loCAtek wrote:Andrew D wrote:What am I missing?
The whole experience. I've had to camp with men, and crap near men in a bucket.
They see it as only one thing- sexual intimacy.
Age regardless, sexual attraction clouds men's judgment.
You must have camped with some pretty creepy men.
I have camped with women and used the same latrines as they were using, and at the same time. A woman crapping in a bucket (or a hole in the ground) connotes sexual intimacy? Blecchh.
I have also showered in the same facility with and at the same time as women with whom I have been camping. Did I register their features, including features which I would not have seen otherwise? Of course; I'm not blind. They also, I presume, registered features of mine which they would not have seen otherwise. So what?
But "clouds [my] judgment"? What kind of men have you "had to camp with"?
I have never had the slightest difficulty distinguishing a situation in which a woman shows herself to me naked because she wants me to see her naked from a situtation in which I see a woman naked because the circumstances are such that everyone sees everyone else naked, like it or not.
Again, what kind of men are you talking about?
Whoever they are, I am not one of them. And I have been in such circumstances with various different men and women, and I have never seen a man experience any "cloud[ed] judgment" due to a woman's nudity. (Obviously, I can't read their minds, so I don't know what clouds may have drifted through. But if there were any such clouds, the men did nothing to indicate their presence, which is pretty much the same as the clouds' not having been there. Unless the clouds are figments of your imagination rather than of their judgment.)
Some men are undoubtedly juvenile. And so are some women. (Perish the thought! But it's true: There are some women who have the same puerile attitude toward seeing mens' genitals as some men have toward seeing womens' genitals.)
But the social rules which govern our behavior in the world should not be dictated by the behavior of those among us who cannot function as adults. Those rules should be predicated on the idea that all of us who are adults (we can leave the subject of adult nudity in the presence of children for another day, although you may have noticed that my attitude about that is pretty much the same) can and will function as adults.
As far as I know, I have never seen you. You have made comments which suggest that you have large breasts. (I recall something about your being amused at mens' attempts to avoid staring at your cleavage.) As it happens, I am fond of large breasts. But if you and I were, say, to have lunch together somewhere, my fondness of large breasts wouldn't matter. I would register their existence, of course, just as I would register your height and the color of your hair and your facial features and anything else that would differentiate you from others around you so that I could recognize you if I were to see you again. And you would register my height, etc., for the same reason. And on both sides, assuming that we were behaving as adults, those things would simply be facts: Breast size would be like height or hair color or whatever -- facts that register so that I can recognize you and you can recognize me, but otherwise of no significance.
I am not pretending any Spock-like detachment. I have my preferences about womens' appearances, and when I see a woman naked, whatever I see registers, beyond mere recognition, in light of those preferences. Some womens' appearances make me want to look more closely; others' don't.
But I am an adult. I am not blind, so when I see a woman naked, I not only register her features for future recognition but also have an immediate impression of whether she is or is not attractive to me. But that impression is like the impression I have of a woman in a painting I see in a museum. Or of a woman I see in a TV commercial. It is an instantiation of beauty, and I feel no shame in appreciating that beauty.
But a sexual attraction? I might as well want to hump the Venus de Milo.
I gather from what many women say that there are -- or, at least, those women think that there are, which is far from the same thing -- many men out there for whom a naked woman is a turn-on, regardless of the context. Yuck.
But I am not sure that there are as many such men as some women appear to believe. Suppose that I have noticed the attractiveness of some woman at a bar. She leaves -- and although I hate to see her go, I love to watch her leave -- and I see her get run down by a car. I rush out there to provide whatever help I can. She is bleeding profusely from her chest. I tear open her blouse, bra, and whatever else might be between me and the bleeding wound.
Am I going to see the very breasts that I was just a moment ago admiring? Yes. Is the sight of them going to be at all titillating? No.
Which brings me back around to context. If the men you have camped with, when they saw you crapping in a bucket, saw that "as only one thing - sexual intimacy," they were some creepy men. They had realization-of-context problems. They were overgrown children. But not all of us are like that.
Reason is valuable only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe.
