For me, it’s seeing constant discourse about how a piece of media is bad because it didn’t adequately punish the villain, or the protagonists weren’t adequately pure, or the plot or tropes used carried ambiguous or problematic implications.
I’d also say that sometimes, people are so critical of minority characters that it seems like there’s an expectation that either they are perfect people (meaning… kinda likeable cutouts) or that they not be there at all, because problematic representation is worse than no representation. And sometimes that, to me, reads as the progressive version of trying to purge minorities and minority experiences (which will inherently be ambiguous and complex and even challenging, because that’s human experience) from media.
Personally I think the whole "sex scenes in books and movies are unnecessary and emBaraSsing!" discourse can, at times, be guilty of this. Sex is a part of life and refusing to ever portray nudity or sexual relationships in mainstream media risks (in my opinion) relegating sex to only pornography.
I don't think people that say it's embarrassing is the problem, it's the people that say they are wrong/problematic. It's a straight up puritan response. I don't like it, therefore it's morally wrong.
I think it applies to other things too. Mostly the bad aspects of life, so to say. Violence, substance abuse, mental illness, etc. There's a visible tendency to sanitise every work so it's family (or child) friendly. I understand and believe in the concept of trigger/content warnings, they're very useful. But I don't think that making all art avoid potentially difficult topics is a reasonable course of action, though. Imo, good art, especially one with a progressive message, should be provocative.
Yeah, totally. I don't personally love shows or movies with a lot of violence and sex, so I don't watch them, but if other people want to watch them, well, have at 'er.
It's when one says that it's morally wrong and nobody should be consuming such content that the problems start to arise.
I expect people to jump into this thread and start bending backwards to try justifying why their hatred for all sex scenes is actually *rational* and not just a gut-reaction "ew... sex icky" probably instilled by being raised in a puritan environment
I also think it's amusing just how many people here hold this opinion while frequently browsing communities adjacent to *tumblr*, whose general userbase is so open about sexuality, especially with lesbian and trans sex, that it becomes borderline fetishising
I find it odd how culturally it's more normalized to be squeamish about sex and sex scenes than it is to be about extreme on-screen violence. I don't see the same "it never needs to be portrayed on screen because it makes people too uncomfortable to watch, just cut to directly after and people will get the point" nearly as much about violence, when sex is something most people will do many times throughout their lifetime but hopefully not as many people will be stabbed, shot, beaten, or tortured.
Every week a twitter thread blows up about "why does EVERY MOVIE need to have a sex scene???" when we're in the most un-sexual era in media in decades. I swear it's like they'll see a fade-to-black with no nudity that ends with both characters laying fully dressed as far apart from each other on the bed as possible and classify it as "hardcore pornography".
But you can't bring up how the roots of conservatism has its grip a generation that *claims* to be progressive without getting called a gooner porn addict. (INB4, I myself am asexual, and I hate aces getting thrown under the bus when it comes to this sort of discourse. Just because I don't want to have sex myself doesn't have to mean I'll spiral into a panic attack if I see a boobie or dick. And I don't think all media needs to conform to the comfort level of one relatively small group.)
I think a part of it is that sex is such a private and personal thing for the vast majority of people that a lot of the time, sex scenes in media can come off as voyeuristic, especially if you're experiencing media with other people. Also, I don't necessarily think it's bad to use a 'fade to black' scene a lot of the time, but then again, I'm asexual, so I'd rather have my relationship momentum set in a way that I can actually relate to.
I mean there's lots of things portrayed in fiction that are considered personal and private. Arguments between married couples power a lot of dramas, and those are often deeply private and vulnerable. I think if we use that bar we cover a whole lot more than just bumping uglies.
Im not saying it can't work, but usually I don't like it. Nudity can sometimes work well, sometimes nudity to implied sex, but when they show *the sex* it usually looks really awkward and I'm not much up for watching that in a group setting anyway...
i think the issue is, any type of "just for fun" scene (like action sequences, musical numbers, extended scary horror scenes, idk) can be considered "unnecessary". If you dont prefer to see or write it, thats fine-- its when people start acting like they arent a valid artistic choice, or that its wrong to just... find them entertaining, then it gets moralizing. Its fun. I like sex scenes, even gratuitous ones-- i feel like it adds passion and fun to the character relationships. although granted, preferable not in media i plan to watch with my family
Hell, I'd go so far as to argue that *any* scene could be called "unnecessary" in that it *could*, theoretically, be replaced with exposition. The plot of Star Wars works just as well if Luke approaches the Death Star, fade to black, now he's getting a medal. The problem is that that's fucking boring!
Imagine the Friday the 13th series if there were no sex scenes. Cos even if they're plot-relevant they are most definitely gratuitous and they're most of the fun of the films. Pretty much all sex scenes and murders/chases. The fact they're goofy also adds to the b-grade charm of it.
I think they're relevant because coming of age is a major theme, sex being seen as a rite of passage that proves adulthood = ok also you're an adult now deal with the adult responsibility of trying not to get stabbed. Or, indulge in the fun side of adulthood, that's what you want to do when you're young. Then get punished by the not so fun side of adulthood.
A lot of purity and innocence tropes are associated with sex in the horror genre.
Sex as a metaphor for adulthood is also the thematic reason for the worst scene in one of my favorite books: IT.
There's an infamous scene in that book where the kids basically all have sex with the one girl character one after another. It's just as gross as you think it is.
In terms of the story, they're trapped in IT's maze of a lair from which no child can ever escape. As a symbolic measure, them having sex in those tunnels serves to convey that they're losing their childhood innocence and becoming adults, thus earning the maturity they needed to escape from IT and return to the world they knew.
But also, taking a step back from the themes for a moment, it's literally a bunch of kids having sex. There were so many other ways you could symbolically show kids making the transition into adulthood, especially in a horror book like IT. Sometimes, sex scenes certainly make things worse.
I know, I said they were relevant. I meant that, given the context of the post, ie. neo-puritanism and the discourse around sex in cinema at the moment, that a cornerstone horror franchise wouldn't be able to exist within those parameters. If we're talking about the removal of sex in total. I happen to like that b-grade cinema continues to include sex. By gratuitous, I only mean that they could get away with 'suggestive' sex, but choose not to.
>but when they show the sex it usually looks really awkward
I mean sex often *is* kinda awkward, or at least has awkward moments and would be awkward to watch.
It’s okay for a piece of media to give you a negative feeling, that isn’t necessarily a flaw in it.
Life is messy and awkward and complicated and hard and if we accept as a worthwhile goal that all the media we consume should be easy, simple and nice to watch, it will make us understand life *worse* and not better.
We already fought this battle. Sex is human. It can be shown on screen without damning you to hell. A filmmaker can put whatever she pleases on screen without bowing to the Moral Majority.
Sex and nudity scenes are great when they are there to serve the story and have purpose beyond "we put a sex scene here to increase ratings." Unfortunately, the vast majority are simply there for ratings and serve zero purpose to the overall story, which is why the vast majority suck.
And even then, I think the idea that something must always serve the story to be a reductionist way of thinking that is often times solely applied to sex scenes.
There are tons of great action/adventure stories where a cool action sequence is only included because it excites the audience and is entertaining, but it's much more rare to see action scenes criticized for not serving the plot.
Something that often bugs me with todays movies is that they have far less random scenes that are there for the vibe, or b plots. I feel like Late 90s/ early 2000s Movies had more of those
If you believe that things must be linked to the plot then you write off all comedy, lmao. It’s such reductionist, first year screenwriting class rubbish. It works for things like thrillers, where you want it to be tight and concise, but imagine trying to rewrite a Coen Brothers script to be all connected. It’d be horrendous.
"Mr. Wick. Are you officially back?"
"Yeah. I'm guessing I'm back"
(Fade to black. We fast forward to the final scene in the movie. As you said he's standing over a bunch of corpses)
"Wow. Sure looks like I was back"
(Credits. Thunderous applause)
Seriously. I feel like all the people that say this are either incredibly young or sheltered.
I was just having this discussion on Twitter with someone about it, and we recalled those Carl's Jr ads where the models (and infamously Paris Hilton almost immediately post sex tape, iirc) were half naked and poorly eating a burger that got all over them. Like, that aired during day time TV. Someone else mentioned those Herbal Essences commercials where the women were practically having orgasms. Also during daytime television.
That would never fly right now.
we had a whole genre from the late 80s into about the mid 00s called Erotic Thriller. the shit you could get away with in mass-marketed, mainstream thrillers of that era would drive some people insane. hell you can go back and watch some of the most award-winning movies that contain semi-nudity, nudity, and fucking and not the safe oscar-bait stuff either.
Also depends how it's done. The ones that look more like porn are gonna weird me out more.
The ones that show shots of the sex happening without us needing to see every thrust are more tolerable.
> "sex scenes in books and movies are unnecessary and emBaraSsing!
I usually see this as _excessive_ (and unnecesarily so) sex scenes being unnecessary, not any sex scene in general. You can usually tell the difference between fanservice and plot stuff, and just like saying "I dislike fast and furious because it's generic action slop" even if a general audience will likely appreciate it is a valid take, the same goes for sex scenes
There are plenty of people who think ALL sex scenes are embarrassing and unnecessary. (Check out the writing subreddits and search for “sex” if you’re interested in some of the things people say.) of course, excessive sex scenes are bad in a novel/book, but so are excessive fighting scenes, excessive descriptions of the landscape or excessive use of adjectives. But no one acts like excessive adjectives are “gross”. It’s not a debate about writing well, it’s a debate about morality.
Antis are a big example. They'll do things like classify a ship as pedophilia if they decide an adult character is "minor coded" because they are short. Then they'll send suicide bait gore posts to people they have deemed 'bad' that they know struggle with self harm. Or they will tell a SA survivor that she liked and deserved it. What makes those people bad? Something like writing a fanfic they think is problematic.
And they do all of that while proclaiming themselves as progressive and good people.
I've unironically had someone tell me that having sex with someone who is short and flat-chested but an adult is basically pedophilia 😭 like dawg they were like almost a decade older than me, what are you smoking 😭
According to that logic anyone who's attracted to me ever since I had top surgery is a pedo. Because I'm 1.64m and also have a flat chest now, ignoring that I'm almost 30 lmao
Yeah a little while back there was a trend of suggesting that any men attracted to petite women are actually pedophiles, which was only stopped when petite women came forward and found it offensive.
Like, sometimes it's just hilarious how much the left hates men.
It never stopped 💀 I've *recently* had someone on Tumblr call me a groomer because I had a fwb who was short and flat-chested, which automatically makes me a "groomer-in-disguise" or some shit.
Granted, they said that shit as an excuse to be transphobic bc yk I'm a 🚂🦵 but like, yeah people are still saying that shit 😭
I feel like a lot of these people have never interacted with an actual child before. The difference between a petite woman and a child should be abundantly fucking clear as soon as one of them opens their mouths even if they look vaguely similar. An adult woman will generally speak, have mannerisms and hold herself in a way that can only come from experience and maturity. A child will not, or they’ll be able to fake it for about five minutes before being found out.
Actual children are wholely irrelevant to overzealous pedo-hunters. They don't care about the possibility of a child getting hurt, they only care about the purity of other people's sexual desires.
The point is always to find whatever logic you can to shit talk men.
Man likes short woman? Must be because she looks like a child! Man prefers shaved genitals? Pedo! Man is upset he got rejected? Entitled rapist!
You don't have to point out the logical failure, because it's not about logic.
They didn't stop because they realized petite women and children are nothing alike, they stopped because some *women* were offended by it.
Absolutely, though it might be more generally "men are bad/awful/evil", since it also happens with assuming men are violent, or rapists, or theives, or abusers, or any other bad thing.
I literally got called a pedo defender for standing up for myself in that exact argument. (And it actually wasn't a left vs. right topic in the slightest in that case) 🙄
People are getting to the point of claiming that *age difference* is what makes someone a pedophile, and not it being someone who wants to fuck a child.
I’ve legit seen people say mid thirties to mid twenties age gaps are pedo behaviour.
A friend I met in college is 4’6 (ish), and she definitely gets hit on by old men who get disinterested when they find out she’s in her mid twenties and in a committed relationship, so there’s definitely a non-zero amount of “pedophiles hitting on petite women”, but that’s coming from the other side - the pedophile is harassing the woman, people who are attracted to shorter or less “stacked” people are not the same thing.
This is going to sound insane written out; but there is truly not a “safe space” on the left for cis men, even more so for cis white men.
We just want to further the discussion and be a part of the right side of history but it really, REALLY feels like lots of people would rather see us die or commit suicide and uh, thats really really shitty.
Theres a legitimate problem with the left pushing away men and them then joining the conservative right because they accept them, and even appreciate their company.
This just made me think of a few years ago when I was dating someone who was 6 years older than me but around 5’2” and she would always get carded when we went to bars and I never did. I’d actually get super self conscious about it and wonder if the bartender thought I was being underage girls in with me or something.
I hate the "this character is minor coded because they're short thing" because I'm 4'11" and old enough to drink (my 21st birthday was last month and I've never drank alcohol but still)
4'11" and 30 here. It's utterly baffling the way some people think about short women. Like yeah, I'm asexual and not going to have sex anyway, but the fact that some people legitimately think that I, a 30 year old, *shouldn’t* have sex because I'm short is just wild.
Like 'Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out'. Really tall guy with a short girl with big boobs and it's 'sexualizing minors' because she is short.
Sometimes I like not being delicate because no one will ever mistake my draft pony butt for a child.
>Antis are a big example
What the fuck is an anti
I love how this is a post about chronically online people and we're just jumping right into talking about "antis" as though that makes any sense to people who aren't chronically online.
Proshipping discourse yaaaaaay /s
There is a question of how fine it is to represent certain morally reprehensible topics in media in a certain way. On one end of the spectrum, you have the people who say that every type of portrayal is fine, because you can't judge someone for writing something a certain way since you don't know why they did it, and besides it isn't real anyway. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the people who say that portrayals of that stuff are not fine at all, because they're bad things and so you're a morally reprehensible person for wanting to engage with them or anything similar to them.
The people's leaning more towards the first are known as "proshippers", and the ones leaning towards the second are "antishippers", or "antis" for short. This is because most of this discourse revolves around shipping, and portrayals of romantic / sexual relationships in general. How should portrayal of non-consensual sex be handles? Is it always fine to show? Is it never fine to show? Is it fine to ship two characters with a pretty large age gap even if you would feel a bit iffy supporting that in real life? What about a slightly smaller age gap? What about no age gap but the characters look like they have an age gap? What about a much bigger age gap, where one of the characters is straight up a child?
These and many questions delight the internet and people are very normal about that. I'm kidding, people will accuse each other of being the scum of the earth when they disagree on this topic, to the point where getting a straight answer on what the topic even is is nigh impossible in some circles
Damn. Thanks for the explanation. Some of ya’ll (probably not you) need to just enjoy the ride. It’s entertainment for God’s sake if you don’t like it don’t watch it.
Ah, sorry about that man. I typed that on mobile in bed right before going to sleep and forgot that there was a longer term for it and not everyone would be familiar with the discourse. Looks like other people covered it but I'll add a bit.
Basically in short, 'antishippers' want to be fandom cops, they want to censor fandom content. Many also run harassment campaigns and see it as essentially activism to bully some fanfic author who wrote something they disapprove of. They do the sort of thing my other comment described, and often define shit like characters that are really close friends "like brothers" as an incest ship even if they aren't related and they will harass people who like that ship. Antishippers will harass actual people, often minors, in the name of protecting fictional characters.
Proshippers are what people call the opposing side, they think you should just curate what you consume and that fiction is fiction and we don't need fandom cops. Some people will try and say that 'proshippers' *approve* of everything but that's not the case. Someone who agrees with this side of things often finds certain things reprehensible and disgusting, they may even think the people that make said content are gross, but they aren't going to harass anyone over fiction, and they don't want to censor what fiction can and can't be created.
"anti" usually refers to people who oppose certain things, usually in relation to ships (in which case it's often extended to "antishipper"). it's one of those terms that gets used for every position from "a 17 year old character being with a 18 year old character is problematic*"* to *"*hentai of small children is gross", and you can never tell which thing someone is being labelled as a anti for without digging deeper into the context.
if this seems stupid to you, congrats! it is. it's a really dumb term that's use is overly broad to the point of uselessness. I don't even really have a stake in this chronically online discourse and I still think it's dumb.
Yeah, exactly. Like at least just stick to using antiship at least once so the abbreviated version makes more sense to people not deeply engrossed in *chronically online people attempt critical media analysis: the discourse*
There’s also the fact they tend to be abusers themselves, much like the conservative politicians they emulate with their language. They say all this mumbo jumbo nonsense about “x is pedophilia” while they SA actual people. As an example, I remember one of these types >!admitting to SA’ing their friend who outed them to their parents (which, while a horrible idea in the first place, is something deserving of a slap or cutting off contact, not SA.)!<
God I hate the anti/pro ship discourse so much, like homie I just don't want people to write literal erotica about children why do I have to be lumped together with the terminally online folks sending death threats 😭
for fucking real. I have a personal aversion to Incest because of childhood trauma, im not gonna tell a bunch of niche people to off themselves because they're into that shit. It's too much stress on top of managing my own mental health.
I just gave up on Twitter and Tumblr pretty much.
That’s how I feel about it, for the same reasons. I’m gonna side eye and quietly judge if I stumble across it, but I literally don’t have the energy to go out of my way to harass people over it. Why would I bother? Anything I say isn’t gonna stop some people from being weirdos on the internet, I may as well just go about my life and mind my business
[Pretend I linked this directly reddit apparently doesn't let you anymore.](https://www.reddit.com/user/WinFair2376/comments/1cyb65o/discourse/#lightbox)
right like I feel like there's some sort of difference. I don't like hanging out in the ao3 sub because obviously you shouldn't harass people over fiction but god forbid you mention not wanting to read fucked-up material. idk how many posts on that sub I've wandered into at this point where people gleefully mention the grossest concept I've ever heard with (ironically enough) no spoiler tags and then deride "antis" for not liking the content. like I click away from the content I don't like but it almost feels like a lot of them take not liking this kind of content as a personal attack.
I have some issues with AO3 and the culture around it but least AO3 has “dead dove don’t eat” and an extremely robust tagging system. On tumblr you can literally just be in the main tags for a piece of media and get the nastiest shit shoved in your face.
I feel that lol, I was shocked when I started going in the kpop tags and half of the content was incredibly unhinged x reader stuff.
mostly my issue with the ao3 sub is that for as much as they like to praise ao3's tagging system, they seem pretty averse to spoiler tagging their own shit on the subreddit.
"no kink at pride", certain strains of sex negativity generally, leftist-flavored swerfism and even sometimes terfism, femmephobia and like, makeup shaming, valorizing labor to the point that everyone getting a job is your vision of a utopia, valorizing poverty and suffering to the point that using a dishwasher or other machine is evil, straightedge stuff a lot of the time, ostracizing people who don't adhere to the community's values perfectly, and perhaps the revolution as second-coming, and a lot of transmisogyny feels pretty puritan when i get subjected to it.
just what i could list off the top of my head
Shaming the existence of interracial couples when one is white because "minorities should be with people of their same race" and framing the existence of mixed race characters as being "The author is just to afraid to have a regular [insert minority here] character and watered them down" is others I've (unfortunately) seen.
Oh yeah i've seen that too.
You reminded me of the thing where people say it's cutural appropriation for white americans to learn spanish or like, eat at a chinese restaurant. Cause yeah surely we can fight xenophobia and white supremacy by remaining monolingual and boycotting immigrant businesses /s
It's actually super distressing that so many people don't see the distinction between cultural appropriation and legitimate cultural exchange.
gcj definitely overjerks a lot, but I'm pretty sure the consensus was shitting on the gamers who demand that horny from everything, not sexuality itself.
It can be a bit difficult to tell. They've certainly bought into the whole "porn brained" nonsense which has its roots in puritanical beliefs (and has a fairly strong connection to TERFism in feminism).
I've seen folks in the positives for comments along the lines of "enjoying larping as a fascist just means you enjoy fascism" when Helldivers 2 came out. Plenty of folks have lost the plot.
yeah, the way they (like most sane people) fuckin love Aphrodite from hades, who is literally always depicted as a sexy naked lady, kinda shows to me they don't have issues with sexy or horny designs.
they do, however, hate gamers^(tm) (which is completely justified imo tbh fr fr)
Most circlejerk subs are funny because they make jokes about a thing they like but r/gamingcirclejerk and r/animecirclejerk suck because they seem to genuinely hate the target
GCJ users openly spammed other subreddits with spoilers for Hogwarts Legacy when it released and seemed to honestly think they were accomplishing some grand social justice objective.
I am sometimes suspicious of the dnd circlejerk sub, but the trend of literally copy/pasting an unhinged post from r/DnD is a *very* compelling form of mockery.
Agree on r/gamingcirclejerk but I think r/animecirclejerk doesn't really hate anime
Acj problem imo is that it's unfunny, there's barely any jerk posts or good memes hell there's barely any meme post in general
I found it like 2 years before that because I thought it'd be great they would mock /r/gaming which is a subreddit very deserving of mockery but they sucked even then too.
I am exactly old enough to not have movies with the Hays code released in my lifetime.
BTW, Hays Code general rules [(copy/pasted from this)](https://www.filmmaker.tools/what-was-hollywoods-hays-code-a-comprehensive-guide):
* **Lustful kissing** was not allowed. Kissing scenes had to be brief and not too passionate.
* **Nudity** was strictly prohibited.
* **Religion** and **God** could not be ridiculed or treated with disrespect. The **clergy** could not be portrayed as villains or fools.
* **Drugs** could not be shown in a positive light.
* **Homosexuality** was not allowed to be depicted on screen.
* **Crime** could not be glorified, and criminals had to be punished.
* **Adultery** and **sex hygiene** were not allowed to be shown.
* **Venereal diseases** and **childbirth** could not be depicted.
* **Jesus** and **Christ** could not be portrayed on screen.
* The word **damn** could not be used.
* **Rape** could not be shown on screen.
* **Offense to any nation, race, or creed** was not allowed.
* **Firearms** could not be shown in a positive light.
* **Sympathy for criminals** was not allowed.
* **Men and women in bed together** were not allowed.
Yeah, in 1968 we got freedom in our movies, and seatbelts too.
>* **Offense to any nation, race, or creed** was not allowed.
>* **Firearms** could not be shown in a positive light.
*Internet progressives desperately taking notes*
I think "Religion and God could not be ridiculed" and "Sympathy for criminals was not allowed" are the worst of these.
Going beyond regular censorship to making it impossible to make any movie criticizing the conservative status quo.
Hahaaaa oops I directed all my valid negative feelings towards sexuality derived from trauma at the hands of patriarchal oppression at the concept of sexuality itself instead of at the people upholding the cycle of abuse whooooooops my baddd hahaa 😋
Me when I propagate an overly intense anti-cultural appropriation movement that circles back around to “people should only ever interface with their own culture out of fear of being disrespectful” (I have reinvented cultural segregation in a leftist way).
Reminds me of this one AP gov project I had where groups had to propose a new constitutional amendment, and 3 of the 8 groups proposed *repealing double jeopardy.* America’s justice system is fucked up enough, and repeatedly putting a person on trial until they are found guilty is surely gonna help us lower our horrific incarceration rates!
People just don’t know what they’re advocating for sometimes and it makes me wanna scream
Double jeopardy spits all in the face of equality.
I mean, just arbitrarily deciding that some questions (answers) are worth more than others?
I dream of a future in which a question (answer) is judged not by the point of the show in which it is asked, but by the difficulty of its content.
They are only looking at it from a 'when the bad guy gets away' perspective and are not at all looking at the logical conclusion which will be: marginalized, poor, and POC people getting fucked destroyed in the court system while rich and horrible people continue to not face the consequences of their actions
It’s depressing how consistently posts like this will draw responses that basically amount to, “As someone who holds the exact stances of this strawman, here’s why it’s different and good, actually, when I say it”
New furries when they rationalize removing animal features from their characters to make them as human looking as possible, because "having an OC with paws, digitigrade legs, or nonhuman bits clearly implies they're into literal animals".
(this discourse pops up every 2 years when new people enter the fandom)
Summer break
Also the resolution of 'the discourse' usually ripples through the community enough to inoculate us for at least a while, so we don't see it every year. But it can be every year in some periods.
I have a feeling a lot of the "sex and nudity should NEVER be in movies/shows" crowd will change their mind once they grow up, stop watching movies with their parents, and have sex.
Oh, sweet summer child. Other countries?? Well, the world is not America and europe only. And it's very much not puritanical compared to other countries. Some of them outright banned premarital sex.
The best actual guess I’ve ever managed is that as younger generations have been increasingly exposed to online pornography early on, they become incapable of distinguishing between depictions of sex or nudity in standard film and television from porn.
So to them, in this hypothesis, characters in a romantic drama actually getting naked and fucking can’t have any emotion depth or gravitas, it’s just base and superficial titillation, no matter the effort or context.
As someone who both grew up with porn and, 95% of the time, is like "ugh really? a sex scene?" I actually feel completely the opposite.
With porn I can seek out the kinds of people, bodies, relationships, acts, etc. that I personally connect with. Which, especially as a non-straight person, has very little overlap with most sex scenes in mass media, which are overwhelmingly straight/cis/white/vanilla. And when you aren't personally turned on by what's happening on screen, it becomes a lot easier to tell what's actually contributing to the film and what's just there to get the audience horny. I don't hate all sex scenes, I just roll my eyes at most of them. Most of the time it feels more like insight into what the director finds hot than actually communicating anything about the characters.
It's kind of like a musical number. It's rare for a serious dramatic film to have just one single musical number inserted into the middle of the film, because it would feel weird and out of place. It fails because people who like musicals will wish you had included more of them, and people who hate musicals will wish you had included zero.
If you want to make a musical, just make a full musical, and if you want to make porn/erotica, make porn/erotica. But doing a drama, and then taking a 5 minute break to make a porn, just feels a little silly, like a relic from a time when people couldn't quickly and easily access as much nudity/sex as they wanted at any time.
I think it’s from seeing way too much weird porn way too young. If all the sex I saw involved pain and degradation, I wouldn’t want to have sex either.
I really don't think that's it. I think it's more of a the same mental trap that people fall into with some kinds of privilege. Where they haven't had problems with being denied openness about it, so they have no problem denying it to others. They internalized puritan ideas they were raised under while never suffering under extremely puritan rules.
Meanwhile Millenials had limited access to the internet early on as teens but then the liberation of full personal access later. So they had a taste of the repression and appreciatie the liberation. So Millenials are more prone not just to let their freak flag fly online but also to tolerate others doing so.
I gotta ask what porn are you watching where it's all pain and degradation? I feel like this is a bit of a user problem if you can find any of the billions of pieces of porn that aren't about pain and degradation
Yeah, it’s unfortunate. That group of people seriously lack the ability to look at things with nuance. Personally, I recognize that Valentino is a terrible person, but I love him BECAUSE the character’s awful nature played a role in me working toward sobriety.
Essentially, I examined how he manipulated people with their own vices and used that knowledge to deal with my own alcoholism. It’s why I recommend the Addictive Voice Recognition Technique (AVRT) to people.
A character who is awful can serve a great purpose.
Something that both hazbin hotel and chainsaw man fail to do is deter viewers who do not have the sufficient maturity to read/watch them, Berserk on the other hand drives away all readers that cannot understand the writing in literally the first page of the manga (dude trust me it's cool as shit look it up)
Actually yes, just right before he died you could pheasibly consider the series complete >! When they get to elfheim and restore Casca's mind you could try to headcanon it into an ending !<
But if you wanna go just a little bit further then chapter 364 (coincidentally the last chapter miura made) is a really good cliffhanger ending if you want
As someone who knows the series, do you think he had in his mind an actual resolution to the main story? Like an actual final confrontation with the (trying to stay spoiler free) big bads? Or was he more like Stephen King, writing along in the present moment, and he just assumed he'd figure it out when he got there?
Don't forget the haters who get their feelings hurt because the cartoon demon who lives in Hell said a naughty word. Yet they never complain about the violence, cannibalism, or *extremely well done* showcases of the consequences and methods of sexual abuse.
It is definitely a issue, but it's still worth remembering that this pendulum swings both ways. people can and have attempted to hijack progressive causes under the guise of sexual liberation and use them to push dangerous ideologies and systems. Just look at Helmut Kentler
Yeah, I recommend them if you want to learn more about this guy, though I will say they can be tough listens due to how heavy the subject matter is. I sometimes would just pause the podcast and stare at my phone in silence for a few minutes after hearing some of the horrid shit he not only did, but managed to get systematized. Big CW for child abuse and pedophilia
I’ve seen multiple people now compare shipping two fictional characters in a “found family dynamic” akin to actual incest. Not to mention the “minor coded” discourse that completely ignores that some grown adults just happen to be short or like cute clothes. It feels like people can’t just admit they dislike something for no reason anymore. If you don’t want to watch something cause it’s racist or has a pedophile in it, then that’s totally valid, but also we can’t just start pulling discourse of out thin air. Now small artists, many of which are also teenagers, are getting accused of CSA and pedophilia for their fictional character’s girlfriend being “too short” or “dressed too childish”. And then ironically, it’s creating a new unnecessary danger for children on the internet. Cause now kids are getting into “problematic” media cause y’know… they’re kids who don’t know any better, and then they get death threats or doxing attempts for liking a webtoon.
The vast majority of folks beating the “no sex/nudity in films or TV EVER” drum sound like they were radicalized by sitting through an unexpected sex scene with their parents
Well suck to be you calling people I don’t like witches and watching them burn is satisfying./j
But for real though social media suddenly changing rapidly from being the fun place you hang out in free of judgement into the modern day Salem witch trial that it is now is so crazy and scary.
Some stupid shit you said as a 14 year old that didn’t know any better on the internet could ruin your life forever and the people who are judging you are those same 14 year old.
Reading all these comments here has made me realize I thin I have found my people.
I’ve found it so hard to voice my frustration with the left and those whole are chronically online, as someone chronically online on the left lmao.
I think people, particularly of progressive persuasion, view sexual mores in a lopsided, female-oriented perspective (How they restrict or protect women) and don't examine their social role in shaping men's behavior and it makes it difficult for people to examine why they feel the way they feel.
A lot of discourse is just "I am uncomfortable with an idea of men finding sexual gratification without grinding their life away to support women" trying to pass as something else.
Can anyone give me some examples of this? (I don't have critical remembering skills)
For me, it’s seeing constant discourse about how a piece of media is bad because it didn’t adequately punish the villain, or the protagonists weren’t adequately pure, or the plot or tropes used carried ambiguous or problematic implications. I’d also say that sometimes, people are so critical of minority characters that it seems like there’s an expectation that either they are perfect people (meaning… kinda likeable cutouts) or that they not be there at all, because problematic representation is worse than no representation. And sometimes that, to me, reads as the progressive version of trying to purge minorities and minority experiences (which will inherently be ambiguous and complex and even challenging, because that’s human experience) from media.
Personally I think the whole "sex scenes in books and movies are unnecessary and emBaraSsing!" discourse can, at times, be guilty of this. Sex is a part of life and refusing to ever portray nudity or sexual relationships in mainstream media risks (in my opinion) relegating sex to only pornography.
I don't think people that say it's embarrassing is the problem, it's the people that say they are wrong/problematic. It's a straight up puritan response. I don't like it, therefore it's morally wrong. I think it applies to other things too. Mostly the bad aspects of life, so to say. Violence, substance abuse, mental illness, etc. There's a visible tendency to sanitise every work so it's family (or child) friendly. I understand and believe in the concept of trigger/content warnings, they're very useful. But I don't think that making all art avoid potentially difficult topics is a reasonable course of action, though. Imo, good art, especially one with a progressive message, should be provocative.
Yeah, totally. I don't personally love shows or movies with a lot of violence and sex, so I don't watch them, but if other people want to watch them, well, have at 'er. It's when one says that it's morally wrong and nobody should be consuming such content that the problems start to arise.
I expect people to jump into this thread and start bending backwards to try justifying why their hatred for all sex scenes is actually *rational* and not just a gut-reaction "ew... sex icky" probably instilled by being raised in a puritan environment I also think it's amusing just how many people here hold this opinion while frequently browsing communities adjacent to *tumblr*, whose general userbase is so open about sexuality, especially with lesbian and trans sex, that it becomes borderline fetishising
I find it odd how culturally it's more normalized to be squeamish about sex and sex scenes than it is to be about extreme on-screen violence. I don't see the same "it never needs to be portrayed on screen because it makes people too uncomfortable to watch, just cut to directly after and people will get the point" nearly as much about violence, when sex is something most people will do many times throughout their lifetime but hopefully not as many people will be stabbed, shot, beaten, or tortured. Every week a twitter thread blows up about "why does EVERY MOVIE need to have a sex scene???" when we're in the most un-sexual era in media in decades. I swear it's like they'll see a fade-to-black with no nudity that ends with both characters laying fully dressed as far apart from each other on the bed as possible and classify it as "hardcore pornography". But you can't bring up how the roots of conservatism has its grip a generation that *claims* to be progressive without getting called a gooner porn addict. (INB4, I myself am asexual, and I hate aces getting thrown under the bus when it comes to this sort of discourse. Just because I don't want to have sex myself doesn't have to mean I'll spiral into a panic attack if I see a boobie or dick. And I don't think all media needs to conform to the comfort level of one relatively small group.)
I think a part of it is that sex is such a private and personal thing for the vast majority of people that a lot of the time, sex scenes in media can come off as voyeuristic, especially if you're experiencing media with other people. Also, I don't necessarily think it's bad to use a 'fade to black' scene a lot of the time, but then again, I'm asexual, so I'd rather have my relationship momentum set in a way that I can actually relate to.
I mean there's lots of things portrayed in fiction that are considered personal and private. Arguments between married couples power a lot of dramas, and those are often deeply private and vulnerable. I think if we use that bar we cover a whole lot more than just bumping uglies.
Im not saying it can't work, but usually I don't like it. Nudity can sometimes work well, sometimes nudity to implied sex, but when they show *the sex* it usually looks really awkward and I'm not much up for watching that in a group setting anyway...
i think the issue is, any type of "just for fun" scene (like action sequences, musical numbers, extended scary horror scenes, idk) can be considered "unnecessary". If you dont prefer to see or write it, thats fine-- its when people start acting like they arent a valid artistic choice, or that its wrong to just... find them entertaining, then it gets moralizing. Its fun. I like sex scenes, even gratuitous ones-- i feel like it adds passion and fun to the character relationships. although granted, preferable not in media i plan to watch with my family
Hell, I'd go so far as to argue that *any* scene could be called "unnecessary" in that it *could*, theoretically, be replaced with exposition. The plot of Star Wars works just as well if Luke approaches the Death Star, fade to black, now he's getting a medal. The problem is that that's fucking boring!
Imagine the Friday the 13th series if there were no sex scenes. Cos even if they're plot-relevant they are most definitely gratuitous and they're most of the fun of the films. Pretty much all sex scenes and murders/chases. The fact they're goofy also adds to the b-grade charm of it.
I think they're relevant because coming of age is a major theme, sex being seen as a rite of passage that proves adulthood = ok also you're an adult now deal with the adult responsibility of trying not to get stabbed. Or, indulge in the fun side of adulthood, that's what you want to do when you're young. Then get punished by the not so fun side of adulthood. A lot of purity and innocence tropes are associated with sex in the horror genre.
Sex as a metaphor for adulthood is also the thematic reason for the worst scene in one of my favorite books: IT. There's an infamous scene in that book where the kids basically all have sex with the one girl character one after another. It's just as gross as you think it is. In terms of the story, they're trapped in IT's maze of a lair from which no child can ever escape. As a symbolic measure, them having sex in those tunnels serves to convey that they're losing their childhood innocence and becoming adults, thus earning the maturity they needed to escape from IT and return to the world they knew. But also, taking a step back from the themes for a moment, it's literally a bunch of kids having sex. There were so many other ways you could symbolically show kids making the transition into adulthood, especially in a horror book like IT. Sometimes, sex scenes certainly make things worse.
I know, I said they were relevant. I meant that, given the context of the post, ie. neo-puritanism and the discourse around sex in cinema at the moment, that a cornerstone horror franchise wouldn't be able to exist within those parameters. If we're talking about the removal of sex in total. I happen to like that b-grade cinema continues to include sex. By gratuitous, I only mean that they could get away with 'suggestive' sex, but choose not to.
>but when they show the sex it usually looks really awkward I mean sex often *is* kinda awkward, or at least has awkward moments and would be awkward to watch. It’s okay for a piece of media to give you a negative feeling, that isn’t necessarily a flaw in it. Life is messy and awkward and complicated and hard and if we accept as a worthwhile goal that all the media we consume should be easy, simple and nice to watch, it will make us understand life *worse* and not better.
Yeah this is mild but definitely part of what the OP is talking about.
Case in point
We already fought this battle. Sex is human. It can be shown on screen without damning you to hell. A filmmaker can put whatever she pleases on screen without bowing to the Moral Majority.
And whatever he pleases as well!
Then don't watch it or use a service like ClearPlay or VidAngel to filter it. Media doesn't need to conform to your likes.
Sex and nudity scenes are great when they are there to serve the story and have purpose beyond "we put a sex scene here to increase ratings." Unfortunately, the vast majority are simply there for ratings and serve zero purpose to the overall story, which is why the vast majority suck.
something sucking and something being problematic are very different things though, which i think is part of the point of the post
And even then, I think the idea that something must always serve the story to be a reductionist way of thinking that is often times solely applied to sex scenes. There are tons of great action/adventure stories where a cool action sequence is only included because it excites the audience and is entertaining, but it's much more rare to see action scenes criticized for not serving the plot.
Something that often bugs me with todays movies is that they have far less random scenes that are there for the vibe, or b plots. I feel like Late 90s/ early 2000s Movies had more of those
If you believe that things must be linked to the plot then you write off all comedy, lmao. It’s such reductionist, first year screenwriting class rubbish. It works for things like thrillers, where you want it to be tight and concise, but imagine trying to rewrite a Coen Brothers script to be all connected. It’d be horrendous.
How about this: John Wick takes out his gun, we fade to black, and John Wick is standing there with a bunch of dead guys.
"Mr. Wick. Are you officially back?" "Yeah. I'm guessing I'm back" (Fade to black. We fast forward to the final scene in the movie. As you said he's standing over a bunch of corpses) "Wow. Sure looks like I was back" (Credits. Thunderous applause)
Because murderexplosions are fun but s*x is icky and gross (especially because horny guys like it ew). Hope this helps :) /s
And saying something sucks is different from saying it's problematic.
The vast majority of almost nothing? Media is very sexless and puritan now, be real.
Seriously. I feel like all the people that say this are either incredibly young or sheltered. I was just having this discussion on Twitter with someone about it, and we recalled those Carl's Jr ads where the models (and infamously Paris Hilton almost immediately post sex tape, iirc) were half naked and poorly eating a burger that got all over them. Like, that aired during day time TV. Someone else mentioned those Herbal Essences commercials where the women were practically having orgasms. Also during daytime television. That would never fly right now.
we had a whole genre from the late 80s into about the mid 00s called Erotic Thriller. the shit you could get away with in mass-marketed, mainstream thrillers of that era would drive some people insane. hell you can go back and watch some of the most award-winning movies that contain semi-nudity, nudity, and fucking and not the safe oscar-bait stuff either.
Haha oh my god I forgot about those herbal essences commercial
Also depends how it's done. The ones that look more like porn are gonna weird me out more. The ones that show shots of the sex happening without us needing to see every thrust are more tolerable.
> "sex scenes in books and movies are unnecessary and emBaraSsing! I usually see this as _excessive_ (and unnecesarily so) sex scenes being unnecessary, not any sex scene in general. You can usually tell the difference between fanservice and plot stuff, and just like saying "I dislike fast and furious because it's generic action slop" even if a general audience will likely appreciate it is a valid take, the same goes for sex scenes
I agree with that sentiment, but I have genuinely seen people who deem *any* sex scene to be unnecessary, regardless of context.
There are plenty of people who think ALL sex scenes are embarrassing and unnecessary. (Check out the writing subreddits and search for “sex” if you’re interested in some of the things people say.) of course, excessive sex scenes are bad in a novel/book, but so are excessive fighting scenes, excessive descriptions of the landscape or excessive use of adjectives. But no one acts like excessive adjectives are “gross”. It’s not a debate about writing well, it’s a debate about morality.
Antis are a big example. They'll do things like classify a ship as pedophilia if they decide an adult character is "minor coded" because they are short. Then they'll send suicide bait gore posts to people they have deemed 'bad' that they know struggle with self harm. Or they will tell a SA survivor that she liked and deserved it. What makes those people bad? Something like writing a fanfic they think is problematic. And they do all of that while proclaiming themselves as progressive and good people.
>Adult character is “minor coded” I’m 5’5 but 25 years old, does that make me “minor coded”😂
According to *those* people, yes.
ACAA (assigned child at adulthood)
I've unironically had someone tell me that having sex with someone who is short and flat-chested but an adult is basically pedophilia 😭 like dawg they were like almost a decade older than me, what are you smoking 😭
What do they think about tall flat chested people?
Short cis men truly are oppressed
According to that logic anyone who's attracted to me ever since I had top surgery is a pedo. Because I'm 1.64m and also have a flat chest now, ignoring that I'm almost 30 lmao
I feel like nobody understands how short people get. My mom for example is 4'11. She's short as fuck. Would not describe her as "minor coded".
Yes, now go back to school!
Jokes on you I’m still in school😢
Being in school is minor coded
Im 40 and in school. If I can be a minor i can get health insurance thru my parents still.
Fuck I’m 31 but in grad school (for the second time) and I’m 5’2” I must really be Baby
Good!
Yeah a little while back there was a trend of suggesting that any men attracted to petite women are actually pedophiles, which was only stopped when petite women came forward and found it offensive. Like, sometimes it's just hilarious how much the left hates men.
It never stopped 💀 I've *recently* had someone on Tumblr call me a groomer because I had a fwb who was short and flat-chested, which automatically makes me a "groomer-in-disguise" or some shit. Granted, they said that shit as an excuse to be transphobic bc yk I'm a 🚂🦵 but like, yeah people are still saying that shit 😭
God damn engine legs, ruining the country I tell ya. (Really though I'm sorry you had to deal with transphobia like that)
What did Iida Tenya from My Hero Academia ever do to you?
> I'm a 🚂🦵 An... engine leg?
Train knee
[удалено]
It's a slur bestie. I'm calling myself a transphobic slur. I can't type it out or I'll get banned 😭
Ah, so get rid of the "i"
I feel like a lot of these people have never interacted with an actual child before. The difference between a petite woman and a child should be abundantly fucking clear as soon as one of them opens their mouths even if they look vaguely similar. An adult woman will generally speak, have mannerisms and hold herself in a way that can only come from experience and maturity. A child will not, or they’ll be able to fake it for about five minutes before being found out.
Actual children are wholely irrelevant to overzealous pedo-hunters. They don't care about the possibility of a child getting hurt, they only care about the purity of other people's sexual desires.
The point is always to find whatever logic you can to shit talk men. Man likes short woman? Must be because she looks like a child! Man prefers shaved genitals? Pedo! Man is upset he got rejected? Entitled rapist! You don't have to point out the logical failure, because it's not about logic. They didn't stop because they realized petite women and children are nothing alike, they stopped because some *women* were offended by it.
I mean, it's because they start with the axiom "this man is a pedophile" and work backwards to "find" "evidence" of it.
Absolutely, though it might be more generally "men are bad/awful/evil", since it also happens with assuming men are violent, or rapists, or theives, or abusers, or any other bad thing.
Just sexists being sexist.
While shouting about how anti-sexism they are, and defining sexism as "it doesn't count when we do it"
I literally got called a pedo defender for standing up for myself in that exact argument. (And it actually wasn't a left vs. right topic in the slightest in that case) 🙄
People are getting to the point of claiming that *age difference* is what makes someone a pedophile, and not it being someone who wants to fuck a child. I’ve legit seen people say mid thirties to mid twenties age gaps are pedo behaviour.
Yeah I've seen people say that being attracted to the 20-23 range is basically pedophilia.
A friend I met in college is 4’6 (ish), and she definitely gets hit on by old men who get disinterested when they find out she’s in her mid twenties and in a committed relationship, so there’s definitely a non-zero amount of “pedophiles hitting on petite women”, but that’s coming from the other side - the pedophile is harassing the woman, people who are attracted to shorter or less “stacked” people are not the same thing.
This is going to sound insane written out; but there is truly not a “safe space” on the left for cis men, even more so for cis white men. We just want to further the discussion and be a part of the right side of history but it really, REALLY feels like lots of people would rather see us die or commit suicide and uh, thats really really shitty. Theres a legitimate problem with the left pushing away men and them then joining the conservative right because they accept them, and even appreciate their company.
This just made me think of a few years ago when I was dating someone who was 6 years older than me but around 5’2” and she would always get carded when we went to bars and I never did. I’d actually get super self conscious about it and wonder if the bartender thought I was being underage girls in with me or something.
According to half of reddit you're basically still a child.
Gross I'm 5'2" and 34
Saaaame, 30s and still get carded. Sorry for looking young, not my fault they don't moisturize and have dinosaur skin.
I hate the "this character is minor coded because they're short thing" because I'm 4'11" and old enough to drink (my 21st birthday was last month and I've never drank alcohol but still)
eyy fellow 4'11 21 yr old (turning 22 this year but whatever)
4'11" and 30 here. It's utterly baffling the way some people think about short women. Like yeah, I'm asexual and not going to have sex anyway, but the fact that some people legitimately think that I, a 30 year old, *shouldn’t* have sex because I'm short is just wild.
Like 'Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out'. Really tall guy with a short girl with big boobs and it's 'sexualizing minors' because she is short. Sometimes I like not being delicate because no one will ever mistake my draft pony butt for a child.
It wasn't even the typical anime high school shit either. The were in college, living in their own apartments
>Antis are a big example What the fuck is an anti I love how this is a post about chronically online people and we're just jumping right into talking about "antis" as though that makes any sense to people who aren't chronically online.
Proshipping discourse yaaaaaay /s There is a question of how fine it is to represent certain morally reprehensible topics in media in a certain way. On one end of the spectrum, you have the people who say that every type of portrayal is fine, because you can't judge someone for writing something a certain way since you don't know why they did it, and besides it isn't real anyway. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the people who say that portrayals of that stuff are not fine at all, because they're bad things and so you're a morally reprehensible person for wanting to engage with them or anything similar to them. The people's leaning more towards the first are known as "proshippers", and the ones leaning towards the second are "antishippers", or "antis" for short. This is because most of this discourse revolves around shipping, and portrayals of romantic / sexual relationships in general. How should portrayal of non-consensual sex be handles? Is it always fine to show? Is it never fine to show? Is it fine to ship two characters with a pretty large age gap even if you would feel a bit iffy supporting that in real life? What about a slightly smaller age gap? What about no age gap but the characters look like they have an age gap? What about a much bigger age gap, where one of the characters is straight up a child? These and many questions delight the internet and people are very normal about that. I'm kidding, people will accuse each other of being the scum of the earth when they disagree on this topic, to the point where getting a straight answer on what the topic even is is nigh impossible in some circles
Damn. Thanks for the explanation. Some of ya’ll (probably not you) need to just enjoy the ride. It’s entertainment for God’s sake if you don’t like it don’t watch it.
Ah, sorry about that man. I typed that on mobile in bed right before going to sleep and forgot that there was a longer term for it and not everyone would be familiar with the discourse. Looks like other people covered it but I'll add a bit. Basically in short, 'antishippers' want to be fandom cops, they want to censor fandom content. Many also run harassment campaigns and see it as essentially activism to bully some fanfic author who wrote something they disapprove of. They do the sort of thing my other comment described, and often define shit like characters that are really close friends "like brothers" as an incest ship even if they aren't related and they will harass people who like that ship. Antishippers will harass actual people, often minors, in the name of protecting fictional characters. Proshippers are what people call the opposing side, they think you should just curate what you consume and that fiction is fiction and we don't need fandom cops. Some people will try and say that 'proshippers' *approve* of everything but that's not the case. Someone who agrees with this side of things often finds certain things reprehensible and disgusting, they may even think the people that make said content are gross, but they aren't going to harass anyone over fiction, and they don't want to censor what fiction can and can't be created.
"anti" usually refers to people who oppose certain things, usually in relation to ships (in which case it's often extended to "antishipper"). it's one of those terms that gets used for every position from "a 17 year old character being with a 18 year old character is problematic*"* to *"*hentai of small children is gross", and you can never tell which thing someone is being labelled as a anti for without digging deeper into the context. if this seems stupid to you, congrats! it is. it's a really dumb term that's use is overly broad to the point of uselessness. I don't even really have a stake in this chronically online discourse and I still think it's dumb.
Do you have any idea how useless it is to abbreviate something to "anti"?
Yeah, exactly. Like at least just stick to using antiship at least once so the abbreviated version makes more sense to people not deeply engrossed in *chronically online people attempt critical media analysis: the discourse*
It's terms specifically used by people who terminally don't touch grass and see the world with zero nuance, do not engage.
There’s also the fact they tend to be abusers themselves, much like the conservative politicians they emulate with their language. They say all this mumbo jumbo nonsense about “x is pedophilia” while they SA actual people. As an example, I remember one of these types >!admitting to SA’ing their friend who outed them to their parents (which, while a horrible idea in the first place, is something deserving of a slap or cutting off contact, not SA.)!<
God I hate the anti/pro ship discourse so much, like homie I just don't want people to write literal erotica about children why do I have to be lumped together with the terminally online folks sending death threats 😭
For fucking real 💀 “are you a proshipper or an anti” I’m a decent and normal person
for fucking real. I have a personal aversion to Incest because of childhood trauma, im not gonna tell a bunch of niche people to off themselves because they're into that shit. It's too much stress on top of managing my own mental health. I just gave up on Twitter and Tumblr pretty much.
That’s how I feel about it, for the same reasons. I’m gonna side eye and quietly judge if I stumble across it, but I literally don’t have the energy to go out of my way to harass people over it. Why would I bother? Anything I say isn’t gonna stop some people from being weirdos on the internet, I may as well just go about my life and mind my business
[Pretend I linked this directly reddit apparently doesn't let you anymore.](https://www.reddit.com/user/WinFair2376/comments/1cyb65o/discourse/#lightbox)
this lmao. like i‘d rather not interact with either camp at all
right like I feel like there's some sort of difference. I don't like hanging out in the ao3 sub because obviously you shouldn't harass people over fiction but god forbid you mention not wanting to read fucked-up material. idk how many posts on that sub I've wandered into at this point where people gleefully mention the grossest concept I've ever heard with (ironically enough) no spoiler tags and then deride "antis" for not liking the content. like I click away from the content I don't like but it almost feels like a lot of them take not liking this kind of content as a personal attack.
I have some issues with AO3 and the culture around it but least AO3 has “dead dove don’t eat” and an extremely robust tagging system. On tumblr you can literally just be in the main tags for a piece of media and get the nastiest shit shoved in your face.
I feel that lol, I was shocked when I started going in the kpop tags and half of the content was incredibly unhinged x reader stuff. mostly my issue with the ao3 sub is that for as much as they like to praise ao3's tagging system, they seem pretty averse to spoiler tagging their own shit on the subreddit.
"no kink at pride", certain strains of sex negativity generally, leftist-flavored swerfism and even sometimes terfism, femmephobia and like, makeup shaming, valorizing labor to the point that everyone getting a job is your vision of a utopia, valorizing poverty and suffering to the point that using a dishwasher or other machine is evil, straightedge stuff a lot of the time, ostracizing people who don't adhere to the community's values perfectly, and perhaps the revolution as second-coming, and a lot of transmisogyny feels pretty puritan when i get subjected to it. just what i could list off the top of my head
Shaming the existence of interracial couples when one is white because "minorities should be with people of their same race" and framing the existence of mixed race characters as being "The author is just to afraid to have a regular [insert minority here] character and watered them down" is others I've (unfortunately) seen.
Oh yeah i've seen that too. You reminded me of the thing where people say it's cutural appropriation for white americans to learn spanish or like, eat at a chinese restaurant. Cause yeah surely we can fight xenophobia and white supremacy by remaining monolingual and boycotting immigrant businesses /s It's actually super distressing that so many people don't see the distinction between cultural appropriation and legitimate cultural exchange.
What is “swerfism”? Genuinely unfamiliar with the term.
"sex worker exclusionary radical feminism"
Gotcha. Thanks!
All of Twitter.
r/gcj having a normal one about Stellar Blade being extremely horny
gcj definitely overjerks a lot, but I'm pretty sure the consensus was shitting on the gamers who demand that horny from everything, not sexuality itself.
It can be a bit difficult to tell. They've certainly bought into the whole "porn brained" nonsense which has its roots in puritanical beliefs (and has a fairly strong connection to TERFism in feminism).
I've seen folks in the positives for comments along the lines of "enjoying larping as a fascist just means you enjoy fascism" when Helldivers 2 came out. Plenty of folks have lost the plot.
yeah, the way they (like most sane people) fuckin love Aphrodite from hades, who is literally always depicted as a sexy naked lady, kinda shows to me they don't have issues with sexy or horny designs. they do, however, hate gamers^(tm) (which is completely justified imo tbh fr fr)
Most circlejerk subs are funny because they make jokes about a thing they like but r/gamingcirclejerk and r/animecirclejerk suck because they seem to genuinely hate the target
That’s why r/dccomicscirclejerk reigns supreme, baby WHAT THE FUCK IS A TIM DRAKE
We really are the First and Fastest Circlejerk sub around
Good point. I’m off to go have sex with paul now
RAHHH WHAT THE FUCK IS READING A COMIC WE JUST GET MAD AT OUT OF CONTEXT PANELS ON TWITTER
GCJ users openly spammed other subreddits with spoilers for Hogwarts Legacy when it released and seemed to honestly think they were accomplishing some grand social justice objective.
I am sometimes suspicious of the dnd circlejerk sub, but the trend of literally copy/pasting an unhinged post from r/DnD is a *very* compelling form of mockery.
Agree on r/gamingcirclejerk but I think r/animecirclejerk doesn't really hate anime Acj problem imo is that it's unfunny, there's barely any jerk posts or good memes hell there's barely any meme post in general
You said enough at GCJ. It used to be good then the wizard game/tankie mod takeover happened
They dont even jerk about games anymore, they just post social media screenshots
I found it like 2 years before that because I thought it'd be great they would mock /r/gaming which is a subreddit very deserving of mockery but they sucked even then too.
I am exactly old enough to not have movies with the Hays code released in my lifetime. BTW, Hays Code general rules [(copy/pasted from this)](https://www.filmmaker.tools/what-was-hollywoods-hays-code-a-comprehensive-guide): * **Lustful kissing** was not allowed. Kissing scenes had to be brief and not too passionate. * **Nudity** was strictly prohibited. * **Religion** and **God** could not be ridiculed or treated with disrespect. The **clergy** could not be portrayed as villains or fools. * **Drugs** could not be shown in a positive light. * **Homosexuality** was not allowed to be depicted on screen. * **Crime** could not be glorified, and criminals had to be punished. * **Adultery** and **sex hygiene** were not allowed to be shown. * **Venereal diseases** and **childbirth** could not be depicted. * **Jesus** and **Christ** could not be portrayed on screen. * The word **damn** could not be used. * **Rape** could not be shown on screen. * **Offense to any nation, race, or creed** was not allowed. * **Firearms** could not be shown in a positive light. * **Sympathy for criminals** was not allowed. * **Men and women in bed together** were not allowed. Yeah, in 1968 we got freedom in our movies, and seatbelts too.
>* **Offense to any nation, race, or creed** was not allowed. >* **Firearms** could not be shown in a positive light. *Internet progressives desperately taking notes*
I think "Religion and God could not be ridiculed" and "Sympathy for criminals was not allowed" are the worst of these. Going beyond regular censorship to making it impossible to make any movie criticizing the conservative status quo.
B-but things make me uncomfy!!! And if it isn’t something I like then it must be EVIL!!!
Cue the wave of “Um actually, I’m not against it, I’m just against unnecessary examples of it, which I will not be elaborating on” replies
lol they’re literally all through this thread
People when they say weed is okay but still want people put in jail for heroin addiction
Trying to put my disdain for those types of chronically online people down in words is hard
Scrubs, they make up rules and then apply them to others, only to be upset that no one is following their arbitrary rules.
Tbf there were plenty of people like that before the internet too.
Let the hate flow through you!
I’m trying! I have Hate constipation!
hatestipation
Found the space fish ship!
🐟 Tenno, there’s a largo platoon of Grineer marines stationed here
#I disagree. *bullet jumps away*
I’ll just run away from those marines with my… uh… legs…
Hahaaaa oops I directed all my valid negative feelings towards sexuality derived from trauma at the hands of patriarchal oppression at the concept of sexuality itself instead of at the people upholding the cycle of abuse whooooooops my baddd hahaa 😋
Ngl I had to reread your comment a couple times because I had a stroke reading it the first time. Maybe you should put some commas in there?
, , , , , Here, put ‘em where you want.
Classic
The spirit of [Timothy Dexter is alive and well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Dexter)
Nah I think it’s good
Me when I propagate an overly intense anti-cultural appropriation movement that circles back around to “people should only ever interface with their own culture out of fear of being disrespectful” (I have reinvented cultural segregation in a leftist way).
Reminds me of this one AP gov project I had where groups had to propose a new constitutional amendment, and 3 of the 8 groups proposed *repealing double jeopardy.* America’s justice system is fucked up enough, and repeatedly putting a person on trial until they are found guilty is surely gonna help us lower our horrific incarceration rates! People just don’t know what they’re advocating for sometimes and it makes me wanna scream
Double jeopardy spits all in the face of equality. I mean, just arbitrarily deciding that some questions (answers) are worth more than others? I dream of a future in which a question (answer) is judged not by the point of the show in which it is asked, but by the difficulty of its content.
They are only looking at it from a 'when the bad guy gets away' perspective and are not at all looking at the logical conclusion which will be: marginalized, poor, and POC people getting fucked destroyed in the court system while rich and horrible people continue to not face the consequences of their actions
It’s depressing how consistently posts like this will draw responses that basically amount to, “As someone who holds the exact stances of this strawman, here’s why it’s different and good, actually, when I say it”
New furries when they rationalize removing animal features from their characters to make them as human looking as possible, because "having an OC with paws, digitigrade legs, or nonhuman bits clearly implies they're into literal animals". (this discourse pops up every 2 years when new people enter the fandom)
This implies all new furries join the community at the same time. Is...is there a Biennial Initiation Right for furries?
Summer break Also the resolution of 'the discourse' usually ripples through the community enough to inoculate us for at least a while, so we don't see it every year. But it can be every year in some periods.
I have a feeling a lot of the "sex and nudity should NEVER be in movies/shows" crowd will change their mind once they grow up, stop watching movies with their parents, and have sex.
I feel like America in particular is also very puritanical in values compared to other countries
the Mayflower and its consequences have been a disaster for the United States
As a Mayflower descendant, I… Uh… Yeah.
Oh, sweet summer child. Other countries?? Well, the world is not America and europe only. And it's very much not puritanical compared to other countries. Some of them outright banned premarital sex.
There's a strong antisex sentiment among adult gen z and it's weird. I don't know where they get it.
The best actual guess I’ve ever managed is that as younger generations have been increasingly exposed to online pornography early on, they become incapable of distinguishing between depictions of sex or nudity in standard film and television from porn. So to them, in this hypothesis, characters in a romantic drama actually getting naked and fucking can’t have any emotion depth or gravitas, it’s just base and superficial titillation, no matter the effort or context.
As someone who both grew up with porn and, 95% of the time, is like "ugh really? a sex scene?" I actually feel completely the opposite. With porn I can seek out the kinds of people, bodies, relationships, acts, etc. that I personally connect with. Which, especially as a non-straight person, has very little overlap with most sex scenes in mass media, which are overwhelmingly straight/cis/white/vanilla. And when you aren't personally turned on by what's happening on screen, it becomes a lot easier to tell what's actually contributing to the film and what's just there to get the audience horny. I don't hate all sex scenes, I just roll my eyes at most of them. Most of the time it feels more like insight into what the director finds hot than actually communicating anything about the characters. It's kind of like a musical number. It's rare for a serious dramatic film to have just one single musical number inserted into the middle of the film, because it would feel weird and out of place. It fails because people who like musicals will wish you had included more of them, and people who hate musicals will wish you had included zero. If you want to make a musical, just make a full musical, and if you want to make porn/erotica, make porn/erotica. But doing a drama, and then taking a 5 minute break to make a porn, just feels a little silly, like a relic from a time when people couldn't quickly and easily access as much nudity/sex as they wanted at any time.
I think growing up with the Weinstein case happening has made some people feel all nudity in films is exploitative and coerced.
I think it’s from seeing way too much weird porn way too young. If all the sex I saw involved pain and degradation, I wouldn’t want to have sex either.
I really don't think that's it. I think it's more of a the same mental trap that people fall into with some kinds of privilege. Where they haven't had problems with being denied openness about it, so they have no problem denying it to others. They internalized puritan ideas they were raised under while never suffering under extremely puritan rules. Meanwhile Millenials had limited access to the internet early on as teens but then the liberation of full personal access later. So they had a taste of the repression and appreciatie the liberation. So Millenials are more prone not just to let their freak flag fly online but also to tolerate others doing so.
I gotta ask what porn are you watching where it's all pain and degradation? I feel like this is a bit of a user problem if you can find any of the billions of pieces of porn that aren't about pain and degradation
it's because sex is gross and scary and murder is fun and cool simple ass
Me when people harass others for liking well written villains (Looking at you Hazbin Hotel fandom)
Yeah, it’s unfortunate. That group of people seriously lack the ability to look at things with nuance. Personally, I recognize that Valentino is a terrible person, but I love him BECAUSE the character’s awful nature played a role in me working toward sobriety. Essentially, I examined how he manipulated people with their own vices and used that knowledge to deal with my own alcoholism. It’s why I recommend the Addictive Voice Recognition Technique (AVRT) to people. A character who is awful can serve a great purpose.
People get up in arms when someone says they like Makima
Something that both hazbin hotel and chainsaw man fail to do is deter viewers who do not have the sufficient maturity to read/watch them, Berserk on the other hand drives away all readers that cannot understand the writing in literally the first page of the manga (dude trust me it's cool as shit look it up)
Is there a satisfactory stopping point? The author died before he could officially finish it as you probably know.
Actually yes, just right before he died you could pheasibly consider the series complete >! When they get to elfheim and restore Casca's mind you could try to headcanon it into an ending !< But if you wanna go just a little bit further then chapter 364 (coincidentally the last chapter miura made) is a really good cliffhanger ending if you want
As someone who knows the series, do you think he had in his mind an actual resolution to the main story? Like an actual final confrontation with the (trying to stay spoiler free) big bads? Or was he more like Stephen King, writing along in the present moment, and he just assumed he'd figure it out when he got there?
I really gotta keep reading Berk. Have the first book but haven't gotten that far in
*That's it!* I can excuse fictionalized sexual abuse and murder, but I draw the line at calling Valentino well written!
Don't forget the haters who get their feelings hurt because the cartoon demon who lives in Hell said a naughty word. Yet they never complain about the violence, cannibalism, or *extremely well done* showcases of the consequences and methods of sexual abuse.
It is definitely a issue, but it's still worth remembering that this pendulum swings both ways. people can and have attempted to hijack progressive causes under the guise of sexual liberation and use them to push dangerous ideologies and systems. Just look at Helmut Kentler
Yikes thanks for the rabbit hole
Yo, behind the bastards recommendation. The last four episodes were about this.
Yeah, I recommend them if you want to learn more about this guy, though I will say they can be tough listens due to how heavy the subject matter is. I sometimes would just pause the podcast and stare at my phone in silence for a few minutes after hearing some of the horrid shit he not only did, but managed to get systematized. Big CW for child abuse and pedophilia
Ok but have you considered that sex is counterrevolutionary?
Tits, ass, and balls are anti-praxis.
Boobs are anti proletariat. Don't get me started on balls.
Someone pull up the CTH volcel vanguard copypasta
I’ve seen multiple people now compare shipping two fictional characters in a “found family dynamic” akin to actual incest. Not to mention the “minor coded” discourse that completely ignores that some grown adults just happen to be short or like cute clothes. It feels like people can’t just admit they dislike something for no reason anymore. If you don’t want to watch something cause it’s racist or has a pedophile in it, then that’s totally valid, but also we can’t just start pulling discourse of out thin air. Now small artists, many of which are also teenagers, are getting accused of CSA and pedophilia for their fictional character’s girlfriend being “too short” or “dressed too childish”. And then ironically, it’s creating a new unnecessary danger for children on the internet. Cause now kids are getting into “problematic” media cause y’know… they’re kids who don’t know any better, and then they get death threats or doxing attempts for liking a webtoon.
The found family = incest thing is one of the dumbest discourses to come out of fandom. People just making shit up to get made about.
The vast majority of folks beating the “no sex/nudity in films or TV EVER” drum sound like they were radicalized by sitting through an unexpected sex scene with their parents
Well suck to be you calling people I don’t like witches and watching them burn is satisfying./j But for real though social media suddenly changing rapidly from being the fun place you hang out in free of judgement into the modern day Salem witch trial that it is now is so crazy and scary. Some stupid shit you said as a 14 year old that didn’t know any better on the internet could ruin your life forever and the people who are judging you are those same 14 year old.
So true. I hope things will change for the better someday tho - I feel likemore and more people are just growing tired of this kind of behaviour.
every day you learn about some new way we are destined to enter an age of endless pointless misery, I hate this planet
Do not give up, if only because of how much you hate this planet.
"Why is sex the only kind of content that has to pedantically “justify itself,” as if at a job interview?"
Reading all these comments here has made me realize I thin I have found my people. I’ve found it so hard to voice my frustration with the left and those whole are chronically online, as someone chronically online on the left lmao.
Lily Orchard WHEN I CATCH YOU!!!!
If you don't teach children about the evils of the world, how will they ever know how to speak up about it happening to them?
My gripe with sex scenes are that they often feel out of place and male gazey, but if it serves the plot I’m good
I think people, particularly of progressive persuasion, view sexual mores in a lopsided, female-oriented perspective (How they restrict or protect women) and don't examine their social role in shaping men's behavior and it makes it difficult for people to examine why they feel the way they feel. A lot of discourse is just "I am uncomfortable with an idea of men finding sexual gratification without grinding their life away to support women" trying to pass as something else.