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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Interesting questions. My instinct tells me that it's not THAT wrong. My gut feeling is that the shame of having nudes of yourself circulated is that it shows that you did something "naughty", or you're "that kind of girl", or you're not the sort of person who would avoid taking such pictures in the first place. Basically, I feel like the shame comes from having taken the picture, not from the fact that other people are seeing it. Or it comes from simply being dumb enough to not be careful about who you give the pictures to, so that the video/images don't end up circulated. Or some combination of the two. Either way, if we live in a world where anyone can be deepfaked onto a lewd picture or video without them having taken any action at all, then there's no shame in it. Absolutely everyone has a naked body, after all, and almost everyone has sex and a sexual side. There is no shame in having either of those, just maybe using them in specific ways.

But they do feel shame! If you read the tweets about the atrioc incident you can clearly see women are very upset, so if not shame specifically there is certainly a feeling of violation. To be honest, reading those tweets they strike me as post-hoc justifications, I think most women cannot clearly express why it disturbs them so much but it certainly appears to. My explanation is it comes down to losing control of the exclusivity of their sexuality, a primal reaction that they didn’t reason themselves into. This would also explain, I suspect, a disparity between men and women’s opinions on this issue. I think most posters on the motte think deep fakes are not a big deal because they are mostly men. Women and men both tend to care a great deal about the exclusivity of women’s sexuality, and women and men both tend not to care much about the exclusivity of a man’s sexuality. Even if they can’t articulate why women feel this loss in a visceral way.

If you read the tweets about the atrioc incident you can clearly see women are very upset

I do not think you'll get very far by believing that any of the emotional states presented for mass public attention by YouTubers on social media are authentic. Least of all on topics directly relevant to their personal branding.

That's actually a really interesting take, and I think it sounds like it could be true. If we wanted to appropriate woke terminology, we really could frame women being upset about deepfake porn, as women simply being upset at the loss of a privilege they have and care about, that men do not have: the ability to utilize the exclusivity of their sexuality to get what they want. To be honest, then, I think the best thing for the world would be to have deepfake porn technology be proliferated. That could help even out the sexual power dynamic between the sexes.

Absolutely everyone has a naked body, after all, and almost everyone has sex and a sexual side. There is no shame in having either of those, just maybe using them in specific ways.

I disagree and I think I'm not the only one here (source: widely accepted social norms around clothing, nudity and sex).

Whenever this topic comes I'm usually surprised by the number of people who try to make the case that it's not actually a big deal or how confused they are that people would get offended by deepfakes of themselves being created. Personally, if I found out that someone had made fake porn of me or anyone I care about (or distributed actual pictures of them naked/etc), I would immediately go kick their teeth in. I would do this because I would be incandescently furious that someone would do something so flagrantly insulting and disrespectful and then be dumb enough to let me find out about it.

And I know that everyone imagines these kind of things already, but there is a world of difference between imagining and actually producing/sharing a video/picture. In the same way that pretty much everyone is digesting food but I don't want to see it and I definitely don't want it on or near me.

Personally, if I found out that someone had made fake porn of me or anyone I care about (or distributed actual pictures of them naked/etc), I would immediately go kick their teeth in. I would do this because I would be incandescently furious that someone would do something so flagrantly insulting and disrespectful and then be dumb enough to let me find out about it.

OK, but this reaction is isomorphic to Wahabis going "If another man talked to my wife unchaperoned..."

Just because you were brought up fundamentalist doesn't mean it's objectively acceptable to do violence to people for victimless crimes.

Just because you were brought up fundamentalist doesn't mean it's objectively acceptable to do violence to people for victimless crimes.

Then it's probably a good thing for me and the Wahabis that we are indifferent to the question of if something is "objectively acceptable" and instead are concerned with what we personally find to be acceptable and the means by which we may align reality to our respective visions.

What about just getting them fired and banned from using banks?

(source: widely accepted social norms around clothing, nudity and sex).

I don't think that those norms fundamentally disagree with me, either. If you're someone who has a naked body or has sex, that's all well and good. But to defy the norms is what will get you shamed, because it says something about you. For example, everyone has the capability of being naked in public, but only people who are slutty stupid or crazy would actually do it.

It might just be that the norm exists (don't be overtly sexual in public), and different people, like you or I, will interpret the underlying reasons for it in different ways (you think it's that people should feel some amount of shame for having a sexual side, and I feel that it's just that you should only feel shame if you're not careful enough to keep it concealed except from the right people).

I would do this because I would be incandescently furious that someone would do something so flagrantly insulting and disrespectful and then be dumb enough to let me find out about it.

Once again, that's not so different from what I said. I may disagree about "furious that someone would do something so flagrantly insulting and disrespectful". But I also said that part of the shame that comes from having nudes is simply being dumb enough to let other people find out about that they exist. That sounds similar to "and then be dumb enough to let me find out about it".

Basically, I feel like the shame comes from having taken the picture, not from the fact that other people are seeing it.

Yeah, this is my intuition too. People aren't harmed by being seen naked and/or mid-coitus: people are harmed by having their friends, family, and coworkers know that they're stupid and/or slutty enough to be taped, then leaked. In the deepfake case, you weren't stupid and/or slutty enough to be taped, then leaked, so the sting is all but gone.

Would I want friends or family to watch a deepfake sex tape of me? No, but only to the same extent that I wouldn't want them to imagine a sex tape of me, either. And the problem is I have with the imagining is that they're incestuous perverts, not that I've been exposed as a slut who doesn't do their due diligence checking the hedgerow for peeping toms with cameras.

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