Sexy is good! Regardless of the social scrutiny and pressures we all face to fit into a "norm" decided by religion, politics, elitists, and a protectionist censorship, sexy is good! Countries like France have learned to embrace it, countries like the US "polarize" it from lack of understanding, education, courage, and a "healthy" outlook on sexuality. We owe it to ourselves to not miss out on the elemental pleasures gifted to us with life.
Do you think the video displays inappropriate sexuality?
My impression is that as a society, we try to censor our way to preventing teen pregnancies, teen births, teen abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases. I’m assuming those are the issues we are concerned with regarding sexuality otherwise the censorship is a function of religion, politics, and elitists imposing their own bias. If those biases have no real consequence such as those of teen pregnancy and so are really just imposing lifestyle choices or voodoo values on the rest of us, maybe we should be less afraid of sexuality and more embracing of it. How is it that there was such a negative connotation placed around the incident when Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime event? She’s a woman, it was a breast, what’s the big deal? Oh, we are afraid the underage children may have been traumatized? Weren’t they most likely feeding from a breast just after being born? Oh, but they didn’t know what it was then! They didn’t know that seeing that breast they were feeding from was a bad thing because we had not told them yet. Now that the children are older, they know that seeing a breast is bad because we have told them so! Aren’t the children really traumatized based on the prior education and introduction to sexuality we have given them? If the adults that make up society in the US are not comfortable with their own sexuality, it seems unlikely that they will be able to raise their children to have a healthy outlook on sexuality and how to handle their thoughts and emotions when presented with sexuality. It is much easier to censor it because then we don’t have to talk about it or face the difficult task of educating.
If we think censorship is the right approach, then perhaps we should examine the effectiveness compared to the approaches of other cultures. Oh wait, that’s been done! The results are that the US has more teenage pregnancies, births, abortions and sexually transmitted diseases that in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. But how can that be when there are such provocative advertisements and other media including degrees of nudity in these countries? How is it that a country like the Netherlands can have such a sexually explicit culture evidenced by its famous “Red Light District” and have better adolescent health than the US? These point are taken from an article written by written by Ammie Feijoo, MLS, and published by Advocates for Youth in 2000 and 2001 and is accessible on the Advocates for Youth website at this link: http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/419?task=view
So maybe in a society plagued by such high divorce rates, low and no sex marriages, and a lower level of adolescent sexual health, it is time to rethink censorship and consider embracing and educating. Maybe we would all enjoy more pleasurable lives. Isn’t it a confusing state when deaths of thousands is less important that an extramarital affair? Recall that we sought to impeach a president for lying about having an affair with a Whitehouse intern, and sought no consequences for a president that lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The following article is very illustrative of America’s confused view of sexuality, a double-faced Puritanism. The author suggests that America looks forward to sexual indiscretions as vehicles to talk more about sexuality. He asks “What does that really mean? It is clearly a furious condemnation of sexual pleasures by criminalizing the heterosexual act. Every man is a rapist, every woman may be a victim. The flattering remark is a first step to harassment, seduction is on the road to rape, gallantry is a euphemism to blur the man’s predatory moves. The flesh leads to corruption, desire is dangerous.”
Making War, Not Love: A French View On Sex In America - From Abu Ghraib To DSK
Op-Ed: A prominent French intellectual's j'accuse against a nation that accepts lies to justify war, while extra-marital sex is the equivalent of "national betrayal." Pascal Bruckner on America's obsession with sex, and what it says about a nation with a Puritan past -- and uncertain future. http://www.worldcrunch.com/making-war-not-love-french-view-sex-america-abu-ghraib-dsk/3642
Really something to think about. Can change really occur? Cultures have forces within them that seek to maintain status quo and keep the current state in its equilibrium. Crisis is often an initiator of change. What possible crisis might motivate America to view sexuality differently?
The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love by Thomas Moore is a very interesting book that aims to restore sex to its rightful place in the human psyche as an experience of the soul.
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