In favor of talking about sex (and I include in that showing pictures or movies) is that you can't stop people from doing it, people like to do it, and it's fun. You can make them feel bad and guilty about liking to do it, but it's still fun to do. It can even be exciting and sexually stimulating, which in many contexts is a good thing.
Also it demystifies and educates, promoting greater sexual satisfaction and reducing the likelihood of disease. ("And that's the clit, son, remember to stimulate it until she comes before you do, you'll both be happier. This is how to do that. How do you tell if she has come? OK, I'll explain. . . . And while we at it, this is a condom. Always use one, always, without fail.") Furthermore, you can also learn new things you never thought of before that might be fun for you and your partner, or help correct your mistakes in a relatively nonhumiliating context.
Finally there is Brian's point, that open talk about practices and activities of groups who have been discriminated against because of their sexual preferences is a necessary part of the liberation of those groups -- both from their point of view, so they can talk about who they are and what they do without shame or guilt, and so other people can come to accept them without making a big deal about it. Until queers and dykes and perverts and the polyamorous (cheaters, I guess) and so forth can talk about (and depict) their activities with at least the same freedom that the dominant hetsex majority already does and without any more notice, those people are going to suffer prejudice and obloquy for no justifiable reason. That is part of why films like Brokeback Mountain (gay male homosexuality) or Secretary (S&M) are really progressive, they are steps towards making these activities normal and relativey unremarkable by talking about them as if they were.
Against this is the prudish thought that sex of any sort is dirty and disgusting and sinful, which is an attitude I hope is not widely shared around the list. Or talking about sex makes some people uncomfortable. Some people say one should never talk religion, politics, or sex. I guess that is because these are topics that are controversial. Well, evevryone around here is argumentative and likes to talk religion and politics, sex, frankly, is more fun to talk about. Nonetheless this is a valid consideration if one recalls that there is a time and a place for everything. Talk dirty at the office, you may create a hostile working environment and be the occasion for a lawsuit. Talk dirty at a holiday dinner table, you might alarm an elderly relative or annoy the parents of young children. So you have to use some common sense. That goes for talking about law or literature too, though.
--- BklynMagus <magcomm at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Dear List:
>
> Wojtek writes:
>
> > But I also tend to be of the old persuasion
> believing
> that what consenting adults do in their bedrooms is
> their personal matter, . . .
>
> Agreed.
>
> > . . . not to be discussed in public.
>
> Unfortunately, the reality is that such behavior
> needs to
> be discussed in public in order that consenting
> individuals
> can continue to do as they please in private without
> fear
> of prosecution.
>
> > The exhibitionistic dragging it into the televised
> sphere
> of pop-kultur is a marketing trick that has little
> appeal to
> me.
>
> While public discussion may not appeal to you, it is
> not
> a marketing trick. Sexually oppressed groups never
> realize
> how large they are until public discussion occurs,
> and they
> begin to realize how "common" certain behaviors are
> which
> they and many others long believed were "uncommon."
>
>
> One of the many tools oppressors use is the specious
> call to
> an older standard/persuasion/tradition that
> shuns/denigrates
> such speech not for any valid pragmatic reason, but
> for its
> alleged prurient nature or its status as merely the
> detritus
> of a degenerate popular culture.
>
> Brian Dauth
> Queer Buddhist Resister
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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