discipline posted:
I have at least found less hostility and more solidarity between women in the shame-based society because the enemy is generally seen not as your body but generally (correctly) as men.
What is the meaning of the claim that 'men are the enemy' in 'shame-based societies'? Is this anything more than an easy applause line? Does it have any implications for remedial action? (Kill men? Castrate men?)
this is kind of unrelated but it occurred to me as i was reading this; really, just over a decade ago the phenomenon of 'amateur' pornography really didn't exist and has since become a mainstay of pornography you encounter on the internet. i'm really not that loath to consider places like reddit or 4chan arbiters of societal acceptance and the widespread availability and demand for "jailbait" porn (self-produced pornography featuring underage women) is not at all surprising. in a just a few years you've gone from longstanding simulated depictions of barely pubescent women to the real thing, so maybe i shouldn't be surprised that men will want genitals to look like they belong to children.
Groulxsmith posted:
reducing the vulva to a hairless cleft of skin is obviously not new (it is pretty much the standard since the development of western art) but it seems relatively recent in pornography and popular culture, or at least something that is different from my adolescent/sexually formative years. in a sense a cultural preference/demand for it to be shaved is only a bit 'worse' in that it is an expectation involving action over passivity and a less natural ideal. so i guess i'm wondering where that came from.
i don't wanna derail from the shame vs disgust topic because it's a lot fresher but I really think the attribution of the "no pubes" trend as an imitation of prepubescence isn't the entire explanation. it certainly plays a role, insofar as it's behind body hair more generally being seen as unfeminine (like in the armpits). but, in porn (which obviously leads the trend) I think it is more about removing a barrier from the camera; in support I point at the fact that you don't see many pubes on male actors anymore either. more revealing swimsuits and the increased acceptance and practice of cunnilingus have also got to play a role
1. Performed exclusively on consenting adults
2. Performed in a safe hospital situation rather than by some dude with a sharpened hunk of Toyota in a shack somewhere
3. Comparatively insignificant in incidence
4. Not intended to decrease or destroy a womans ability to experience sexual pleasure
5. Society does nor demand it, and women without labiaplasty have a zero percent chance of being beaten or killed for that reason, and can easily find a spouse without it
Goethestein posted:
i don't think it's supposed to be a competition
discipline posted:Groulxsmith posted:in general women are encouraged to be child-like in western society. this encourages dependance and docility. cutting your labia off and waxing hair off your vagina is little girl aesthetic. perhaps men are not so aware of this as women are. then you get a constant double-whammy of lamentation over youth (you are hideous) and encouragement to be girl-like (docile, stupid)
If they encourage you to be child-like in Western society they do even moreso in non-Western society. In Japan it is far more explicit and commonplace. America still appreciates a full-figured, sultry woman and I think that is the pop culture "norm" for male sexuality. The West has also established a very rigid taboo around the idea of sexualizing children.
discipline posted:
The only legit analogue I can think of outside of the "West" is Chinese foot-binding, but even that is (supposedly?) extinct and seen as barbaric by Western standards nowadays.
it's definitely extinct, it's pretty common for Chinese to deny that it was practiced at all much less that it was widespread. it's been "replaced" i guess with other surgical procedures like leg lengthening and shit, but those aren't widespread and don't occupy the same place in the cultural firmament.
actually footbinding is an interesting lens to look at this issue with. the Western perception of footbinding as being quintessentially barbaric, disgusting, and patriarchal has its roots as much in imperialism and orientalist thinking as it does in the lived experience of Chinese women. it was used by imperialists to perpetuate the notion that Chinese society was fundamentally backwards and weak, which was in turn picked up on and turned on its head by the CCP who demonised footbinding in order to portray the traditional order in much the same terms (backward, susceptible to rapine foreigners).
on the other hand, footbinding pretty clearly wasn't a purely patriarchal practice imposed on an unwilling female population if you read what Chinese women were saying about it through the dynasties where the practice started to become widespread (Song and later). it was initially practiced almost exclusively by upper class courtesans, acrtresses, etc and only much later did it become widespread enough to leave the upper crust (like Qing era). even then the extent to which a woman's feet were bound was a direct function of class (lower class women would have unbound or moderately-bound feet to enable them to labour) and women were routinely writing about the kind of economic, sexual and social power bound feet gave them. the actual practice of binding was exclusively in the female sphere, men didn't participate in it at all. the extent to which a woman ultimately ended up with negative feelings about it was usually related to the extent to which her mother and close relatives were the ones doing the binding, so there's a whole bonding/social aspect to it as well.
there's also a whole other nationalist/state aspect to footbinding as in this quote from a Ming scholar
The reason these barbarians are able to leave their own territory easily and swiftly and come to invade us from a great distance is that there are no beautiful women in their northern regions. If we want to control these northern barbarians, we should bring it about that they have many beauties and cause their men to be ensnared and deluded by feminine charm. We should teach them footbinding and persuade them to imitate us in dress. They will prize women with a willow waist and a lotus gait and a weak and alluring attitude. Barbarians who have been deluded by such women will then lose their cruel and harsh natures.
so while there's definitely a patriarchical component to footbinding, it's embedded within a particular social context which needs to be considered, and which maybe defy easy equation to the forms of FGM you're talking about
christmas_cheer posted:The West has also established a very rigid taboo around the idea of sexualizing children.
discipline posted:
what is MYA
take a deep breath, its actually pretty depressing, it stands Make Yourself Amazing, theyre a private surgery company that advertises on the london tube, they do breast enlargement/reduction/"uplift", liposuction, 'body shaping' (like a car i guess?), vaginal surgery, facial surgery, and (imo the most important piece of this puzzle) "surgery for men".
discipline posted:
lol what line is this I haven't seen them yet.. in fact one of the nicer things about london thus far is that it doesn't have plastic surgery or diet ads everywhere so far as I've seen or at least in comparison to other locations I've lived in
Central line, but these things are seasonal I guess, I remember having a real culture shock moving there fo rmy masters and seeing ads for them, not because it was cynical and exploitative, but because i had never seen ads for that before in the west country (best country) and assumed it was illegal to advertise it at all
it was only after spending a year there i could empathise with how tired, depressed and insecure london makes people, which made me hate those ads even more
discipline posted:Goethestein posted:
1. Performed exclusively on consenting adults
2. Performed in a safe hospital situation rather than by some dude with a sharpened hunk of Toyota in a shack somewhere
3. Comparatively insignificant in incidence
4. Not intended to decrease or destroy a womans ability to experience sexual pleasure
5. Society does nor demand it, and women without labiaplasty have a zero percent chance of being beaten or killed for that reason, and can easily find a spouse without it1. People take issue with your definition of consent.
2. Sharpened hunk of Toyota in a shack somewhere lmao
3. Not true
4. Not true
5. Women are not beaten or killed for having/not having FGM and it's not about finding a spouse
1. I'm sure they do, but I am also quite certain that even the Platonic Ideal of Oppressed First World Woman Who Can Afford Minor Unnecessary Cosmetic Surgery is still more capable of consent than a six month old in Sudan or a 14 year old in Yemen.
2. 
There simply is no argument that labiaplasty is not on the whole safer, cleaner and performed by more qualified medical professionals than FGM, so I am appreciative that you didn't make any.
3.
The surgery is primarily intended to make labia smaller or more symmetrical. Figures released to the Observer show that the Harley Medical Group, a leading cosmetic surgery provider across the UK, received more than 5,000 enquiries for cosmetic gynaecology in 2010, 65% of which were for labial reduction, the rest for tightening and reshaping.
Similar increases have also been experienced by the NHS. A study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2009 revealed that there had been an almost 70% increase in the number of women having labiaplasty on the NHS on the previous year. There were 1,118 operations in 2008, compared with 669 in 2007 and 404 in 2006.
The female population of Great Britain is roughly 30 million. Of that 30 million, let's say 10,000 chose to inquire in 2010 about labiaplasty, or 0.034%. Inquired, not indulged. By contrast, as an example:
http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/fgm/fgm_trends/en/index.html
Today, 94% of women in Egypt arrange for their daughters to undergo this “medicalized” form of FGM, 76% in Yemen, 65% in Mauritania, 48% in Côte d’Ivoire, and 46% in Kenya.
4. Labiaplasty is not intended to destroy a woman's sexual pleasure. Some milder forms of FGM are not either, but many are, especially in Africa. Saying "not true" is not an argument.
5. http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=118289
The head of a Somali aid agency says a gunman shot dead a Somali woman employee in the latest of a string of attacks on the humanitarian community. Ali Sheik says Duniya Sheik Daud was killed Saturday evening as she returned from work at the Iida organization in the central Somali town of Gurilel. Their organization campaigns for women's rights and against female genital mutilation but it was unclear who was behind the attack. Fifteen aid workers have been killed so far this year.
Many international feminist organizations that I briefly Googled seem to disagree with you that women are not at risk of violence from refusing FGM.
discipline posted:
not get the message that pornography is conveying anyhow?
what is the message of porn?
the shaving thing seems pretty harmless. i know dudes who shaved their legs for sports or whatnot. but i understand that most women do it for men's aesthetic preference. the question is - where will you draw the line on rejecting men's preferences? do you say that all makeup, perfume, nail polish, and sultry clothing is demeaning? personally, i think that cosmetic surgery is a line that shouldn't be crossed unless it's to repair an injury or serious deformity.
men have a not-insignificant amount of media-pop-cultural pressure in western society as well. many men feel they are socially inept unless drunk. most men tie their sexual worth to their wallet, though. and they are pretty much right - it's awfully hard to convince a girl that you will take care of her and any future kids without financial means. with unemployment in the US for 18-25 year olds hovering around 50%, you've got a ton of inept and hopeless youth sulking about.
also this isn't helping -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rl1TJG17Wk
