How lovely of you to put all victims of sexual abuse into one large lumping. A question, have you ever been one? Cause if not, then well, you really have no say in that matter. Whereas I do.

To be quite frank, unless a game has a rating and rules that are clearly stated against MUDsex, then it's up to the players to make that choice. I personally don't have anything against but that doesn't mean I just go doing it all the time. Only if it actually furthers a character's development because really, isn't that what RP is about? The development of a character and the exploration of who that person you're playing really is, how they think, why they think what they do and how they'd react to this or that.

The "success" of religion is a multi-faceted one.  It should be pointed out that Christianity is a minority religion and hence an "anti-Christian" viewpoint hardly could contribute to the success of religion since there are far more non-Christian religions.  Additionally, what is "normal Christianity" since there are more varieties of it than there flavors of ice cream.  And "normal life" constitutes what?  Afraid you're the one looking at everything from a narrow point of view.

Mankind kills out of more than anger.  Greed, cultural differences, and just plain pleasure all constitute reasons why people kill either other animals or other human beings themselves.

It's a cultural norm perhaps, but not biologically normal.  Embarassment and taboos regarding sex are learned behavior.  Raise a human being in an environment without such things and they won't be factors in their personality.

Actually, not every culture traces their lineage the same way.  Nor do people view clothing in the same way.  Christians find female breasts offensive.  Plenty of cultures do not.

There are no natural forces.  Culture is learned behavior.

Again, you're looking at things from a very narrow and inaccurate viewpoint.  Biologically, human beings are capable of sexual reproduction at any time with anyone.  That's one of the differences between humans and many other animals which have specific breeding periods.

As time passes, so too must a culture.  To cling to outdated beliefs that might have been useful (if they were indeed ever) at one time out of their chronological context is ridiculous.

You wouldn't have to go back very far in mankind's history.  Two thousand years out of tens of thousands of years hardly constitutes "the dawn of time".  Mankind got by without Christian taboos for all that time.  How?  Because they're cultural.  For whatever reason they developed, they are not absolutes.  We no longer live in the same world in which they were developed.  The world has changed.  Beliefs and taboos which had their place don't necessarily any longer.

I know plenty of Christians who agree with me.  It was only a gratuitous slap at ignorant fundamentalists.

No, they simply separate facts from beliefs.

*Laugh*  Do you really believe that or are you just grasping at straws in a lame attempt to offend someone?  "Don't point out anything contrary to my beliefs or I'll call you an anarchist!"

It's you who is either a) clinging tenaciously in the face of evidence, or more likely b) speaking out of ignorance.  If you can show a legitimate source which cites evidence of human sexual insticts which predispose them to the cultural behavior you're claiming is normal, please enlighten everyone.  The fact is that it's cultural behavior, hence learned.  And because it's cultural, that means it's not an absolute.  If you don't think cultures change, then you really need to learn more about history in addition to anthropology.

Take care,

Jason

You can pick out a few cultures that also have tabboos against nudity, and I can pick out a few that don't. Actually, quite a few. There is nothing universal about sexual or body tabboos other than people tend to invent some of varying and contradictory types.

As for its place in roleplaying games, I do believe it has one, since you CANNOT portray a realistic social environment without at least the lure and 'promise' of sexual interaction between people. Whether or not that promise is played out in detailed language is up to the players, but excising it altogether is disastrous to deep and believable storytelling.

I personally play it out in detail, but avoiding ridiculous 'titillation' language, because if the scene has been reached through good roleplay, then I want to explore how my character reacts to other people in that situation. It has, at times, been critical to character development.

However, I do not do it every time the character is getting laid. If, for example, the important interaction details have been played before and the next sexual encounter is not likely to show anything new in the character development area, I fade to black. If something has happened in the roleplay previous to the scene that is likely to make it an interesting scenario with new character development, then I'll play it out even if the characters have been married and supposedly boffing for 10 years.

The MOMENT I get the inkling that the other player is doing it primarily for getting their rocks off, I stop roleplaying such scenes with that player. It leads to a bad place when the motivating reason is to satisfy a player's personal cravings.  The roleplay goes to hell, players leave their real life spouses in order to come 'find you' and all the reasons I started playing out a storyline evaporate into the morass of human wackiness.

I equate this to a situation where a player has his character attacking others, robbing them blind, and interfering with their existence purely because the player is a dill that loves upsetting other people to satisfy his personal issues. That's when useful storyline conflict crosses over into problem land, and it's the same thing with sexual issues, because both lead to very emotional and irrational behavior of the players that are guaranteed to run roughshod over any story in progress.

If it's good for the story, I'm all over it. If it risks the integrity of the gameplay, I'm gone.

---Brett

Well, I think one point noone's made is that a sexual predator might not exactly be able to figure out who's a minor, either.

From what I've seen, there are people in their thirties and forties who've picked up the internet speak 'lol' and 'wtf' and all that noise, and that's something I've always attributed that to younger people. On the other hand, there are minors crashing muds and becoming outstanding members of their roleplaying community, and I always start picturing some older, classically-trained actor behind them.

So, short of a predator asking everyone "Are you younger than 18?", there's probably no good way to tell. And a smart kid will always lie, for fear of being thrown out for being underage.

I think as long as muds at least have a policy and make it clearly understood to their players, mudsex is fine, if not for everybody. Muds who do have sex should police it to make sure everyone meets the age requirement, though.

I won't bother touching 'fundamentalist Christian assholes', but whether or not us adults can decide what's going on with that, kids can be hurt by sex. At a certain point in their lives they'll start seeking it out for themselves, and make that progressive change from sexual child (id est, not sexual at all) to sexual adult. (which doesn't necessarily mean it in the responsibility sense)

But...but but but...if you throw sex in their face when they're not ready for it, it can be disturbing and even damaging. I don't know if you've seen that Family Guy where Peter wants to have sex with Lois while Stewie's sleeping in their bed, but Lois starts to protest, and Peter reassures her, "Don't worry, honey, he'll just think I'm hurting you."

Funny in an outrageous way, but it's unfortunately true, and was true for me as a kid.

What I'm hacking at is, the mud community needs to really make sure to have solid policies, age restrictions if there's certain types of content, and monitoring to make sure that we don't have any wunderkinds who happen to play muds and are completely naive about sex slipping through the cracks, and getting themselves hurt.

There's no reason why a well-run mud with clear policies can't have people doing what they like with each other, as long as they take it upon themselves to keep the party private from people that don't need to be there. Not all minors will be horribly scarred by sex, but the percentage that can needs protecting.

And as far as the violence and sex issue, violence is pretty bad, and probably something we shouldn't encourage. But the thing is, kids understand violence. When they get mad, they know to hit someone. So they can relate to it. A six year-old, though, is going to have a hell of a time explaining why it is his mommy and daddy, who he thought loved each other, were screaming and biting each other, and that's usually sex at its mildest.

We kind of derailed this thread of Brody's...

I can't really see why full mudsex would be necessary, but I suppose if people can do it without investing themselves into it too much and taking it on a personal level, then that's cool.

I'm just more into heroes and epics sort of rp, than the politics and affairs type. But that's my personal digs.

I think I'll start here, since you are a parser and much of what you chose to quote here and there does not really follow what I was trying to say.

One natural force that dictates clothing is harsh environment.  Once a people begin to clothe themselves, there is the effect of hiding and then revealing the naked body that differs experientially from simply being nude all the time.

That's a start, or do you deny this from the start?

A second major point regarding reproduction is of course the emotion of jealousy.  This seems instinctual to me.  It also seems to show itself in other species.

Forces like this help shape human culture, and when I speak of whatever seed started Christianity, I am not speaking here of the birth of Christ.  Rather, I am referring to whatever it is in the fabric of ongoing cultural developments that could be traced back past Christ, through Judaism, back to the religions of the region around Canaan and so forth and beyond even that to prehistory, to touch on whatever it is in the human experience that ever made Christianity viable to begin with.  What I am saying is even if you were to trace that back physically and nip it out physically, the psychology that helped to form it would remain and would simply reinsinuate itself over and over by various names until it found outlet.

Finally, regarding all the assertions that clothing and sexual taboo are not universal.  I already set my example for you all to see.  I know of cultures that vary and there's an old saying about exceptions proving the norm, but if you truly intend to argue that public nudity is not usually somewhat taboo or that sex is not usually considered rather private, I would like to see something in the way of proof rather than simple assertions that people have somehow missed the mass of civilizations past and present that tended towards totally open sexual behavior and convenience nudity.  Not just an example or two please, but something to indicate a trend, as you insist Christianity is somehow very unique in this characteristic, whereas I just do not see it.

Brett makes the superior point here.

As a member of one of these seemingly mysterious primitive “people that have somehow missed the mass of civilization” I thought I should speak directly to this issue.

It maybe that “missed” really does not apply in my case. You see.. Ninewidbaskohaung Ndesnekas. Mukwa Ndodem. Bedosega ndogeba minawa Waganakising Odawa Ndaw. What I said there, among other things, is that I am Odawa … a lot of people pronounce it or spell it as Ottawa. My people were among some of Turtle islands first to be victims of the whitemans angry war god. Among the first to have the twisted words of Christianity victimize our people through this very topic.

Before the coming of the Black Robes my people understood human beings as human beings. We understood who we were and were not ashamed of ourselves. The women wore strap dresses so that in the summer they could remove the sort of bib portion of the dress and be cool. This, of course, left their breasts exposed. The men wore a kind of apron in front of their genetalia but if that flapped up or even got snatched off in a game of begadewe no one was shocked, incensed or otherwise thought ill of it. If we were lucky maybe one of the women might like what she saw.

Relationships were of all kinds, monogamous, pluralistic, open, heterosexual, homosexual … whatever you can think of we did and respected each others right to do so. The only issue was the piece and tranquility of the tribe. Yes, some folks got jealous, maybe that is a human thing. To us, however, jealousy was the individual’s problem and something they would need to go to the mountain and get their head straight about. If YOU were jealous then YOU are/were the problem.

Today many of us Odawa are poisoned by the whitemans Christianity. We are taught these ways are wrong. The very priests who tell us our traditional views on sex are evil horribly torture some of us, like my father, for things like speaking our language.

Human beings do not spring out from Kishilomilangop knowing they are necked. Christianity does not go back to primitive man, be it as Judaism or not. The Church fathers speak with two tongues, and they always have. From the gender bias their book is written in, to its racists over tones, to the way their priests murder, rape and destroy the world around them the truth manifest in our reality has very little to with Christian ideology or philosophy. Whatever human nature is, Christianity is not it.

--Tim

I agree; Christianity is, like, totally the devil.

Before the white man came, we Finns received from our great pagan gods the power to move mountains (which is why we don't have any, these days, as we smote the Norwegian tribes with them). There was never a murder, theft, or rape, as we all revelled in our numerous and ubiquitous orgies. All day long. The resulting spread of sexually transmitted diseases is responsible for our limited population even today.

It must be true.

Every single picture or statue I have ever seen from Egyptian culture they are clothed. What explains that?

Greeks did not go around in public naked. They went to sport naked. Women were not allowed to go to sport at all if memory serves.

Tribes that "barely cover anything" are not the same as not covering anything at all, and a long list of them without any recourse to any authoritative study or even any mention of what their sexual taboos are and are not does little to help the point you seem to be trying to make. About the only one of your examples I was able to check out was Eskimo culture. They do indeed seem to be very open about sex, up to and including fondling their children from early childhood. So there's one. From the beginning, I have stated that some small minority of cultures do indeed practice open nudity and do not seem to treat sex as privately as most cultures do. You have now convincingly identified one of them. Pacific islanders are a notorious example that often works its way into these discussions as well. I am aware of them, as I said from the beginning. What percentage of the total human population do they make up? Is there any data?

Indian monks using nudity as a special sign of some religious significance seems to argue opposite your point, as does the habit of ancient Celts to go naked into battle. I would also like to point out the singular lack of utility of the last, as it is likely among the causes of their downfall in early conflicts with the budding culture of Rome. In any event, it would symbolize little if anything at all if there were no understanding of the vulnerability of nudity.

Most American indian tribes appear to have worn clothes. The larger civilized nations of mezzo and south America seem to have worn clothes.

If anthropologists are capable of ignoring the weight of all the many, many cultures - Japanese, Chinese, Western, Middle Eastern, African - cultures from every continent where mankind has made its home in any large number... all the weight of all these cutlures who do practice sexual discretion and clothe themselves, in favor of a long list of small tribes that actually appear to represent a tiny minority of people, and represent in themselves a relatively small number of truly distinct cultures, then that is a sad state of affairs. I am not convinced, however, that anthropologists are ignorant of the wide range of sexual taboos or the habit of wearing clothes that seems to pervade cultures all over the world, whether they be Christian or not.

This is to me the most baffling of all:

"It is irritating to see that a person considers Christian culture, coupled with a single Guinea tribe that wears gourds on their privates, as outweighing the validity of the countless cultures past and present that behave(d) completely differently; that supplying the example of one primitive tribe as proof of the naturalness of body-shame requires a full-fledged thesis list to refute. Of course it isn't really about that Guinea tribe, it's about the certainty one feels about social 'truths' when one is born and raised to them. Of course the many millions of people for thousands of years don't compare to personal conviction, do they?"

Do I have to, like you, go back and list all the nations, western and non western, where clothes are worn and where sex is private? No... because they are commonly known, whereas isolated tribes of people with no sexual inhibitions living in places where it is hard to maintain any contact with anyone else need to be enumerated just to be known. It's not as if I am speaking here out of the blue sky as you intimate, and it is this tendency to overexagerate a point that brings my mind back to one of my earlier statements, which is that most people who argue strenuously over these matters seem to do so without much regard to any sort of systematic philosophy, but do so with a sort of self-appointed zeal and seemingly feigned exepertise that says a lot more about their own personal beliefs than it does about all of anthropology or all cultures.

Two examples. First, if you think that by rattling off a list of isolated tribal cultures you have proven that the large bulk of humanity does not wear clothes or understand sex in terms of it being private, you are mistaken.

Further, you put words in my mouth. I have never tried to pass this off as a strictly Christian habit. You have, in your attempts to somehow single Christianity out. I am talking about the world in general, and have made that point more than a few times. To hear you, one would begin to think that Christians were the only people who historically wore clothes, whereas my point is of course that they are not, and that it is false to assert that clothes wearing or sexual taboos of any sort are strictly Christian in nature.

Looking over nudism on Wikipedia, I noted this woman at the bottom of the web page. "Question Authority".



Pretty much sums up my experience with people who insist that treating nudity or sex as somehow private is a Christian aberation.

LOL!

Meaning no disrespect, but again you appear to be missing my point.  I did not mean to imply that small numbers make a people unimportant, or that they should be abused, merely that to argue that your culture's attitudes towards nudity and sex are a very small subset of the total of humanity, Christian or not.

"According to the 2000 census, the population of the 5 pernanently inhabited islands is 3,600 people in 646 households. With a land area of only 3.08 square kilometers, the islands have a population density of 1168 persons per sq. km. – much higher than the national average of 276 persons per sq. km.

Access to the Turtle Islands is difficult, as there are no regular means on transportation to the area."

Another Wikipedia entry, but is it not relatively accurate?

In other words, isolated incidences such as your case do not counter effectively the idea that most cultures do wear clothes and have sexual taboos regarding public sexual displays.  They consider sex private.

Don’t have enough people to matter. Interesting thought, lets look at that.

My people the Odawa have never been a large tribe, before contact or otherwise. We are however, Ahnishnabek. The “K” in that word means that it is plural, nishnabe is a root word meaning “the people”. So what we are talking about here is membership to a greater collective. Other Ahnishbabek people include, but are not limited too, the Ojibway, Potowatomi, Cree, Sauk, Fox, Mickmac, etc. The Ojibway alone are the second or third largest Indian Tribe in North America today. Before contact, which is what I was referring too, we dwarfed the population sizes of many communities even today. Some accounts have as high or higher than the population of Detroit in the Detroit area. One quarter of the American continent is hardly “unimportant” do to small numbers.

Additionally, just because we wore clothing does not mean we were hung up on this nudity point you are making. Men wore leggings because we didn’t like our legs tore up in the forest. We just didn’t have the fore sight it would have taken to know that in order to clearly illustrate our comfort with nudity to someone from a different culture in the twenty-first century we would have had to not wear any cloths at all ever … atoll.

I do not often speak for other tribes, we consider it to be rude, but it is quite plain that other tribes throughout the America have held the same view. This is, of course, if you keep your nose out of Wikipedia. I recommend Francis Densmore. You can even find some of her work on line. She wrote around the turn of the 20th century so the whitemans poison was already firmly entrenched in the Ojibway (whom she was primarily concerned with writing about) but there were traditionals around even then. Densmore does give you a jumping off point though to read more periods works, some even written at the time of contact.

Brett makes a good point about doing your research thoroughly. A few years ago, before I finished graduate school, I heard one of the faculty at the college I was attended say, “What the Internet has taught us in academia is that you no longer have a right to your opinion. We cannot afford to say that anymore. You only have a right to an INFORMED opinion.” To that point I would add that anything is possible as long as you don’t know what you are talking about.

If you find that a bit harsh I am sorry. I know I found it to be the first I heard it. It is, however, the reason I decided to post here. I am responsible, for my part, in the proliferation or stopping the proliferation of erroneous ideas. The idea that Indians had a garden of “Eden”, that our culture was identical to the dominant culture today or that we used crystals in out ceremonies are all examples of that. That list goes on and on by the way so I will leave you with just the three.

Asaudan, if you are pointing that straw man at me please don’t. I think we are trying to have a serious conversation here.

--Tim

I took an art class that covered it in some detail.

Regarding Greek clothing,

"The painting by Degas at the top of this page illustrates what is thought to be a not atypical scene of a (coed) Spartan gym class. However, it seems that the Spartans were not in step with the rest of Greece, where somewhat more prudishness was evident.
Although in Greece generally people were sufficiently used to the sight of nakedess, this costume of the Spartan girls was ridiculed. Hence they were called "thigh-showers", "those with bare thighs", and the expression "to dress in Doric fashion" ... was used of those "who liberally bared a great part of their body". In gymnastic and bodily exercises Spartan girls also put off this single piece of clothing and appeared completely naked.
Sparta aside,
In the rest of Greece the chiton as a single article of dress was only worn in the house; in public the himation was indespensible for women; this, with the exception of the somewhat modified cut required by the differently conditioned build of the female's body, was not essentially different from the man's himation."




I don't know if your misrepresentation was purposeful or not, but it is apparently somewhat common knowledge that Sparta was the exception and not the norm, and certainly neither is accused of being overly Christian, so where did they get these habits from?

The site also seems to dispute your assertion that all Greeks tended to get naked at the drop of a hat in clothing got in the way, and if you have ever done strenuous work of any kind, you will find in short order that clothes tend to keep certain sensative bits out of the way rather than being a hindrance.


You next go into a description of native dress in some cultures which I have already stated several times I am aware of. I am also aware of the concept you describe regarding shame being more of a result of breaking expected social norms. What I have said before is that in general, clothing's utility makes it near universal in use, and that once it becomes common to wear clothing, it tends to take on significance sexually since sexual characteristics that are normally hidden come into plain view, which has the natural effect of making this sudden appearance more sexually arousing than the same body parts would be if they were in plain view all the time. This bit seems to have been lost in translation somewhere, but if you look back you will surely see that I covered that ground.

Regarding Indian and Celt issues. Of course they had different ideas of what nudity meant, but the point is that it MEANT something. In cultures where clothing is habitually worn, I think it is a given that nudity will begin to mean something, since it will be the exception. I find it hard to fathom how it would not carry sexual connotations because it is necessary to get partially naked at least to have sex at all, and even in a culture where nudity is common place, one at least has to have the capacity to see a person of the opposite sex and be attracted to them and sexually aroused or else sex becomes impossible, so I don't think it makes sense to try to insinuate that the naked form does not carry with it a certain sexuality.

You accusation of me not having made even the slightest investigation into Celts belies the fact that I pointed out a specific point in their history where the courage and "fear factor" of going naked in battle became a negative rather than positive thing. Nor was the point at all that it was "right" that they were defeated. My point is that there are physical realities about nakedness that I believe play into the development of cultural norms concerning nudity and the privacy of sexual behavior, and I have stated this before as well. For some reason, you seem to like to shift from that thrust in my posts though and off into things I neither said nor intended. I wish you would stop. It would make getting on with things that I actually don't know much easier if you would stop accusing me of not knowing things that I do, indeed, know, and have even given examples of knowing in previous posts.

I did not discard the list of tribes as invalid. I specifically stated that they do not appear to make up a large portion of historical cultures, and my argument concerns the natural development of sexual mores and folkways around certain physical necessities, most notably clothing, and how the use of clothing would then give rise to dynamics that lead so many cultures to behave differently than the handful that you mention. In other words, it is invalid to argue that Christianity is somehow uniquely anti-sex when so many other cultures share the same or similar mores and folkways. I used the example of a tribe I had heard of because this tradition of rattling off little known tribes as examples of how narrow minded Christians have made western culture ignores the fact that not all tribes lack the taboo against nudity.

I never asserted that clothing was about shame. I said the use of clothing probably gives rise to the shame that then turns into a sexual taboo about nudity and the privacy of sexual conduct. ou ascribe that to me and then proceed to deconstruct the argument with little regard to what I have asserted.

About the only thing I have asserted forcefully is that it is unfair and off topic to take a slap at Christianity in a forum thread about sex in muds.

I never said that. (Edited to add: Actually I very appologeticly and specifically said the exact opposite directly TO YOU, Tim.  What gives here?)

 I said that to accuse Christians of being somehow unique in their desperate hangups about sex and nudity would take more than stringing together cultures with small populations and insisting they make up some sort of norm from which Christianity has fatally strayed.

Wikipedia has been compared favorably to professionally created  encyclopedias and has an organizational philosophy that belies the insulting tone you use in reference to it.  It is at heart a lovely example of how people can free themselves of academic snobbery for which I find your quote regarding people no longer having a right to their opinions somewhat symptomatic.

To me, if one wants to prove tha Christianity is a horrible abomination when it comes to its effect on sexuality, one needs to make reference to something besides a group of little known people groups who form an exception, and not the rule, regarding such things.

If you wish to refer to North America as nothing more than loosely strung together cultures of small populations then you will be constantly struggling with the chains of academic snobbery. At least academia has the virtue of actually having had to work to form their opinion.

You can go ahead and post your opinion on Wikipedia, going back and reading it there might make you feel better about having done little to form it.

Christian abomination, especially as it is expressed in America today and in American history, is readily apparent to anyone who is not Christian, ignorance being chief among that religions components. To speak directly to the issue of the confused sexual crisis with in the Christian faith I will quote Father Richard McBrien from the University of Notre Dame … he has a PhD so likely you will want to undermined this statement to the best or you abilities …

“Jesus could have been married, and see I am not discounting the possibility, but if we had clear evidence that he was and even that he had a family, that would have knocked out of the box all this nonsense that has been part and parcel of the Christian tradition, small T, for so many centuries that somehow sex is ahhh not so, not so nice.”

Christianity teaches, among other things, that one: it’s followers need to be ignorant of even their own religion and two: to veraciously attack anything that even remotely looks like it could challenge the political position or power of it’s faith. Father McBrien is desperately trying to combat this very issue in his own faith. I can respect him for it but he is a salmon swimming up stream. His statement does however shine a light on the confused sexuality of the Christian faith.

This edit function is not to be used twice in a row with quote functionality, it seems....

Yeah, there's a balanced expert opinion on Christianity for you, academia style.

As I said, you will obviously want to devalue Father Brien’s comments. He is an informed well-educated individual who must adhere to the mechanism of pier review. Something you obviously are very intimidated by.

The point remains however that the racist ideology that we Ahnishnabek did not have a cohesive culture or a body politic is flatly incorrect, despite what you might find splashed about the Internet or what gives you personal satisfaction to think.

The fact that Christianities morally bankrupt view on sex has poisoned the indigenous cultures of the America’s is again a signpost I am sure you will continue to argue with.

The point however, is that your Puritanical views on modesty are not common to cultures outside the influence of the Christian Church. In fact, they are not even common to early Christians.

The fact that a cohesive indigenous culture comprising of no less than one quarter of the American continent did not agree with, support, or act in a manner consistent with your fallacious belief in human nature is just a bit more than you can stand and as such you cast about for any life raft of denial. Additionally, the fact that many other Indigenous cultures acted more in accordance with the Ahnishnabek than with your Puritanical Christian faith buries your argument entirely.

On the point of Wikipedia, take a college class sometime. Try using it as source to support any writing you do in that class (much like you are doing here) see what kind of grade that gets you. Before you go off on the oppressive nature of “the man” … an analogy might be to get a serious infection and rub grass in it instead of taking penicillin, or if your one of those types you can try the power of prayer. You could likewise try praying yourself to work in the morning as apposed to driving or shaking your cross at your computer to make it run. I suspect that to you these analogies seem inconsistent because you want your computer, you want your car, and you want penicillin but you LOVE Wikipedia because you just don’t want to be wrong.

Tim, if you're trying to keep me from posting by making my case for me, please don't.

Come on, I know you're just kidding, yourself. Your sentence structuring gave you away.

If you are going to do that keep it in the bathroom and private no one wants to see you stroke yourself that way.

I realy do not believe that you are incapable of understanding what I wrote so please, keep out of the realms of your fantasy and to what was put down.

Tim, the concept of modesty is not "specific" to the Christians. It is not *only* common among Christians (as opposed to being common among any other non-Christian sect). In addition, Christianity is a religion, and not a culture. Judaism, which is both a religion -and- a culture, which predates Christianity by a couple thousand years, has always embraced modesty as a cultural and religious norm. That isn't to say nudity within the privacy of your own home is taboo, but nudity outside the privacy of your own home would likely get you in trouble, or even cast out, in a secluded Jewish community. Even within the home, an Orthodox wife is required to wear a shteitle (a wig or other hair covering) except when she is alone or solely in the company of her husband. I've never been to a ritual bath (required for Orthodox women who are menstruating) so I can't attest to the rules there. Nudity would be allowed, then of course, but I'm not sure if they'd be allowed to remove their head covering even then.

It has nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with Christianity. Sure, Christians have turned the whole sex taboo thing into an art form, but they most certainly don't hold the patent.

Even Eskimos know better than to run around their neighborhood naked. Maybe inside the home, sure. But even in the Alaskan summer, when temperatures are perfect for nude sun-bathing, they embrace modesty in public. Hindus and Hindis also practice modesty. As do Muslims, and religious communities of -most- faiths and populations.

You'll find that the majority of cultures who prefer nudity or semi-nudity live in climates that are conducive to it. It makes sense to strip down in semi-tropical areas. In the jungles though, stripping down could mean dying to disease carried by flies and mosquitoes, so clothing isn't optional; it's a survival tactic. Modesty, in most cases, descends from necessity and not from religious morality (or lack thereof). Those who dwell in the desert climes where the majority of Muslims live NEED clothing, because without it the sands and winds would strip their skin raw. And so - after time, they decided, "Hey let's make it an actual rule so idiots don't start making a fuss about how they're bleeding to death in the middle of a storm." Necessity isn't only the mother of invention, it's the father of social, cultural, and religious mores.

I am Ahnishnabek that is all the pronouncement you will ever need. It is not my intent to convince you of anything, you are devout Christian you can’t be convinced of anything. The fact is, like the sun rising in the east, you can deny that I am not an authority but the fact remains, I am. Like it or not I am one of a very few people who speak my language and know my people’s traditions. The fact is we stand as proof of the blood that runs on your hands and the shame you people can just not face no matter what.

I understand that as a Christian you are incapable of admitting a solid point when you see one.

You have been given several. Francis Densmore for example and yes, as much as you just can’t bring yourself to admit it, I am another authority. As far as my spelling goes, it’s your language not mine.

I can’t understand you when you mumble.

See, I can do it too.

So, lets buck up and accept the evidence posted here by both Brett and I. There are plenty of positions you can take that still include a different point of view than my own. Those positions however do take some work and research on your part. I know you are taught to keep you head in the sand, and to a degree your church leadership is right to do so, but if you are going to step into a public forum take the time to read a book on the subject, say like
“Blood Politics” Circe Sturm
“Ritual and Myth in Odawa Revitalization” Melissa A. Pflug
“Chippewa Child Life and Its Cultural Background” Inez Hilger
“Ojibway People” William Warren
or
“History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan” A.J. Blackbird (a relative of mine)

These are just a few books that I felt like posting and ones readily off of my bookshelf and they hold more proof than someone like you can handle.

In the end though you will just twist those thoughts in your own mind as you do the posts here. You are Christian and are incapable of speaking or thinking straight. The thing that rely intrigues me though is the arrogance in Christians. In you it has caused you to spend so much time trying to twist what I and Brett write here that you’ve completely missed the fact that I am not talking to you, I am talking about you too the rest of the people that might come here and read this.

It's customary even in academic circles, rather than to prove your point by stating you are right, to cite references and where they are from, rather than just present a reading list.

And, once again, your post is largely insults and short on discussion points.

I will wait and see if your treatment of Jazuela is any better than the treatment I have received at your hands. You've well and truly re-enforced my ongoing opinion and experience regarding those who argue the case for open nudity and open sexuality without limits.

No it is not, nor am I arguing that it is. Shane however wants to put it forward as an inevitability of developed cultures. The idea that modesty is somehow a higher understanding IS a Christian thought as they wish to paint themselves as the most correct, most developed or Acme of human development. Additionally Christianity is not a culture but it impacts culture significantly and aggressively. For example, many of my own people will not learn our traditional language because they are Christian and to learn our language, in their minds, would re-affirm that they are “ignorant savages” from a lesser culture doomed to go to hell.

The fact that they have turned it into an art form makes it about Christianity, especially when we are talking about their negative impact on a group of Indigenous people like my own. The assertion that Shane put forward is that Human nature is manifest in the Christian faith, the Ahnishnabek stands as a defiant example of that position and the fact that Christians beat, raped, starved, and tortured us because of this fact is not only significant to the question of what is human nature but it is significant to Shane’s position of the infallibility of Christian doctrine.

Again, if you go back and read my posts you will find where I talk about how my people, as well as other Ahnishnabek, wore clothing. We did. In winter, we wore lots of clothing. The issue however is that we did not have the sexual mores that Shane is asserting is somehow human nature.

--Tim

You've been given it. I responded to your insults with insults and to your assertions with assertions but I understand your need to back out.

--Tim

Off the top of my head, the Ohlone didn't wear clothes. Thats the only tribe I've ever studied in depth.

As I stated from the beginning, the only constant about sexual tabboos among all humanity is that people can be very creative about constructing them. Many are totally contradictory from other cultures. My posting of various cultures past and present was never intended to prove that people have NO tabboos of any kind; simply, that they rarely are the same tabboos as those of modern America, and therefore, are not inherent. They are a product of culture.

The reason I took up this argument against you was because you made the assertion that modesty was not a construct of culture. My examples are all very helpful in countering your assertion, and I would never say that all Greeks were exactly the same in the same way that I would never say that all people in the world have the same cultures.

Greeks on the whole, including the more prudish Athenians, were much less ashamed of their bodies than Americans are today even if all you take into account are the men in the Olympics and the decoration on the pottery that everybody had in their homes (and there are far more examples than that.) The Spartans were an example of a large chunk of Greece (they were one of the most powerful and large sized of the city states) that even allowed their women to display nudity as a non-sexual behavior in the manner of men, taking the differences even further.

ALL Greeks, contrasted with our modern American culture, indicate a very different idea of the role of nudity and sexuality and were therefore a valid example of a different set of mores. I mentioned the Spartans only to correct your comment that Greek women couldn't attend gaming events. It was never necessary to the argument, and your refocusing on that detail as the crux of my point is a straw man tactic.

I don't recall saying that body shame is a Christian invention (which I do not believe), only that your personal viewpoint and argument seems strongly Christian-biased. Anyone that views the entire world through a particularly strong social filter will have difficulties seeing the validity in other cultures, whether their filter is Christian, Muslim, Wiccan, or Zoroastrian. They will have a tendency to assume that any similarity they find in other cultures to their own validates their viewpoint, while any variance is merely an aberration.

----Brett

I invite anyone to go back and find a post by you that constitutes as well referenced quote in support of anything you have said, or for that matter to find an example where I insulted you. My very first post to you was an appologetic explanation of why your exampels do not answer my concerns, and you have now yet again misrepresented my arguments in your response to Jazual.

I think everyone here understand that your ability for denile is second to none. Infact, we covered that from the moment you said you were Christian.

You might try out your denile on Brett for a while but something tells me he has very much heard it all before.

Where were/are the Ohlone from, I don't know them.

I never said it was not a construct of society. You took up this argument with me when you began to tick off a number of tribes of people who had substantially different attitudes, and I from the beginning, from before you even chimed in, had stated that I knew of such things but that the majority of cultures have some sort of clothing taboo and some modicum of modesty where sex is concerned.

I would be most glad if both you and Tim took a few moments to go back and read what I actually have said as opposed to making things up. To repeat, and strenuously, I NEVER suggested that attitudes towards sex were not moldable. I have repeatedly stated that they can be. I have simply observed a lot of commonality across the globe concerning sex and clothes and I have yet to see even the slightest indication that the exceptions to that rule you and Tim have cited constitute a proof that Christianity is somehow the root of all sexual hangups in western society.

From this I have been transformed into some xenophobic closed minded bigot for essentially not agreeing with you and Tim, at least in his mind. This is not an uncommon discussion tactic in my experience from those who seek to prove something negative about Christianity. It just doesn't happen to work on me, as I tend to rear up rather than dissapear when being accused of some sort of wrongdoing or malicious intent that I never had or exhibited.

You really see the concepts of sex and clothing among the Greeks (any of them), the Egyptians, the Yanomamo, the New Guineans, the Polynesians, the Japanese, Southern Baptists, and the Muslims as more similar than dissimilar? If so, then I give up the discussion as absolutely moot and unfathomable.

And again, I have never stated that Christianity is the root of all sexual hangups in western society, and in fact, clearly stated that I did not.

Tim and I are not making the same arguments, though it was rather nice of him to reference my posts upon occasion. If it's easier for you to lump all our opinions together, well, whatever floats your boat.

---Brett

You say this a lot. It’s interesting that you always put the blame on other people. I think you should re-program what ever function key you have this statement on to read … “I wrote this wrong” or maybe “I miss-spoke myself” if you feel especially non Christian you might even say “please excuse me I had no idea how wrong I was.”

And there never will be in a Christian dominated society like America. Aggression is far more paramount in this dynamic to procreation, let alone love.

You don’t know many people do you.

No but it is telling that the only childish sexual play you can come up with is an illegal act which results in the absolute victimization of the female for your example. Additionally, I think you would be VERY surprised to see how cowboys and Indians were played where I grew up.

--Tim

I am a big believer in the commonality of human experience, yes, even knowing as I do that as we speak someone in Africa is cutting off someone's lips in a show of brutality that would make many of us quail to see. After all, somewhere in the US, someone has recently, or is in the process of, or is about to commit an unspeakable act of cruelty to someone else that would make most of us quail to see.

I draw you and Tim together only insomuch as you draw together yourselves, in that both of you assert that I say things that I have not said.

Since Tim has made it abundantly clear that he is talking about me rather than to me, I will aim this reply at Brett as well.

Your refusal to rebut this sort of rhetoric on Tim's part speaks volumes about your supposed separation from his arguments.

These are nothing but trite personal attacks, and they characterize the vast majority of all that he has posted since he invented this name in order to talk about this subject anonymously.

You got to love this. You can’t handle either Brett’s or my posts and so you lump us together and cry foul.

I guess Brett, you and I are the Cathars and the Gnostics all rolled into one. I think it is because deep down Shane understands his/her arguments really don’t hold any watter.

And Shane, no, I am speaking too you because it illustrated my point about you. You’re the kind of Christian that circumcised my father when he was six as a form of punishment for speaking Ahnishnabemowin. You are the kind of Christian that then decries proof of that happening all the time ignoring the thousands of people that had similar experiences and never once offering proof your self that it did not happen.

Brett has never once said that Christianity is the root of sexual dysfunction in European cultures. I did and I stand by it. The fact that you just can’t handle the truth helps to illustrate the function of the Christian dynamic … and that is my point.

Brett tried to be reasonable with you. He/she appears to be educated but has taken the moral high ground and never once made reference to your insistence that ONE class in art makes you some kind of authority on history.

I think that it might be that Brett, to some small degree respects you (or maybe just people). I have no respect for Christians until they can prove to me that they have thrown off the yoke of their poisonous Church and actually have some kind of faith not dictated to them by a priest.

You go on and on about how you didn’t say such and such. You cry for “proof”. All the while you offer no proof of your own, absolutely refuse to acknowledge the sources both Brett and I have posted … and you would to ANYONE else that posted something against your beliefs. You cannot hear a different point of view other than your own. All you can do is deny it. I pin that on your church because it is so mundane to it.

You have a very small world that is steeped in the blood of my people. It is the inheritance that your fathers left for you and you accept it every time you find fault in something not to your understanding of Christianity, even if that is vilifying a priest.

You want proof? Go find it. To you and people like you that is the only way you will come to it.

"And Shane, no, I am speaking too you because it illustrated my point about you. You’re the kind of Christian that circumcised my father when he was six as a form of punishment for speaking Ahnishnabemowin. You are the kind of Christian that then decries proof of that happening all the time ignoring the thousands of people that had similar experiences and never once offering proof your self that it did not happen."

My first post to you was an appologetic acknowledgement of that sort of thing along with a statement that I do not believe that such things constitute proof that the majority of the non-Christian world does not also share some basic commonality regarding sex and clothing. I hate that sort of thing. It is indeed sick and twisted, but then again, so is your blind and vitriolic hate of me, a person you have yet to even truly meet.

"Brett tried to be reasonable with you. He/she appears to be educated but has taken the moral high ground and never once made reference to your insistence that ONE class in art makes you some kind of authority on history."

Yet another in the endless stream of untruthfull assertions regarding what I said. Brett stated I should go and research Egypt after I mentioned that the art I have seen that is Egyptian invariably has them wearing clothes. There probably is a lot of Egyptian art out there I have never seen, but the fact that so much of it has them wearing clothes flew in the face of his assertion that Egyptians were largely free of clothing related taboos of any sort. I am still open to real discussion about that, but so far that's where it stands. You assertion of what I said is simply, flatly, obviously demonstrably a false one, which incidentally is why I keep saying, "I never said that," to you, and not because I have some sort of psychotic disconnect with reality that forces me to deny my own culpability in things as you have accused me.

"You go on and on about how you didn’t say such and such. You cry for “proof”. All the while you offer no proof of your own, absolutely refuse to acknowledge the sources both Brett and I have posted … and you would to ANYONE else that posted something against your beliefs. You cannot hear a different point of view other than your own. All you can do is deny it. I pin that on your church because it is so mundane to it."

Another really obvious falsehood. I have offered up China, and India, and the Middle East, and just the world in general with dozens upon dozens of nations and cultures and hundreds upon millions upon billions of people. You and Brett have presented a short list of some of the least known civilizations that exist and asserted that they reflect something very important about how cultures form their values regarding clothing and sex. I have agreed with every single one of both of your points EXCEPT the parts that tend to insinuate that being concerned with clothes or privacy in sexual matters is uniquely and unhealthily related to Christian prudishness. For this one small caveat, I continue to be completely and totally lambasted by you, Tim, and I find it faith affirming.

"You have a very small world that is steeped in the blood of my people. It is the inheritance that your fathers left for you and you accept it every time you find fault in something not to your understanding of Christianity, even if that is vilifying a priest."

Tim, until today I didn't even know you HAD a people. My hands are about as clean of your people's blood as a Chinaman's.

Your supposedly victimized people were active participants in wars since before the horrid white man arrived, and his arrival seems merely to have given your people fresh economic reasons to continue that passtime. In short, your moral outrage is hollow, vapid vanity. You were a proud, fighting people, but your people lost the big gambit for power in North America eventually, and now it's time to move on.

Still having hard times? Deal with it. Time to stop blaming the white man or his twisted churches. If we are so awful, what does it say about your culture that it could not withstand ours?

I'm done with you.

Actually, I just don't get involved in religious or political arguments that are that heated. It's a policy of mine, but again, you are free to read whatever you like into it. My limit was reached and that's that as far as my involvement is concerned. You'll note I also have not responded to any of your arguments directed to Tim's arguments, for that reason.

---Brett

It is true that we were and are capable of violence. That is obvious in how we never lost an armed conflict against the whiteman or how Bwandiac took all but two of the whiteman's forts during his war. It is like wise true that the whiteman gained dominance in this country out of lying, just as you are now.

“Moving on” to you and people like you, means forgetting who we were, or that we ever were. Instead of circumcising me to punish me for speaking my language you insist that I am just wrong, worse yet, you insist I am going to hell. It is unfortunate that your lies seep their way into any Indians ears such that they believe you. Brain washing is a powerful force and after the erroneous subjugation of the Odawa the larger population size of the Whitman (at that time) allowed him to force our children into their Christian schools to seed their poison firmly in Odawa people, as well as all Indian people. What does that say about white people? That they have the capacity for an evil that is boundless because it is cloaked in their Christian church. Nothing allows for the kind of evil like righteous condemnation. Not that any white person is bound to this legacy, they can choose to reject it. You have not.

Deal with it? I am, write now. At this very moment. We are YOUR shame and we will not go away. We do withstand you, because I, and others like me, withstand you. At the end of the day … Niinewiddashkohaung ndeznekas. Mukwa ndodem. Bodosega ndojeba minawa Wagankising Odawa ogichida ndaw. Choomokmanodeqway.

I would like to meet you in person, I would like to give you proof, because that proof would tear your heart out. Are we capable of violence? Today words are my war club we have withstood you.

Every time a white person like you says “You Indians get so much from the government”, or any one of a thousand screwed up ideas you buy the legacy your fathers left you. You accepted the legacy. Our blood is on your hands. To you I say do not deal with it. Do not twist it into whatever excuse you can think of … let it sit in your belly and rot. I think that there is a Jewish God that a man named Christ worshiped, I believe that you worship someone else and that the rot of your shame will identify you when you go to the other world. Your denile will not help you there. Nor will the spirits of those whites who have rejected what you have claimed as your own.

Oh, I totally understand what you're saying. In fact, I've gone as far as to plan the whole operation out for you!

I call it 'the Second Final Solution'.

That's because Catholic teachings, like any religious teachings, are beliefs not facts. It requires absolutely no facts to formulate or justify a belief. Liberal theologians who often dispute religious doctrine do so on the basis of examination of historical data, data which most forms of Christianity not only exclude but refuse to acknowledge the existance of, in spite of reality. Just look at how long it took the Catholic church to acknowledge the Copernican Theory or how many Christians still believe homosexuality is somehow based on a "choice" rather than genetics. Most Christians aren't even aware of the history of their religion.

For example, the Gnostic texts provide a different view of Christianity than that of the New Testament. These conflicting works were thus excluded from canon, and many Christians today don't even know of their existance. Thus, it's possible for fundamentalists to claim that Christianity somehow consists of a consistent view. Of course it does, since they're not looking at the whole picture.

Ask John Siegenthaler how accurate Wikipedia is. It is not, and won't be, accepted by academia because it does not possess a legitimate system of checks and balances to ensure accuracy. Academic publication is a rigorous routine to ensure accuracy (and even then, there have been examples of slip-ups). The lack of such means that the data in Wikipedia is suspect because if any biased and uninformed moron can add to it, that's exactly who will.

Take care,

Jason

No doubt one would need to fact check a Wiki entry vs than an actual encyclopedia, but that's not what's been going on here. Tim has simply been attacking the information in it in lieu of presenting his own evidence, or for that matter bothering to look into whether or not the things I posted from it were accurate.

I actually said at one point, "is that or is that not accurate?" The proof that Tim didn't even bother to read it is that it was indeed inaccurate, not because of Wiki but because the Turtle island he was referencing was not the same one I came up with in my search. So he's just skimming and slinging mud and you're defending him on the grounds that Wiki isn't as reliable in some sense as a hardbound copy of Encycolpedia Britanica on your desk.

Well, surprise of surprises, I already understood that too. I just find the fact that people think a piece of paper from a university is the measure of intelligence need a wake up call, and the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia articles are quite accurate, and they do have a system in place for fact checking. It is peer reviewed in that sense, it is simply not the same group of people who are deemed "peers", and academics seem to hate that, and I love every minute of it.

It is always extremely disconcerting to me, and weakens my faith in mankind, when someone like Tim just goes off and normally decent people just sort of stand by and watch.

There's no excuse for what eventually became of this thread.

Couldn't resist.

It is true what you say, but the fact remains that gnosticism is distinguishable from Catholicism which is distinguishable from Protestentism which is distinguishable from Daoism.

The really funny thing about Copernicus is he had no experimental evidence. The scientific community of today would be every bit as skeptical of such a man as they were then, and the utter vitriol that oozes from the scientific community at even the hint of walking outside accepted guidelines regarding such things is as strong or stronger than it ever was under Catholicism.

Imagine someone believing homosexuals have some choice in the matter, given the number of people who chose to practice bisexuality. Scandal!!!!

Carefull Prof.1515 Shane will have you lumped with Brett and I in no time.

Although it does seem like we have softened him/her up a bit for you, at least now the rhetoric is less than the absolute infallibility of church doctrine and Wiikipidia entries. You might even get a cognitive post until you hit a point Shane just can’t accept.

Let me suggest raising the point of the early church’s attempts to suppress the women in their faith. That will tie in nicely with the Gnostics and I am sure the topic will spring Shane’s button.