Sex and violence (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.)

Tue May 11 17:46:58 UTC 2004

Mark Richards wrote:

>I am baffled as to why a clitoris would be considered
>comparable in any way to torture. I guess I am baffled
>as to why 'sex and violence' so frequently appear in
>the same sentence.
>
To paraphrase that great American philosopher, George Carlin, "It's OK 
to fuck your enemy; just don't fuck your lover."  It's a question of 
morality.  On American TV they may be showing the torture pictures from 
the Sadaamite jail, but any suggestion on these pictures that the 
prisoners might have genitals needs to be blurred to avoid offending the 
morals of decent religious folks.  The administration strongly objected 
to pictures of returning dead American soldiers.  These weren't pictures 
of mutilated bodies - just rows of flag-draped coffins.  For many, the 
video game world has to be real; without that some would be left with 
the unpatriotic illusion that when you pull on the trigger real people 
are being killed.

Perhaps the painted nails on the fingers that spread the labia to show 
the clitoris were a detraction from the purpose of that article, but so 
too would be an excess of pictures to illustrate the tortures at Abu 
Ghraib, as was the excess of pictures about Rachel Corrie.  But we can't 
ignore any of these images altogether.

Ec