Discrimination Frame vs Obscenity Frame

[walkitout]

After discussing this with my husband, I realized that we were speaking past each other. I am using a "discrimination" frame when thinking about retailers and things like bestiality and incest themes. The question I am asking is, is it illegal/immoral/unethical for a retailer to discriminate against an item based on this criteria.

Bestiality and/or incest are _not_ protected classes, and given that we're still writing laws against the activities, not likely to be any time soon. So while I would object to a retailer refusing to sell anything written by/about a woman, a person of color, a person with a disability, etc., I'm not prepared to deploy the same kind of outrage about this kind of erotica. Freedom of speech/freedom of the press does not actively require a retailer to carry all product and thus does not apply.

R. was framing it as an obscenity question. Once I realized that, I was like, no no no, that is not how I am thinking about it. I'm not saying a retailer should or should not carry this stuff; I'm addressing whether or not I think a retailer is being Teh Evil for having a rule along these lines.

In practice, there is no reason to believe that Amazon, for example, has anything against incest (hey, they'll list "Ball in the Family" from 3rd party sellers) or bestiality (they'll sell you "Sleeping Dogs Lie"), per se. I do think they want customers to be happy and keep coming back, which means sometimes the majority preference to not be shocked is going to make things trickier for people trying to find some material for their sexual minority fantasy. I don't think anyone is well served by papering over these differences and somehow suggesting that because some material was removed from some online bookstores, our literary culture/written environment has somehow been damaged.

I'm in the middle of reading _Perv_ by Jesse Bering, and while I applaud a gay man stepping up for better treatment of sexual minorities, I am not overjoyed by how he is going about it. For example, I see "well, animals do it" as a Great Argument to counter idiots who say things like, "well, animals _never_ do _that_", because, you know, counter example, ideally with video. Because _that_ is some funny shit. Just because animals do something doesn't mean _we_ should do that thing, any more than animals not doing something is a perfect argument against us doing that thing (really, gonna give up all your Apple devices that easily? I think not). But labeling the entire area the "Naturalistic Fallacy" without giving more consideration to _when_ it is appropriate and _when_ it is _not_ is crude and unhelpful.

Also, Bering's treatment of our understanding of how we think about the world and make decisions lacks a lot of nuance in important ways.

So I'm sad. I _want_ this to be a good book, but at 10% of the way in, I am Not Happy.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I didn't much like the excerpt posted in the Stranger http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/age-of-consent/Content?oid=17715319

Also see http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/25/dear-jesse-please-dont-give-up-your-day-job/ and http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/29/hot-forstudent/

Oh, and I forgot, Emily Nagoski got mad at him too: http://enagoski.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/misogyny-and-cervical-mucus-in-scientific-american/

consent, minors, gay men treating women's sexuality with disgust, etc.

[walkitout]

Okay, so Jesse Bering turns out to just be another misogynistic creepster who wants to have sex with minors because he has a fantasy about how that might have been for him when he was younger, with only a wormeaten figleaf to cover all that up.

Good to know. I pre-ordered the book because I am super excited when a formerly oppressed group starts sticking up for a still oppressed group -- and that excitement frequently gets me into trouble. So I'm going to chalk this up to Life Experience and not read any further. I really like Dan Savage, and _he_ used to say (and believe) some truly disgusting things about women, heterosexual sex and so forth, so there's probably hope for Bering. Maybe someone will kick him (in a risk aware, consensual fashion) until he gets a clue.

ETA: While I'm at it, I was perturbed by Bering's assumption/assertion that the reader experienced shame about their sexual ideation. Like, _really_ _really_ disoriented. It didn't feel like he was just trying to connect with those readers who experience shame about their sexual ideation. He more than once stated that _everyone_ has this shame about some aspect of their erotic thoughts. (Oh, and he's another one of those silly people who thinks you really _cannot_ avoid thinking of X when told to do so, which is only true if the only way you have to stay on task is to repeat the directions as given. If you convert the directions to something positive, you won't have any trouble thinking of something else having nothing to do with, wait, what were we talking about? Bandler and Grinder may be _nuts_ but they did figure out how a lot of this stuff works and conveyed it in ways that even Geek Boys should be able to understand.) Long and short, it would seem he does not realize that not everyone experiences such shame. Again, no wisdom.

And, as always, thank you. I had already read some of what you pointed to, and wasn't prepared to give up on that basis (altho it was worrying me), but the Emily Nagoski incident demonstrates that the author doesn't actually _have_ any wisdom, so there's just No Point in continuing.

beating a dead horse (no consent required, presumably, but tasteless)

[walkitout]

IIRC, Bering introduces himself in _Perv_ as knowing he was gay when quite young, but internalizing a lot of homophobia and deploying it himself to distract others from his own orientation which he was convinced other people could detect (like, maybe the doctor in a blood test).

There's a lot of reason to believe that this guy's history of abusive treatment of those down-hierarchy from himself is so entrenched that he can't stop himself, particularly when he feels _any_ threat to himself or his identity whatsoever.

That's unfortunate. That's cornered rat behavior. In an _actual_ cornered rat, understandable, and something an exterminator should just plan for. But Bering has some standing online, as an author and in the scientific community. Cornered rat behavior in that situation is much more difficult to manage. Because there is no pest control to call.

Re: beating a dead horse (no consent required, presumably, but tasteless)

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Yeah, his treatment of EN and PZM shows that. It also shows that bloggers on SciAm writing about their personal interactions with other scholars isn't exactly a new thing (see the recent Urban Scientist hoohah, though in that case the SciAm blogger was entirely in the right).

I'm not much of a Dan Savage fan. He strikes me as the kind of guy who literally does not know, perhaps does not want to know, how to avoid being an asshole sometimes. And I'm not going to look to someone like that for personal advice. Granted that we needed a sex-positive columnist like him, and he's done a fair amount of good, but I think we'd have done even better with a more humane person. (And he's a big fan of Jesse Bering, so I don't think he sees him as in need of reform.)

Re shame: I think probably most people have at one time or another felt at least fleeting shame about SOME aspects of their ideation on almost any subject whatsoever, because shame is pretty universal. That doesn't mean that everyone has permanent, crippling shame about their sexual ideation.

Incidentally, I think a lot of people deal with shame by incorporating elements of it into their sexuality -- hence the desire to be "naughty" or "dirty," which otherwise makes no particular sense. Having been brought up in an idealistic hippie era, though alas not without plenty of shame involved, I couldn't grasp that myself for ages -- why wouldn't one far rather sexuality were considered simply NOT dirty? But of course that was too simplistic.

Re: beating a dead horse (no consent required, presumably, but tasteless)

[walkitout]

*sigh*

I am _so_ slow. Whenever I've run across Jesse Bering subbing, I've read the first sentence or two and gone, wait, what? Realized it was a sub, and found something else to read. If only I'd realized it was the same guy. :( Before I spent money on the book.

I'm with you on the "wouldn't one far rather sexuality were considered simply NOT dirty". If that is simplistic, I'm just gonna stay that way.

Re: beating a dead horse (no consent required, presumably, but tasteless)

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I meant simplistic in the sense that not everyone is going to feel that way, and I can understand better what's going on around me if I realize why they don't.

Re: beating a dead horse (no consent required, presumably, but tasteless)

[walkitout]

Very fair minded of you.

Re: beating a dead horse (no consent required, presumably, but tasteless)

[walkitout]

Oh, and I'm not questioning that people have _ever had_ feelings of shame with respect to their sexual thinking. I'm questioning whether that's really an ongoing, live aspect of adult sexuality for everyone. Like, I kind of don't think it is. It'd be sad if only a minority of people have adult sexual fantasies without shame, and I _hope_ it is a majority.

I think a lot of people reach a sort of accommodation with their sexual desires and thoughts and learn to be basically okay with themselves, and the shame fades away. I don't think that's very unusual.