Re: Facebook censorship and internet porn

> Bruce Bostwick wrote:
>> Charlie wrote:
> > Jon wrote:
 
>> ...that may prevent a woman from learning how to examine herself for
>> cancer or her options if she is diagnosed...
>> ...policy of removing pictures of breastfeeding.

I glanced at the La Leche League site (an org. that promotes breastfeeding) - no easily accessible pix; perhaps one needs to join? Interesting article on age-of-weaning, which here in the US is typically less than one year, but in developing countries can be 3 or 4 yo.  Huh! - I'd draw the line at teething!

> > evidently there are a lot of riled up women about
> > this.  evidently, some few were using breastfeeding
> > as a way around the facebook restriction on frontal nudity. 
[on facebook]

<roll eyes>  Some people just can't deal with bodily functions in a non-kindergartener way, tittering instead of just acknowledging.  Not that there isn't genuine humor to be found in many cases (I've _so_ had to adjust to living with a guy)...

<snippage> 

> The problem, and this seems to be endemic to the industry [porn]
> as far as I can tell, is that the industry would very much
> rather do business the way it does now and take every
> possible tactical and/or strategic action available to make
> sure they're not only net-ubiquitous, but that they actually
> crowd out legitimate web search results for completely
> unrelated subjects, and appear in your inbox even if your
> junk mail filtering is strong enough that you end up
> filtering out your friends before you filter out the porn
> ads.  Rather than target a perfectly willing and
> sex-positive demographic that would be happy to pay for
> their premium content, they would rather make the maximum
> possible nuisance of themselves trying to convert maybe one
> in a thousand or so of the largely sex-negative remainder of
> the population that doesn't want to see anything they have to offer. 

Indeed.

> As for free speech, deciding what's abuse of it and what's
> legitimate use of it is a formitable philsophical problem
> indeed.  Likewise, which restrictions on it are
> legitimate and which are overbroad and possibly
> draconian.  There's room for considerable debate along
> that boundary...

I personally find porn repugnant, but as long as only consenting adults are involved, I can't advocate banning it.  <thread crossover> As in the wikileaks dump - I don't want anyone endangered, but there's far too much being covered up by various govt's.  

> And I repeat my assertion that our society (particularly
> that of the USA, and even more particularly that of some
> regions of the USA and/or specific segments of the
> population) is not exactly objective or even rational on
> this subject, and is influenced by social and cultural
> standards that I consider dysfunctional and destructive at
> the very least.  Not the least of which is the
> perception that nudity == sex, or the related perception
> that sex == bad/dirty/evil.  Or a whole list of
> others...

We do seem to be schizoid and schizophrenic as a society WRT sexuality. 

> The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace
> alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing
> it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them
> imaginary. - H.L. MENCKEN

Good one!

'It's hard to fight the fire while you're feeding the flames' - Rush

Debbi
Condoms For The Mind? Maru
Debbi