No one would tell the woman to stop it because it might make the man uncomfortable.
Morgenstern you are correct in the sense that the OP was trying to have a conversation about breasts in a non-sexual way. Well, some people find the topic sexual enough to insert sexual jokes in it. The mod note was appropriate.
Um, what? The question posed in the OP was whether or not women took off their bras to have sex.
Yes, like many of the women who participated in the thread:
I don’t think a mod note can ever really be described as ‘heavy handed’ but the fact is the topic was only semi-serious and semi-sexual and women by far made more booby jokes than men in that thread.
Not a single one of those is a “booby joke”.
The quotes are a mashup both demonstrating the subject of the OP was indeed sexual, and also the jokes that were made.
So if the OP of this thread had posted:
“I"m a fan of naked there as well”
or
“There is something to be said for a good fondling before taking off the bra”
that wouldn’t have fallen into the category of ‘booby jokes’ in the way that
“I cant’ tell if I’m turned on or turned off” did?
Arg. This is what happens when you try and answer one person, briefly, and a whole 'nother conversation happens.
The original OP wasn’t really asking whether women take their bras off to have sex. It was inspired by another thread where that topic came up. It asked about bra wearing habits in general, (all the the time, never, only at work, different bra at home, sleeping, exercise, and, yes, because the OP shared this, sex). Morgenstern’s comment, to which I was responding, was, I think to the effect that bra wearing habits alone aren’t particularly sexy. And I agreed. Still, men were joining the thread and adding sexual jokes.
Your culled remarks, meant to show that women were also interjecting the sexy, are irrelevant. Observing that you like to take your bra off for sex, and your partner seems to like it when you do, isn’t the same thing as Dr. Jackson’s comment that he doesn’t know if he should be aroused or not, or Urban Redneck’s bon mots about a women’s cup size. Neither of those have anything to do with the discussion. Odd that the difference is so hard to understand.
My comment was in response to the Making sexual jokes in a thread about a serious sexual topic rule.
First of all, I’m totally okay with that rule, as I am with the mods action in the thread. Both the rule and the action are appropriate exercises of good modding.
My problem comes from the interpretation of the rule with respect to the topic. The topic of the op had to do with how women wear a certain part of their clothing. Certainly that’s not sufficiently sexual so as to trigger the “serious sexual topic” rule. Or so I would think.
So basically, I’m thinking the mods got one right but for the wrong reason. This sort of scares me because I’m thinking there’s a very faint line for find a thread is about a “seriously sexual topic” now.
Rule #2 was for making sexual comments in a thread with a non-sexual topic, so even if you consider that discussion of bras non-sexual, the jokes were still worthy of a mod note based on rule #2.
The thread was a mix of sexual and non-sexual discussion of bras. I don’t think you’d be wrong to classify it either way.
All I can say is if there was a “guys” thread about jock straps and whether or not they somehow enhance sex (I know… but you can’t draw perfect equivalents here) and someone posted “I have a huge, sweaty dick and sometimes I take my jocks off before I even get home” and another posted “there’s something to be said for a nice fondling before the jocks come off”, I really, really doubt another poster chiming in they don’t know whether to be turned on or grossed out would raise even a mod note.
No, I don’t understand the difference and I don’t think that is odd.
Good moderating; save that HURR DURR BOOBS AMIRITE LOL stuff for the playground.
I found the moderating acceptable. No warnings were even issued, so I don’t see how you can call it heavy-handed.
FWIW, I’m a man, and I’m proudly sexually obsessed with boobs, and if I’m being honest, that obsession is the main reason I was even reading the thread in the first place. Yet I was able to understand that some women in the thread were trying to talk about their breasts in a non-sexual way — although others were talking explicitly about sex. More than anything else, the title of the thread clearly signaled that leering male comments were probably inappropriate.
I think men should have the decency to respect that women need an occasional refuge from the heat of the male gaze.
The difference is that men don’t live with the constant awareness that lots of people find their dicks mesmerizing and obsessively wish to see them and touch them.
In reality, some people, including some women, actually do feel that way about the male sex organ — but it’s relatively uncommon. A man who thought people were always trying to sneak a peek at his package would be having delusions of grandeur, unless perhaps he lived in a gay men’s enclave. But a woman who thinks people are obsessed with her breasts and constantly trying to look at them is living in the real world. So women really appreciate having a break from that. In the interest of making this board a comfortable place for men and women alike, I think it’s OK to have some community standards that treat the sexes differently.
I support that thesis in terms of threads that don’t include women’s sexualization of their own breasts. In a pure and simple thread about bra sizes or whatever, the leering hurpidy durpity boobs jokes are totally out of line and, if nothing else, hijacks.
But in a thread where women are posting about enjoying their breasts being fondled and referring to them as “the playground”, etc. I really can’t support enforcement the no hurpity durpity from men rule. (not that I am a hurpity durpity poster anyway - it’s not my style and it’s been a pretty long time since I was 13.)
For those women truly sensitive about the concerns you raise, I have sincere respect and would never want them to be made uncomfortable, but I would think that if one was so sensitive they wouldn’t participate in such a thread in the first place. It’s worth noting that puzzlegal, the poster that the comment in question was directed to, wasn’t offended or uncomfortable.
Well, just to undermine my own thesis a little, I will point out that one of the women in the thread linked (approvingly) to a NSFW video where a male comedian sings a show-me-your-boobs song, and some women in the audience happily grant him his wish. (I watched it several times. :D) I can see how one might conclude that a thread where such things were shared was not a context off-limits to expressions of that nature.
I’m just trying to strike a balance here. Men have desires and want to be able to express them. I’m satisfied our culture provides sufficient opportunities for that to satisfy most men. The majority of women seem to want some sexualized attention from men, but not as much as they habitually get. While it will never be possible to satisfy everyone, I think we can improve the overall happiness of the population by asking men to show somewhat more restraint.
First, I am not complaining about the moderation. Direction as to the posting style encouraged by the board, with no actual punishment of posters, does not feel “heavy handed” to me. But I’d like to distinguish between the three posts mentioned.
One was a slightly lewd, slightly flirty post directed towards me. That may not have been the direction the thread ought to go, but it was clearly engaged with the primary posters in the thread, the women. Perhaps it made some women feel like there were men watching in a female area, I don’t know.
One was a comment about the poster’s internal state. Ditto re presence of men.
One was a guy talking to other guys about the bewbs. And putting down any woman with small ones.
Those feel very different to me.
You’re making this much harder than it needs to be.
The thread was asking women to share their bra habits, not men to share their thoughts on breasts. That’s really all it comes down to. This board doesn’t moderate on content all that much. If you want a boob joke thread, go ahead and open one. I’m sure it will get lots of posts; some of them may even be from me. Because I love boob jokes. They’re hilarious, in the right context. That wasn’t it.
“There is something to be said for a good fondling before taking off the bra,” would actually have been fine, in my book, coming from a man, if it happened in the same flow of the converstaion. At least it’s about bras and experiences with bras.
Those aren’t booby jokes. Those are women’s experiences with their bras and the things the bras hold. Our experiences aren’t jokes, even when we talk about them in a lighthearted tone. That’s exactly, precisely, politically the point here. That whenever the Doper women attempt to have a serious (serious as a synonym for genuine, not tone) conversation about our bodies, sharing our own experiences and teaching each other how to have a better experience (with bra fitting, with menstrual products, whatever), it gets pissed all over by a few jerkish posters.
Absolutely, I agree. None of them were on topic, but only one was enragingly inappropriate. The other two were merely groaningly par for the course.
This thread, specifically, is about Doctor Jackson’s post, specifically. I can’t defend the cup size joke and never intended to try because if nothing else it was just stupid and that is offensive in any context.
When I referred to the posters in that thread making their own ‘booby jokes’ I was talking about for example referring to them as ‘the playground’. If a drive-by male poster said “hey, don’t close the playground” in a thread about whether or not women wear bras during sex, that would be a booby joke. Demeaning, sexualizing, off topic “hur hur boobies”, etc.
If one of the women themselves posts the very same sentiment, it is really hard to defend making the same types of remarks off limits to any other posters.
Another way to state this: anyone who complained about Dr. Jackson’s post should have also complained about the females who posted things like “boobs=playground” in a thread where women were trying to have a non-sexualized discussion. But I would prefer that instead they didn’t complain about either and save the righteous indignation for the cases where it is actually warranted, of which I am well aware there have been many.
A woman joking about her breasts is very different than a male poster joking about that specific woman’s breasts.
And really, a man trying to explain why women shouldn’t be bothered doesn’t mean a whole lot. Just listen to (some of) the women here saying it bothered them. You can’t compare it to your own experience because men simply don’t go through what women do. It is impossible to come up with a comparable situation for men, because that situation doesn’t exist.
If people want to insist that their right to tell a joke trumps a woman’s feelings, then make that argument. Don’t pretend that women are wrong to be bothered by it.
The thing is those types of comments don’t get made. If it was happening, I’m certain the mods would see it as a problem and would extend their existing policy to prohibit it.
I’ll admit I wasn’t aware of how big a problem this was when the topic was being addressed. I’m neither a woman nor a thirteen year old boy so I wasn’t reading threads on topics like women’s underwear. But when the discussion started, somebody posted dozens of cites to posts on this board where men were making these jokes and derailing threads. So the problem really did exist and I can see why women had had enough of it.
Well it’s just a mod note so any argument is really academic anyway.
I didn’t participate in the thread and the only thing that brought me into this one was a comment that women were trying to have a non-sexual discussion about breasts/bras. That isn’t true. It was a highly sexual discussion and the quotes I cited earlier demonstrate that quite clearly.
It appeared to me like saying “Geez, we can’t even have a little girl talk about fondling, exposing ourselves, opening up to lovers our bras as a playground, without some dumbass guy coming along and making it all sexual…” and that is really hypocritical.
It’s only a few who seem to have taken that stance and I always hate to see the few dictate appropriate behavior for the many. That wasn’t meant to rationalize or diminish those real cases where a genuinely non-sexual conversation is hijacked by drive by sexual comments.