Warped priorities

Last week the new series of Sherlock started, the first episode of which featured the only woman to run rings around the supersleuth, Irene Adler - played by Lara Pulver.

In this adaptation of Sherlock, the esteemed Adler operates as a dominatrix and appears in a state of severe undress at least once and a barely clad state in a number of other scenes.

As an initial disclaimer: I love the series - you should all watch it - and I am a big fan of the BBC.

As the scenes featuring Adler's disrobing took place before the 9 o'clock 'watershed' there were swarms of complaints on Twitter from angry Daily Mail readers -

One wrote on Twitter: ‘Dominatrix?! Watershed anyone? My ten-year-old was watching that.’
Another said: ‘I don’t think the storyline in Sherlock is pre-watershed suitable.’
A third asked: ‘How was Sherlock on pre-watershed with that slut walking round with no clothes on for most of it?!’ 

Okay, so you get where the drift of what happened. The Mail does note in the article that Auntie Beeb had no official complaints, in fact getting excellent responses.

Here is my problem with this: in the first series Sherlock features a serial killer, effectively, in every episode. People die, there are guns pointed at lots of characters, there is a large amount of violence and, yes, at least one person is shot, on screen; that's not including the scene where a Tong General tortures a semi-regular character or when Moriarty has a bomb strapped to a child. There was no real up-cry about that. There were no "Enraged of Tunbridge Wells" on Twitter complaining that their children saw this violence. But the sight of a woman's back and a hint of sideboob and out come the morality police. A large reason for this is the bizarre bias we have in our society towards violence over sex.

Have a look at any 'boys' cartoon. I loved Transformers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I was a kid, my little brother loves a show called Ben 10. There is a massive amount of violence - in fact the premise of Transformers is a war - but if there was ever a single bare breast shown, it would instantly be pulled off the shelves and propriety-bombed off the screens.

The violence on screen can be shown more or less all day, although there is a degree to which it is curtailed, but the single image of a naked woman (or man) is deemed too much for our children to take?

That seems to be the wrong way around. While I agree that sometimes violence and war are necessary, they are far more harmful to people than nudity or sex are. Our cultural attitude to human sexuality seems even lugubrious. I think that a lot of our sexual hang-ups tie into this; the objectification of women's bodies certainly can. People are drawn to things which are hidden away; it them a fetish, a tempting taboo.

In an episode of The Godless Bitches podcast recently talked about how religion makes sex a guilty action; something you should be ashamed of. You're allowed it when you're married, but in any other circumstance you should beg forgiveness. This works when there's the risk of consequences - pregnancy, STDs - but now these consequences can be avoided if we're educated properly about sex, but our society isn't moving on from thinking that sex is somehow bad.

There are also massively sexist results of this attitude to nudity. Women's bodies become goals; the Page 3 girls in every red-top 'news'paper, put there to gratify the men who are so used to the idea of nudity being 'naughty' that they lap it up and rate girls on how 'hot' they are.

I don't think that seeing a bare breast, bottom or even - horrors - the occasional genital will hurt a child. If we get used to the idea that it is natural in some situations to be unclothed then it might even be beneficial. Certainly more beneficial than endless cartoons about wars and action films trivialising violence to a cultural goal of the Action Hero©


Culture is more comfortable with children seeing violence and war than seeing a single penis/vagina, or hearing a single fuck or shit.

Fuck that shit!

Here Endeth The Rant...

Further information, specifically focusing on Hollywood's preference of violence over sex is in Kirby Dick's excellent This Film Is Not Yet Rated


Now, so as not to be sexist: Here is Benedict Cumberpatch, playing Sherlock Holmes, in a compromising moment!

 

Beginning my Atheist Blogging...

Earlier this year I began reading Hemant Mehta's The Friendly Atheist. From there I also found myself reading Libby Anne's Love, Joy, Feminism and JT Eberhard's What Would JT Do?. I've also been watching Thunderf00t, zomgitscriss and AronRa's Youtube channels for a couple of years now.

What is the point of all this preamble? Well, it's partially a thank you to those people and the others who post, blog, write, vlog and every other verb you can think of about atheism. The other reason is that, while reading or watching all of these I want to join in with them.

It's a nerve-racking goal really. A lot of the people I read or watch came from a deeply religious background and turned their back on it as they learned more about the world. I'm not like that. I was raised without religion and I live in a country where being an atheist really isn't anything to comment on so I really don't have the same struggle to impart. I just want to show solidarity and to be able to speak about these topics from time to time.

At some point in the future I will post a brief biography of myself, but until then I bid you welcome. Here begins my first Rant.

~~~

I suffer from depression. It's tough, but manageable. I'm not currently on medication, but I am in therapy and we are currently discussing whether medication might help me. Sometimes, when the depression swing hits me badly I create spectacle, because the attention does help me feel better about it. I am aware of the silliness and I have been trying to curb the degree to which I do this. Most of the time these days I content myself with a post on a particular famous social network and then I manage to muscle through by talking to some close friends, so I am improving.

The other day I posted a comment which said:

Needs some frucking happy pills. Maybe they'll be able to shake this malaise...

to which my Aunt made some pithy comments, regarding spelling, and I bantered back and forth with her for a bit. This was all well and good, and I don't have any real complaint about it. What I do have a complaint about is her last comment:

Though I suppose I could go all religeous on you and tell you what you really need! Goodnight!

Which frustrated me beyond belief. First of all, after starting the conversation commenting on spelling (the word she thought I'd misspelled was actually spelled correctly anyway) she then went on to misspell 'religious.' Secondly, and much more importantly, was the assumption that the reason I was feeling depressed was because I don't have faith (she knows that I am an atheist, she's a fairly devout Church of England attendee)

If all I needed to stop myself feeling down and depressed was to find Jesus or some-such, then surely a logical extension of that is that absolutely no religious people suffer from depression or other mental illnesses. Oh, wait...

The other issue here is the automatic assumption that it's okay to randomly proselytise to me. We have had discussions about this before; she genuinely thinks that my parents did me a disservice by not taking me to church, that they didn't let me make up my own mind. As I will go into in a later post that is definitely not the case. But if I tried to say to her

The reason this thing isn't going right for you is because you're wasting time praying for it instead of making it happen

I'd instantly be guilty of "disrespect." Well, I am sorry Auntie, dear. That argument only comes from the fact that in our society Christianity is privileged unfairly and assumed to be superior to not having faith.

Here endeth the Rant. I hope to see you again shortly!