Re2: SCN Board Candidates and alt.sex.your.worst.nightmare

[Kurt Cockrum]

Janosz said:
#Kurt,
#
#PLEASE RE-READ YOUR ARGUMENTS AND ELIMINATE THE CONTRADICTIONS THEN 
#REPOST IT SO I CAN TELL WHAT IT IS YOU ARE SAYING.

OK, I will do my best.

#EXAMPLE:  ADULTS AREN'T VERY BRIGHT....

What part of this didn't you understand? (-snurk-)

#          USERS SIGN WAIVER THAT THEY ARE OVER 18

This was a suggestion offered as a simple remedy to a potentially hairy
situation.  While rationally viable, perhaps it was not legally viable.
Perhaps it was my mistake to assume that rationality and the law are/were
compatible.  This seems to be an area where clear thinking is a handicap
or disability; I admit to mine.

#         THEN YOU SLAM ISLAM AS A RELIGION.

I said:
>It is said that in certain Islamic countries women must wear chadors (a
>head-to-toe flowing garment that conceals the body) so that men aren't incited
>to lustful thoughts, or otherwise offended.  But it seems entirely unfair to
>hold a woman responsible for events that occur solely within the confines of
>a man's cranium.  Should she be held responsible for things that the man is
>likely obsessing about anyway solely because that culture forbids it?  In any
>case, there's nothing she can do to control what goes thru the man's head.  In
>this country, a similar analogy holds.

Show me where the "SLAM" is, besides in your own cranium.  In the latter case,
I can't be held responsible any more than the hypothetical woman mentioned
above.  Women having to wear chadors is a fact that is easily checked out.
Go read a book about Iran or any country where "sharia" is the law of the land.
I ventured an opinion about the fairness of certain social relations that
are also easily checked out (read any book by Islamic feminists).
Are you saying having opinions about religiously-derived social relations in
other countries or this one is not OK?  Would-be shades of Salman Rushdie!!

In this country dressing provocatively is no justification for rape (or it
shouldn't be); men are expected to be able to contain themselves when seeing
more of a woman's body than is ordinarily the case.  It is not considered
by many people to be socially justifiable for men to be protected against the
consequences of acting out their lustful urges by passing the burden of
restraint to women.  "The devil made me do it" is not a viable excuse.

#Please explain your position clearly so I can understand why you 
#just don't find these areas and "play"?

Janosz, I gave it my best shot.  Since you still don't understand it
I guess I'm just not a very good writer.  I guess I'll just have to keep
on writing until I get better.

Candidly, I'm not particularly interested in reading sexual material,
although I occasionally run across something interesting.
I'm against censorship, particularly where the state is involved.  I don't
like people telling other people what they can read and what they can't
read, and backing that up with force of any kind.  That is the position I'm
coming from.

#I have no problem with sexual material, but.... where does social 
#responsibility begin and end?

Well, maybe there are no endpoints.  Social responsibility is perhaps
more a property of the social space we all inhabit, sort of like how
(warning! loose analogy ahead! :} ) PI (3.14159265+) is embedded in
3-space.

#I have no answers that are clear cut hear only we have issues that 
#are greater than this thread that need to be addressed first and 
#this issue should go on a back burner until it can be thought 
#through. I feel the same way about violence/bombmaking it's just 
#not the time when we are so far from being at the end of the first 
#chapter of SCN.

Well, is it ever going to be OK to talk about
<name-your-favorite-forbidden-topic> or is it going to be
"jam yesterday, jam tomorrow but never jam today"??

What's this "first chapter" business?  You mean before the group incorporates?
Is it going to be OK to talk about violence/bombmaking afterwards?  Inquiring
minds want to know.

Let's bear in mind that we aren't talking about sex, violence or bomb-making
in this forum.  We are talking about talking about sex, violence or
bomb-making.  I urge readers to take most careful note of the distinction.

#>[...180 lines of quoted material deleted...bug in the mailer?...]

It is almost embarrassing to reply to a posting which, while purporting
to be a point-by-point refutation of my posting, is in fact a confirmation
of same.

-- kurt
"The map is not the territory." --Korzybski