Which of These Four Items Strikes You as Obscene by the Definitions Given Below?
There are no right or wrong answers. It could be any one, any two, any three. all four, or none. This is about your character and disposition as revealed through your personal tastes and predilections. Please discuss each item, and tell us why
you think as you do.
you think as you do.
OBSCENE
Offensive to accepted standards of decency or modesty
Inciting lustful feelings; lewd. Repulsive; disgusting
So large in size or amount as to be objectionable
Offensive or outrageous to accepted standards of decency
Having a tendency to deprave or corrupt
Relating to sex in an indecent or offensive way
Very offensive usually in a shocking way
So large an amount or size as to be very shocking or unfair
Disgusting to the senses - repulsive
Abhorrent to morality or virtue;
Designed to incite to lust or depravity
Containing language regarded as taboo in polite usage
Repulsive by reason of crass disregard of moral or ethical principles An obscene misuse of power so excessive as to be offensive
I'd say that the second one is the most obscene -- except that I've actually seen individuals such as the person picture in Graphic 3.
ReplyDeleteThe last graphic seems to depict an individual enjoying nudity in the privacy of his back yard. As long as he's not sitting in his front yard, who cares if he's clothed or not?
Shame, shame on you Mr. FT for this Porn!
ReplyDeleteBut after some of the things that you have blogged about was just as bad like those horrid posts about Shaw., so it comes as no surprise to me at all.
My reasoning in the above graphic:
ReplyDeleteGraphic 3 is a mutilation and desecration of the human form. He looks like a freak. I'm willing to wager that that freak thinks that he's oh-so-handsome.
Graphic 2 is a satire of the male obsession with the size of his member -- or perhaps the wish of many a man.
"... the wish of many a man."
ReplyDeleteAnd doubtless many a maid as well, AOW. ;-)
The pen and ink drawing, which you rightly categorize as satire is part of Aubrey Beardsley's famous portfolio of comically obscene-absurd illustrations for a modern edition of Lysistrata, which I believe was translated from Aristophanes, but I need to look it up before i could say I'm sure.
I put Beardsley's illustrations in the same category as "dirty" limericks most of which are so grotesquely phrased, so exaggerated, and so impishly tongue-in-cheek in tone it's impossible for an adult person with a modicum of sophistication to take them seriously enough to find them offensive.
I, myself, have little patience with prudishness, which ought never to be confused with prudence.
In fact I'll say straight out:
It isn't prudent to be prudish.
As usual, I had hoped to provoke thoughtful discussion, and did not want to tell people what they OUGHT to think.
Obscenity -- probably even more than Beauty -- really exists in The Eye of the Beholder.
Oaky Phenokee said
ReplyDeleteJeeze, where did you get that nude picture of Nikita Kruschev?
I'm surprised you didn't find this as an example for your post today.
ReplyDeleteThe human body is not pornographic so viewing nude paintings, photos and film would not be offensive to those who agree.
Neither is piercing and tattooing pornographic, IMO. If a person wants to do that to his or her body, why should anyone pass judgement?
Another disgusting Conservative PIG
ReplyDeleteI consider an inordinate fascination with erotica to be obscene.
ReplyDeleteIt's time to remind you, FT, of one of your favorite sayings:
ReplyDelete"You learn more about Peter from what he says about Paul than you learn about Paul."
And must I point out that you never said a word about pornography? The subject was obscenity and the many different interpretations of the word. Why must leftists always change the subject and never address points at issue?
---------> Katharine Heartburn
Thank you, Katharine, for saving me the trouble. I can always count in you and AOW for understanding.
ReplyDelete________________________
Ducky, what could be your definition of "erotica?" With the possible exception of the top photo, who in Heaven's name, other than some very strange perverts, could find anything "erotic" in the other three photos?
The second is so ludicrous it's purely comical. The third is frankly terrifying. The fourth is just a quiet looking old man taking a sunbath in the nude. If he were sporting an erection, the picture might be considered provocative, possibly obscene even in thse possessed of a certain provincial mentality, -- but EROTIC? Puhleeze!!! -- unless you happen to be a homosexual gerontophile. Are you?
Golly gees FreeThinke, what would the God of Abraham, Issac, and Moses say bout this post?
ReplyDeleteMe, I is a-okay wit all cepin #3 cause that thar is one freakin horrifyin dude.
Wishin that was me in numero uno.
Filthy Pig! Disgusting Teabsger
ReplyDeleteI think that YOU are a closet Homo.
ReplyDeletePaul said:
ReplyDelete"You learn more about Peter from what he says about Paul than you learn about Paul."
Whoever said that first sure got it right. Some of these goons are so stupid they don't realize how they're exposing themselves as the disgusting creeps they are.
All four photo's are out of the mainstream.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't want your six year old daughter to see it, put a towel over it!
A sober young maid from Darjeellng
ReplyDeleteProfessed to lack sexual feeling,
But a fellow named Boris just touched her clitoris
And she had to be scraped off the ceiling!
- Lime Rickey
Say what you wish, I STILL say that FT is a disgusting, SOB, Homosexual , racist, fuck!!!
ReplyDeleteLime Rickey,
ReplyDeleteLOL!
Anyone that can't see the humor in that limerick is an idiot -- an idiot with the gray matter of a beebee in a box car.
In my opinion,
ReplyDeleteWhat comes to mind - it takes one to know one.
Nicolai Ivanovitch Gegapetov said
ReplyDeleteThrow a baited hook into the water, and you never know what you're going to catch, yes?
But why try to fish in a cesspool? That does not seem very bright to me. Or is it that you like garbage?
"There's nothing either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so."
ReplyDelete~ Wm. Shakespeare
"Honi soit qui mal y pense."
"Neither [are] piercing and tattooing pornographic, IMO. If a person wants to do that to his or her body, why should anyone pass judgment?"
ReplyDeleteInteresting viewpoint!
I suppose it oughtn't to be considered "child abuse" if a mother and father decided to bind their girl child's feet according to old Chinese custom, even if it meant she would be crippled and unable to walk for the rest of her life?
I guess we ought not to do so much as raise an eyebrow, if some blonde, pink-skinned, blue-eyeed, fresh-faced American, English, German, Italian, Swiss, Scandinavian, or Russian girl if tender years decides to have graduated wooden disks inserted into her upper and lower lips till she develops the appearance of having a duck's bill to show "solidarity" with the tribeswomen of the Ubangi either, right?
In some primitive cultures, I understand, the front teeth are filed down into to sharp points. If daughter, dear, takes it into her pretty little head head when stoned on crack or meth that this would be a "real cool" thing to do, who are her parents and teachers to dare to object?
In other primitive cutures stylized geometric designs are cut into the skin of the abdomen and pectoral muscles, and sometimes across the back, then filled in with dirt after healing takes places -- if the person doesn't die of deadly infection first -- the cuts are transformed into a dazzling display of rigid raised bumps. A perfectly lovely idea, right?
Slicing the clitoris off pre-pubescent girls is SOP in Middle-Eastern and African cultures. Who the hell are we to object if white parents of formerly Christian stock take it into their empty, indoctrinated, multiculturistic heads -- as they did with the wretched example set by the Jews of mutilating male genitalia by slicing off the skin that covers the head of the penis on innocent, infant males -- to perform clit-slicing operations on their little girls?
Oh, and guys, surely you wouldn't feel shocked or offended or in any way disconcerted if your wife or live-in girlfriend came home from the Beauty Parlor one day with a large piece of whittled whalebone or walrus tusk thrust through her nose, would you?
Perhaps it may become fashionable one day for virulent Vegans to have their children's teeth pulled exracted age 12 so that it will be physically impossible for them to commit the ungodly atrocious act of ever sullying their systems with so much as a morsel of meat?
If that's their preference how DARE anyone object in a pluralistic society where freedom of expression is constitutionally guaranteed -- unless you happen to be a committed Christian, or a fiscal conservative, of course?
There should be absolutely no end to the amount of irretrievable damage one may inflict upon oneself and society, but any attempt to argue against total licentiousness and depravity, or promote values and mores antithetical to Licentio-Marxian-Destructionist-Hedonist-Devastationist Ideals and practices must be dealt with unequivocally the harshest possible terms.
Sell your six-year-old daughter's maidenhead -- or your little boy's ass -- to the highest bidder at public auction, let the defloration process be performed on a public stage, and then encouraged members of the all male audience to gang rape the child all night?
SURE! Why not? We live in a FREE society, don't we?
If "Anything GHoes," then EVERYTHING must go WITH it, right? The cold, clear, light of pure logic tells us it must be so.
Mankind can never be free until The Damnable Dictates of Decency are Destroyed once and for all, and The Lord of the Flies brings in the longed for Millennium at long last.
Hail, SATAN! Thou art our only Lord and Master!
well jumpin jimnsey cricket.FreeThinke, this here sort set meathinkin.... ya sees its aokay ifen a all growed somebody isa hankeri ta do stuff ta hisself er hersself. Ifen theys doan hurts sumbodyelts.
ReplyDelete"I suppose it oughtn't to be considered "child abuse" if a mother and father decided to bind their girl child's feet according to old Chinese custom, even if it meant she would be crippled and unable to walk for the rest of her life?"
ReplyDeleteMy comment said: "If a person wants to do that to his or her body, why should anyone pass judgement?
When parents impose changes to a child's body, such as feet binding, they are doing it not to their ownm but to their child's, and without the child's consent.
My comment says nothing about "anything goes."
I merely say that if an adult decides to tattoo or pierce or color his or her hair or do anything to his or her body, why should it be anyone else's concern.
The adult makes a choice, good or bad, and her or she has to live with it.
I don't think children are allowed to get tattooed, btw. Or pierced.
Genital mutilation is done without the child's consent. Hardly the same thing as an adult choosing to pierce his or her body.
Satan has nothing to do with any of this. It's a matter of poor choices.
When a person deliberately damages himself, he damages all of society. We are interconnected, and thus inextricable from one another. This implies a responsibility to think of others, and not just of ourselves. In the four pictures presented in the article, only the one depicting extreme self-mutilation has done any real harm, and has the capacity to extend and multiply that harm indefinitely.
ReplyDeleteIf somebody's six-year-old girl rns across a naked man sunning himself in the garden, or a young couple making love in a remote corner of a public park, or runs across Aubrey Beardsley's quaint illustrations for Lysistrata on a coffee table, no harm will come to her -- UNLESS she has very stupid parents who get hysterical and make a stink about it in which case the hysteria, anger and misplaced concern is more apt to traumatize the little mite far more than the mere sight of human beings being human.
The hideous Metal-Faced Monster on the other hand is apt to cause her to wake up screaming for the rest of her life. Very frankly I wish I had not seen it, myself. The image terrifies me as much as it disgusts me. Ut stays with me and has haunted ever since I stumbled upon it at another blog. I would go so far as to say there is something seriously wrong with anyone who could accept this sort of mutilation on any level. I'd rather live in a LEPER COLONY than be confronted with these manifestations of aesthetic, emotional, spiritual and psychological perversion. Such things are pushing us firmly toward a return to The Coliseum.
Perhaps we should allow people to sell themselves into slavery, ala sixteenth century "identured" variety, eh, pShaw?
ReplyDeleteOr into a BDSM dungeon... just don't give them any "safe" words!
Isn't it unfortunate that Mme. Kenawe imagines that comments made challenging or criticizing opinions she has shared are focused specifically on her, personally, and not the broader implications of what she has said.
ReplyDeleteXantippe Dubrowska
Oh my goodness, Anon, Mr. F.T. prefaced his comment by quoting me.
ReplyDeleteAnd then wrote: "Interesting viewpoint."
Then proceeded to explain why he disagrees.
So, yes, it was my comment that triggered his response.
"it was my comment that triggered his response."
ReplyDeleteYes, and an excellent, very logical response he made. I understand very well what FT is driving at with this post. His thinking, as usual, is exemplary. He has a knack for reading between the lines and seeing possible consequences of the deeds and opinions of others, consequences of which the authors may not not be aware. That is a real talent.
-------> Katharine Heartburn
Could the Anonymous .... Katherine Heartburn ... be FreeThinke's sock puppet?
ReplyDeleteWhy do those with tiny minds
ReplyDeleteSeek to peek behind the blinds?
Covered by a filmy curtain
They feel safe with Danger flirtin.'
This type of surreptitious sleuth
Imagines he reveals the truth,
When in fact these boy detectives
Show themselves as mental defectives.
~ Lily Callas Romberg
REAL obscenity. :P
ReplyDelete