I do think objectification in and of itself can be creepy. And yes, for some I think the inherent creepiness was because it was here on the SDMB. If it was on some sexual fetish website, I doubt anyone would’ve batted an eye. To your last question, yes, even I think it’s creepy to do something like that for purely fap material.
I find the collective reaction odd for a place that considers a discussion of pan-fried semen to be a tale from the ‘good old days’.
How’s this: E-mail the poll to all the women in your office or all your female Facebook friends. Be sure to tell them they don’t have to answer, it’s an “opt-in”. I’d bet you money the vast majority of them would find it creepy at the very least. So why are you so shocked people find it creepy here?
Did the nipple thread contact you?
I’ll agree that I thought it was odd to see such a reaction. I’m not saying that the poll wasn’t creepy…but I’m surprised that the fact that it was creepy got people on this board all riled up.
If there were any place where someone’s oddly clinical, detail-obsessed question about a body part would be embraced despite its obvious creepiness, I’d have thought it would be the SDMB.
As an aside…while I think a man conducting a nipple poll is a little skeezy, I’d gladly answer the penis poll without a second thought regarding its creepiness. How’s that for a double standard?
Yeah, it keeps sending me text messages, but I refused to open any of them when I saw they were from “Nipple Thread”. I’ve got a life to live, for Chrissakes.
You tease, you.
I, for one, found that topic really hot! :D;)
I first saw the thread on my mobile device, so I didn’t even see the 3,000 options in the poll and I found the OP creepy in and of itself. As I mentioned in the original thread, it would have been less creepy if it hadn’t been a man focused entirely on ladies’ nipples. If he had been all inclusive because everyone has them, or if the OP had been a lady, I think it would have gone over better. The way the OP was written it seemed like was strictly for masturbation fodder and no other reason. If that’s your reason for starting a thread, you should disguise it better; being discreet is much more socially acceptable than being so blatant.
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, goin’ to make a poll about nipples
Long thin skinny ones, big thick fat ones, goin’ to make a poll about nipples …
FWIW my earlier post was originally going to discuss how the nipple poll was even more objectifying than a similarly detailed poll about women’s sexual habits (which would at least be treating us as sentient beings and not reducing us to a small portion of our anatomy) and thus potentially even creepier. I left it out because I didn’t want to write a long post, but Crotalus wasn’t the only one who saw the nipple poll as dehumanizing. Frankly the level of detail asked for and the narrow focus on a specific body part struck me as going beyond garden variety perviness into something bordering on Silence of the Lambs territory.
“garden variety perviness” - these are the types of comments and attitudes that make me curious about the objections.
My impression of that phrase is that you have a negative reaction to what are, in reality, very normal sexual urges. When someone uses the “perv” term, I typically think they really haven’t thought this all through very much - because we are all “pervs”.
To me the whole “creepy” thing doesn’t make much sense because I know we all have these things inside us.
But I do understand the issue of appropriateness/crossing social boundaries - and to a lesser extent objectification (I personally believe “objectification” is wired into us and is perfectly normal in the same sense that we are also emotional creatures as opposed to perfectly rational creatures).
Really? Entirely normal? I’m not saying they’re indicative of some kind of pathology, and maybe I’m just on the other end of the bell curve, but I can’t say they sound exactly like normal and typical thoughts to me. As a fellow who sometimes has objectifying sexual thoughts about strangers, I still don’t really see myself getting quite into that specific detail.
Like, for instance, I might see someone and think, “I would like to engage in [some particular sexual activity] with that gentleman”. Not really focusing on any really detailed specifics of his body at all. Or maybe I might think, “I wonder what he looks like naked”. Even, “I wonder if he’s hung” or “I wonder if he’s cut or not”. I can’t remember ever thinking, “Gee, I wonder what the length of his penis is with accuracy to 1/4 inch, in both flaccid and erect states”. Or, “I wonder what color his glans penis is, precisely”.
I just can’t imagine having preferences that were quite that specific, rather than a more gestalt perception of some particular part of a gentleman friend, or even his entire body. Whereas the specificity of this poll makes me imagine that he’s got a drawer full of calipers and Pantone swatches. And then, beyond that, I particularly can’t imagine worrying about the answers as a percentage of some sample of the population. As unlikely as I am to really care that much about the particular color of some small (“Speak for yourself!”. There, let’s just head off that joke.) portion of someone’s intimate anatomy, I care even less about breakdowns for the population as a whole, especially since most of the population isn’t even appealing to me. And even then, the self-reporting aspect ruins any possible surprising findings, like if we found out that members of the Straight Dope have nipples that are, on average, 30% pinker than those of the general population.
I’m not saying whether or not he’s creepy or not, since I’m not in his target audience so it can’t really creep me out. But I really can’t imagine that it’s typical for men to have the sort of curiosity he’s showing here. Sort of like a terrifying pornographic adaptation of Goldilocks: “This nipple is too brown! This nipple is too pink! This nipple is just right!”
It is normal to have sexual urges. It is not normal to ask strangers or acquaintances to provide you with intimate details about their own anatomy because you wish to think about them while you masturbate. Such behavior is certainly not something we all do, and I have no problem labeling it as “perverted”.
Some things inside us should stay inside. People who are unable to distinguish between the thoughts that are appropriate to express to others and the thoughts that are not are generally regarded as “creepy”.
I think the level of detail is deceiving because it may have looked like a lot of words for a poll, and a lot of distinction, but your visual system/memory/experience is tracking a lot more than that.
Let’s take it out of the sexual realm and just think about eyes you may have found attractive - for most there is a variety but even within the similar, in my experience, there are numerous details that are noticed/desired.
Ok. So your objection is that it was done on the SDMB where that is not common or expected, which seems logical. (Presumably, if it was on a forum where that was the norm, then you would consider it “normal”).
I do.
In my opinion, people that use that word do not seem to have the capacity to step back and perform an unbiased analysis of sexuality of human’s in general.
I think it would be fair to say “some things inside are not appropriate for all social situations” - but why should it stay inside us in all conditions?
Each of us is just a human being - I think you’ve been fooled by our veneer of socialization to think that we are something we are not.
The poll should be about labia size
_Post it Note
_Napkin
_Mudflap
No, I don’t think even subconsciously I’ve considered it in that degree of detail.
And even if I had, it still stands that I’m not even slightly interested in population-wide breakdowns of wang color. I think that that interest is not at all common.
I guess I can’t think of anything. I like pretty blue eyes, and pretty dark eyes, and green eyes are quite nice. I find the various variants of eye-shape among folks of different ethnic backgrounds appealing. But even if the eyes I enjoyed weren’t quite as widely-varied, not only would I not be consumed in breaking them down into their constituent properties, but a poll trying to elicit their respective frequency in the population would not be anything more than momentarily interesting to me.
I doubt there is any forum where this sort of thing would be the norm. There are certainly plenty of sexually explicit forums out there, but questioning people in great detail about the specific size, shape, and color of their body parts strikes me as something that would be odd even in that sort of setting. That’s why I said it reminded me of Silence of the Lambs – when reading the poll I was thinking “Why the hell does he want to know all this, is he planning on starting a collection or something?”
Maybe he’s planning on making a belt out of nipples, ala Ed Gein?