9 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2022
    1. So what the researchers were looking at was relative stimulation to different kinds of sexual materials, some suggesting sexual encounters with prepubescent girls or boys (usually about aged 10 and younger, and of sexual interest to pedophiles), some suggesting sexual encounters with pubescent girls or boys (generally aged 11-14, and of sexual interest to the group termed “hebephiles”), and some suggesting sexual encounters with sexually mature men and women (of interest to the people researchers call “teleiophiles,” and what the rest of us tend to call “normal,” i.e., “straight men and women,” “gay men,” or “lesbian women”).

      So boys and girls aged 15 to ? are left out of this group, or does the study assume that "adulthood" starts at 15?

  2. Nov 2021
    1. For example, about ten years ago I watched and adored the first two seasons (the first “generation”) of the British show Skins. For whatever reason it caught me at just the right moment and affected me deeply. Just really hit me deep in my heart, as silly as that may seem to you.

      Something similar happened to me with Elite.

  3. Aug 2020
    1. Beach, who uses they/them pronouns, agreed. “Who decides what is arousing?” they asked. “Like ‘you must be turned on by this video and if you’re not, you must be gay?’”

      For sure. There's a lot of gay porn that would not get me going. A LOT.

  4. May 2020
    1. Now square that with the fact that our country recently elected a bright orange Demogorgon whose administration is publicly, eagerly attempting to reverse every single gain the gay community has made in the last 20 years.

      Trump is bad and the admin is transphobic but I just don't see the anti-gay bias. Trump himself seems pretty openly progay. What's the justification for this assertion than tribal loyalty to the Dems? Genuine question.

      (I'm also sick of Bernie saying Trump is homophobic.)

    1. I hasten to add that my own liking for this movie, as with Lucy, has nothing to do with academic enlightenment and is strictly and exclusively a matter of fun (without scare quotes, and speaking in terms of both erotics and aesthetics, at least insofar as anyone can separate these two forms of sexiness).

      I love how Rosenbaum categorizes aesthetics as a form of sexiness. Yes.

  5. Apr 2020
    1. In Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Henry, we’re asked to feel sorry for the slasher, who’s just a poor, crazy mixed-up kid, an attitude that’s more or less extended to Buffalo Bill in Demme’s film.

      How is this any different from the way Joker is presented in Todd Phillips' movie?

    1. The pattern of Hollywood is to balance the independent woman with the female stereotype so that the net sum of progressivism remains zero.

      Compare the line of reasoning in this essay with Bordwell's observation that Hollywood movies strive to present the perfect balance between left and right, so as to upset no one, to flatter everyone, and to sell tickets.

  6. Mar 2020
    1. Although I have no way of proving this, I strongly suspect that the enthusiasm of much of the American public for both the Gulf War of 1991-1992 and, at least initially, for the so-called Iraq War of 2003 can be attributed in part to the popularity of Star Wars and its sequels, which sold the American public on the notion of “war” (or, more precisely and accurately, violent military occupation) as an essentially bloodless video game to be enjoyed by families and households as an abstract spectacle for non-participants.

      Endgame/Infinity War is also bloodless by design. Is fading away into nothingness less traumatic than being blown apart into bloody bits?

    1. As the conversation proceeded, and I raised my hand, lowered it, and then raised it again, she became aware of the worm in her brain, a mental-emotional implant that prevented her from treating me as a colleague when certain topics were engaged.

      Ideology. Orwell would have loved "the worm in the brain."