A rant on today's society's view of sexuality - featuring Sareth and Nekura

I have, I admit, a rather odd view on the subject of nudity, sexuality, art, and porn. And I'm arrogant enough to feel it's worth actually tossing out here and making you folk all wade through it. I do not expect everyone, or even most of you, to agree with me.

Before I begin, lest anyone start getting any ideas while reading this, I have not, and will not, draw any MT character in a sexual situation. Period. Any PMs asking me to draw MT characters having sex will be forwarded to Ray to be dealt with properly. They're not my characters, I'm not gonna mess with them like that. My own characters... that's a different story.

Now, on to the meat of the subject.

I, personally, believe that it is possible to depict not just the nude body, but human sexuality in a way that is artistic and of benefit to society.

To me, porn is defined as the depiction of a person or people engaged in meaningless or degrading sexual activity. Note, I did not say nude people engaged in such acts. I leave that out for a reason. Why? Because, to be blunt, I consider half the stuff you see in movies marketed to 14 year old kids to be more pornographic than a Playboy.

Think about it. Look at a lot of the movies out there. You won't see any penetration, of course. But good lord. Hot and steamy action between people who just met, and can't possibly be in love. That's okay to show 14 year old kids, according to our authorities.

On the other hand, some people view Michelangelo's David (Wikipedia link) as horribly vile and nasty because OMG he has a penis. (Just like every other male on the planet. Woah.) One fellow attempted to smash the statue a few years back (he succeeded in breaking a few toes off, damaging an irreplaceable cultural treasure.) Or what about Rodin's "the Kiss?" (Wikipedia link) A nude man and a nude woman, deeply and passionately kissing... Oh, we can't have that!

Horseshit. We not only can, but in my opinion, we SHOULD. Why?

Currently, in much of the Western world, particularly the U.S, we treat our bodies and sex lives like it's a dirty thing. Crude jokes in the laundry room, gratuitous sex in movies, T&A to sell laundry detergent... We've made it acceptable outside the bedroom only if it's a sick joke or a money making strategy. So guess what we take into our private lives when we close the bedroom door to spend the night with our S.O?

I've known couples who were married to one another. Every religious and legal stricture was being met. And they were still horribly embraced and even ashamed to be seen by their own spouse. Because that's what we've turned our bodies into. Things of shame.

To hell with that. If we can counter that, we should! people should not be ashamed of their own body, and should delight in being looked at by their S.O.

Rather than hiding these things, we should be edifying them. Respecting them. HONORING them. Know why the Greeks depicted nude men and women so often? Because the human body was the pinnacle of creation. The human body, god inspired and shaped, was the best of all natural works. Hiding god/goddess/the entire pantheon's best work and being ashamed of it really says something about your view of god. The Greeks, (and later the Romans) got it. They held it up as the standard, as perfection, as beauty, as a gift that was divinely given.

The Greeks and Romans did sports in the nude. We have a boob pop out in a football game and scream about the corruption of our youth. What is up with that?

Similarly, sex. It's important. It can be a terrible thing, yes. When treated poorly. But it can also be a very powerful positive in one's life. When two people who love one another passionately slip between the sheets it brings them together, binds them not just in body but in soul, and firms up the relationship. Why in the world should we treat that as shameful? Why sweep something so beautiful under the rug? Why use it only to sell blue jeans?

I am a father. Maybe this is weird of me, but it is my sincere hope and dream that, when they reach an age that they are ready to find people who will fulfill and complete them, I want them to know what they are looking for. The passion of "the Kiss?" That should be their goal. They should know to look for a husband (or wife, I'm open minded) that gives them that level of connection, that affection, that deep seated passion. But if all they get is sex scenes in movies that have no real relationship, how the devil will they know what to look for?

We need positive examples. We need to edify the human body as something to be proud of, and we need to celebrate the good parts of sex while warning against the bad parts. But if we're hiding it and pretending it doesn't exist, we can't do that. If we're treating it as a crass commodity, then that's what we're taking with us into the bedroom.

In my Deviant Art account I have an entire sub-gallery labelled "Sexuality." In it there are numerous nudes. Some of them are clearly engaged in foreplay, or in affectionate behaviour that involves a lack of clothes. Many would call that porn. I don't. I have exactly ONE picture in my DA I myself call porn, and that one was made to illustrate a point about the character. The rest are, I believe, depictions of an ideal, something that should be edified and viewed as praiseworthy. Something that I think we as a society should desire, not be ashamed of.

To close, I think I'll leave you with an interesting point that brought it home to me once. I received an angry note on my DA a year or so back. The anger was not directed at me, it was directed at the policy DeviantArt had at the time, and the society that had spawned it. She made the following statement. "I'm a young woman. I have those parts. I know what they look like. I look at them regularly while bathing or dressing. They are nothing special. So why is it against the rules for me to see a drawing of the very thing I have?"

Makes sense to me...

/rant off

The old man never thought that all of the responses to his rant in that thread would positive ones. Seeing all of those who responded to his rant agreeing him totally or at least mostly... it actually restores some of the faith I used to have into humanity but that was lost, thanks to the bollocks called political correctness and many other, much worse things that have happened in the recent years (you know, all that totally fucked up, life destroying shit that has been happening).

The other post I am quoting here is a response to Sareth's rant by the MT user NekuraEtowaru (most folks on the forums simply call her Nekura) and shows a fine example of the double standard that always comes along with this subject:

@Sareth excellent post! I would also add that there is definitely a double standard. When I was 17 and change, I did some modelling. For a catalogue shoot once, I was wearing pumps, stockings, some VERY nice jewelry...and a smile. In a catalogue that is apparently okay, but if that same picture had appeared in Playboy, it would have been someone's ass, because of my age. So if I'm selling bracelets and earrings, I can be half naked, but if it's in a mens magazine it is exploitation? Are you SHITTIN' me? Either way it's still sellin sex

Nekura, sex doesn't sell, it rents

Mind you that she did that shot about 22 years ago but looking at the current situation with all that political correctness bullshit going on nothing has changed for the better. It has obviously gotten worse as one can see by reading through Sareth's rant. If someone told you 20 years ago that some dipshits would go bonkers about Michelangelo's David or Rodin's “The Kiss” what would you have thought? I bet you would have laughed and then forgotten about it. Back then your local press would have given them a short appearance in form of a 5 lines article to score some laughs, if they would have been given any attention at all. Nowadays those people even get the attention of the bigger media like some nationwide newscast and (of course) in the internet. It is easy to see that something in our society has gone horribly wrong, seeing just how ashamed we are of ourselves and again I mainly blame the rubbish they call political correctness for that, including militant lesbians/feminists. You know the kind, those who verbally assault every men who shows even the slightest sign of affection towards them and take every offer of help by a man as an insult. On the other side they call for preferential treatment, stating that they are so much weaker than men. Bollocks, during basics I met a female comrade that was doing MMA (Mixed Martial Arts, often called Free Fight) in her free time. And no, she didn't look like troll at all. And yes, from what I heard she was actually darn good at it. The only movie that ever depicted sexual equality the right way was G.I. Jane (and I think Demi Moore did an effin good job in that movie)... but I'm getting off topic here.

Oh and let's not forget the issue of nudity of small children. Whenever a picture of a 6 year old girl that doesn't has her upper body 'properly' concealed pops up the 'political correctness' monkeys start flinging po at anyone that doesn't say something negative about the picture (like for example “THAT IS ZUM BAD CHILD PRON!!!!!11111!”) like a horde of hyperactive chimps on a caffeine high. Sorry but in my family there are lots of photos going around that show me and my younger brother (at the age of 5 or maybe younger or maybe older) being nude in grandmas garden happily jumping through the lawn sprinkler and playing around with the garde hose. While I wouldn't be too happy with them being shown around outside of the family I would never think of them a child pornography but if that would ever happen, you can bet that there will be dozens of brainless baboons flinging shit at my whole family. My personal opinion is that the ones who should be carefully watched are the very dipshits who keep going about child pornography once they see as much as a under age bellybutton. A person has to be very weirdly wired to actually see something sexually or dingy in those kind of pictures, period!
A good example of shit flinging chimps can be seen on www.joshuahoffine.com the side of a professional photographer known for his 'childhood fear' photographies. When they showed some of his works on www.soothbrush.com the mindless monkeys didn't took too much time to show up and fling shit in form of hateful comments like “You are sick or summat for getting that girl to pose partially naked for your pics, call that art?” at Joshua.

Anyway, if you get into anime and watch/read all those romance stories you are suddenly confronted with tons of characters that are insanely insecure with their own sexuality, often being ashamed of their own body and their 'naughty' thoughts they have about their love interest. Among all those manga I've read and all the anime I've seen there have been only a handful that didn't carry the issue of modern society being overly ashamed of sexuality to extremes. In fact I know only of two manga series that actually deal with the topic an an 'appropriate' manner, not trying to imply any shame to our sexuality: The 'Video Girl Ai' Series by Masakazu Katsura and many of the short stories of the 'Confidential Confessions' series by Reiko Momochi. Both are very interesting yet entirely different series which I recommend wholeheartedly to anyone out there.
And to all of you who now want to argue with the fact that in Japanese society is all so different from our own and that this stuff is perfectly normal over there: Don't bother because I'm not buying that. If you are looking for a authentic depiction on how social life in Japan is nowadays then just look at Reiko Momochi's works because the other stuff mostly depicts an overly romanticized view of what I would like to call a 'social illness'. Even though I often read/watch stuff like that (though I tend to avoid such series more often lately) it never ceases to bug me out. The manga series 'Pastel' which I am currently reading is no exception.

But the stuff that really takes the biscuit is Hentai in all of it's forms. And I'm not even talking about the REALLY nasty stuff here, like tentacle rape or incest or incestuous tentacle rape.
I am only talking about the fact that terms like 'slut' are even more widespread there as in most western pornography (again I am letting out the most nasty stuff, mainly to keep my own poor mind safe...). Seriously, there is something wrong with a boyfriend that calls his own girlfriend a slut just because she shows some reaction once he starts fondling her breasts or because she is interested in sex. I know that this stuff is mostly aimed at men but it still bugs me out.



Well then, I am finished ranting so here are the links to the websites/blogs/whatever of those I've quoted in this rant (Sareth and Nekura):

Sareth:
sareth.livejournal.com
Sgt Sareth's DeviantArt account.

Nekura:
Will add them once I got the info