In Love and Sex

I found the following words quite interesting given the post I made yesterday:

'In my memoir I have exposed myself – not just sexually but emotionally. I've shown myself as weak, sometimes naive, and written about sexual rejection. A reviewer says she finds my emotional candour more shocking than the sex. I find this fascinating. The British are very squeamish about emotions too. Is owning up to rejection a bigger taboo than sex? I have written from the point of view of making what I thought was a colossal error: sex, I say, ruined my life. We have been given a formula for a "valid" relationship: it must combine sexual and platonic love. If a relationship isn't sexual, it isn't the real thing.

Yet love affairs come in every size and shape. Whether a person lives in passionate celibacy with another, or in a blaze of erotic desire with someone they find annoying, there are hundreds of flavours and mixtures of love. I made myself unhappy measuring my love against a given norm. The truth is, we make ourselves happy in among a wide variety of loves; all count.'

Sex and Violence In Film

This kind of article would have been good for my dissertation last year detailing a discussion between whether sex and violence in cinema should be deemed taboo. Sex columnist Tracey Clark-Flory details the scepticism between classification in America; stricter rules towards taboos against sex in film yet less stricter rules against sex and violence.

It seems like the public can't accept the visualisation of pleasure in humans. Perhaps porn is responsible for this; though porn is created in order to arouse it's audience, where as in film sex is used to represent. I made the point within my essay, why does there have to be so much control over the consequences in film? I mean we see murder scenes, drug taking, torture within film and television and only age warnings come about that (have they missed that ideas towards impending violence on others could occur?!); but when it comes to sex on our screens any element seems to be shunned just incase the audience gets any pleasure from it themselves. There seems to be a concern with self control, or even how much control such societies can have over us in order to avoid risk taking responsibility themselves for our actions. Does it all come from paranoia and issues (like the extreme procedures towards health and safety as well) caused by angry members of the public? I admire how Tracey ends her words:

'Sometimes I really have to wonder who we're most trying to protect by restricting sexual imagery.'

She is right! I do wonder whether those in control of viewing such material are more concerned about the consequences towards going against the social norm? I say lets give it a go and see what happens. Surely you would rather the audience have a larger knowledge of sexual pleasure, than sexual pain and physcial violence caused! I don't see any shame in that.

Handling Hate

Hate, I find is such a worthless emotion. It doesn't achieve anything and it doesn't solve anything. You could say it is a mere self comfort in reassuring/convincing self that what we feel is justified; it feels like a reaction to an emotion which is essentially empty, unless we decide to do anything with the given emotion. Everything we feels steers us towards making decisions and we take action to solve our mental equation.

Essentially we do our self more damage in feeling such emotions, it's like a armour to feeling vulnerable towards something linked with what we care so much about. How dare 'insert particular annoyance' can affect your happiness. You feel sick, you feel angry, you snap, you do things unexpected of your natural self. We seek release from such an ugly emotion...However, we learn from it as well.

All the more does hate make us realise what we need to face, whether it's the fear attached to the hate, a moment of clarity in fighting against our instinctual thoughts or accepting circumstances out of your control. I see no worth in hating a person-it becomes more of an issue for you then than theirs. To hold such emotion towards a person only gets in the way of sorting things out. It would be a backwards task in achieving your own happiness. Let go and feel fresh.