Yes, yes it is. Good or bad, right or wrong, effective or not, there is a strong effort amongst the right, and a few on the left, to "sanitize" and censor all things sexual on the Internet. Even in cases where they're not outright banning sites, they shadowban, block keywords, meta-tags, deactivate search engine terms, try to force things behind paywalls, forced ID verification and on and on. At the same time, certain porn "hub" sites are accessible with one click, OnlyFans types sites are in an abundance and flourishing, so it makes no sense...not that much of what politicians under pressure do makes sense to begin with...but it's still happening. :)
Some people are obsessed with exerting control over others, often over matters that don't concern them. It's not about porn or adult material per se, it's about power. And money. As far as I'm concerned, other than the usual caveats regarding minors and non-consensual participation (and the penalties for those should be harsh!), live and let live. Watching someone get massaged with a rubber chicken while dressed as a Hobbit may not be my jam but I'm free to scroll on past.
ReplyDeleteAmericans have a weird relationship with sex. Massive producers and consumers but also incredibly puritanical. That's fucked up.
Okay FL..gotta say: "Watching someone get massaged with a rubber chicken while dressed as a Hobbit." got me...a little hot. 😁
DeleteNice picture. I’d love to be that saddle.
ReplyDeleteSo many years ago, I was reluctant to ask my girlfriend to leave her boots on. I was afraid she’d think I was weird. It was only the very beginning of course.
If there had been an internet in 1967, maybe i would have realized my particular passions, obsessions and fetishes were not so rare and I could have avoided a decade of guilt and unfulfilling relationships.
You are correct Rosco. The Internet has been, in many cases, the single best "therapist" for humanity...in that it allowed people of like mind to communicate with others, and realize they are not alone in their interests and thoughts. :)
DeleteSexual content always scares the government. Of course its all in that effort to "Save the children." I think I rather have kids look at people fucking than having them play violent video games, but hey that's just me. So while the sights are not being taken off they are now requiring one to identify ones self and that means names, addresss etc are now available for the government. Putting ones trust in government is like putting ones trust in a leaky life boat.
ReplyDeleteCould not have said it better myself bdenied. Americans are so whacked out over sex, which is natural, and yet fine with kids seeing a million murders on TV, which is not natural. Totally backwards. One is consent, one is not. One is normal, one is not. One is beautiful, the other is violent and ugly. One they try to outlaw, the other they glorify. What the hell? :)
DeleteThe MPAA had to change its rating from X to NC-17 in 1990 because it didn’t trademark the X rating and the adult film industry made extensive use of the term X - much to the chagrin of the MPAA.
DeleteThe first film to receive the NC-17 rating was Henry & June, “an American biographical drama” starring Uma Thurman, Maria de Medeiros, and Fred Ward. Directed by Philip Kaufman, the film is “loosely based” on Anaïs Nin’s posthumously published autobiography of her life with playwright Henry Miller and his wife June. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Janet Maslin’s review in the New York Times “noted the film's efforts to present sex in a more artistic, highbrow manner, remarking, "The film's sex scenes, photographed delicately by Philippe Rousselot and directed with great intensity by Mr. Kaufman, are particularly lofty. These sequences, often tinged with symbolism (a hand playing a guitar juxtaposed with a hand on a woman's breast), tend to be self-consciously bold," but felt the film lacked daring.”
That same year saw, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Blind Fury, Dick Tracy, Die Hard 2, Navy Seals, The Exorcist III, Death Warrant, Goodfellas, and Night of the Living Dead all received the R rating.
If you show someone cut a woman’s breast off that film is rated R. If you show someone kissing a woman’s breast that film is rated NC-17.
There was another example of an absurd NC-17 film that year: Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. It’s got a fully nude man, with a straight penis -hard to say that it was erect because he’s been cooked and he’s being served as the main course at a fancy formal dinner party. (He deserved it!)
At root, this national obsession with sexuality is a direct violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. No, not freedom of speech - though it clearly applies; but, it violates the establishment clause. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The belief that some things are obscene, and that sex is sinful is a manifestation of the Judeo-Christian religious belief system and it should have no place in our laws. That’s not just an anonymous author on the Internet who argued that point- that’s William O. Douglas, the late Supreme Court justice, who steadfastly refused to watch the purported obscene films that were then before the Supreme Court. He was absolutely correct in his reasoning that there’s no obscenity for the law to regulate. He argued that criminal acts were just that, crimes. If a film shows a crime committed then charges should be filed. Otherwise it was beyond the scope of the law to decide what constitutes an obscene act. Justice Potter Stewart was not willing to concede the point and when Douglas asked him to define what constitutes obscenity Stewart replied, “I know it when I see it!” Black letter law there, justice Stewart.
Religion has to have some means of controlling the behavior of the tribe. Withholding food and water cannot go on for very long before the believer start dropping like flies (he said during Lent & Ramadan), but withholding sex from people until such time as the church has instructed them is a very pernicious practice. It has led us to deny our humanity and our bodily integrity.
As Voltare wrote, Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
We are living in a very dangerous time.
I’m going to see about getting my ass beat so that I can have a few minutes free of obscenities coming down from our Tangerine Tyrant, King Donnie, The First Felon.
Great breakdown and overview. And on the point of "crime" as in is there a victim, what the above points out is, no, there is only the crime of "thought". Someones (sexual) thoughts wrote a book or made a movie. Someones ideas created that, and they shared it with others in whatever medium, but no one was forced, robbed, murdered, raped, hurt, enslaved, so there was no victim, so it's a "thought crime". Thanks for posting this. :)
DeleteAgree 100% on your comment above Vanessa re sex and violence and the different ways both get treated.
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