doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
sexuality
public service announcement
0Just in case you didn’t get one of these videos in junior high school, I want to share with you a sex-ed type movie from Walt Disney, who are masters of animation (but where is that brilliance in this?). Probably not safe for work even though it really is a harmless video (I mean, it does talk about…shhhhh…the vagina…)
experimental
04 years ago
I found a fun little quiz on Lili’s site and took it (results below). That’s not a big deal, really, because so many of us take the quizzes that go around the blogosphere.
I started thinking about the consequences of posting it on my blog though. And I started thinking about one of the questions that came up during my defense. One of the professors asked me about having multiple identities on the Internet and how we could separate those (if we can) and how we can keep one consistent identity throughout. She asked (I’m paraphrasing here), for instance, about our sexuality. Doesn’t that eventually come through and should it be kept secret just to safeguard our careers, our educations, and our offline lives?
I told her that if anyone read my blog, they would get to know more of me than if they just read my facebook page or my twitters. I talk about my life here — the good and bad. But it’s still not all of me. I do filter — and mostly because I know how accessible I am on the Internet. If you know my name, you can find me. I’m not too secretive about where I am online (and that was done intentionally to see how my identity construction compares to someone who may desire more anonymity).
That being said, I don’t post a lot about what happens in the privacy of my bedroom (unless you count the comments about waking up next to Dakota — which, in reality, is the extent of what happens in the privacy of my bedroom. Heh.). Seriously, I don’t see the need to post some of the more intimate analogs of my daily life. They just aren’t relevant to what I write here. If I was writing about a relationship (beyond my relationship with Dakota — who is a beagle, for those of you reading for the first time), those discussions might be relevant (and I have talked about those aspects of my life in earlier entries of my blog, when I was in a relationship).
I also consider that some of the universities that I am applying to have access to what I write here. They know I’m an avid blogger. They know they can find me online if they want to. While I haven’t seen evidence that they’ve been here, it is possible for any of them to find me (and I am linked to some of the people in facebook so they do see new blog entries pop up in there).
Anyway…this whole identity / openness idea is interesting to me. I am constantly thinking about it and how I can be affected by what I post. Do you all think about it? Does it concern you? How do you filter yourselves?
Ok, ok…I know you’ve really been waiting for this part of the post, the part that led me on that esoteric journey into “self.” Here it is…
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| Do you have an inclination for BDSM? created with QuizFarm.com |
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| You scored as Experimental
Experimentation is a great place to be. Open-mindedness when it comes to sexuality can open doors and allow you to discover things that you didn’t think you would find engaging. Having such a curious attitude can help you learn more about your own sexual nature as well as the nature of others.
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do I look fat in these jeans?
04 years ago
In April, I wrote about the study of the sexual orientation of women and men. I discussed how we are bombarded with images of women in sexual poses from the moment we are born and how that may affect the way we view women sexually.
A co-worker recently sent me a video about advertising and the portrayal of women in advertising. It is 34 minutes long but I think it’s worth a half hour of our time. It will make you think.
One thing I do want you to consider while you watch this is the jokes made about men (the minute rice comment, for instance). While she does promote equality and advocates for less objectification of both sexes, there are still a few derogatory statements made about men — something that shouldn’t be a part of this kind of presentation.
Words are important. The way we use them along with images can give an entirely different meaning to the subject. Contextualization is everything.
women & sexuality
0
I was recently listening to a Scientific American podcast (you did realize I’m totally geeky, right???) and they mentioned a blog post of theirs that refers to a NYTimes article about men and women’s sexual orientation.
While I couldn’t read the NYTimes article (because I don’t have an account and I refuse to get one more account to a place that I may only visit from time to time), I did read the excerpts on SciAm’s page and on The Stranger’s slog. What I come away from these articles thinking about is that they aren’t realizing how much play pop culture would have on this supposed sexual orientation. For instance, SciAm quotes:
Presumably the masculinization of the brain shapes some neural circuit that makes women desirable. If so, this circuitry is wired differently in gay men. In experiments in which subjects are shown photographs of desirable men or women, straight men are aroused by women, gay men by men.
Such experiments do not show the same clear divide with women. Whether women describe themselves as straight or lesbian, “Their sexual arousal seems to be relatively indiscriminate – they get aroused by both male and female images,” Dr. Bailey said. “I’m not even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and most choose to have sex with men.”
This is my theory: We are bombarded with images of women and sexuality each and every day of our lives, from the moment we are born until the day we die. We see women in all modes of dress in ad compaigns, television shows, movies, and in life. We do not see men in the same way.
I think that it is also the norm for “red-blooded” American men to say that they don’t find other men attractive.
It’s not the same with women. We have been shown women all of our lives. “Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she sexy? Isn’t she stunning?” We have had women’s bodies literally shoved down our throats until we naturally agree that women are sexy and beautiful.
Would that not then translate into what we find sexually appealing? When we are told that a certain shape and form is sexy and desirable all of our lives, I can imagine that we’d begin to find them thus even if that wasn’t our “bent.”
I hear men saying that all women are bisexual. I disagree. I just think that we are able to say that we find women desirable because we are open to finding them desirable — even if we would never want to have sex with them.
selling with sex
05 years ago
This is nothing new. People have been using sex or sex appeal to sell things since the dawn of advertising, I would guess. I think of bathing suit clad beauties perched on old muscle cars. Or the half naked dancing man in Kmart commercials.
It’s about sex, baby. And it sells.
One company, shai clothing (pronounced “shy”), decided to take it up a notch. They aren’t just using sex – they are using porn to sell their clothes. I’m not talking soft core porn where you only see breasts and hear noises. Oh, no…it’s porn. Vaginal and anal penetration, blowjobs, and more. They have sections for men with men, women with women and women with men.
To be fair, they also have an “under 18″ area for those who are not of legal age to still be able to buy their clothing and they do stress that their site has porn on it and that it is safeguarded by one of those parental nanny systems.
Shai is a European company. It is not regulated by the same laws that regulate those within the United States.
That being said, they are very proactive about taking personal responsibility for what is shown and seen on the internet. In their Copyright & Credits they state,
Rules for Kids (Minors, Under legal age)
If you are under legal age, you should not enter this website!SHAÃ believes that children using the Internet require special protection, and we urge parents or guardians to explain Internet safety to their children. Parents are urged to spend time online with their children to become familiar the Internet in general.
Control tools are available from online services and software manufacturers to help create a safer environment for children. This web-site automatically alerts Parental Control Systems regarding its X-rated content.
For more information, please visit: http://www.icra.org/
And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? They have a feedback section where people are complaining about how blatant it is. People are complaining about how accessible it is.
But this is the thing…we are responsible for what happens on our computers. If our children are online, we are ultimately responsible for what they are doing, what they are seeing, and what they are accessing. We are. Not another company. Us.
When Willow comes over to visit, I am careful about what goes up on my screen. When I’m visiting flickr, I know that I may see some nudity and I use discretion in visiting the site.
We’ve tried, as a society, to completely remove ourselves from responsibility over our (and our childrens’) actions. We try to place blame everywhere else but where it ultimately resides: with us.
We are responsible for what happens on our machines. We have the power to disconnect. We have the power to lock them down. We have the power to disengage.
We should take these responsibilities seriously.