One of them celebrates death and destruction, the other one is about life and creation. Seems to me like the priorities are the wrong way round.
I've had that exact conversation with someone.
"I don't mind if they see nudity."
"Aren't you worried about how it will affect them?"
"I dunno, how many people died in the last Marvel movie? We're not worried about them becoming mass murderers. And besides, if the consequence of them seeing nudity is ... sex? That's a thing they'll be able to do when they're old enough, as opposed to murder, which will never be right in any circumstance..."
The idea I have is our fear of sex lead to US film makers searching for something that would get people's attention, and violence turned out to be it. One could also make a vague claim about guns being a more natural part of our independent fantastical claims of living on the frontier (needed to kill the previous inhabitants during our genocidal takeovers). But I think it was the infamous Hayes Code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code) in the 1930s, where we moved from a time without as much cinematic censorship (that allowed both violence and sex & nudity at times) into a time that was much more anti-sex in the media. The anti-sex was already there, but the Hayes code gave anti-sex conservatives much more power to control mass media for a while.
Even setting that aside, you have the influence on Western culture of Greek and Roman myths, where heroes were defined not by recognizably Christian moral virtues but by their superhuman capacity to commit violence. The ancients weren't particularly afraid of sex either (nor did they have the same ideas about sexuality that would develop into the heterosexual/homosexual dynamic in Christendom) but it's easy to see how the aspects synchronous to the Judeo-Christian ideal would persist in the culture while the other stuff went by the wayside.
Even movies like Hannibal, Psycho, and Schindler's List usually turn the camera the other way before blood starts splashing around, the stinking, grossly distorted, dismembered things that just stopped being human never even appear in the background. In fact, I bet American culture abhors violence so much that I'll get downvoted for telling the truth about violent death in my previous sentence instead of euphemizing it.
— ⁂ —
Contrast Iliad 6.37–71, in Murray's meticulous but annoyingly archaized 01924 translation:
But Adrastus did Menelaus, good at the warcry, take alive; for his two horses, coursing in terror over the plain, became entangled in a tamarisk bough, and breaking the curved car at the end of the pole, themselves went on toward the city whither the rest were fleeing in rout; but their master rolled from out the car beside the wheel headlong in the dust upon his face. And to his side came Menelaus, son of Atreus, bearing his far-shadowing spear.
Then Adrastus clasped him by the knees and besought him: “Take me alive, thou son of Atreus, and accept a worthy ransom; treasures full many lie stored in the palace of my wealthy father, bronze and gold and iron wrought with toil; thereof would my father grant thee ransom past counting, should he hear that I am alive at the ships of the Achaeans.”
So spake he, and sought to persuade the other's heart in his breast, and lo, Menelaus was about to give him to his squire to lead to the swift ships of the Achaeans, but Agamemnon came running to meet him, and spake a word of reproof, saying: “Soft-hearted Menelaus, why carest thou thus for the men? Hath then so great kindness been done thee in thy house by Trojans? Of them let not one escape sheer destruction and the might of our hands, nay, not the man-child whom his mother bears in her womb; let not even him escape, but let all perish together out of Ilios, unmourned and unmarked.”
So spake the warrior, and turned his brother's mind, for he counselled aright; so Menelaus with his hand thrust from him the warrior Adrastus, and lord Agamemnon smote him on the flank, and he fell backward; and the son of Atreus planted his heel on his chest, and drew forth the ashen spear. Then Nestor shouted aloud, and called to the Argives: “My friends, Danaan warriors, squires of Ares, let no man now abide behind in eager desire for spoil, that he may come to the ships bearing the greatest store; nay, let us slay the men; thereafter in peace shall ye strip the armour from the corpses that lie dead over the plain.”
— ⁂ —
In the original:
Ἄδρηστον δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔπειτα βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Μενέλαος
ζωὸν ἕλ᾽: ἵππω γάρ οἱ ἀτυζομένω πεδίοιο
ὄζῳ ἔνι βλαφθέντε μυρικίνῳ ἀγκύλον ἅρμα
ἄξαντ᾽ ἐν πρώτῳ ῥυμῷ αὐτὼ μὲν ἐβήτην
πρὸς πόλιν, ᾗ περ οἱ ἄλλοι ἀτυζόμενοι φοβέοντο,
αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἐκ δίφροιο παρὰ τροχὸν ἐξεκυλίσθη
πρηνὴς ἐν κονίῃσιν ἐπὶ στόμα: πὰρ δέ οἱ ἔστη
Ἀτρεΐδης Μενέλαος ἔχων δολιχόσκιον ἔγχος.
Ἄδρηστος δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔπειτα λαβὼν ἐλίσσετο γούνων:
‘ζώγρει Ἀτρέος υἱέ, σὺ δ᾽ ἄξια δέξαι ἄποινα:
πολλὰ δ᾽ ἐν ἀφνειοῦ πατρὸς κειμήλια κεῖται
χαλκός τε χρυσός τε πολύκμητός τε σίδηρος,
τῶν κέν τοι χαρίσαιτο πατὴρ ἀπερείσι᾽ ἄποινα
εἴ κεν ἐμὲ ζωὸν πεπύθοιτ᾽ ἐπὶ νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν.
ὣς φάτο, τῷ δ᾽ ἄρα θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἔπειθε:
καὶ δή μιν τάχ᾽ ἔμελλε θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν
δώσειν ᾧ θεράποντι καταξέμεν: ἀλλ᾽ Ἀγαμέμνων
ἀντίος ἦλθε θέων, καὶ ὁμοκλήσας ἔπος ηὔδα:
ὦ πέπον ὦ Μενέλαε, τί ἢ δὲ σὺ κήδεαι οὕτως
ἀνδρῶν; ἦ σοὶ ἄριστα πεποίηται κατὰ οἶκον
πρὸς Τρώων; τῶν μή τις ὑπεκφύγοι αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον
χεῖράς θ᾽ ἡμετέρας, μηδ᾽ ὅν τινα γαστέρι μήτηρ
κοῦρον ἐόντα φέροι, μηδ᾽ ὃς φύγοι, ἀλλ᾽ ἅμα πάντες
Ἰλίου ἐξαπολοίατ᾽ ἀκήδεστοι καὶ ἄφαντοι.
ὣς εἰπὼν ἔτρεψεν ἀδελφειοῦ φρένας ἥρως
αἴσιμα παρειπών: ὃ δ᾽ ἀπὸ ἕθεν ὤσατο χειρὶ
ἥρω᾽ Ἄδρηστον: τὸν δὲ κρείων Ἀγαμέμνων
οὖτα κατὰ λαπάρην: ὃ δ᾽ ἀνετράπετ᾽, Ἀτρεΐδης δὲ
λὰξ ἐν στήθεσι βὰς ἐξέσπασε μείλινον ἔγχος.
Νέστωρ δ᾽ Ἀργείοισιν ἐκέκλετο μακρὸν ἀΰσας:
ὦ φίλοι ἥρωες Δαναοὶ θεράποντες Ἄρηος
μή τις νῦν ἐνάρων ἐπιβαλλόμενος μετόπισθε
μιμνέτω ὥς κε πλεῖστα φέρων ἐπὶ νῆας ἵκηται,
ἀλλ᾽ ἄνδρας κτείνωμεν: ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τὰ ἕκηλοι
νεκροὺς ἂμ πεδίον συλήσετε τεθνηῶτας.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
— ⁂ —
In Pope's more poetic but considerably less literal rendering:
Unbless’d Adrastus next at mercy lies
Beneath the Spartan spear, a living prize.
Scared with the din and tumult of the fight,
His headlong steeds, precipitate in flight,
Rush’d on a tamarisk’s strong trunk, and broke
The shatter’d chariot from the crooked yoke;
Wide o’er the field, resistless as the wind,
For Troy they fly, and leave their lord behind.
Prone on his face he sinks beside the wheel:
Atrides o’er him shakes his vengeful steel;
The fallen chief in suppliant posture press’d
The victor’s knees, and thus his prayer address’d:
“O spare my youth, and for the life I owe
Large gifts of price my father shall bestow.
When fame shall tell, that, not in battle slain,
Thy hollow ships his captive son detain:
Rich heaps of brass shall in thy tent be told,
And steel well-temper’d, and persuasive gold.”
He said: compassion touch’d the hero’s heart
He stood, suspended with the lifted dart:
As pity pleaded for his vanquish’d prize,
Stern Agamemnon swift to vengeance flies,
And, furious, thus: “Oh impotent of mind!
Shall these, shall these Atrides’ mercy find?
Well hast thou known proud Troy’s perfidious land,
And well her natives merit at thy hand!
Not one of all the race, nor sex, nor age,
Shall save a Trojan from our boundless rage:
Ilion shall perish whole, and bury all;
Her babes, her infants at the breast, shall fall;
A dreadful lesson of exampled fate,
To warn the nations, and to curb the great!”
The monarch spoke; the words, with warmth address’d,
To rigid justice steel’d his brother’s breast.
Fierce from his knees the hapless chief he thrust;
The monarch’s javelin stretch’d him in the dust,
Then pressing with his foot his panting heart,
Forth from the slain he tugg’d the reeking dart.
Old Nestor saw, and roused the warrior’s rage;
“Thus, heroes! thus the vigorous combat wage;
No son of Mars descend, for servile gains,
To touch the booty, while a foe remains.
Behold yon glittering host, your future spoil!
First gain the conquest, then reward the toil.”
Even Pope in 01899, anxious to flatter Victorian prejudices, is euphemizing and softpedaling this shit pretty hard here. "γαστέρι μήτηρ κοῦρον" means "boy in mother's belly" ("γαστέρι", like "gastroenterologist"), not "Her babes, her infants at the breast." "ἀλλ᾽ ἄνδρας κτείνωμεν" means "kill the other men", not "Behold yon glittering host". "ἕκηλοι νεκροὺς ἂμ πεδίον συλήσετε τεθνηῶτας" means "at ease among the corpses strip the dying", not "first gain the conquest, then reward the toil". Like, literally Nestor doesn't mention conquests, toil, or rewards here at all. (And obviously he doesn't mention Mars, who Pope has substituted for Ares.) "Ἀγαμέμνων οὖτα κατὰ λαπάρην" means "Agamemnon struck soft flesh", not "The monarch’s javelin stretch’d him in the dust", though Pope adds "Forth from the slain he tugg’d the reeking dart," while the Greek original doesn't say Adrestos was slain or anything about the smell of the spear of Agamemnon Atreides, just "λὰξ ἐν στήθεσι βὰς ἐξέσπασε μείλινον ἔγχος," which means "stepping on chest pulled the [ash-wood?] spear back out".
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6130/6130-h/6130-h.htm#toc36
I don't see anything odd about those exceptions.
>Florida
Old people vote.
>Nevada
unenforced unless you're making a complete ass out of yourself like every other nuisance law there.
>Massachusetts
puritanical standards of behavior run deep.
The specific things that makes it a crime would be intent to "cause distress, alarm or outrage", or if you are "outraging public decency".
And so e.g. a nudist beach generally does not need any particular permissions on the basis that merely signing it properly, or the place being generally known to be somewhere where people are naked makes it hard to argue it causes distress, alarm or outrage to come across someone naked there.
Of course where exactly the line goes on that is constantly changing and tricky to judge.
E.g. someone stood naked on a plint in Trafalgar Square in the middle of London and police refused to order him to cover up [1] but another naked man on the plint was told to cover up another time.
The reason I say that is I've noticed a lot of men (not boys) swimming in shirts, and I've also witnessed people telling men to put on a shirt (or otherwise complaining about how gross it is) at outdoor gatherings, whereas, this used to be extremely common. Maybe it is different in California or Florida.
Of course, it might help that we don't have that many days a year when anyone would want to.
(Beach or swimming pool is another matter - I can't echo your experience there, but it is quite a while since I've been to either, so can't really comment I suppose. Above I mean 'in public' in general, shopping or walking down the street etc.)
Cultural norms were vastly more oppressive and restrictive in the 1960's. And in the 1990's.
Should the law view child toplessness differently than adult toplessness? And if so, then how would we be making be a step towards the desexualization of the nipple?
Was the girl harmed? Was her privacy violated? Otherwise, it is the same as for anyone else.
Really I'm just thinking about your comment in isolation though - as a whole I don't think this is a good idea, it perhaps doesn't have to be illegal but I don't personally see a need for social standards to 'slip'. (But they're not made by one person, nor one parliament, and that's fine, maybe I am in the minority.)
This might seem like a linear form of progressiveness, based on the last half century, but it isn't. Just ebbs and flows.
Typically what's occurred is a period of uncertainty allows for strict and religious sects to be emboldened and revive compliance with their ideals as they offer an ephemeral form of certainty, dominant Abrahamic religions include very gendered roles and control. (Other belief system's populations die out due to lack of breeders, so it is just survivorship bias.)
Given the pushes for surrogacy laws and reproductive rights, I don't think this assessment is accurate.
> Other belief system's populations die out due to lack of breeders, so it is just survivorship bias.
Breeding isn't a sure-fire way to produce more believers, either, and I say this a a non-religious person who was raised in a very religious family, married to another non-religious person who was raised in a very religious family.
There are many correlations for the last half century to try to latch onto, but there is a historical reality that continues to this day: they will outbreed you.
As another person said: wishful thinking.
[1] https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christ...
I'm sure there are tons of parallels. The national party constituencies were reversed (Southern whites favored Democrats vs. Northern elites favoring Republicans).
If male nipples are not considered sexual but female nipples are, and we permit exposed female nipples in public, then does it also follow that the male penis be allowed to be exposed in public? Do "free the nipple" folks feel the same way about that, and why?
Society prohibits the exposure of genitalia for both men and women. Although it's certainly up for debate whether that's reasonable or not, the treatment is equal. And at least genitalia perform a sexual function, so if the principle is that we shouldn't show organs with a primarily sexual function, for whatever reason, at least there's some sort of principle at work.
The issue of the nipple is completely separate and indefensible. The nipple has very similar appearance for both sexes; it performs no sexual function, and the one function it does have for women is something that has no obvious moral basis to prohibit. To wit: adults eating in public is fine, children eating in public is fine, but, for some reason, a baby eating in its natural form in public is not fine.
I agree with OP. It's nuts and we will likely see this view relaxed over time, though I have no idea how long of a time horizon.
1. It's usually stated as a matter of fact that primary sex organs possess inherent qualities that make them reasonably objectionable in a way that is not attributable to secondary sex characteristics, but few are actually articulating why that is, which is important for an argument differentiating the two.
2. Genitalia are considered acceptable in an artistic form, as is likely seen in the art this museum posts on social media. This appears rather contrary to the idea that genitalia should be hidden, thus art may not be a good argument for allowing exposed female secondary sex characteristics (as art is treated as a special case).
Now people seem to be getting me wrong... I'm NOT in favor of criminalizing the female nipple in any way.
> The issue of the nipple is completely separate and indefensible. The nipple has very similar appearance for both sexes; it performs no sexual function, and the one function it does have for women is something that has no obvious moral basis to prohibit. To wit: adults eating in public is fine, children eating in public is fine, but, for some reason, a baby eating in its natural form in public is not fine.
No, they are not completely separate. They are all based on a root assumption that is not being adequately challenged.
The assumption is that, to take your argument, there is something inherently acceptable about eating, because everyone eats and has mouths, and that there is something inherently objectionable about characteristics primarily related to sex even when the act of intercourse is not taking place.
Unless that question is broached, then your point about eating could also be applied to sexual organs. The only difference being that sexual organs have different appearances between males and females, but placing value on whether they differentiate in appearance is also arbitrary.
> No cogent argument can be made in favor of banning only female chests.
I'm unsure if that's really true.
As I've already mentioned elsewhere here, these arguments are all based on assumptions that are being made as a matter of fact. For instance:
> Genitalia are different because they can be sexualized.
Is that necessarily true? Breasts are frequently sexualized, which makes me question whether that sexualization is entirely cultural or not. On the other hand, male chests are rarely sexualized in nearly the same way outside of relatively minority communities. Yet they can be as well.
I wonder these things because the further down the chain of logic, the more it just seems arbitrary, in which case why are we rationalizing and intellectualizing this issue in order to explain it away? In such a case, it really isn't possible to make a cogent argument in favor of allowing exposed female breasts, because it would come down to what society is irrationally comfortable or uncomfortable with.
Nudism is a relatively big thing in German culture [1], there's a park in munich for example that's clothing-optional. The world hasn't ended yet and Germany seems to be doing just fine, so why get all worked up about it?
To be clear, I never said there was anything terrible about it.
[edited to be less standoffish]