The video isn't loading, but I can get a vague sense of what this is from the stills.
"we are putting it here where they told us people will aprecheate it for it's fun an silliness and not flag it or think it some weirdo sexy stuff."
So, Elbee, Buck, Smearcase, Jackmormon, and I are all in the holiday spirit Chez Blandings. Maybe we will take a picture.
2: Yes! My family is asleep, and I'm not doing anything useful for the rest of the night!
Yes! I never would have guessed that you guys would go for this kind of thing, but definitely post a picture!
It's pretty hard to entirely de-sexualize the vagine, strictly speaking (hence all the YouTube bans, which are understandable), but some of the more elaborate compositions in that video do indeed manage it. It looks like it was a hell of a lot of work. And fun, of course. And it's funny as hell.
Yes! I never would have guessed that you guys would go for this kind of thing
I'm never going to think of the phrase "in the holiday spirit" the same way again.
6 made me laugh. Then I went back to shivering from memories of Audrey II.
I would guess that 40% of girls have affixed googly eyes to their dog's vagina.
That poor dog looks kind of humiliated. Can dogs feel humiliated?
In case you have trouble with the link in 18, here is a video from the same night.
(ok, this is more NSFW. possibly the second most hilariously weird porn of all time.)
(Oh, jeez. ((Because 2.2 happened)) I just want to say the problem with getting dressed at 8 in the morning when your faculties don't engage until sometime around 11 is sometimes not realizing that your shirt a) doesn't fit and b) is too wrinkled to leave the house in. Can someone photoshop a picture of the president of your choice over my face on yonder flickr feed?)
The clause "It's pretty hard to entirely de-sexualize the vagin[a]..." for some reason makes me want to append "...and god knows I've tried." Actually, as typed, it makes me want to write a number in the style of Cole Porter entitled "Vajinn the vagine."
I was thinking about when something counts as sexualized and reached these conclusions:
1. When everyone agrees that something is sexualized, a good time is had.
2. When everyone agrees that sometime is not sexualized, work gets done.
3. When one party things something is sexualized and another party doesn't, it is incumbent on the party that thinks things are sexual to keep their damn dirty feelings to themselves. The party that thinks things are asexual does not have to change what they are doing.
Your numbered lists are getting me all hot and bothered, sailor.
Rob, I accept what you say, but I want everything to be desexualized. Your principle is a Utopian one and a noble dream, but I don't expect widespread compliance anytime soon.
I want everything to be desexualized.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEIN' SEXY?
I want everything to be desexualized.
Except geoducks.
19: Weird? Nahhh. Happened at band camp all the time; there's a reason some of us were music nerds.
When correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
||
Tribute to Louis C K at Big Picture
links to...Louis C K ...doing an Internet Q & A pushing his $5 Internet Show...long long but good
Louis C K:"this shit I'm doing right now, by the way, is confusing as fucking a three cunted cow in the dark."
|>
I downloaded his $5 show last night. Haven't watched it yet.
OMG, guys! It's almost Hanukkah! Yaaaaaaaaaay!
Brain-eating amoeba in your neti pot.
I should probably get a flicker account or a neti pot. A bit of brain damage can't always be fatal. Probably.
21.3 would seem to give the guy on the train with trench coat a great deal of leeway. "Officer, I was stroking my penis while looking at them, but it isn't sexual to me."
Speaking of vaginas, this documentary*, The Perfect Vagina, irks me a bit (or its narrator, Heather Leach does anyway), but might be fodder for discussion somewhat along the lines suggested by the OP. (Maybe it has been linked before?.)
*Note: four parts which have been poorly edited together so there is a minute or so of dead air between each part.
34: Is his state of mind in any way dispositive?
It would be given a literal reading of 21.3.
37: Ah, see it now--assuming he is speaking truthfully in your quote in 34.
If you can't trust people who touch themselves on public transportation, who can you trust?
Hava nagila
Hava nagila
Hava nagila ve-nismeḥa!
These are not de-sexualized. Perhaps for the first few tens of seconds before one realizes what one is seeing. But once one sees that these are vulvas (vulvae?) and that the appearance of mouths moving is caused by threads pulling on labia (labias? labiae?), then I at least settle down to an appreciation of the anatomy -- the song becomes a distraction.
Back a while, when people were discussing metrosexuals and the phenomenon of Gay Until Penetration, someone remarked that to be gay one really had to like cock. Some of us are straight because we really do like cunt. And we can't see cunt in a non-sexual light. It's always sexual.
Yeah, that was not my reaction to the video at all.
Of course, the inevitable question is what jim would think if it were a penis and scrotum.
ok, I couldn't watch that till just now. that totally fucking rules.
You can de-sexualize some of the vulva all of the time and you can de-sexualize all of the vulva some of the time, but you can't de-sexualize all of the vulva all of the time.
jim is not gay, Stanley! We can discern what he would think!
Of course, the inevitable question is what jim would think if it were a penis and scrotum.
Only one way to find out!
What do we call those puppets that consist of lipstick on your thumb and forefinger, and "talking" while sliding them over each other?
Anyway, I was trying to compare what I will call those "handpuppets" and these "vagina puppets"
What makes the "handpuppets" funny is that it is a hand, and a really lousy puppet. Like drawing a mouth and eyes on a watermelon and animating speech. What's funny is that it is a watermelon.
What's funny here is that they are vaginas. They have no more "desexualized" vaginas than the watermelon is changed into Charlie McCarthy.
The contradiction, the incongruity is the entire joke, but there would be no joke if there was actual desexualization.
I think 49, especially 49.5, is right. Most of the time you're watching bizarre yet terrible lip syncing, but then every few moments there's a gestalt switch where remember you're watching vaginas.
The Great Wall of Vagina. Mentioned in the video in 35.
Shorter 41: I'm so rampantly heterosexual that I don't even see de-sexualization.
agree that the possibly sexual aspect is part of the joke. I took a few seconds out of every silly lip-synch to think, that chick is pretty hot.
I took a few seconds out of every silly lip-synch to think, that chick is pretty hot.
I actually found it surprisingly difficult to make judgments like this, seeing as how basically all the usual criteria used to evaluate hotness are missing. It's interesting how something like this emphasizes how the most inherently sexual body parts are normally totally absent from everyday evaluations of sexual attractiveness, so we don't have well-defined aesthetic standards for them on a societal level.
I just watched it again, and yeah, same reaction. There are a few shots that are sufficiently zoomed out that you can see something of the woman's legs and torso, but they're mostly extreme vulval closeups.
That said, protruding labia minora (which none of the women in the video have, particularly) are teh hott.
each time they zoom out enough to see the woman's legs you can see she's got great legs. I mean, you can tell from the way they connect to the top of her body as she's moving her hips around. various women and various bodies, I assume. but all hot!
The strings/wires were mildly distracting, and looked a little uncomfortable.
But, like Betty White said, vaginas are pretty tough things.
I wonder how long it took them to make the video.
42: No, a weak claim: "some of us".
There are men (I'm one) who delight in the sight, smell, taste, touch, overall feel of female external genitalia. Other men find them scary (vagina dentata, say, or Freud's interpretation of long dark tunnels as vaginal imagery) or disgusting (insert fish reference) or simply weird. I have no sense of the relative proportions of these tastes.
The strings/wires were mildly distracting
A little disturbing, even, in a horror movie sew-your-eyelids-shut sort of way.
63:I hesitate to bring it up, but the connection mouth = vagina is just a little disturbing.
I want to thank David Cronenburg for his self-restraint...wait...images are returning. They Came From Within The Brood Paul Morrissey. Geiger. Ewww
There are men (I'm one) who delight in the sight, smell, taste, touch, overall feel of female external genitalia.
Any age/weight considerations to this? All possible snatches, children aside, would titillate you? In other words, I think this is genitalia couches within young, taut torsos, or projected to be. I'm guessing there are plenty of women's junks that you wouldn't find arousing.
The statement that vulvas can't be desexualized is very irritating to me.
I think this is genitalia couches
genitalia couches
You definitely want the ones with the built-in recliners.
The statement that vulvas can't be desexualized is very irritating to me.
They're sex organs. Kind of a definitional necessity.
They've only not been able to be desexualized since 1992.
They're sex organs. Kind of a definitional necessity.
Children have sex organs. Other men have sex organs. No one is aroused by all sex organs.
I see we are using the word "desexualized" differently.
There's a bit of dominance in the statement that a (taut, young) woman's junk can't possibly be desexualized. I think that's what's irritating to me. Also the over-generalization: it's a statement about taut young women, but phrased as if it were all women's junk.
And we can't see cunt in a non-sexual light. It's always sexual.
I'm using "desexualized" the way that jim seems to be using it. I assume he was saying something about arousal.
71: I think there is a fair argument that the video isn't desexualized (that is, that it's not a pure visual joke, made without consideration of whether it's arousing or not) because it does seem to all be hot young women. Throw some baggy middle-aged bellies and genitals in there, and it'd be more plausibly non-sexual.
Not just taut young women. My wife is 65.
Not quite arousal either. But continual awareness.
I defy anybody to be aroused by the link in 66.
We have got to get these two together.
N.B. a Google image search for "muppet genitals" is pretty weird.
Oh, hey, nobody's at work this morning, are they? Even if they were, they wouldn't be clicking around in this thread, presumably, right?
I suppose it's similar to the way that small children can be so cute, even when they're trying their damndest to be not cute. And then, of course, they can be not cute whatsoever, depending. But the beholder's eye is out of control of the kid.
It seems obnoxious to apply that to other adults, though. I suppose that's why we keep our twats covered up professionally. In non-sexual professions, at least.
Would we be disturbed if the video had been done with 8-yr-olds? Explain your answer. If acceptable, would it be entertaining in the same way?
We can't "de-sexualize" that which isn't previously sexual. We can't be socialists except as anti-capitalists.
The context exists. The Patriarchy and sexualization of women's bodies is not something that can be escaped or ignored, but only resisted or confronted or mocked (seen Community Christmas Special?)
The video is not a de-sexualization but a counter definition, an act of resistance. We are not yet free.
81: That, but there's also a thing where even in a putatively non-sexual context, you're usually going to see a lot more attractive people getting naked than you are less-attractive people. The women in that video were doing it as a mostly non-sexual joke, but fatter, older, less 'taut' women would have been opening themselves up to a lot more of a disgusted reaction; being conventionally sexy is protective in that sense.
We are not yet free.
No? You can get a Nachos Bellgrande® for like a dollar. That's pretty goddamn close to free, bob.
I watched that documentary about genital surgery last night and damn that was annoying. The woman directing and narrating it is 100% sure that whatever her claims are about vaginas, they need no research to support them before she screams at various women about how they "should" feel (fuck everyone, I am beautiful because I am *me*), pities them for not having her friends/partner/life, gets into a panic because her daughters are like 8 months old and she's already got the vapors about whether at 17 they'll dislike the shape of their vaginas, and, eventually, she reveals that she actually has major problems with her own vagina and wants to make fun of this "trippy hippie" woman for having therapy sessions in which women talk about their vaginas. Like, this is a huge, mind-bogglingly horrible problem in which all of culture conspires to make people despise their vaginas, but let's not actually do anything about it because that's gross. Except having a sculpture made of your puss. That's a reasonable solution to every problem.
The porn magazine thing is a somewhat interesting example because, unlike video porn, in which the genitals you see are the genitals of a real person, however pre-selected, if porn mags want to be sold in Australia, there is a strict limitation on showing inner labia, which render a photo obscene. So they just Photoshop them out. Magazine porn aimed at young men rarely shows actual human vaginas.
Please, everyone tell Heebie that to them her twat is non-sexual. She's getting disturbed.
83: The women in that video were doing it as a mostly non-sexual joke, but fatter, older, less 'taut' women would have been opening themselves up to a lot more of a disgusted reaction; being conventionally sexy is protective in that sense.
Sure, but there are plenty of women who are bigger, older, looser, etc. who are willing to put that thigh-to-navel shot of themselves in amateur porn films, and even quite a few in professional porn. I find it interesting that large bodies are so obscenely sexually offensive in mainstream contexts (like that horrible Marie Claire blog about Mike & Molly--omg all i can think about is those two fatties like doing it and what if they had a baby im going to puke), but, when tucked away in actually-sexual content, they seem to have an audience.
(I must be crazy to engage or argue here. I mean really crazy.)
Magazine porn aimed at young men rarely shows actual human vaginas.
Uhh, wrong, at least since the 70s, and increasingly so since. They may not show all the varieties, but as far as I can tell, the models are human.
I'll answer my own question, why not 8-yr-olds in the decorative video.
1) Because the active "de-sexualization" is the point, and children are already not sexualized.
2) Because I think most of us would feel that focusing in that way on young girls would actually sexualize them in an unacceptable way, which should go to show that the decorative video was a re-sexualization or a counter-sexualization.
Heebie, I'm guessing the video strikes you as "desexualized" because you aren't gay? I'm with Jim; vaginas aren't not exciting. (I don't know why this has to be compared with child vagina. I literally never see child vagina.)
88: That's part of the evidence, yes.
88: I'm not talking about Hustler; I mean those cheesecakey softcore "lad" mags that have nudity but coy poses.
51: I watched part of the documentary in that link when Wm. Gibson linked to it on his Twitter. Any Limeys want to weigh in with the cultural associations of the location being Brighton? I see Brighton and I think Brighton Rock and Funny Bones. Having it as the locale for social realist genital art is kind of a head-scratcher.
91: Does anyone buy those nowadays? I could never figure them out myself. Their cultural influence seems to have declined precipitously in tandem with the rise in ubiquity (and resolution) of net pron.
89:Ok,you want another case?
My mom was an ob-gyn nurse for twenty years, with books lining the shelves, and the first thousand vaginas I saw were pathological.
Vaginas, or labias majora and minora, are not necessarily or always erotic.
I would almost say never erotic in themselves, I prefer attached to a person and the whole package is what arouses. YMMV.
AWB is right. Maxim and a bunch of others. And increasingly other porn only only shows shaved and surgically titled up female genitalia.
SHouldn't we be saying vulvas, though?
93: I think they still have a following with very young guys, like in college. I can't see what would be the purpose of buying them for the photos, so perhaps they buy them for the sex tips and consumer guidance.
94: Talk about an outlier niche opinion.
It's possible that guys buy them to have a limited collection of photos in front of you, curated by someone who knows you don't want to see pussy or fat. If you're looking at porn on the internet, you're definitely going to come across some actual pussy.
And increasingly other porn only only shows shaved and surgically titled up female genitalia.
What "other porn" does this? Even mainstream companies have some porn actresses with hair, and I don't even know what "surgically titled up" means.
OK, "mostly". Playboy. "Tidied up". No labia peeking out.
Playboy isn't a serious hardcore magazine, I don't think. It's for looking at boobies.
91. Brighton: Commuter exurb of London + long standing arts community + Major university + huge gay scene + tourism central. Also a lot of extreme poverty, carefully hidden.
Well, move the goalposts on me then. And shame me for research less penetrating than yours.
Oh, I should go presidential, and I won't create a link on this site, but google M/et-a/rt if you want to see state-of-the-art "classy" nude art photography pron. Take the free tour
89 & 94: After working in Ob/Gyn + L&D they sure weren't when seen in draped isolation. That didn't seem to affect my responses to an entire human in a different setting though.
I asked a few of the MDs about it, they contended they had very quickly learned to compartmentalize pathology and their patients away from their personal lives.
Heebie, I'm guessing the video strikes you as "desexualized" because you aren't gay? I'm with Jim; vaginas aren't not exciting. (I don't know why this has to be compared with child vagina. I literally never see child vagina.)
No, I'm quite capable of seeing vaginas/vulvas as sexual and arousing. I do see child vaginas all the time, and so it's easy for me to picture a context where genitalia isn't sexual. (The child's vulva can still be sexual to the child, however.)
The idea that genitalia must, a priori, be sexual, seems to deny a lot of what genitalia does: it pees and poops and blood comes out of it, monthly, and it gets yeast infections, etc. Vaginas are well-known for their flexibility!
Getting To Know The Versatile Vagina: A Most Fascinating Endeavor.
107: Do you feel the same way about cock? Like, it's just that human organ that excretes urine? Again, I may be betraying my lack of experience here, in that I've never lived with a partner, so I've never been exposed to cock to the point of banality.
Do you feel the same way about cock? Like, it's just that human organ that excretes urine?
This isn't what I was saying. I was saying that vaginas can have many rolls, and it seems bizarre to say it always must be sexual.
Sometimes penises are sexual to me. Sometimes not. Sometimes they are excreting urine, which tends to fall in the not-sexual category for me.
...which might be another way of explaining. Any time I have seen a vagina from the angle displayed in the video, it is the vagina of a woman I'm having sex with. I am usually not face-first into a well-lit supine vagina that is just doing its peeing or bleeding business.
Again, I may be betraying my lack of experience here, in that I've never lived with a partner, so I've never been exposed to cock to the point of banality.
What about your own, though? Certainly sometimes it's great to look at one's own stuff, when you're turned on. Other times it's just your stuff, though, and it's messy or surprising or noisy, or whatever, (or embarrassing, if you're a teenage), etc.
Perhaps there's some variance from person to person!! Many find urination erotic.
Perhaps there's some variance from person to person!! Many find urination erotic.
Sure, but I bet everyone has their bounds of what they find unerotic.
114: Let alone many cocks, to necessitate a cock rack?
Through some glitch, Helpy-chalk's early comment "Yes! My family is asleep, and I'm not doing anything useful for the rest of the night!" just appeared among the more recent comments, which was kind of funny.
I mostly agree with h-g, but simply think that the context of this video was counter-sexual or anti-erotic or even erotic. My guess is the activity of decorating and filming might even turned the participants and partners on.
But I am going to experiment. I need some ribbons and bows and paste on sequins and glitter, some paint. A whole hell of a lot of these things.
Some pills.
118: Let me know if you'd like to post anything to the group flickr page.
I was saying that vaginas can have many rolls
Which is why you should buy the ThighMaster!
120: Heh. I was imagining the vaginas with faces nomming on a few Pillsbury crescents.
Do you know that I went back and forth between roles and rolls several times? Ultimately my logic went "I think last time on Unfogged, I used "roles" and got corrected, so I'll go with "rolls" this time."
That was pretty much the ne plus ultra of Freudian slips.
||
Isn't it weird to think that something like The Vietnam War actually happened? On the one hand, it seems so unlikely -- the greatest empire in the world goes off to crush a rebellious jungle province and comes back defeated and ashamed? And yet, on the other hand, it keeps happening. Empires always overextend themselves. People on the margins are always looking in to the center to figure out new ways and means of resistance. Social bandits continue the fight even when it seems like all is lost. The more vicious and reprehensible the empire's tactics become, the more mocked and reviled it is by history. Someday there'll be a critical mass of people who have the will and the ability to overthrow hierarchy and domination forever.
||>
83: there's also a thing where even in a putatively non-sexual context, you're usually going to see a lot more attractive people getting naked than you are less-attractive people. The women in that video were doing it as a mostly non-sexual joke, but fatter, older, less 'taut' women would have been opening themselves up to a lot more of a disgusted reaction; being conventionally sexy is protective in that sense.
Right. Though I'm not sure why it's "protective" -- against what?
While not-necessarily-conventionally-attractive people get naked in some pron, much of the joking ha-ha-let's-turn-the-patriarchy-on-its-head stuff I've encountered is done by or employs hot women, which greatly tempers any transgressive point it may be supposed to have, and renders it still safe. I tend to assume the point was not really to, in this case, desexualize the vagina vulva or render it banal or whatever, but to just do something weird and funny.
Oh, I see I've answered my own question above: it's protective that the actors be hot because that keeps it safely funny rather than disgusting? (Comedy and humor are so complicated, dammit.)
Isn't it weird to think that something like The Vietnam War First Anglo-Afghan war Haitian Revolution Battle of Adrianopolis Battle of Plataea actually happened?
Not weird. It's human. It's the air we breathe.
What brought that on, anyway?
114: Now I'm picturing a gender-reversed Silence of the Lambs. Do you live somewhere with a basement that is suitable for digging a deep pit?
127: I don't know why one would need a pit for that. In Silence of the Lambs he was trying to starve the girl so her skin would be loose and easy to remove.
Sorry, I wasn't thinking that you meant one might want the whole boy-suit. I really hate thinking about dismemberment. Makes me feel dizzy.
109: I've never lived with a partner, so I've never been exposed to cock to the point of banality.
It becomes pretty everyday, in my experience. There are times when the cock part of the man is a sexy part in concert with the total package, and other times -- most times, as the hours of the day go -- when it's like his toe or his eyelid or something. Though it's hard not to notice that he takes especial care over it.
teo's 56.2 gets it right.
I really hate thinking about dismemberment.
I know what you mean. I have a serious case of castration anxiety.
130: Do partners who live together for many years spend vast swaths of time completely nude without having sex, to the point of desexualizing one another's genitals? It sounds horrible. I've spent a lot of naked time with long-term partners, but not to the point that their genitals cease to have an aura of specialness.
Maybe if, as Heebie suggests, one *wants* genitalia to be "desexualized," it's not horrible?
Do partners who live together for many years spend vast swaths of time completely nude without having sex
Not if they live in northern England, I promise you. Maybe in Texas.
I actually like mollusca but am not sexually attracted to them, and the molluscoid aspects of genitalia make them less appealing to me. Which is good, since I want to desexualize everything in the world.
132 and 133 are really misunderstanding me. I keep saying that genitalia can have many roles (née rolls). It's sometimes desexualized, sometimes not. Sometimes special, sometimes not. How is that horrible?
Me! Me! I'm the one who wants to desexualize genitalia.
Once they're desexualized, aren't they effectively done being sexualized? I don't see how something is a sex organ one minute, and then just a completely neutral body part, and then later an object of total desire.
I've had the experience of people that I once found very attractive becoming unattractive, and I can't go back to even remembering how I ever had sexual thoughts about them. Maybe that's the only comparison I have.
Is your own junk always sexualized? Is your partner's mouth always sexualized? Is your bed always sexualized? What about the couch? What about your partner's back, or curve of their leg? Sometimes it's incredibly erotic, sometimes not. Lots of things move flexibly in and out of sexiness. In and out, in and out.
140: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I eagerly await menopause.
I haven't had a "partner" in years, of course. The memory is very fuzzy.
141.last: Um, not quite there yet myself, but it's not my understanding that one's sex drive turns off like a switch.
Not off like a switch, but I'm led to believe there is some relief from the default sexualization of everything.
138 seems really odd, to me. So, what 140 says. Context matters. Your naked partner running about getting ready for work, flustered, in a bad mood, projecting 'piss off' vibes: not sexy. Same partner, at another time, totally hot/sexual. It's not even something I can really comprehend having to had explained as it seems just a fundamental part of being a person.
145 seems fairly banal (which I suppose was intended).
145: Your naked partner running about getting ready for work, flustered, in a bad mood, projecting 'piss off' vibes
No, I've never experienced this. It's not part of "being a person." It might be part of being a married person, or someone who has many-year-long cohabitation partners, but I don't see why marriage should be considered the default status of personhood.
145: That may be difficult to convey to AWB, since apparently 140 brought her to climax.
144: I am told this is not always so, even where the sex-drive was already inconveniently high.
I find that sheer affection often overwhelms lust for my other half, which is just as well, or how would we get anything else done? Also what ttaM just said, also sometimes you have to nurse them.
147 Nobody's suggesting long term cohabitation should be considered the default status of anything; they're explaining the circumstances under which a clear view of somebody's genitals doesn't immediately suggest hot sex. It may well be that these circumstances are far from ideal, but they are, for better or worse, those under which some of us labour.
re: 147
I didn't mean 'being a married person', I just meant that one's sexuality not be 'on' all the time, about all possible things where it might be 'on'. And that the same thing might provoke a sexual reaction in one context and not in another. That's entirely independent of cohabitation, or any particular structure of relationship.
What 140 said.
Do partners who live together for many years spend vast swaths of time completely nude without having sex, to the point of desexualizing one another's genitals?
Depends on the partners, I guess -- some might spend all their time at home naked, some might walk around naked on occasion.
Once they're desexualized, aren't they effectively done being sexualized?
Not unless the relationship is at the point at which you no longer want one another, at all, ever. Some people break up then, and some don't. Mostly, in my experience, it's that if you've had occasion to, oh, say, remove a tick from a partner's pubic hair (because he was lying in tall grass where there were ticks, while wearing shorts, because he did that kind of thing sometimes), you might not have been sexualizing his cock, though on the other hand you might have turned it into an occasion, unless you were, like, on your way to work in the first place, so okay okay, fine, drop 'em, let's take care of this, okay, see you later, I'm late! Then you get home that night and he reports that he has one on the top of his head, too, so could you help with that as well?
After a while, living with a partner becomes sort of like living with yourself: sometimes it's sexual and sometimes it's just daily living. In my experience.
And as chris y says, I chose a banal 'cohabitation' example. But that wasn't the central point.
One observation of my wife's genitalia not becoming de-sexualized after a decade of cohabitation.
Contrariwise, to 140: ferry, office desk, and kitchen counter all sexualized. (The last is actually quite inconvenient.)
After a while, living with a partner becomes sort of like living with yourself: sometimes it's sexual and sometimes it's just daily living. In my experience.
This. Also, don't believe that shit about losing interest after menopause. In my experience.
you might not have been sexualizing his cock
Hm, maybe there is a miscommunication here. I'm saying that genitals are body parts with a special sexual aura. If I think of many different body parts of someone I love, especially in terms of being individualized and enumerated, they have a special sexual aura--hair, lips, neck, arms, hands, stomach, etc.--always, because I am thinking about those individual parts as the parts of someone I love. In my experience, the longer I've been with someone, the more that's true. And if I am looking at a partner in a part-by-part way, and really seeing what I'm looking at, not just glancing in a careless fashion while I listen to that person talk about work or whatever, it's actively looking in a way that I think is inherently sexualized.
The removing ticks thing is a good counterexample, in that one must look very carefully at a single part of the body of the beloved for non-sexual purposes, but even then, removing a tick from the sensitive areas of someone you love is just a different experience from doing it to a stranger or someone you don't care for. I think having a lot of sex with someone you love makes you think about their body in a different, more particular, more compassionate, sensitive, and erotically charged way. Not like picking a tick off literally makes you horny, but that their body parts have a significance and suggestiveness that the bodies of strangers don't.
It's not part of "being a person." It might be part of being a married person, or someone who has many-year-long cohabitation partners, but I don't see why marriage should be considered the default status of personhood.
Who's talking about default personhood statuses here?
re: 157
To be fair, I did:
it [by which I meant, sexuality that wasn't always on, and sensitive to context] seems just a fundamental part of being a person.
AWB'S 156 suggests there may be some miscommunication, since it [156] seems to allow for non-sexualised looking/interaction [while drawing attention to the ways in sex/love/affection can remain present even in not-actively sexual situations].
And if I am looking at a partner in a part-by-part way, and really seeing what I'm looking at, not just glancing in a careless fashion while I listen to that person talk about work or whatever, it's actively looking in a way that I think is inherently sexualized.
This also is true, although it doesn't contradict Parsimon's point. If you read an unexpurgated version (translation for me, because I'm pathetic) of the Grimm brothers' folk stories, you find that people de-lousing each other by way of foreplay is pretty standard stuff for early modern peasants. And pretty hot too, I should think. Really.
Also, if you find the magic wearing off, please don't do this.
I guess I'm surprised that "to sexualize" means "to look with the active intent to get aroused for the purposes of orgasm. Don't you ever just perv on someone with no intent of getting off?
156.2: for me, the other experience invoked by intimate care is working as a nurse's aide - I probably saw more naked people in two summers doing that than I'll ever see in lust. It was so haptically vivid that I had trouble hugging my family for a while. 40 hour weeks plus overtime overwhelmed total time with lovers for most of my life. I have no evidence, personal, that loving sex sets the context more strongly than other bodily experience.
Leads to extra heartbreak when one partner gets very sick, often.
I'm still kind of stuck on the word 'horrible' in 132.
I mean, if you're not cohabiting, and not around naked people frequently in a non-sexual environment, then seeing a plausibly attractive person naked is almost without fail going to be related to imminently having sex -- it's an acutely sexual experience.
If you are, in a contingent and non-necessary way with no implications about your personhood, cohabiting with someone you also have sex with, and you're reasonably casual about being naked together, then seeing your partner's genitals isn't always going to be an acutely sexual signal. You can perceive it as sexual in the same way you perceive their presence at all as sexual, but the sight of their genitalia isn't always going to be a trigger for those thoughts.
Don't you ever just perv on someone with no intent of getting off?
Oh my, yes.
161, 165: Although, even with no immediate intent of getting off, sometimes you do perv, and sometimes you don't.
156: I think having a lot of sex with someone you love makes you think about their body in a different, more particular, more compassionate, sensitive, and erotically charged way. Not like picking a tick off literally makes you horny, but that their body parts have a significance and suggestiveness that the bodies of strangers don't.
I can't really argue with this, except that, at least in my experience, the more compassionate and sensitive -- let's say intimate -- ways in which you encounter their body isn't always erotically charged.
So, a partial split, a divide, a space, between intimacy and eroticism.
"Aura" and "significance" make me think there's something correlated with a literary worldview, too. I have flashes of experiencing the world that way, but short & few.
Don't you ever just perv on someone with no intent of getting off?
Oh all the time, and usually they're fully clothed. But this is a leisure activity, surely, when you're not either engaged with the other person for non-sexual purposes or too rushed to be bothered. So it happens in the street, on buses etc. Not when you or the other person has to run for the bus.l.
168: Yeah, I certainly don't mean in a new-agey magickal way; you're right that I mean that bodies accumulate semiotic meanings--for me, at least--which is why people become more rather than less attractive over time, unless there is some kind of traumatic event that forces me to reconsider the meanings that body has had.
people become more rather than less attractive over time
At least what I'm talking about here has nothing whatsoever to do with people becoming less attractive over time. It's about levels of erotic attention being variable over the course of a day or a week, and not tightly linked to nudity where nudity isn't a strong predictor of imminent sexual activity.
Also I saw my parents naked a lot, and would still if I were at home. So there's a template for me, for seeing grown genitalia and having it be nonsexual.
I was amused when I took Hawaiian Punch over to wake up my dad, and he wouldn't get out of bed in front of her, because he was naked. It's probably a reasonable boundary, but I still teased him about it.
That's interesting. I bet having parents who were religious and weirdly obsessed with incest does have a strong effect on the way I see naked people. When I was a kid it was practically impossible to see naked people. It's still sort of a novelty.
I was trying to backtrack through how this discussion went from the question whether female and male genitalia are always sexualized, to whether the parts of a loved one always are.
I found it interesting chiefly because I want to say that, for myself, once I'd cohabited with a partner for a while, their gender becomes not really that distant or mysterious. I enjoy the company of men in a way that's different from the period before I'd lived with one, then another and another, for several years.
Sorry for the awful mix of pronouns and tenses in 174.
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My brother has invited me to join his circle on Google+, and I don't know how to proceed. He and I have kept our distance from one another on Facebook, because privacy, so I'm surprised by this. And I'm on not on G+. Do I have to do this out of love for my brother? What is involved? Is everybody I've ever corresponded with who has gmail going to be implicated? Good grief.
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I advanced a law of transitive nakedness to him. But he did not comply.
176. G+ can be fairly discreet. If you join your brother's circle you'll communicate anything you post to that circle to everybody in it, but you can also just talk to your brother. And if you want to create a circle that doesn't include your brother or anybody else in his circle, that's watertight too.
179: All right. Thanks. A couple of people have tried to drag me into G+ and I haven't wanted to bother with it, but a brother's request is a different matter.
