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October 25, 2005
Using bad glamor?
Eugene Volokh wrote a thought-provoking post about STDs which stimulated some very interesting discussion in the comments. What seems to be getting most of the attention is Professor Volokh's remark that glamorization of promiscuous sex has real medical costs: I disagree on many things with many of the foes of the Sexual Revolution; I don't have moral objections to casual sex or to promiscuity; and I certainly don't support criminalization of consensual adult sexual behavior. Nonetheless, it seems to me that we need to acknowledge that sexually transmitted disease is a serious matter, and there are real medical costs (as well as real hedonic benefits, plus real hedonic costs) to the glamorization of relatively casual and promiscuous sex that seems present in our culture (though not in all of its subcultures).I couldn't agree more that sexually transmitted disease is a very serious matter, and that STDs have real medical costs. (And enormous personal costs to me, as I lost most of my friends in the 1980s.) But whether the costs result from the glamorization is not as clear. This depends on the extent to which people engage in conduct because it has been glamorized, and whether that is their fault -- or the fault of the glamorization. Part of this may touch on what we consider a reasonable standard for human gullibility and culpability. It's tough for me to blame a Nigerian spammer (much less the Internet) for the conduct of someone idiotic enough to believe he's really going to get $8.5 million dollars he was promised in an email. I'm not inclined to blame casinos even though they have glamorized gambling, and I'm not sure whether this glamorization is responsible for the costs of gambling to society. My stubbornly rational libertarian instincts make me recoil over the idea that I might do anything because it has been glamorized. Yet I cannot but admit that there are people who do things because they have been glamorized. One of the reasons Prohibition of alcohol was ended was because not only was alcohol being glamorized, but so was crime. Bootlegging and bootleggers were hip. Yet once Prohibition ended, the advertisers stepped in, and alcohol continued to be glamorized. Cigarettes are a classic example of the glamorization of danger. The idea was that if people could be persuaded that it was cool to smoke, they'd smoke. And they did smoke. They still do smoke. As an individualist, though, I'm more inclined to blame the smokers than the advertisers (or, the glamorizers). Yet as a pragmatist and a realist, I recognize the value of glamorization when it suits my own interests. Thus I have argued for the deliberate glamorization of pit bulls as the best way to prevent their prohibition -- and defuse anti-pit bull hysteria. I also freely advocate glamorization of firearms as an excellent way to combat antigun hysteria. Yet I do not and would not advocate glamorization of promiscuous sex. I don't think there is anything glamorous about it, even though I think it -- and the glamorization of it -- should be legal. (Parenthetically, under our First Amendment the glamorization of conduct is more protected than the conduct itself, and I am allowed to freely advocate smoking crack or "bareback" sex.) Am I being a callused hypocrite here? Inconsistent? Maybe I am. I'm not sure why, and perhaps this merits a closer look. What is the difference between pit bulls (or guns) and promiscuous sex? Both should be legal, yet I am willing to glamorize the former but not the latter. Might the difference lie in the fact that promiscuous sex is more inherently dangerous than dogs or guns? Actually, promiscuous sex can be quite safe if the participants remain sober and rational, and some forms of intercourse are inherently safer than others, so I doubt that's it. The difference is that I don't think promiscuous sex is a good thing; only that I think it should be legal (i.e., people should not be imprisoned for it). I think it's a good idea to remain monogamous, and loyal to one's partner, so I wouldn't want to glamorize not doing that. (Similarly, I would not glamorize the use of drugs, cigarettes and alcohol.) On the other hand, guns and pit bulls are good things, and therefore (to my mind, at least) worthy of glamorization. One of the Volokh commenters analogized to motorcycle helmets, and I think it would be equally irresponsible to glamorize riding without a helmet. Or driving without seatbelts. Also morally egregious and irresponsible is abortion. While I don't believe women should go to prison for it, glamorizing it would strike me as an awful thing to do. Hell, I wouldn't even glamorize eating junk food, because it's bad for you. I have admitted my love of cream-filled donuts, and I while I blush to admit it, I have been known to occasionally patronize fast food restaurants. But junk food is not glamorous -- and I'll never glamorize it. The larger and more disturbing question, though, is whether or not the glamorization of undesirable practices helps spread them, and thus contributes to society's costs of the consequences of engaging in them. It's a good question, and I fear that I may not be the right person to answer it. That's because I resolutely oppose the influencing or manipulation of people, and it just goes against my grain to admit that people are influenced or manipulated. If they are, then I worry that it might mean person B becomes responsible for the conduct of person A (even if he did not know person A) -- which I think carries the idea of responsibility too far. It would mean that the Beatles were responsible for the suicide of Diane Linkletter.* It would mean that I am responsible for the conduct of people who might have influenced by me. Even the people I didn't want to influence!
Similarly, does "Gangsta Rap" make "impressionable" men curse at and beat women? It doesn't make me do that, so how can I blame it for the conduct of others? MORE: There's something I touched on but didn't much discuss, but which I think is at least as relevant -- that attempts to discourage something can nonetheless glamorize it just as much attempts to encourage it. Many a social ill (and many a social good, for that matter) has been encouraged and spread by persecution, and by attempts to stamp it out. To the extent that there is a promiscuous sex "movement," I think it thrives as a result of the forces which claim devotion to stamping it out and to a "showdown" against it. (Similarly, Martin Luther King's movement drew strength from the attacks against it, while Anita Bryant transformed gay rights from a taboo subject to a dinner table topic by denouncing it on the cover of Newsweek.) Of course, there's always the principle of cooptation as well. But do I have to discuss everything? posted by Eric on 10.25.05 at 10:50 AM
Comments
I can have moral (spiritual) objections to promiscuity without remotely coming close to advocating criminalizing it, since the sole legitimate role of government is not to legislate morality but to protect life, liberty, and property. I shouldn't even have to write that, but nowadays every discussion of morality (holiness) gets turned into a discussion of legality if I don't preface my dogmatizing with such a disclaimer. Promiscuity, and the Naturalist philosophy underlying it, is wrong because it involves a fundamental contradiction. Sex, by definition, is passion. How can you be casual about passion? Naturalism reduces sex to something far less than "it" (i.e., he and she, he and he, she and she) is. Contrary to what the Naturalists say, sex is "a big deal". "Promiscuity is immoral, not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important." I hold that sex is the expression of one's deepest and highest values, of one's self. "The kind and degree of one's sexuality reaches up into the very pinnacle of one's spirit." "The noble soul has reverence for itself." I hold that sex is ultimately either sacrament or sacrilege. Sex is an act of worship, the passion of the Divine in one's self for the Divine in the other's self. The total passion for the total height. The Ego striving for the Infinite. Sex reaches its highest intensity, not in promiscuity, but in Romantic love, the love that finds its full expression in a vow of exclusive eternal fidelity, of total commitment. That is where I stand. I can do no other. Polytheistic Godliness, Selfishness, Sexiness. Up With Beauty! Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · October 25, 2005 03:57 PM "Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn. I was willing to hold the huge estate of heaven and earth by any such feudal fantasy. It could not be wilder than the fact that I was allowe to hold it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur of the rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion's) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind." Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · October 25, 2005 04:11 PM Sex is not glamorized enough! Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · October 25, 2005 04:14 PM There's also a philosophical question. If glamorization causes some people to have sex, and if rap music causes some men to abuse women, what about the fact that many people are NOT so influenced? I think it means that people allow THEMSELVES to be influenced, and may be seeking out these influences. If that is the case, then how fair is it to blame the influences themselves? Who buys and listens to rap music? Who purchases and is aroused by pornography? Isn't this a bit like blaming alcoholism on distilleries? Eric Scheie · October 25, 2005 04:44 PM I think it means that people allow THEMSELVES to be influenced, and may be seeking out these influences. You're thinking in terms of a mature mind; which is normal for someone who isn't around children all the time. The problem (with rap, promiscuity, Tom Sawyer, Rush Limbaugh, everything, really) is that an adult mind is capable of making critical choices and informed decisions. Hrm. I'm trying to figure out how to say this clearly and I'm not having a lot of luck, so let me jump straight to my point: what you are exposed to, as a child, is what you, as an adult, will consider normal. If, as a child, you world view is filled with men beating women - particularly men you admire - then you will see beating women as normal. If, as a child, you are constantly exposed to women who use their sexuality as their primary tool for surviving in the world then you will tend to believe that that is what women must do to get by. Note that you allude to this in your "Bad grief" post - Americans are being taught to grieve over things that, in the past they wouldn't have been grief stricken over. Well, if Americans can be taught to be neurotic, why can't they be taught to be promiscuous?
Mike Heinz · October 25, 2005 06:53 PM "Who purchases and is aroused by pornography?" Mostly, people with no imagination. "Who buys and listens to rap music?" People with no taste. I'm conservative. I don't believe that children should be exposed to sex at all. I'm very glad that I had never heard of sex when I was a child. As I said, sex is the deepest expression of one's self. Therefore, you must have time to have a self, to build a self, before you can have any true understanding of what sex is, of what sex means. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · October 25, 2005 08:49 PM You wrote: That is why sex needs prohibitions, taboos, mystery, the aura of the forbidden, to keep sex glamorous and sexy. The Gnostic needs the Jehovanist. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · October 25, 2005 09:29 PM |
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I have to say that I think "glamorizing" is pretty much what's happened. We, (by which I mean "western culture") have not only stripped the taboos from promiscuous sex, we've turned it into "the norm" - people who don't screw around are looked at as weirdos, kids feel pressure to start having sex by nineth grade and the standard defense is that "people are always going to have sex" - which is pretty humorous given the huge jump in unwed birth rates in the 70's and 80's - if they were always having sex, and now had access to abortion, why did the birth rates jump up?
Meanwhile, through music, TV and movies children are constantly being informed that cool, beautiful people have sex frequently. So much so that even 7 and 8 year olds refer to each other as "pimps" and "hos" without any understanding of how degrading those terms really are.
Sorry for getting off on a rant her, but it really frustrates me how hard I have to work to convince my daughter that there's more to look forward to in life than jiggling her ass on MTV.