Hello there,
First post... exciting.
I've created this blog to discuss one of my favourite topics, societal taboos. Maybe I just enjoy shocking people, but it's always been an interest of mine to talk about the things no one else wants to talk about. Sex, drugs, swearing, pornography, more radical politics, teenage life... the list goes on and on.
None of us should be afraid to use the English language (or, indeed, any language) to talk about topics like this that affect us all as humans. As a teenager, it's especially important to me to be able to discuss life freely, when so much is deemed inappropriate for the classroom or the dinner table.
I can't promise regular updates, but when something comes up that should be talked about, rest assured that it will be discussed. I have a whole host of topics that I would love to expound on at length — please join me in discussing them. The relative anonymity afforded by the Internet allows us to explore the things we would never mention in public.
I suppose I should ask, why are we embarrassed? Why is it that four letters can carry such an enormous connotation of rudeness and hate to some, and be dropped easily into a conversation and barely noticed by others? Why is it that MTV brings sex to our living rooms, but we almost daren't teach about how to have sex responsibly in our schools? Why do libraries ban books even today, and why wouldn't my mother let me buy the erotic novel Story of O?
There is nothing criminal in sex. There is nothing criminal in profanity. There is nothihng criminal in reading. There is nothing criminal in being a communist. And there ought not to be anything criminal in viewing pornography underage and there ought not to be anything criminal in limited recreational drug use or in prostitution.
Of course, that's what I think. But I'd like to hear what you think, of course. Please comment on my posts — that way we can discuss our language and our culture properly and maybe even, I don't know, draw some conclusions from it. These are taboos: no one else will discuss them.
Hopefully our first subject will come soon!
About Me
- Emily Rutherford
- Princeton, NJ, United States
- I blog avidly, but on WordPress. I'm a teenager from California and I aspire to overcome both these things.
Blog Archive
24 comments:
Why won't your Mom let you buy 'The Story of O'.
I think I can see her point. Sex can be emotionally troubling at the best of times - for anyone. 'O' is a particularly troubling book, even for (ahem) 'grown ups'. There are acts in it which I would find disturbing in Real Life - but given my sexual experience I find it relatively easy to understand that there is a whole spectrum of sexualities out there, some of which are alien to me.
You are - what? - sixteen? I don't know how sexually permissive your mom is in general, but my guess is that she'd think it safer for you to walk before you run: Get a little more comfortable with more vanilla sex before you experiment on the fringes.
That's not necessarily prudery. It's similar to advising someone to read widely before attempting Ulysses.
PS best to turn your Verification on (via the Control Panel). Otherwise, you will get spammed.
Why let people harm themselves at the expense of society?
Sooo, you believe there should be legislation protecting people in terms of healthcare, etc, but there shouldn't be legislation to protect them from harmful substances?
Lets par-tay! Hey, the bills are on the taxpayers.
You have a point, Edward, but I think the big difference here is that "The Story of O" is a book. It's not like Emily wants to go out and have kinky BDSM sex and her mom's saying "Try normal sex first", rather, it's simply a tale centered around BDSM.
To anonymous, "the expense of society" is such a general term. How is viewing pornography harming yourself to the detriment of society? How does smoking weed cause you to be unable to support yourself?
Finally, to Leo, you're talking about two completely different things here. Healthcare protects someone's right to medical coverage. "Protecting" people from pornography, drugs and sex isn't at all protecting your rights, it's taking away your ability to make decisions for yourself.
Of course, We're all limited in defending myself in a comment that should be short by nature, so I may have missed your point or you may miss mine.
Wow, it's terrific to see all these comments straight off. I suppose I shall tackle them one at a time, and try to stick to my role as discussion facilitator and not get too wrapped up in my POV.
I'll just explain, Edward, that I know why my mother won't let me buy Story of O. It's because certain sexual practices (which I think, in the interests of being a well-informed human being, it would be wise to know about) make her uncomfortable (we've had discussions about it before). Why? Because said sexual practices are considered taboo in our society. I smell a future post here...
And thanks for reminding me about verification — it's on now.
As to anonymous: the way I see it, 'society' will be harmed regardless of whether recreational drug use is legal. But if it's legalised to a certain extent, we can regulate it, creating age limits and amounts of substance usage and establishing rehabilitation clinics. But that's just an example. I think that addresses Leo's comment as well.
In response to Jefe's points, should there not be some limits imposed upon taboo practices, even if they are generally legalised? For example, if the recreational use of cannabis was legalised, should it be restricted to those over, say, 18?
Thanks all for your comments. I have high hopes for this blog after reading your remarks. :)
Is your mom aware that you are posting this? What steps are you taking to make sure she can't find this?
I am another Californian, but I am a 43 year old gay guy and don't want to end up on a sexual predator list if she freaks out when, say, you get caught reading "Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong.
Hi nakedkali,
Thanks for your concern. My mom isn't aware that I've started this blog, but seeing as I've advertised it only to my RL friends in my AIM profile and to my online friends on h2g2 I'm betting that she won't come across it. Because of my involvement on h2g2, she's not usually too worked up about my talking to adults as long as it's serious and non-sexual — which is my intent for this blog. If either of my parents do find it, well, I'm hoping that they'll see it in the same light.
Also, having had run-ins with non-trustworthy online contacts in my more innocent days, I am very, very cautious myself.
Anyway, back to the discussion at hand...
L'shannah Tovah and Blessed Be.
The reason I mentioned your mom is because "The Story of O" is rather bad trash, it violates the usual wise rules of safe and sane. Unless she specifically told you her reasons were as stated here, you would be perhaps doing her a disservice to her to suppose her motive for preventing you reading it is her own discomfort, and doing the BDSM community a similar disservice by allowing this book to be your introduction.
Sure you wouldn't rather try some Jong or Genet first?
Virginity is highly overrated, I was one much longer than most people, so I am in the know. Nevertheless, there is value in cautious first impressions. Edward has a point.
L'shannah tovah to you too. :)
Story of O isn't precisely my introduction to BDSM literature — I'm interested in reading it as part of a survey of the books published by Olympia Press, one of my particular interests.
A happy Banned Books Week to all, by the way. Read a banned book to celebrate — I'm reading Clockwork Orange.
Hmm. I'll defend The Story of O, just on principle. It's rather good bad trash. But disturbing. At least it's consensual.
Now: Howsabouts 'The Greatest Ever American Novel (That Wasn't Written By James Baldwin)'?...Lolita. Disturbing? Hell, yes! Great literature? Hell, yes! But...not the same kind of "Whore Art" as 'O'. I honestly don't think that Nabokov was getting off on it.
And while I'm at it...I'd also place 'American Psycho' in the Ameican Top Ten. No...Top Twenty. Oh, OK...Fifteen. It's a great novel. But - I never recommend it to anyone. During the (UK) Lady Chatterly trial, an Oxford don testified that he'd been "depraved and corrupted" by the book and was a worse person for having read it. What Bret Easton Ellis does is to write formulaic porn which pushes all the standard buttons, but then, at the point of maximum erection, Patrick Bateman starts stapling people to the floor.
I have no idea where I'm going with this...
But...at the risk of a 43 year old straight (mainly) man getting you into trouble with your parents...does porn have the intended effect on you?
The two Greatest American Novels?
Another Country
Giovanni's Room.
Another Country's better even though he pulls his punches with the gay sex. But as a gay man he manages to write amazingly erotic straight sex.
btw...
I'm a Burgess geek.
A Clockwork Orange, besides being a recounting of his wife's wartime rape by Ameicans, is his textbook on language teaching (he taught English in Malaya). In the first third, he explains all the Nadsat terms. In the second third, he carefully places them in context. In the last third, you're on your own...but by now you've learned them. He was dead against his publishers including the Nadsat glossary.
It works! I lerned functional Russian from A Clockwork Orange. It got me through several situatons in Leningrad (as was).
Try 'Earthly Powers'. Or his Malayan Trilogy.
Hi Edward,
Lolita's certainly on my list. I have heard good things about it, not to mention that it's an Olympia Press book.
I shall take your question with its non-creepy intention and say that porn interests me from a historical and sociological standpoint, but little else. From that perspective, though, it's fascinating. You can learn so much about our culture from its porn.
I'm really interested in Clockwork Orange thus far (though I'm only on page 10 or so).
Drugs won't go away, but if they're legalized, they'll be more 'there' than if they're illegal.
And rehab is nothing to snort at. It isn't easy, and many people relapse.
The reason drugs are illegal is because, for the most part (and lets not get bogged down in specifics here) they are very harmful to the ingester. They can also interfere with daily functioning.
What I, and I believe, anonymous, meant, is that many (most?) drug abusers ends up in rehab or medical care at the expense of the taxpayers.
Free medical coverage protects the citizen from dying of disease due to lack of care.
Laws banning drugs also protect people, from harming themselves and therefore needing that care.
It seems odd to beleive in one and not the other. Very... Hippy-like. Free dugs, free love, and healthcare to take care of the fallout.
Interesting points, Leo... perhaps to be addressed in another post?
For the sake of argument, I'm not saying that you should just allow everyone to randomly get stoned everywhere. But when you take the step of legalising, say, recreational cannabis use (I'm not saying legalise every drug — crystal meth is dangerous enough that it probably oughtn't to be) you can regulate it. You can determine how much any one person can acquire at a time, you can tax it, you can impose age limits, that sort of thing. Yeah, you're still going to have illegal use, but you're going to lose that entire sector of folks who do drugs simply because they're outlawed. Plus, if you take cannabis/pot/weed/marijuana/whatever you want to call it, it's not even addictive. The burden you place on society by allowing folks to light up once in a while is no greater than that placed on society by tobacco smokers.
As to drugs, I don't know that personal harm is a big concern of anybody who is antidrug, really. Suicide is illegal, but you never see anyone's family get prosecuted. Alcohol is legal and people kill themselves just fine on it. Three times as many people die from automobiles both accidental and on purpose as do from guns. For all of these, nobody seems to care anywhere near as much as they do about illegal drugs. Death and self-harm don't seem to be the issue.
The problem with them is that with most of them enough of the people taking them fail to keep themselves going in a way that's beneficial to a capitalist society, and of the society's provisions for personal safety of others.
There are European nations in which a significant proportion of the population is unemployed, so it's no loss to the economy there, and they provide drugs free to those who declare themselves addicted, so there's much less impulse to steal or assault. Under those conditions, it isn't such a big deal.
Much better than "The Story of O", would be the webcomic "Liliane Bi-Dyke" (you can find it by search function on topwebcomics.com) or the (also comic book, but paper) collections "xXxenophile" by Phil Foglio. It's not a major focus of these works, but it *is* put in context.
Great comic, nakedkali! Thanks for passing it on. :)
Context is important.
I'm glad you liked whichever one you saw and hope you strongly consider the other.
Liliane Bi-Dyke was the one I saw. I read the archives in an afternoon and enjoyed them considerably, and subsequently bookmarked the comic for further perusal.
About vindictiveness that EMR has mentioned, I have a response that is laden with cultural values.
I disagree that the usage is unintentional. Your example is a case in which the expletive excess is used in an attempt to violate the power structure in a way, and to a presumably power-constrained person, that will presumably not get the speaker hurt. The ritualized response is to show the speaker that he (yep, usually a guy) will get hurt, in a manner that society has marked as safe, ie. detention.
Whether or not he is smart enough to get this is a different matter entirely. Equality of education is an ideal that gets rough around the edges when it clonks itself up against reality.
Language is redundant. Furthermore, since most things people are talking about is other people and culture is redundant, you can insert an amazing amount of 'fucks' or 'cunts' or whatever in a sentence, in any grammatical position you choose, and the person who likes you enough to still listen to you will understand. Psychologists furthermore tell us that 90% of what people say is nonverbal.
So, why talk at all?
The presupposition, and perhaps it's every bit a deprecated and degraded one as the presupposition that presumes that theater is a valuable and required part of the cultural education of young people, is that even though speech acts are not necessarily something you need to be schooled about, that we will teach it to you anyways.
Rhetoric may very well be dead and gone, and I know that speech class was rather rarefied at my HS, but the idea that people need to learn how to speak is still a valid one. You are not obligated to make the world a better place, but this doesn't mean that you can stop trying.
Posted this to the wrong conversation, darnit.
In terms of legalizing drugs so they can be restricted—c'mon. They’re already restricted: nobody is allowed to have them. And do people get them anyway? Yeah. Make them legal to a part of the population and will even more 'restricted' people get them than before? Yeah.
Think about cigarettes. Your average 15-year-old has an easier time accessing cigarettes than Ecstasy for a simple reason: cigarettes are on the shelves and accessible to a large portion of the population. Ecstasy isn’t.
And as for the argument that people won’t try them for fun just because they’re illegal: same argument. Under-aged smokers do it just because they can't. Anyone restricted from legalized drugs will still do it—just because they can't.
Furthermore, the illegality of drugs makes them harder to obtain simply because there are cartels that keep the prices artificially high; not everyone can afford drugs. If they became legal—whee! Everyone starts shipping the stuff, prices plummet, and anyone who might have been put off the habit by the expense of it are all jumping the bandwagon.
I repeat, I'm not arguing the case for or against any specific drugs. I leave it to the scientists to argue over what is really bad for people, and not magazine columnists pushing an agenda either way. I'm talking in general: addictive, harmful substances.
Do cigarettes fall into that category? Probably; again, I’ll leave that to the men in lab coats. But drugs were easier to ban than cigarettes ever will be, simply because drugs were always looked down upon as a low habit and never proliferated to the extent that tobacco usage did. Does that mean we should un-ban drugs simply because cigarettes aren’t banned? I don't think there’s logic in that statement.
They already tried banning alcohol, but it was impossible, because anyone can make it, and some people require it, ritually. And if you don't see why you can’t compare cars to drugs, I’m very willing to explain it.
As for giving drugs to the unemployed... sounds like 'bread and circuses' all over again. You don’t want unemployed people stoned, you want them getting a job. You want to provide them with a job. Not just consumption of imported goods. And can you imagine where we’d be if the unemployed got drug stipends? Oy.
Well, I got here by selfgoogling, and I am very happy to find liliane suggested (and followed up on and appreciated) in this discussion. Thanks for checking her out. Very interesting discussion... personally I read all sorts of things at 16 that my father disagreed with. But I read them anyways. (oh dear, look where it got me!) Reading is not doing and it certainly opens one's eyes to the world.
I'm afraid that I've rather let this blog fall by the wayside, but I'm incredibly pleased you checked it out.
I have since read Story of O, in addition to other things of the genre (though nothing, I can unequivocally state, holds a candle to O). And it certainly goes without saying that if I hadn't read what I've read, my view of the world would be much more limited.
Post a Comment