View Single Post
Old 08-14-2012, 03:14 AM   #58
Elfwreck
Grand Sorcerer
Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Elfwreck's Avatar
 
Posts: 5,185
Karma: 25133758
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA
Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)
Quote:
Originally Posted by djulian View Post
I think a concern is that if someone soaks themselves in books that glorify men/women who treat other men/women as sexual objects who exist only for the protagonist's sexual satisfaction, that reader may be inclined to begin thinking of other people as objects to be used for their own sexual satisfaction. Or if someone soaks in books that glorify abuse of children, they may be inclined to consider such abuse a good thing.
That's certainly possible. However, the basic topic of a book doesn't tell you whether it "glorifies" people as sex objects, or the abuse of children, or murder, or any other crime or depravity. And sex carries such a negative stigma that books that feature a lot of it wind up getting tagged "erotica" regardless of what themes or story tropes they also have.

"Books that encourage poisonous mindsets and inspire messed-up people to commit atrocities" aren't limited to any one or two genres, and they can't be identified by their marketing tags.

"Erotica" isn't the problem. "Hardcore explicit erotica" isn't the problem. Nor is "explicit erotica focused on kinky practices that most people find disgusting." "Books that treat people as sex objects" might be the problem... but doesn't that include books for teenage girls that tell them they'll never get a boyfriend if they don't learn how to apply eyeshadow correctly?

Objectifying people has nothing to do with explicit descriptions of body parts. Condoning abuse has nothing to do with descriptions of sex. There is no way to separate out "books that are bad for society" based on objective content descriptions. The books that are toxic are so because of context, because of their meaning in today's cultures, and there's no computer program that can identify those problems.
Elfwreck is offline   Reply With Quote