Posts by Russell Brown
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I recently discovered that I am in fact one-sixteenth curmudgeon. It was a humbling experience.
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Out of curiosity, how would people feel about a parent forcing a child to stand on one leg, or hold an arm above their head, for thirty minutes until it started to cause pain?
When I was a kid we knew a perfectly nice family where the punishments for naughtiness included having hot mustard put on your tongue, and having your head flushed in the toilet. This could happen while we were visiting.
I recall feeling grateful I didn't have to put up with that. We would very occasionally get a smack with the wooden spoon. I don't recall feeling chastised so much as resentful.
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From a current Slashdot thread:
it's funny, i just checked out 2nd life last night -- first time since a year or two ago -- and i was pretty amazed -- the place is one big car lot or sex club. really. i guess there are two kinds of people in 2nd life now -- the people selling "sex", and the people trying to sell their objects to buy the "sex".
it really was a cool online social experiment -- it only ultimately confirmed what we knew all along -- the internet is good only for porn and consumerism.
now, think about this for a second. first, it's not real sex that is drawing people. it's not even imagery of real people having sex. it's interaction of poorly-rendered avatars in a virtual world. this is a testament to the power of the sexual drive in humans, and what we decide to do with our best technology..... just a friendly reminder that yes, we are doomed.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/25/1459234
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"I'm really uncomfortable with what seems like a growth in the "girls gone wild" type porn, when there's a pack mentality and also lots of booze involved. That seems pretty borderline consentual when the girls are often about to pass out."
LOL everyone's got their own special gripe.
I don't know if it's a gripe, so much as the element of consent being so dubious.
OTOH, the folks (men and women) who send in videos of themselves masturbating to orgasm - showing their faces only - to beautifulagony.com seem to be harming no one, and being exploited by no one. It's still porn, and people pay $15 a month for it, but compared to Second Life, it seems rather healthy.
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http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/02/23/second-life-sketches-please-stop-doing-that-to-the-cat/
Good old Boing Boing.Eeeew.
But interesting in a so-not-interested-in-playing-Second-Life way ...
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I thought a bit more about the claims of a runaway raunch culture while I was making dinner and stacking the dishwasher. It occurs to me that this isn't the first time around.
In the late 60s and early 70s, the media was convulsed by mini-skirts and hot pants. A little later on, Thursday, the independent woman's weekly edited by Marcia Russell, ran ads showing more flesh than the ones you'd see in the women's magazines today.
At the same time, certain male counterculture heroes treated women abysmally.And some people were so brainless as to let Bert Potter mess with their kids at Centrepoint. And yet these were the years when the reproductive rights battle was won.
In the US, Hugh Hefner was a hero. 'Deep Throat', an actual porn film, was the height of fashion (later on, of course, we discovered how dreadfully Linda Lovelace was treated by her scumbag husband).
Things are different now, of course. I've just watched Melanie Reid's 60 Minutes story about some local Second Life players. Perhaps it was unrepresentative, but is it all that porny? Everyone's avatar seemed to be considerably enhanced. She talked to a 70 year-old married man who got his in-game business rolling with money from working in-game as a gay escort. Meanwhile, the very pornified Nicky Watson features in one of the highest-rating TV shows of the year, and has the run of certain Sunday newspapers. Celebrity culture sometimes seems like one long lapdance. Explicit porn is more acceptable that it used to be.
And yet women lead us in the political and business spheres, and girls outstrip boys at school. The kind of sexist claptrap you'd get in the 70s is hard to find outside the breakfast show on The Rock. Sexual offending against women is far lower. And while the dresses are the size of handkerchiefs down the Viaduct on a Saturday night, I don't think that many girls really want to be Paris Hilton or a porn star.
I'm not implying causality in any direction. It's just ... interesting.
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sigh* And before the Sunday Star-Times gets too sanctimonious about 'raunch' culutre - does anyone really give the proverbial rat's rectum where - or in who - Matthew Ridge is putting any part of his body?
Actually, you could say that Ridgey's playing the classic male-in-porn role: he really is no more than an appendage.
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So, should females box, play rugby and is women's tennis just porn?
No - it still matters that Lindsay Davenport's got game and Anna Kournikova never did. But athletes of either sex can be pretty good to look at, and that is one of the reasons people watch.
There was a time when you couldn't safely say that a female athlete was both good at her job and pretty fine. I guess now that Daniel Carter's getting about in that tight jersey and appearing on giant billboards in his undies, it's a bit different.
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the other major problem i have with this is the difficulty of talking about the whole issue. i remember a principal of a girls high school complaining about a billboard near her school that she objected to (in 2005 i think?), and she got universally panned for speaking against it.
Was that the Vegas Girl sign on K Road? You could almost make a heritage value argument for that. But what surprised me was the public clamour in favour of Boobs on Bikes last year. I personally couldn't see why a creep like Steve Crow got to promote his porn show in such a fashion.
On the other hand ... I recall dissing the conservative city councillors who got upset about bare boobs and butts in the Hero Parade years ago. Was that different? So this is why I'm conflicted ...
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Now to see if this comment will make it through the filters at work…
Best start packing up your things ...
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