my sympathies are with your father.

In those inimitable words of ThomasG, blah blah blah

that’s right, you’re on to me. no fooling you, hey?
i don’t imagine for a second that you are up at all
hours, frowsy and disheveled, staring blankly at
your computer monitor through a haze of menthol
cigarette smoke, waiting for me to appear that you
can pounce, your kimono flying, in an ungrammatical
assault of all that doesn’t gibe with your certain,
confused take on your world.
just as you have the right to rave unintelligibly,
to, not just kill, but commit wholesale slaughter of
time in high dudgeon (or delusion), do i exercise
might right of opinion. in my opinion, you are a
mean spirited bawd; a female female impersonator, a
mistaken impression, a bad idea.
in that you don’t care what i think, you will, of
course, ignore me. if, however, you are the (other)
female version of ‘go right young man’, you are now
exalting in the latest infusion of what you mistake
for attention and, adjusting your ungirded bosom,
you will continue to stalk my every move like the
bitter, self-avowed wronged woman you have always
been. don’t let me interrupt your monkey business,
it’s funny when it’s not horribly sad.
when swinging from vine to vine, it pays to know
where the vines are.

Well this simian, or wannabe orangutan simian until I found out I
was descended from a tree shrew, would like you, reynolds, to take
a hike as you don’t contribute anything to the progress or anything
interesting to the conversation except to interject your conceits as
much as Mr. Fish. You can’t really imagine that anybody cares what
the f you think or care about.  Or have you not noticed in your self-
blinding narcissism that not one participant has commented on what
you have had to say, about me or anything else, except me in defense
of myself from your viciousness?  A real slimy troll you are.  Yup, you
might as well go off and continue to gratify yourself elsewhere as it is
plainly seen no one here will provide the service.

semantical simian, your leave tastes good. you said
it will last a few days? i’m glad. i’d like to
sample some others’ leaving.
i waded through mr. fish’s remembrance of things
parsed just far enough to affirm he is qualified to
determine what is “crappy storytelling”. i tried,
really. it appears i’m not the only one struggling.
the most riveting stories are told in the comments,
and at great effort. i’m touched by a few of the
posters’ stories. i’m bad touched by a few more of
them. my eyes are rolling, too. the rest of me is
following suit. reminds me of my ability to forget.
vagina.

You were absolutely right in questioning any thought presented by me, for the exactly the reasons you communicate, it is absolutely imperative that when minds meet the volume of the brain needs to be turned down so communication, the art truly of questions and answers can take place. An art by the way that you are most excellent at.

The definition or objective qualifier is the most necessary agreement between two minds an is required if communication is to exist on a higher level than animal grunts. As to the good and the definition given I believe you are correct. Which in turn would lead us to MR fish, as I believe that between actual humans, the experience of sex begins in the mind and if there is no connection of thought then relationship is not possible, so the act becomes only that which animals share and can be perverted by a brain were thought has lost control. So again I say, MR fish is only reminiscing on his experience of puberty. I being a gorilla, cannot figure out the relevance of George Lucas or religion unless he is expressing pangs of repressed guilt, or the inability to comprehend the difference between art and pornography, maybe both are true? 

I will leave you with this thought, many minds in four dimensional space, organized energy existing at once separate and together, projecting thought like blind men searching for substance, if the hands touch but once there is connection,  if those thoughts projected touch twice and spread then there is relationship. This will only happen when homo sapien’s learn to control the volume in there brains.

Until then you will find this gorilla rolling his eye’s at the clouds, while trying to figure out which leave’s taste best.
I will try to respond to the other post when I return in a few days, as that will require some rather strenuous thinking.

Clash

I have a great deal of respect for gorillas, especially cryptic ones.
I was just trying to sort out what he says, since I suspected from
some of his phrases I believe I understood, it was worthwhile.  I
have always thought the thinking you put on the forums, Clash,
to be of the highest quality.  I agree it is difficult if not impossible
to “know” how we are perceived by others. We can only guess unless
we ask them. Second guessing other minds often leads to trouble. 
When thoughts are shared, it is important, if real communication is
to take place and if it is wanted, to check for understanding as the
discussion goes along.  Otherwise we might be going down completely
different paths, which is what I think you were cautioning about.  Am I
right?  We could be like Mr. Fish and not really care if any connection
was made with the readers, and just assume we did, and could just
amplify our own quirky opinions.

The difference between abstract ideas, or universals, and local
expressions or incidences of them, is the difference between thinking a
mentally simplified representation of something verses the actual
detailed experience of that idea.  It seems to be important that a
distinction be made between the universal and an actual experience. 

For instance, when we talk about the good as a universal, it seems such
a thing exists because we perform the action of evaluating things using
a mental rating scale that ranges from good to bad. It also seems, then,
that the universal idea of the good came about because there was a
collection of real objective experiential events that were evaluated as
good, which is a subjective act unless some qualifier is objectively
predetermined, and that when these several experiences were added up
caused the universal term good to be invented to describe all of them
as a group, such as a “good” view of women in general.  Is this how you
see it too?

Applying this idea of good to what you were saying earlier, there seems
to be something less than good in the way our culture has developed
with regard not only to the perception but also to the treatment of
women, where the evaluation of good is applied to a question of ethics
and morality.  Would you agree? 

The question is whether Fish perpetrates that less-than-good way or if
he facilitates a better view?  Or did he actually pander us down a false
road altogether so that he could exercise his real intention to harpoon
George Lucas or criticize the religious view of the value of sex?  Here
he was using the measure of good although he uses it to judge two
other topics altogether.  Certainly these had nothing to do with naked
women and art.

I think, too, there is no way to achieve universal good, as a general
idea, it itself isn’t a thing that can be undergone, we can only
understand it through having local experiences for which the universal
good could be used as the standard.

Good night cryptic gorilla.  And thank you.

Trying to share thoughts with you, at times , reminds me of how a patient teacher works with the mountain gorilla to teach it how to communicate (myself being the gorilla).

Your mind is as sharp as a razor, the contradiction exists for the same reason we can really never know how we are perceived by others. This deficiency remains a block between those who attempt to share thoughts, such as what the definition off good universal or local is. Without agreement of definition then their can be no universal thought, no universal thought no universal morality, and yes, maybe no way to achieve universal good.

Clash  
the cryptic gorilla

See this finger,
See this thumb,
See this fist,
reynolds,
You better run….

Sayeth the infamous harridan, Shenonymous! Who really ain’t that
old but vicious, you got that right.  Get a life, reynolds.  You spend
way too much time trying to taunt or insult me.  Better minds than
your shrunken one have tried… in vain. 

It reminds me of Dune when the God Emperor Leto said the serial
gholas just keep coming!  Slice them up and another one rises up from
the swamp.  Have you been ghola’d, reynolds?  Oh yeah, and let’s not
forget the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail.  A laugh riot.

harridan

5 Yups, reynolds.  Grrrrr

Mr.Fishs title seems deceptive to me and reminds me of a Huffington postits,  in that the title has little or nothing to do with the article.  I had thought from Fish’s title, “In Defense of Naked Women” and with Fish being an artist he was talking about nudity and art, instead it turns out more like a juvenile delinquents Catholic Confessional…... Forgive me father for I have fornicated watching Gilligan’s Island and think of things most sordid and sinful?

But,....Now after reading Mr. Fish, (I must make sure to call him Mr., for we are not on first name basis)  .... I can talk about my most intimate feelings, fetishes and proclivities absent of trepidation with Tea Bagger certinity.

First and foremost I start my confession by admitting my slobbering fascination for;...... “Zena the Warrior princess”  who doesn’t like a woman who can take care of herself and kick some ass?...(maybe Renyolds)  ....Boy this confession stuff make me feel better!

How about… if I confess my most secrete of all secretes?..... Ah, what the hell…. I never admitted this to anyone before,.... I am a closet Republican, and I think I was born that way!  Wow this coming out thing feels good! ......(I must feel like a foot tapper who just got caught?)  I remember my first Republican O moment, just like this mornings breakfast….if I could remember breakfast?  When Ronald Reagan became president, I was 33 my first O moment!  If Reagan was an O moment, you would never guess what happened when G.W. Bush won the first time, such O stopping moments never existed before. When the Supremes gave Bush the presidency the second time, ..... my heart stopped and I had to go to hospital! Republicans achieve multiple O mementos, because of their inherent ability to screw all the people most the time,... or is it the other way around?  Us Republicans are experts in voyeuristic unbridled fornication. I cannot wait for Newt Gangrape,..... the anticipation is like waiting for a cab going to Hooters. Newt has been worming his way around screwing anything that walks, getting in some practice, I know Newt is preparing to screw the public. I am slobbering already! No it is not rape, it is just what Republicans do best.

My Recent hand wringing joy of O was watching Wisconson Walker using his power like a huge phallic symbol,  such a deviation of power is so organismic to behold and even beyond.  Slobbering joys of watching livelihoods being destroyed.  Twisting people in the wind, oh what Republican joy to behold, such perfect manipulated Tea Bagger delight…. Joy of joys, so many people losing what they have fought for,  over fifty years of rights destroyed, and even better making them feel guilty about getting loosing them. Watching people grovel to keep their petty rights! Damn people always wanting better lives then us Tea Bag/Republicans,  This is the grand organism of Republican power.

Okay, I am on a ranting tangent here,..... for I have just read Hedges article and it touches my G spot.

Geez Mr. Fish, ....I am real glad to find out you are not gay, only because then who knows how the vagina monologue would have turned out?

Okay,..... I find Mr. Fishes article belittling to women, possibly because I interpret Mr. Fishs Porn comments as offensive, simply for they have nothing to do in the defense of Naked women, rather the opposite!

you are the duration.

Some we like, some we don’t.  Object all you want.  I’m here for the
duration. Too bad reynolds.

who’s bashing women? it’s you i find objectionable.

reynolds, instead of bashing women, just go f yourself in a corner
somewhere.  It’s guaranteed you will be much more gratified and so
will the rest of the world.  Do you imagine you are a contributing
member of the human race?  You aren’t.

hernonymous bosh; get a day job.

Sorry about the unclosed italics in my last post and ask pardon for
it.  I’ll indulge and take the space to repost for clarification as I
think it was not as plainly readable as it should have been.  If not
for any of you, then just for myself.

So again:  Please Clash, elaborate on your comment, “this problem
seems to be epidemic in this culture.”  Then also on this one,
“many social injustice’s are perpetrated on defenseless victims in
the culture and thought to be, and then accepted as the norm,” if
you don’t mind, in keeping with your thesis, it might be revised to
say, “when perpetrated through and as art, then seems to be accepted
as the norm,” given the frequency of criminal acts against those less
able to defend themselves and a lack of perceptible change in social
interests.

A sort of ennui seems to have taken over social attention, and the
Freudian Pleasure Principle has become the rule in order to avoid the
pain of the debilitating realities in the world.
 
What is the antidote?  Surely not the experiment of religion as we
see how that has turned out over the millennia with hundreds of
millions of people dead or otherwise harmed by it.  So humans have to
become seriously conscious about what they want to be the morals of
our society without scoffing at the idea for to do so means capitulation
to wretchedness and falling into the abyss of nihilism.

It has to be remembered that brilliant as he seemed, Nietzsche was a
madman, and along with another alienated philosopher who committed
suicide at the ripe old age of 23 (who was a Jew turned anti-semitic),
Otto Weininger, both misogynists, which sometimes it looks awfully as if
that emotional perspective is alive and well and incurably rampant in
our contemporary culture.  Madness does not preclude radiant intervals
of ingenuity and inspiration through mental illness.

It was Thomas Moore (Huffington Post, Sept. 12, 2010) who said, and I
think sagaciously, “Everyone should be in therapy…that everyone is at
least a little neurotic…” 

All images are shadows of experience, but the degree of perversion is
the degree of the perception that one person is the property of another,
i.e., the Lolita syndrome in the case of sexual property.  What used to
be called slavery is now euphemized as “possession.”

Clash, I found your last post hugely cryptic.  I was unable to make any
leap from my brain to my mind to understand exactly what you were
saying. 

As a general rule, I don’t interpret what others say since doing that
overlays my own perceptions on any ideas that seem to appear thereby
not really knowing what was really being said. 

Saying that, it seems when you said, ”The only flaw I perceive in the
thought regarding universal morality is that there can be no such
system, as morality only exists in thought and each of us, if human
must hold to our thought and not be deterred by the culture when we
are pressured into cultural actions that presupposes the good for all.
The good is the good regardless, whether or not the culture agrees.”
that there appears to be a contradiction:  Either no universal morality
exists except you say that the good does exist and is the good
regardless because it is beyond culture, therefore it is universal.  Since
the good is a moral valuation, actually it is the primary measure of
moral valuation, then either no universal good can exist or there are
universal morals.  Would you please explain more simply for my simple
and slow grasping mind?

The inability of children to make the leap from the brain to the mind and then to control their thoughts by understanding that both are necessary to become more than homo sapien the animal. These are the lessons, that for a large part of this culture are neglected, or over ridden insidiously through the use of images created to facilitate an orderly induction into the ranks of a culture based on infinite production( death). In that as long as one imitates the images one will be left to ones self to do as they please, until the outcome which usually leads to some type of violent behavior forces the culture to intercede, usually to late. Unfortunately these acts of violence, well hidden and for the most part undetectable, are perpetrated for the most part by abusive males in the culture, and are a learned behavior, reinforced by the cultural images they are inundated by.
So, as the acts become more heinous, the images are used to reinforce there normality under the guise of freedom of action and thought.
The more difficult, and the most interesting thought is the idea that men and women are some how different species, which would allow the most abhorrent thought, that possession of one another is reasonable and acceptable behavior, or that one gender is less capable than the other. These thoughts(and many others) need to be and must be pushed aside for the homo sapien animal to become truly human. It seems, to learn how to communicate thoughts and give credence to those thoughts of others, by this the meaning here would be, to allow the thoughts of others entry into the personal thought stream, so to expand the original thought to a thought that can be shared would be the most desirable situation, though for that it would be necessary for a prior understanding to exist. 
The only flaw I perceive in the thought regarding universal morality is that there can be no such system, as morality only exists in thought and each of us, if human must hold to our thought and not be deterred by the culture when we are pressured into cultural actions that presupposes the good for all. The good is the good regardless, whether or not the culture agrees.
This in my opinion has been the path to becoming human. 

Clash

Please Clash, elaborate on your comment, “this problem seems
to be epidemic in this culture.”  Then also on this one, “many
social injustice’s are perpetrated on defenseless victims in the
culture and thought to be, and then accepted as the norm,” if you
don’t mind, in keeping with your thesis, it might be revised to say
“when perpetrated through and presented as art, which then seems
to be accepted as the norm” given the frequency of criminal acts
against those less able to defend themselves as evidenced by a lack
of perceptible change in social interests.  A sort of ennui seems to
have taken over social attention, and the Freudian Pleasure Principle has
become the rule in order to avoid the pain of the debilitating realities in
the world.  What is the antidote?  Surely not the experiment of
religion as we see how that has turned out over the millennia with
hundreds of millions of people dead or otherwise harmed by it.  So
humans have to come to serious consciousness about what they want to
be the morals of society without scoffing at the idea for to do so means
capitulation to wretchedness and falling into the abyss of nihilism.  It
has to be remembered that brilliant as he seemed, Nietzsche was a
madman, and along with another alienated philosopher who committed
suicide at the ripe old age of 23 (who was a Jew turned anti-Semite),
Otto Weininger, both misogynists, which sometimes it looks awfully as if
that emotional perspective is alive and well and incurably rampant in
our contemporary culture.  Madness does not preclude radiant intervals
of ingenuity and inspiration even in the diagnosis of mental illness.  It
was Thomas Moore (Huffington Post, Sept. 12, 2010) said, and I think
sagaciously, “Everyone should be in therapy…that everyone is at least a
little neurotic…”  All images are shadows of experience, but the degree
of perversion is the degree of the perception that one person is the
property of another, i.e., the Lolita syndrome in the case of sexual
property.  What used to be called slavery is now euphemized as
“possession.”

Who shall lead the dialogue out of this social madness?  For like
lemmings or the Piper’s rats, we want only to follow someone.

To bad the author hasn’t been able to allow his thoughts to grow out of puberty, but this problem seems to be epidemic in this culture.

Following the adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, art seems to me to be a some what personal thought process. Yet through images or the perception of images, many social injustice’s are perpetrated on defenseless victims in the culture and thought to be, and then accepted as the norm. Abuse and violence directed towards women and children are inexcusable by any standard of true human behavior. These images are not true experience but a perverted shadow of experience, to which the mind becomes accustom. Even the extensional philosopher Fredric Nietzsche weighs in on the proper way to effect a relationship with women, ““When thou go-est to woman, take thy whip.” Seems absurd but the possession of other beings remains still today a thought foremost in this culture.

Deep controversial topic - though I’m not sure which one - nudity? morality? art? pornography? censorship?
Shock value rises in direct proportion to censorship of course.
Too much of what passes for art depends on salaciousness and shock- ‘epater les bourgeois’ Malathorpe’s fetish photos and the ‘Piss Christ’.
Tiresome, cliche and childish.

There’s so much faux morality in the art culture now - especially writing - a sappy PC castrating bold creativity - which I heartily ignore.

Yet the areas where morality should apply - such as violations of privacy on the internet pass without a blink.

Eroticism is degraded into pornography by the Purtanical strain still obssessing the overtly Christian Puritan US culture.

As usual, receiving notices when anyone posts a comment to a
forum on which I have participated, I get a chance to reread the
article to inform me should I want to post again.  Rereading Fish’s
soliloquy on his thoughts and musing on sex and women about
whether it was or was not inherently a bad thing to experience
women as sex objects, deriding along the way feminism who suffers
at that common opinion by men, it struck me that a dickhead and a
penis, it turns out, are exactly the same thing.  (Pause, repeat…this
time a thousand times.)

And that thinking about men exclusively as a sexist thug is that you
miss being able to experience them as anything else, never being able
to make them completely invisible when dressed and breathing normally
—a point of view I’ve had since I was 3 years old watching my father
bash my mom in the nose because she had not ironed his shirt yet
(because she was expected to prepare his breakfast while he berated
her ability to fry an egg exactly to the secret degree where the yolk was
just a little bit runny and no white snot was left) and she had run out of
his time.  But mom finding her feminine power took the blood gushing
from her face in her fist and threw it at my father’s face, picked me up,
grabbed her purse, and left the bastard for good!  Masculinism, as a
doctrine of malehoodness, suffers, I think, when it denies any woman,
prostitute or porn star or mom, complete access to freedom that comes
with all that lies between the loins and fists called despicable and
disrespect (as if the prostitute and porn star had a fighting chance or
choice early or ever in their lives!).  Later in life I made peace with my
father, but I never ever forgot his treatment of a small woman and I am
always reminded when I read about the hundreds of thousands of other
women battered, and murdered, by these sexists who see women only
as sexual objects and rationalize that it is all right, in the name
of…justified sex.

In my youth I did not have such a diversionary phenomenon as Star
Wars that glorified maleness and their power where a princess, no
less, in distress, needed saving along with the universe as we
fantasmagorically know it. The movies then were just as macho as they
are now except now we have Angelina Jolie!  Unlike Fish’s assessment,
Star Wars is less outrageous as the Bible and the Qur’an, but much
more so than the Constitution, the only doormat women have that does
have a clearly marked indelible exit sign for the violence of their person. 
But which is now under assault again by those who would
disenfranchise women’s right to their own bodies.

Upon these reflections, and many many more but not wanting to use up
this forum space (which I have already done, my bad) which would not
be space enough to soliloquize about the continued disrespect of
women, I know that every woman has her own list of both her own
experiences or other women she knows.

The chain saw execution of Nicholas Berg that is now verbally
historicized in Fish’s soliloquy, due to the curiosity of an 11-year old
mentality (though he did not provide the video for the rest of us who
are just as curious), is an odd juxtaposition to the paean of screwing
naked pornocized women. Does it really matter if Fish was frozen only
one degree colder to his core by what he saw that he sanguinely spent
20 minutes calling friends to tell them not to watch it!  How crass.  For
we know that telling someone not to do something they will definitely
do it!  And this grown man knew it too!  Perhaps it was only to have a
moment to jibe at the Christian procreative purpose for screwing. How
about the Jewish reason, or the Muslim, or the Buddhist (yeah, they
screw too), etc.?  While I am not a Christian or a member of any of
those other “organized” belief mills, I do know for a fact that many
Christians, men and women, screw for reasons other than procreation.

I have to disagree with Mr Fish, who I love, about the 13-year-old business.  I blissfully went through life with my 13-year-old experiences until a couple of years ago.

Quite honestly, I had some ‘life experiences’ that were way out of the ballpark for 13.  Now, I am 80% empathetic, and 20% able to rip your throat out if you F*** with me. (Since we are qualifying the human capacity for evil)

Dear Mr. Fish,
I’m not sure if I envy your serious orgasm at age 13, or not.  I certainly didn’t have one until I was in my 20s, but a) I’m a woman and b)well…actually, there is no “b.”

SarcastiCanuck, March 11-5:11 pm Has anyone asked you to
apologize?

In the spring of 1977, I was starting the pilot program (one of 3 artists)of an artist-in-residence program for a foundation because the NYC public schools had eliminated art.

I am fascinated, as I read you, Mr. Fish, of how sexist themes continue down the years, in some men.  No doubt the statements about women as sex objects are meant to provoke, ditto re orgasms.  I’ll pass.

On drawing/paintings of nudes: I view nudes as landscapes.  My husband models for me.  I have a funny drawing of him, sitting on the floor in my studio, with him asleep in the mirror reflection - He fell asleep during the drawing.  He’s a scientist.  Science and art are related.

  Drawings/paintings of women without heads annoys me.  Says more about the male doing the art.

ALPHA-MALES

Why is it that sex is mostly about women, as if they had no separate existence apart from their mammary appendage and genitalia?

I know why, I think. Because we are animals and we share an instinct for survival and procreation that drives us. It is not just our motor, but the driving wheel. Sexual intercourse is an instinctual device shared by all animals. (Instinctual means we are born with the urge, we do not learn it and it awakens at puberty.)

How often do men and women think of sex each and every hour awake? I can’t remember the number, but the significant point is that men do so far more than women. Does that mean women are less sexed than men? Probably not.

In most societies on earth, the sexual relationship describes men as active and women the reactive force - by either social or biological custom. Unfortunately, this also represents a dominant-submissive (or actor-reactor, initiator-follower) hierarchical order to the relationship.

Which seems to have meant, since the origin of our species, one of not only sexual dominance but economic dominance as well. (Aided and abetted by the fact that males were physically more adept at hunting and warfare, whilst females prone to gathering as well as nurturing their young.)

And there, I submit, is where the givens are changing. That established economic order is slowly but surely eroding. It may not be tomorrow and it may not happen for quite some time, but economic equality between the sexes is making its gains ineluctably. Particularly in the advanced western societies where women have more ample opportunity for higher levels of educational attainment.

What does this mean as regards the dominant-submissive relationship between the sexes? That is the interesting part in the relational development between the two sexes. Will women become active agents and men reactive agents in the relationship?

Why not? No social norm forbids it, since its very nature defines the social norm. Who would forbid it therefore since it is presently taking form naturally?

MY POINT

Yes, men could try to do so - since they have the most to lose in terms of economic gain as well as the psychological enjoyment that dominance seems to afford all animals - but particularly alpha-males. Nonetheless, sexual equality will probably do more to change the functioning of both society and state than any other development in mankind since the dawn of time.

POST SCRIPTUM

For instance, it amuses me greatly to ask this rhetorical question: How many male Heads of State, had they carried a child in their belly for nine months and given painful birth, would be prepared then to send their sons and daughters off to die in war?

As long as defense of naked men is also under development! 
No figleafs please, no flowing cloths like those that were painted
over Michelangelo’s original male figures on the ceiling of the Vatican.

Great piece, Suffi and early Twentieth Century poet references included.

Reminds me of Shenonomous Avatar.