see when they look down in the bath?

And no, I'm not some sort of nudist/weird fetishist. I have a girlfriend, a healthy sex life, and still harbour my own inhibitions like I'm not particularly happy with how I look naked so I don't tend to show myself off. That's my choice though, not because I don't think people shouldn't see naked people.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

My mother's BF said I can look at porno that friends own but I can't have my own :(
Thats why I go to 89.com every morning when nobody is awake!

Re: Sex & Violence
 

See. There are two serious problems here. The first is, its not a sudden prevalence of child predators that is a problem, its that they are now so obvious. Bear with me, I will explain what I mean by that. My uncle was one, and he was molesting his daughter ***way*** before the news media was babbling about how many there are, or for that matter, well before we supposedly "lost our way", according to some others. There are two fundamental problems here. The first is a shift in views about predation, which has actually gotten more conservative imho, the other is a willingness of various clueless "family values" groups to harp on how much better the world was. Well.. 200 years ago you could marry and/or sleep with someone that was 12-13 and no one would bat an eye. Arranged marriages often happened as far back as when they where 7-8, and they only waited until menstruation happened before making it "official". The rules about age limits where not imposed until like 1885 in England, and then it was "10", the US had a defacto standard of 10, but not legal rule for it, until roughly the same time period, the *end* of the 19th century. Sorry I can't give a clearer date, but trying to Google the right article would take me ages, since most pages involve "current" ages of consent, which can range from 13 in Hawaii, to 19+ if you are the wrong sex and gay (loved that one. Women could have lesbian sex at like 17, but gay men had to be at least 19, or something like that...), in other places.

In any case, 90% of what we call pedophilia today was nothing of the sort until near the start of the 1900s, and it wasn't until the advent of TV that it become something that could be dumped on the news, in the homes of every single person in the country, the moment some wacko, in some obscure neighborhood or town, chased some 14 year olds.

Like many things, its not an *increase* of these things that is at issue, its a distorted view of history and what people cared about in the first place, combined with easy access to information. Same with the stuff like school shootings. The happen about once a century, followed by a few copycats. The only thing that has changed is the excuses people come up with to absolve the parents and school, and the number of other nuts that hear about it, and become tempted to try the same thing.

Its as Lasher says. We have this fictitious view of what "innocence" means, and some people, who have a lot of money, free time, and influential organizations, want to propagate that silly definition, and all the bad, incorrect, mangled or just made up history they spout to defend it (i.e. "golden age" when these things didn't happen gibberish), in the delusional belief that ignoring real history, failing to provide kids with real facts, and demonizing everyone/thing that they don't personally like, will "fix" the problem. Usually, it just makes it easier for the predators to hide (like some priests I can name), leads people to consider useless solutions (which assume the made up utopian history is true) and exaggerate any and all real problems. And of course, being as this is dogma to them, the single worst thing in the universe isn't the predators they inadvertently protect/enable through this ignorance by doing this, its the people that call them fools and tell them they got it all backwards.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

The funny thing is, that while Sweden and the other Nordic countries - (Denmark in particular) - practically invented nude or scantily clad women adverts, lately there has been a huge backlash, and that type of material in adverts almost inevitably raises an outcry. This has however got nothing to do with qualms about nudity and moral issues, it is all about feminism and what is 'politically correct' at the moment.

Now, I'm a woman too, so I'm somewhat torn here. I too get a bit offended by the exploitation of naive teenage girls, who don't realize what they are getting themselves into, when they expose everything they have in men's magazines or on the internet. But the ultra feminists are a bit like the fundamentalist lunatics of Christianity and Islam, they give the sane, balanced and legitimate parts of a movement bad karma and a twisted image.

Sure, there are some basic injustices in the fact the women generally get paid less for the same work than men, or that less than 10% of the top jobs or posts on the boards of big companies are occupied by women. But when almost all male politicians declare themselves as being 'feminists'. probably out of fear of being ripped apart by the harpies, things begin to look slightly ridiculous. And when things get driven to the extreme by fanatic demagogues, some of these apparent injustices get drowned by stupid statements like; 'All men are animals!' - (sure, but so are all women!) - or 'Swedish men are as bad as Talibans!' - (umm, so far I haven't noticed that wearing a burkha is a requirement in Sweden) - or even wild accusations about groups of pedophile males who allegedly habitually kidnap, abuse and ritually slaughter children in the forests of Norway and Sweden - (excuse me, but why aren't any of all these kids even reported missing then?)... then the feminist movement loses most of its credibility. To these extremist feminists, almost anything can be traced back to what they in some 'scientific' papers have labeled 'The gender-power-order' - (not sure what the correct translation of that term would be in English, if there even is one).

However, this is usually the reason why lately all ads that can be even remotely perceived as disparaging for women are jumped at ferociously in Sweden and other Nordic countries. Moral has very little to do with it.
Goes to show how complex the causes and effects usually are.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

In my opinion, being scantily dressed is okay, and so is prostitution. I however, have a neutral attitude about scantily dressed women and prostitution because I DON'T GIVE A F***!
This was MEANT to be off topic in reply to Molly's post.
No rudeness or insult was directed to Molly in the making of this post (lol).
Support Our Mollys!

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I don't dispute the premise of your question, yet I do point out that there are some very big MUSHes/MUCKs out there that are basically just for sex (I read in the vicinity of 600 connected characters or so). So it seems like the genre is alive and well and not being oppressed :)

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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

Side note;
Bet this will lead to Omera exclaiming;
Support Our Furrys!

Re: Sex & Violence
 

awwww you said it for me :(

Re: Sex & Violence
 

So they can call it a furr and purr mud?

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

**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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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. :p

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

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 commanded, or for free, just because god felt like it that day. Nothing anyone in it ever gains is achieved by their own hand, and half the stuff that is god gets ****ed off about and floods, blasts down or otherwise destroys in anger at them *daring* to do it without his permission. So, why do probably 90% of the people who believe think that phrase has anything to do with their religion?

Its just symtomatic of the same stuff. If you want nudity to be evil, quote something from the Bible. Want nudity to be good, quote the Bible. Want to murder people that are not like you? Quote the Bible. Want to save people from the evils of war? Quote the Bible. Damn near anything can be justified by just quoting the holy texts. And no one will call you on it, because almost no one that believes actually reads it completely, and everyone else is lying and cherry picking it the same way you are. One of the single most common traits of a crank after all is that it doesn't matter if the other crank is 180 degrees the other way around from your viewpoint (they insist its midnight, you insist its noon, while you are both wrong and its midmorning), just so long as both of you are against those evil heathens that both of you dislike. You can always get around to denoucing each other for being unbelievers and evil "after" you have gotten rid of all the people that insist you are both completely nuts. lol :(

Re: Sex & Violence
 

So you're saying it's wrong to be disgusted with someone's beliefs? There's a LOT of things out there that are very horrible, there's people out there that get off on little kids. Sure, they're not hurting anybody, but is that something I really want to tolerate? No, I gotta draw a line somewhere in my mind that defines what's right and what's wrong.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Interesting, so what should be a proper punishment for someone who claims that he or she fantasizes about little children while masturbating?

Re: Sex & Violence
 

This is interesting. I mean, I'm pretty liberal and tolerant. I believe strongly in fairness and parity. But I'm also a hypocrite. I believe in freedom of religion. For everyone. Except satanists.

Sometimes, our morality is not informed by rational, but rather a gut level, visceral knowledge that something crosses a line.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

That's an interesting point - are we trying to change/influence the internal thought process, or just the manifestations of it? Do we want to "program" a child to never think a violent thought ever, or teach them to restrain violent thoughts and actions when it's inappropriate? Calvin (I like Calvin and Hobbes quotes, ok?) said it well - Do you actually have to BE good, or is it enough to merely ACT good? It's along the lines of whether you should avoid breaking the law just because you might get caught.

Personally I feel that it's only human to have private thoughts and actions that you would never want anyone else to see or know. That doesn't mean it's acceptable or "good" - it's only natural that other people would be angered/upset/disgusted by them and that's probably why you keep them to yourself. I'm sure all of us behave differently in some ways depending on the situation and who we're with. I feel that some thoughts are wrong and disgusting, but I don't think that they should be crushed with an iron fist and purged by the authorities. At the most, I'd stop talking to someone if I found out something about them that I didn't like.

If ever happened, it would get pretty worrisome.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

There are worse things than Satanists. How so? Well, Satanism is made up. Until probably the mid 20th century a lot of people *claimed* such a thing existed, but they where usually pointing at pretty much every non-Christian and insisting they where Satanists. They still pull this BS in some camps, claiming that everyone from Atheists to Unitarians are "really" Satanists, since they don't follow radical dogma. Point of fact, Satanism, as officially recognized (which is to say the made up BS people actually practice) is an odd mix of, "Do what though will", extreme 60's liberalism, a rejection of God as the true anti-Christ, being as in the OT he tends to behave more like a sociapath than a god of justice and love, etc. They are basically nothing more than Christians that have mixed some S&M and stuff. Most of the things attributed to them, like human sacrifices, have nothing to do with their practice. In fact, if you where to write a list of stuff that people believe about them down, I am sure you could find "some" right wing group some place claiming that everyone from Scientologists to Jews is doing the same things (depending on how irrational and fascist the right wing group was). Fact is, if you know anything about Satanism, instead of just falling for the rhetoric used to describe it, its nothing more than an idiotic yuppie version of Catholic ritual, which replaces some of the silly rituals they use with ones more likely to be found in a porn flick.

Frankly, having Pat Robertson for a neighbor would scare me personally far more than living in a city entirely populated by Satanists. Robertson is about 500 times more likely to kill me for not showing proper respect (i.e. kissing its backside via the proxy of kissing Robertson's) fire, brimstone and death to all heathens version of god.

But, as you say. Often our morality isn't entirely rational. One good start though is to make you own informed decisions based on what other people actually believe and do, and not on the second or third hand claims used to demonize them. I am sure, if you looked, you could find lots more people who where not Satanist who killed their kids, either intentionally, or by accident, because they thought they where "possessed", than you are likely to ever find any Satanist in the news doing so (that being pretty much the #1 claim used against them). Sure, they might sacrifice animals, within state allowed limits, but so did Christians for *most* of their history, right up until they replaced that with communion wafers (which most later got rid of as well, probably for being too elaborate and silly). Big deal. Its as silly and stupid as some poser Vampire going to a club and drinking someone's "chi" or what ever those people call it when they bite each other. Its all just a lot of silly nonsense, and frankly, as near as I can tell from what they do believe, most Satanists would fit right in at a church picnic, since its only their "your god is the *false* god, not ours" and "we BBQ little critters" stuff that makes them any different than any other attendant. Hmm. Ok, so its just the "we BBQ little critters" stuff that makes them different, the first one is pretty much standard for all religions that claim there is/are god(s). lol