uRreading2slow

Joined 8 years ago

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Aug 13

> Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

-- George Orwell, Proposed Preface to "Animal Farm"

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Comment · 8 years ago

> we're all supposed to be ashamed of porn and sex outside of marriage in the west

So basically, you're not aware of any of the stuff I'm referring to, and reroute it to what you do know. It isn't the weakest possible interpretation of what I wrote, it's completely out of bounds -- there is no way you honestly think I'm referring to extramarital sex with "horrible, vile stuff" and "excessive dehumanization". And it's pointless and a bit unfair, because I can't show you anything, and even to just describe it in detail would ruin my day.

I don't feel anything I'm "supposed to" either -- including this idea that if someone is into X, and it's legal, you can't say bad things about it, but they can say good things about it all day long. Because "it's a thing", and once it's a thing, it's just there in the world as an item to pick off the shelf and consume, and the cardinal sin is to have any opinions on the choices of other consumers. All that matters is that someone wants something, and that it's legal. People are into things because they are into them, end of discussion, and in many cases also end of reflection.

That's like one "camp", and anyone who has anything to say about that other than "awesome" has be be conservative, religious, whatever. It's like many conflicts, try to talk sense to hawks on either side and they cannot imagine you as anything but a "supporter of the other side". If you can imagine shame and horror only as response to social conditioning, religious upbringing, and so on, you by necessity cannot understand where I'm coming from.

If I had the choice to give an earful to anyone who consumes or makes movies and games and music, as someone who gamed a lot, loves music (but to be honest kinda stopped watching a lot of movies) or to anyone who makes or consumes porn, porn doesn't even enter consideration. But the subject at hand was porn, and while I don't think the person I responded to meant it that way, taken literally they said that any adult site, i.e. all of them, is nothing to be ashamed of. That is the only reason I responded, that's too broad for me to agree.

Comment · 8 years ago

I generally agree, but in this day and age, there is also real horrid, vile stuff... just follow banner ads on random free porn sites and you'll find a lot that is more an excessive dehumanization arms race than anything to do with sex.

People don't have to be ashamed of it in the sense that they didn't choose to get so damaged to be attracted by it, but abuse and it's consequences is a major elephant on the couch of the porn industry, and I also don't feel a shred of shame for not lumping it all together into one giant bag of "it's all fine", just like I can't lump it together as being all bad.

To each his own also means that I see what I see, and judge it as I judge it.

Comment · 8 years ago

If you have issues with protecting children from harm by predators, apart from that kind of being a red flag, I would rest assured that any kids ideally will be adults one day, with their potential heavily influenced by what they went through as "mere kids". Think of it as a really cheap way of helping adults.