April 06, 2007

Alan Moore on pornography Just to recap, then, sexually progressive cultures gave us mathematics, literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust. (via monkeyfilter...)
posted by dng 17 years ago
  • Venus of Willendorf?! Pr0nography?? Noooooooo! I mean . . Awwww yeahh baby . . mmmm hmmm . .
  • Facile, masturbatory logorrhea. I have four words for Alan Moore: Shut Up And Fuck.
  • One! Two! Three! Four! /Ramones
  • The Venus of Willendorf is nothing compared to the Willie of Venusdorf. (Joking aside, it was an interesting read.)
  • What the hell? What about Leonardo Da Vinci? That was a sexually restrictive culture. Another lame theory bites the dust.
  • Alan Moore makes brilliant pornography - Lost Girls is shiver inducing. His analysis of pornography, maybe not so much. That said, Leonardo da Vinci's period was less sexually repressed than the 18th or 19th century. For men, it wasn't very sexually repressed at all - and even lower class women had a lot more freedom than most people realise. There was a lot of playing about, especially during bethrothals. (At least, over in England - I think upper class was more strict for women). But you know, I tend to think of things which celebrate sex as a beautiful, mutual pleasure between two or more people (as Moore's work does) as not being pornography - maybe I am all elitist if I call it "erotica", but it just seems to nice to be "pornography". That word smacks of much more one-sided works of explicitness.
  • The one thing I've learned in my short time on this planet is that sex is bloody dangerous. Why anyone would risk it save for the sole purpose of making heirs I shall never know. I hope people who come into contact with other people's genitals in their daily working life have some serious insurance.
  • For artistic passion and fecundity, I'll back extraordinarily repressed nineteenth-century Vienna against any of Moore's groovy-free-love fantasy civilizations. For they are fantasies, safely insulated by the millenia. *wonders if there's a market for Venus of Willendorf buttplugs*
  • Pornocrates and her pig (kinda NSFW)
  • fuyu - it's not terribly dangerous when in a monogamous relationship. And it's completely safe on your own - and always one of nature's best pleasures, and unlike many others, not at all fattening. So, for pleasure, and for the bonding effect.
  • Who the hell is monogamous these days? The very concept has been extinguished from the modern Western society. If I take my contemporaries who are still single, most have had dozens of sexual relationships. I don't think I know anyone who is still with their first partner.
  • I don't think "monogamous" is meant to mean "only with one person in your life ever." You (clean) + partner (clean) + nobody else = not terribly dangerous.
  • I don't think "monogamous" is meant to mean "only with one person in your life ever." Har! My mother takes the word to mean this, and thinks the worse of me for what I think of as "serial monogamy".
  • One person ever? F@#% me!
  • Does the old "write what you know" advice apply to pornographers?
  • The one thing I've learned in my short time on this planet is that rock climbing is bloody dangerous. Why anyone would risk it save for the sole purpose of making it to the top I shall never know. I hope people who come into contact with cliff faces in their daily working life have some serious insurance.
  • fuyu - I know people who are still with their first partner. That is not, of course, the definition of monogamous. I, personally, am monogamous - I currently have sex with only one person. That is what monogamy means "these days", and what it has always meant. (Except for when it's used to describe a marriage pattern - eg most countries in the western world do not allow more than two people to be recognised as legally married.) Many people of my generation have engaged in serial monogamy, but it is still monogamy. You both get tested, as a matter of course. I used to always get my birth control at a clinic which also tested me for everything they could think of. It was great - I knew I was fairly low risk (being in a long term monogamous relationship), but it was an added layer of assurance. Polyamorous people have to take more precautions, but if you carry on sensibly the benefits outweigh the risks. Live action pronography does have serious issues - they have been testing the actors regularly, but there have been problems. The women are most vulnerable - there are many women in the industry, and fewer men, so if a man is infected with anything he will pass it to many women. Personally, I would simply pass a law that anyone making pornography must use condoms, visibly - it would not only protect the actors, but promote the use of condoms as just standard. If I were a pizza delivery boy, I would always carry condoms, just in case. Of course, pornography in the form of literature or drawn art has none of these problems, and is the safest thing on the planet. Except for the paper cuts.
  • (Remarriage rates in the early modern period show that monogamy has never meant only having sex with one person in your life. Of course, bastardy rates also show that they often didn't wait for marriage, either, and also some had adulterous affairs, and everything you can imagine. So "these days" are not so very different from "those days".)