River
Active member
Society believes that a physically intimate relationship can not be complete without sex.
"Society believes?" You say things like this and wonder why I might be a little "testy". It might be accurate to say that "many people believe...." But "society"? Who are "society"? How many of them are there? Are society 100% of something, or a about half, or a third?
Therefore, if intercourse is not included at some point in a relationship it is incomplete. I disagree because I find intercourse as one means of being sexual not the MAIN EVENT. I find hugging to be sexual and can be satisfied sexually by hugging.
Oh? Is hugging always or only sometimes "sexual" for you? Is it only hugging, or do handshakes or a pat on the arm or back also "sexual" for you? If I hug a child does this make me a paedophile?
I am not sure how this has anything to do with pornography where I do not feel dehumanized as being treated as a sex object in porn. As a matter of fact, I strongly desire to be treated as a sex object.
There are sex objects and then there are sex objects. One kind is dehumanizing and the other is not. If a person is made entirely into an "object," that's objectification and complete objectification is complete dehumanization.
I don't need a relationship with sex. You may need it but I don't. But anyways, I don't see the connection between porn and people who may or may not watch porn not being satisfied on a intimate level if there is no sexual intercourse. I have known about these encounters way before porn was mainstream. Once again I don't have this sentiment. And BTW The porn I watch doesn't reinforce this sentiment. Sorry!
The statement which you made which I quoted in my reply was so vague in its intended meaning that it could could be interpreted in a thousand directions. It lacked any contextualization or hints at what you might be attempting to say.
About that word "relationship". The word has become almost meaningless in English recently. Why do I say this? Because people will say things like what you just said, which suggest that a passing sexual encounter isn't a relationship -- at least for the moment. Just how long a duration must people be together for them to be relating, and thus in some kind of relationship? If you can turn a hug into a sex act you can certainly squeeze the last remaining ounce of human relating out of a sexual encounter, thus entirely dehumanizing the entire encounter.
What people mean by the word "relationship" most often these days is capital R Relationship, which is vaguely defined but roughly interpretable as a "romantic relationship" (however defined). But the fact is that even a casual or ephemeral friendship is a relationship by the dictionary definition of the word. My point is that either the dictionaries are in error or those who use lower case r relationship to exclusively mean upper case R Relationship (meaning a 'romantic' relationship) are mistaken.
Personally, I see a rampant epidemic of dehumanization and/as/or objectification going on in our world -- not just in its sexual form but also in relating (broadly spoken) generally--importantly including what is often called "the workplace," but especially in politics. I fully intend the value judgement in the word "epidemic"
The overwhelming majority of pornography is objectifying and thus dehumanizing. Why? Because these supposedly erotic acts more often than not involve no plausible human story line which involve anything resembling three-dimensional human beings with hearts and feelings and such. My gripe here is not with erotic imagery (still or moving), but the covertly propagandistic (mostly due to purely commercial motives, sans anything resembling real art) nature of pornography, generally. The propaganda, intentional or otherwise, is in the representation of what in reality are intimate human relatings as dehumanized non-relatings (a stripping specifically of "relationship"). Usually, in porn (especially on the internet), there is no talking, no getting to know one another, no ... intimacy. The characters are reduced to humanity-stripped sexual organs from head to toe. But these are not our actual sexual organs! They are a packaged, propagandised, absurdly reduced abstraction.
To think this stuff doesn't shape the erotic imaginations -- and capacities -- of its viewers (especially the young) is flatly ridiculous. Those who view a lot of this stuff are being trained in dehumanization / objectification of a specific (and a general) kind.
Again, I'm all for erotic imagery (film, paintings, still photos, written, spoken...)! I celebrate eros. And it is my celebration of eros which has me disgusted with what folks simply call "porn".
Edit:
The blue highlighted (clickable) words "erotic imaginations and capacities" above link to The Challenge of Pornography and the Imagination of Eros | A Talk by Zhenzan Dao. Perhaps some will not want to watch the whole talk, but do listen and watch the part which begins about 32 minutes in.
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