I'm concerned that the sexual (as well as the romantic) images on tumblr, the limitless availability to pornography on the Internet, and the false sense of community on Facebook and Twitter, is creating an entire generation of people who will forever live in a state of confusion and loneliness, because none of it remotely resembles real people, real life, real sex, or real love.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Real World
I'm concerned that the sexual (as well as the romantic) images on tumblr, the limitless availability to pornography on the Internet, and the false sense of community on Facebook and Twitter, is creating an entire generation of people who will forever live in a state of confusion and loneliness, because none of it remotely resembles real people, real life, real sex, or real love.
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4 comments:
KT this is an old concern, expressed by society with the introduction of every new communication technology. The communications course I took delineated these same concerns about the printing press, radio, wireless radio, TV, etc. People addicted to listening to their wireless sets were called radio-heads and the societal fear is that they were, or would become, social deviants and misfits.
I would like to think that the human psyche in general is more resilient than that. It can and does, normally, distinguish between the real and the unreal. The exceptions, here, are just that. Exceptions. (Or at least I think they are, when not just poor parenting!)
E., thanks for your comment, and I SO want to believe you are correct about the human psyche. (I really do!)
When looking at the way things are today, I always try to refer to the way things used to be, but I find it very difficult to compare this time to any other. Things have become so extreme, I mean, certainly being a "Radio-head" is not like being a 20-year-old man who has had free access to hardcore pornography in his home, round the clock since he was a kid.
My concern is that this is creating a real confusion and even a desensitization in regards to sex (and love), which is already a difficult thing to negotiate and figure out when you're young. In addition to that, I think boys are forever looking for this illusive image of the woman he sees, not only in the videos, but everywhere on the internet. I know that pornography has been around forever, but the fact that it's at every teenager's fingertips is alarming to me. How will boys and girls grow up and discover who they are as sexual beings? How will they be able to connect sexually when there is an obsession with certain positions, ways of performance, and a checklist of things that must happen in the bed to make it worthwhile?
If I didn't have a 14-year-old daughter, I might not be thinking about this so much. I know that my concern is not going to change anything, but I do hope that when parents are talking with their kids about sex, they also include the talk about the internet, about self-respect, about love, and about pornography's place in society... which sadly I don't believe, is in a child's bedroom.
xxo
KT, your specific concerns are valid, of course and parenting is the key to being balanced, sexually and otherwise. Parenting, not necessarily that done just by the parent(s), provides the touchstone by which balance and resilience is affirmed, even if specific topics of discussion are not included.
In the long term history of society, it is possible that this phase in American mores is the long end of a pendulum that began with the extreme prudishness of late 19th and early 20th century America. Have you read Bill Bryson's book Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in America? After reading this, one may wonder how the society was even able to propagate itself!
From the Chapter 'Sex and Other Distractions':
"...
But as the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth, people suddenly became acutely— and eventually almost hysterically—sensitive about terms related to sex and the body.
No one knows exactly when or why this morbid delicacy erupted. Like most fashions, it just happened. In 1818, Thomas Bowdler, an Edinburgh physician, offered the world an expurgated version of Shakespeare's works suitable for the whole family, and in so doing gave the world the verb to bowdlerize. Bowdler's emendations were nothing if not thorough. Even the most glancing reminder of the human procreative capacity—King Lear's "every inch a king," for example—was ruthlessly struck out. His sanitized Shakespeare was such a success that he immediately embarked on a similar treatment of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which had been completed only a quarter of a century before. But Bowdler's careful editing didn't inaugurate the change of mood, it merely reflected it.
Even before Bowdler began scratching away at the classics, people were carefully avoiding emotive terms like legs, blouse, and thigh. By the time Bowdler's Family Shakespeare appeared, belly buttons had become tummy buttons, breast had become bosom, and underwear had become nether garments or small clothes (and later unmentionables).
Though the practice began in Britain, it found its full flowering in America, where soon the list of proscribed words extended to the hundreds. Any word with an unseemly syllable like "cock" or "tit" in it became absolutely unutterable, so that words like titter, titbit, cockerel, cockroach, and cockatoo either disappeared from the American vocabulary or were altered to a more sanitized form like tidbit, rooster, or roach. There is at least one recorded instance of coxswain being changed to roosterswain, and bulls were sometimes called male cows. Before the century was half over, the list of unspeakable words in the United States had been extended to almost any anatomical feature or article of apparel associated with any part of the human form outside the head, hands, and ankles. Stockings, for instance, was deemed "extremely indelicate" by Bartlett in 1850; he suggested long socks or hose as more comely alternatives. Even toes became humiliating possessions, never to be mentioned in polite company. One simply spoke of the feet. After a time, feet too became unendurably shameful, so that people didn't mention anything below the ankles at all. It is a wonder that discourse didn't cease altogether" (p307-8).
This was very likely very unhealthy, and may still have its remnants in the society, that express generally more concern about sexuality than guns, blood lust and violent revenge; or the use of cartoons and psychological manipulation to sell products as well as the benevolence of violence to children.
We live, most definitely, in interesting times. But if you want a fascinating read, and belly laughs, read Bryson's books.
Thanks for that... I will take to heart what you said, AND be sure to check out Bryson!
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