In light of recent events I figured a double post wednesday was ok. I was studying for my Law and Society final and was going over American obscenity and sexual laws when it struck me how weird they are. The laws themselves reflect cultural values we have about sex, so maybe it'd be a good idea to start my analysis there.
I find it strange that pornography is stigmatized within our society. Porn is depicting people having sex. Sex is such a fundamental part of being human, or even alive, that stigmatizing it is objectively as strange as stigmatizing videos of people eating. Granted there are types of pornography that involve criminal behavior that probably should be outlawed. But the vast majority isn't. One argument is that it objectifies women or debases them in some way. Again I'm sure there are types of porn based entirely upon debasing women, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority isn't. Does porn objectify or debase the men that participate? I'd also like to see some evidence of this happening. With the proliferation of the internet, porn has spread widely through society. There's your IV, show me a DV.
I think it far more likely that people simply don't like porn because of the puritan culture in which we are born, and make up arguments in order to justify it for the general public. Professor James Hunter's arguments about cultural conflict theory can be applied very well here.
Obscenity laws are also interesting. For starters I'm not sure why being naked in public is a crime. Is the human body itself so intrinsically repulsive that we must wear clothes to cover it up? It's almost as if we wear clothes as a shield to our base desires. It's almost as if theres a collective unconscious fear that if no one were to wear clothes, suddenly everyone would lose control and have mass orgies out on the streets.
One common argument is that we have obscenity laws to protect our children. No doubt that there are pedophiles out there who would take advantage of a universal lack of clothing in some way, and such behavior should be repressed for the health of the members of the society. But I feel that the argument is predominantly that being exposed to nudity, especially of the other sex, somehow ruins childhood innocence. Sex as an act may do that, in that many people see the act of sex itself as a rite of passage to adulthood, adulthood meaning being able to have children. I'd argue that being exposed to the other sex does not ruin children. I'd also like to point out that we are apparently the only species that cares about this. Have you ever heard about a chimpanzee, dolphin, squirrel, etc. ever being traumatized from youth despite being naked themselves as well as every other member of their species?
We as a culture seem so afraid of our own bodies. And I'm not sure theres a good reason why. Sex itself is so overly stigmatized. It's a natural part of life and yet we as a culture seem so afraid of it. This is probably due in some way to our puritan/victorian england cultural heritage.
Bad words are another interesting topic. I saw an episode of Campus PD in which an officer arrested someone for swearing in public on disorderly conduct. Thats how serious swearing can be in the US.
As we english speakers know, there are varying degrees of bad words. We have feces, poop, crap, shit. Heck, hell. Consummate a relationship, have sex with, fuck. Do any of these variations actually mean anything different? No, all that is different are their connotations, and their connotations are only different because we make them so as a culture. There is nothing inherently wrong with any word, they just seem that way because we make them so.
I guess I'm trying to point out that theres nothing inherently wrong with so many things that people perceive to be wrong. Many of these things are perceived wrongs only because we perceive them to be wrong. Theres nothing intrinsically wrong about them, and often times the things that we define as wrong we do so with no good reason.
On a random side note, i remember hearing once that some Inuit tribe in northern Canada had seven words or so for snow. As an American I thought this crazy. There's just snow. How can you have seven variations of it? Then it was explained to me that snow is a huge part of their culture, that they are exposed to so much of it that they do perceive 7 variations worthy of different words. It was defined in their language and culture as such. Then I thought, how many words can you name that all mean shit?
I think the snow and poop analogy is kind of flawed because ..
ReplyDeleteWell the tribe that has many words for snow, its because they're exposed to it so much they are so familiar with it that they have a different word for each type of snow, like icy light snow, or a really sticky heavy snow, or whatever. That's a lot different from the reason why we have many words for poop; we don't have different words for poop based on what it looks like or its type. The different words all mean the same thing but have (like you said) different connotations or stigmas in society.
So the poop and snow are kind of similar, but I just wanted to point out this difference.
fair point. So maybe as you said its kinda similar but not really. I guess in the end that last part was more of a humorous thing rather then a critique of american society via its language haha
ReplyDeleteBeing a linguistics major, I can't resist chiming in on the "seven (or more) words for snow in Inuit" thing... Basically, it's a morphology thing and related to how that particular language forms words. It's not that they have a plethora of words for snow, it's just that they can form more words that allude to snow in some way or another.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow
(yes, Wikipedia is king.)
Anyway, this was as interesting post. I particularly LOLed @ "It's almost as if theres a collective unconscious fear that if no one were to wear clothes, suddenly everyone would lose control and have mass orgies out on the streets" ... probably becauuse that sentence immediately lends itself to amusing mind imagery. I agree that it's all socialized norms and none of it is completely logical - or, to put it simply, it's just not how it *has* to be naturally. It doesn't seem like anything about our values/thinking with regard to porn, nudity, sex, obscenity, etc is >inherent<.
Also, a point about porn: I have no problem with the thing itself, but I often wonder about what it may say about a person that he/she watches porn. Does it say that we're really horny? Or that we're pathetically lonely and thus not getting our needs fulfilled? The former's not so bad (in my opinion), but the latter -- as a social statement -- is probably pitiful in society's eyes... and we tend to care about what people think of us. Hm. Incoherent pointless thoughts = YAY.
Haha I'm glad you found it amusing. Lots of people that talked to me about this told me how they were amused in one way or another.
ReplyDeleteI think it's hard to stereotype all porn-watchers into one social or causal category since there are many that watch for a wide variety of reasons. I listened to a talk by David Brooks recently, where he mentioned that people have a tendency to feel like they're experiencing something for themselves by watching someone else doing it. People have a sensation of having sex without actually having sex. Also, Brook's idea doesn't just apply to porn, but also to eating, exercising, whatever.
And why do people want the feeling of having sex without actually having sex? A wide variety of reasons, i think. You can fulfill sexual desires without actually having sex (because of any sort of impotence), and the reasons for wanting that are myriad.