Score: 6
"Eh, sex and porn are not the same issue"
date: November 15, 2008
You're alright, though. I think about 70 percent of this was wise and showed a healthy level of critical thought, but the whole thing isn't so black and white as all this. I think you go too far to one extreme to avoid the other, and you should always be more measured and restrained about such things. A common mistake.
Not everybody opposing "porn" (staged film and print depiction of sexual humiliation) are uneducated rednecks, religious extremists, or fascists. It's of course always problematic when you begin to legislate morality on a federal level, I would never suggest otherwise, but you didn't take that position so much as you said "anybody who has objections to porn on any principle is unreasonable and stupid, and just believes what they are told to". So we agree completely on this key aspect.
But somehow, I can't picture a single one of the great anarchists, humanitarians, philosophers (except maybe Nietzsche, but he was a bit of a misogynist dick) or feminist intellectuals advocating the virtues of pornography. I can't see Kropotkin or Emma Goldman, or Einstein, or Plato, or Chomsky, or Buddha, or Kierkegaard, or Kant.... and so forth and so on, getting off on a donkey punch video. I rather think they would find it enormously degrading to everybody involved. It's a rather sick state for a society to be in where anybody has to sell their sex for a living. I equally wouldn't want to be the one getting jizzed on or doing the jizzing for a living.
I don't think this is a sex issue at all, nor a matter of sexual repression. In my mind, it's quite the opposite, as many studies being done prove how stultifying ubiquitous hardcore pornography can be to the development of a child's sexual awareness, and the general compassion and attitudes people have towards one another. Of course I do not believe prostitution, drugs, or pornography should be "illegal", that would be irrational and dense considering the very obvious damage such laws inflict on society. We could go a long way to talk about that. Prostitution may be one of the world's oldest trades, but we can't validate by existing precedent alone, otherwise we could bring back slavery without any qualms. Critical observation of anthropology isn't about blind default justification.
In general the spirit of this animation is right on, I like to see more skeptics around. If you aren't cynical in a society like this, you are not thinking. The problem as I said, is you go too far to one side to avoid the other, and you lose your ability to reason. So it's not the spirit of the message I have conflict with, it's the details and specifics of your treatment, which I definitely think is hasty and undeveloped intellectually. I think you are right in the sentiment "American Hates Sex", but if you really examine the concept you realize how the mixture of repression and general immaturity towards the subject can be tremendously unhealthy when you combine with an abundance of confusing, violent, and degrading sexual exploitation (this is an unfair blanket statement, I just can't be specific enough with the comment constraints here). Obviously I do not support any kind of censorship.
I don't think Orwell was at all misapplied here. If you do in fact read 1984 and understand it, the parallels are remarkably uncanny and scary today. Read Brave New World, though, it sort of applies the opposite critique of sex in society. As opposed to repression it explores how it can be used as a decadent distraction to objectify. And if you look at advertising and popular culture now, like television and music, sex is very much used to that end. It's just something further to think about.
Keep it up, and be well,
-Gord
December 14, 2008
Author's Response:
I think you're looking to deep into a flash that was always intended to be black and white in it's nature and completely stupid. How stupid this flash plays out is actually the whole joke I'm getting across. It's actually a parody of my own cartoon "Passion of the Christians", which exhibits the same problems you mention in the first part of your post, which because of, causes me to regret making that cartoon.
This is why I hate doing cartoons with messages in them. I can never get my ideas across without looking like a total dick trying to push his own opinions.
