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Another classic canard-killing, Greta. Another post bookmarked for the purposes of dealing an instant crushing riposte to religious people foolish enough to trot that canard out again...
Atheism, Openness, and Caring About Reality: Or, Why What We Don't Believe Matters
Why do atheist activists focus so much time and energy on what we don't believe? What's the point of a worldview and a social/ political movement that's all about not believing in something? Can't we be open to possibilities? Why do we have to be so negative all the time? I've been, as is my wo...
Quite agree, Greta; this is one of my bugbears. I'm a hetero male of the generation that went through adolescence in the seventies and to most of us pubic hair was a huge turn-on. Not because of what we saw in porn (we really didn't see that much in those distant, pre-internet days) but because, I think, it represented sexual maturity. It was a clear and visible secondary sexual characteristic that we found as enticing as any other. And that seems to be a very healthy sort of sexual response, to me.
I hear many younger hetero males these days not merely expressing a preference for shaved (or heavily trimmed) pubes but, more disturbingly, expressing revulsion towards unshaved pubes. And that seems to be a very unhealthy sort of sexual response. It seems to be a response moulded, as you say, by phoney porn. And sometimes, when I see the popularity of hentai-style porn featuring wide-eyed, pre-pubescent girls (and boys) I wonder if this preference doesn't also feature a disturbing element of paedophilia. Non-hairy genitals are, after all, normally a sign of prepubescence.
It's certainly worth talking about. Oh, nice to meet you and Ingrid at the AAI Convention by the way. I was the Brit who said hi. :-)
On The Ubiquity Of Shaving
I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog, in which I analyze the semiotics of pubic hair shaving. No, really. More specifically, I analyze what seems to be a recent trend towards pubic hair shaving becoming expected, standard, and even de rigueur. It's called On The Ubiquity Of Shaving, and he...
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