Certified_Heterosexual
The Falklands are Serbian, you cowards.
I've been mulling for a while over the strange inversion of society over the past few decades with regard to obscenities or just bawdy comments and themes.
This was brought about in my mind by the discussion of a reported Court opinion from the 1980s (if I recall) about behavior within a Supermarket meat department, and certain behavior by male members of the department in the presence of a female member including lots of not-so-subtle innuendo about "meat" and so forth. The behavior of its own was not found at that time to be of such a degree of outrageousness so as to extend legal liability to the employer, and the reaction among the assembled—especially lady lawyers—was outrage and disbelief. The consensus was that times had changed in the intervening decades, and that none of the behavior described in the opinion should be tolerated because it would absolutely lead to employer liability. This consensus was no doubt correct as a legal matter.
This discussion occurred right around the series finale of Game of Thrones, which I admit that I watched with disinterest, as did many if not most of the assembled participants in the discussion. What occurred to me was that while behavior in workplaces has been increasingly and aggressively supervised and sanitized of any aspect of human sexuality, the wider culture has simultaneously descended into open obscenity and the over-saturation of sex, deviance and and pornography into every other aspect of American life. If there were two lines on a graph representing sex in workplace culture on the one hand and the general culture on the other, they would begin rather close together but then sharply diverge. Game of Thrones stuck out in my mind for its often gratuitous displays of sex and nudity, including sexual sadism and rape. The same people who would find workplace horseplay about "meat" outrageous would regularly watch Game of Thrones without thinking about the juxtaposition of the two as cultural artifacts. In the 1980s, Game of Thrones probably would have earned an NC-17 or X rating had it ever been produced in the first place.
Contrary to the way the law is supposed to work—where the standard of conduct should reflect somewhat the baseline of the culture at large—the American workplace has become neo-Victorian in its prudery, while one is at the same time bombarded with pornographic images that seek you out in all forms of media the moment you leave the workplace.
There are of course obvious answers for why or by whom this came to be, but right now I'm ruminating on how strange it is as a modus vivendi, and how strange it is that tens if not hundreds of millions of people just accept it as a fact of life without question.
On the one hand, we are enticed by all of this open display of sexuality. On the other hand, we are punished for responding to it in the least way.
The culprit, I think, is consumerism and alienation. When you watch porn or quasi-porn, you do so privately. Looking at billboards is not a social experience, no matter how public that billboard may be. Our interactions with other people consuming product is limited even in a movie theater. But workplace interactions are interpersonal by nature. That means that the precious preferences of the precious consumer are no longer non-negotiable. One must deal with the preferences of a different human being. And that human being may not be a member of a protected class.
It goes back to one of the earliest definitions of liberalism: "the belief that each individual can think, say, or do whatever pleases him, without intervention from any authority." That raises the question: what happens when different people have mutually exclusive desires? In more than two hundred years, The Cool People© have never given a satisfactory answer to this dilemma, because there can't be one.
“They should reach an agreement by mutual consent.”
“Did you miss that part about how their desires are mutually exclusive?”
“Whoever violates the Non-Aggression Principle during the dispute is in the wrong.”
“You're already picking a winner by pre-supposing some standard for 'aggression.'”
“SH-SHUT UP, BIGOT!”
This was brought about in my mind by the discussion of a reported Court opinion from the 1980s (if I recall) about behavior within a Supermarket meat department, and certain behavior by male members of the department in the presence of a female member including lots of not-so-subtle innuendo about "meat" and so forth. The behavior of its own was not found at that time to be of such a degree of outrageousness so as to extend legal liability to the employer, and the reaction among the assembled—especially lady lawyers—was outrage and disbelief. The consensus was that times had changed in the intervening decades, and that none of the behavior described in the opinion should be tolerated because it would absolutely lead to employer liability. This consensus was no doubt correct as a legal matter.
This discussion occurred right around the series finale of Game of Thrones, which I admit that I watched with disinterest, as did many if not most of the assembled participants in the discussion. What occurred to me was that while behavior in workplaces has been increasingly and aggressively supervised and sanitized of any aspect of human sexuality, the wider culture has simultaneously descended into open obscenity and the over-saturation of sex, deviance and and pornography into every other aspect of American life. If there were two lines on a graph representing sex in workplace culture on the one hand and the general culture on the other, they would begin rather close together but then sharply diverge. Game of Thrones stuck out in my mind for its often gratuitous displays of sex and nudity, including sexual sadism and rape. The same people who would find workplace horseplay about "meat" outrageous would regularly watch Game of Thrones without thinking about the juxtaposition of the two as cultural artifacts. In the 1980s, Game of Thrones probably would have earned an NC-17 or X rating had it ever been produced in the first place.
Contrary to the way the law is supposed to work—where the standard of conduct should reflect somewhat the baseline of the culture at large—the American workplace has become neo-Victorian in its prudery, while one is at the same time bombarded with pornographic images that seek you out in all forms of media the moment you leave the workplace.
There are of course obvious answers for why or by whom this came to be, but right now I'm ruminating on how strange it is as a modus vivendi, and how strange it is that tens if not hundreds of millions of people just accept it as a fact of life without question.
On the one hand, we are enticed by all of this open display of sexuality. On the other hand, we are punished for responding to it in the least way.
The culprit, I think, is consumerism and alienation. When you watch porn or quasi-porn, you do so privately. Looking at billboards is not a social experience, no matter how public that billboard may be. Our interactions with other people consuming product is limited even in a movie theater. But workplace interactions are interpersonal by nature. That means that the precious preferences of the precious consumer are no longer non-negotiable. One must deal with the preferences of a different human being. And that human being may not be a member of a protected class.
It goes back to one of the earliest definitions of liberalism: "the belief that each individual can think, say, or do whatever pleases him, without intervention from any authority." That raises the question: what happens when different people have mutually exclusive desires? In more than two hundred years, The Cool People© have never given a satisfactory answer to this dilemma, because there can't be one.
“They should reach an agreement by mutual consent.”
“Did you miss that part about how their desires are mutually exclusive?”
“Whoever violates the Non-Aggression Principle during the dispute is in the wrong.”
“You're already picking a winner by pre-supposing some standard for 'aggression.'”
“SH-SHUT UP, BIGOT!”