I am amazed at the reaction of the left in feeling the need to apologise for Kevin Rudd’s drunken evening at a strip joint. I am also surprised at the attitude of those feminists who almost seek to apologise for not condemning him in order to preserve their dubious reputation for consistency. The response indicates that leftist feminists have psychological difficulties resulting in embarrassingly obvious, sexual guilt and persistently negative attitudes towards the world as it is.
I thought this obvious sort of Puritanism disappeared in the 1960s.
Persecuting Kevin Rudd for his drunken strip club visit borders on the ludicrous and trivialises our nation. I would be worried if Rudd didn't enjoy viewing a bit of flesh and imbibing some grog. Indeed I am worried that he feels the need to apologise for his ‘mistake’. Perhaps he is concerned that the phony devoted Christian persona he has put on might evaporate – no risk ‘mate’ it never condensed - at least in my mind - maybe to a handful of evangelicals. The moment the pollies put on the ‘god-talk’ I switch off and listen to ‘Captain Courageous’ or my well-worn ‘greatest hits from the 1950s’.
Men enjoy checking out the physical assets of a beautiful woman and most women enjoy displaying such. Women have similarly despicable ‘sins’ with respect to men. We are all essentially, disgusting, sexual beings. That is indeed wonderful although also base and despicable. We all, at least, have one thing in common.
Enjoying physical beauty a key pleasure of being alive? The pale virgin, shrouded in snow arise....where my sunflower wishes to go. I’ll head off with the sunflower, thanks.
Leftist clots take care of the burial, rightist critics of Rudd – you lose one vote!
Monday, August 20, 2007
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7 comments:
Harry, your attitude to strip clubs seems a little 1950's itself. I mentioned recently in an argument over at Catallaxy that there used to be an argument about burleque style stripping that it was at least partly about admiration of the beauty of the female form, and tantalising the watcher, as much as it was intended to produce erections. I can see the argument, sort of, when you are talking a stage show with considerable distance between the women and the punters, and the actual nudity was relatively brief at the end.
But modern strip clubs, with this pole and lap dancing, have taken down any sense of barrier between the woman and the man, and the fact that it is about sex pure and simple, and the "objectification" of the woman, is beyond doubt.
Of course, many clubs also go beyond the stripping itself, to sex acts with a lucky member of the audience. (Haven't personally witnessed that part, I must say, but been reliably advised.)
As well, while I am sure it has never been exactly a reputable job, you can't deny that modern stripping has a large number of participants there for the easy money for drug habits, and shouldn't the audience feel some embarrassment for providing support to an industry that keeps such women in their hopeless situation?
In short, you don't have to be a god botherer or a feminist to have reasonable grounds to dislike the current stripping industry in general. If it was toned down back to what they could get away with up to (say) the 1960's, and you knew that the participants are all there without drug habits or other less than wholesome reasons, then maybe I would agree with you.
Steve,
Issues of drug dependency have no relevance here. They need to be addressed of course but there would be willing female participants who are not drug dependent.
The case for allowing actual sex acts boils down to the case for legalised prostitution. I have unstable views on this one. I certainly don't like prostitution.
I am not sure that objectification - seeing others as sexual beings - is a bad thing on occasion. I can well understand criticisms if it becomes a dominant or exclusive life view.
There are many dimensions to sexual feeling and pure erection-provoking lust seems to me to be one of them. There are many others.
One other point Harry: The thing which I find a bit creepy about strip joints is the public nature of the act. Especially with the wide availability of free porn, the point of attending a public display of real life flesh with no actual sexual outcome at the end has just always puzzled me. Either staying at home to masturbate, or going to a prostitute for sex, makes some sense as to outcome. The fun of going with mates to go "woo hoo" with them at a stripper though, perhaps you can explain why that is fun! :)
Steve,
you are trying to find justifiable conscious outcomes for something which is not really driven by such processes. If some people like strip clubs over, say, sniffing underwear in public, who cares, and what is the desired outcome in any case?
Also, this sex-is-bad idea seems to me a puritan cultural view. What's bad about it apart from God thinks its bad? The same goes for prostitution. If even a small proportion of people happen to like it, what is the problem with letting them do it? If you were worried about bad influences (your "objectification") then finding worse ones to complain about that we bump into every day is easy -- just turn on your television.
what's wrong with objectification?
ask most men and they'd say they'd welcome more objectification from the women around them ...
well said, harry
I posted a comment along these lines at Larvatus, but I doubt it received much support;
I think feminists are the ones who shortchange and insult strippers and legal sex workers by not giving them the credit they deserve as open-minded, confident women who are more than capable of making their own decisions.
Survey after survey, study after study finds that sex workers and strippers are absolutely satisfied with their career choice, and confident with who they are as people, and often resent feminists judging their professions, because by extention that judges them as willing participants. Often they cite their satisfaction in the job as being that the high wages means they only need to work twice a week and so can spend more time with their children.
Christopher Hitchens recent book "God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" has long and extensive sections devoted to his absolute distaste for the way religion trys to stamp out and suppress what is our most fundamental and Darwinian instinct, even to the point where a horrifyingly high proprtion of the human population mutilates womens' genitals in the name of that end.
I'd say it is the right who are more anti-sex than the left, Harry.
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