Porn And The Freedom Of Thought
While it might seem somewhat counterintuitive to many ErosBlog readers, I don’t spend all that much time with porn.
Oh, some, certainly. In the wide world of erotic materials there are many things that I find appealing. There are many other things that are not all that appealing. Should I come across something appealing, I might spend some time with it, and if I can think of something that strikes me as clever to say about it, I’ll write a post for ErosBlog. If it doesn’t appeal, I move on to something else. There’s plenty to do in life. So, rarely does such consumption take up a very large part of any given day, and it takes up no part of many other days. Certain other porn-relevant activities, like work on a piece of eros-heavy fiction that I hope will eventually see the light of publication in some form, take up some hours more (after all, I do try to practice what I’ve preached before), but it is still not a huge commitment of time.
So why am I writing for ErosBlog, trying to find nice things to say about the enterprise of which it is a part? That’s the subject for today’s Sunday sermon.
There are personal reasons, of course. Bacchus is an old friend, and it is a pleasure and a privilege to have been invited to contribute here. I like digging into my library and coming up with curiosities to spread around the world; they are sources of wry enjoyment for me and I hope they will be for others, as well. There’s also a little spark of happiness — known to every writer — at seeing my byline, even if it is just a nom de blog.
But there’s something else, more fundamental than the reasons above.
At the core of what I value in life is a kind of mental freedom. Freedom of the imagination. Freedom of the intellect. Freedom to create, and to enjoy what we have created. If you don’t share this value, then what I feel for you is not hatred, nor even contempt. Something more like pity seems appropriate, because you are misguidedly disdaining one of the best things sentient existence has to offer.
Now, where freedom of the imagination is concerned, porn is the hard case. The creation and consumption of porn exercises such freedom in a very fundamental way. “Porn dreams of eternal fires of desire, without fatigue, incapacity, aging, or death,” as Camille Paglia once so memorably put it. Since porn is connected with pleasure, and pleasure (if it is not to become stale) is intimately connected to innovation, in porn the imagination lives and lives hard. (You! Up there in the upper gallery! Stop your snickering! This is serious.)
That being so, there’s a lot of hate directed at the particular exercise of freedom called “porn.” There are plenty of people out there who would like to see it crushed, or, if not crushed, then forced to live in a ghetto of despised and proscribed content. But why should I worry? Even if the anti-porn people get their way, my life will worse, but not unbearably worse. There would still be plenty to do in life.
But there’s a problem. As a consequence, perhaps, of letting my own intellect and imagination run free, I have formulated my own rather naughty opinions, which, while they aren’t particularly pornographic, certainly seem to piss off a lot of people. For example, I am a freethinking atheist, and atheists may well be a small minority (in the United States, anyway) to which attaches even more negative animus than attaches to gays and lesbians. Atheism alarms and appalls lots of people who are loud and proud about their own confessional allegiances, but who expect me to be as silent as can be about my lack of same.
Beyond my religious view, I have my own share of still stranger views, such as wanting, like Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, to be posthuman when I grow up — so much so that I would regard my own existence as a dismal failure if this possibility were to be blocked, for humanity at least if not necessarily for me personally. Posthumanity is an aspiration which has already alarmed and appalled plenty of folks both left and right, and I fear the day cannot be far off when there are people who want not just to halt the march of technology toward the achievement of posthumanity, but to eradicate the very ideas out of which the desire to be posthuman grows.
I have some additional ideas which are still stranger than either atheism or posthumanism, and which will probably alarm and appall people all the more. Sounds like a blog in the making, but that’s a project for another day. Let me return to the subject at hand.
The analogy between my position and that of the pornographer should be clear. There are a lot of people who want to crush porn because porn alarms and appalls them. Once the principle is established and precedent is set that “what alarms and appalls (even if it does not harm) us, we may crush,” my own future will not be bright at all.
I never want to find myself — whether on Earth or in Hades — beginning a lament that starts like this:
“First they came for the pornographers, and I was silent, because I wasn’t much of a pornographer.”
So I am proud to write here out of solidarity. As one of the most noble of all Americans once said, we must hang together, for if we do not, we shall surely hang separately.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=3206
No one in America is truly free until the least powerful citizen is free. No one truly has rights in America until the least respected citizen’s rights are protected and defended. There is no need to protect the speech of the writer (or photographer) that everyone loves, it is the creations of a controversial nature that need our constitutional protections. …else we’d all still be teaching that the Earth is flat and the sun revolves around it, women don’t have orgasms, and the king rules us by divine right.
What? You mean he doesn’t?!
lol if the king rules by divine right, then the queen rules by a divine left right to the groin..lol
It seems that arguments like this presume that media exists in a vacuum. I don’t think pornography is necessarily more dangerous in the hands of an average person than a lot of other forms of entertainment, but it’s surely among many that influence people’s attitudes of one another. I don’t believe in censorship, because as has been mentioned it’s always going to have a ridiculously broad stroke depending on who’s holding the brush. Not to mention the fact that what’s harmful in the imagination of one person is harmless in another’s, and I don’t think the latter should suffer for the former. I agree that it’s pointlessly stifling to creativity. I’ve written some pretty graphic and violent sexual content myself, so it isn’t as though I’d support the illegalizing of my own err, occasional hobby, let’s say.
However, I don’t think it’s appropriate to sort of insinuate that all creativity is beautiful, without any significant negative impact. It’s not stated explicitly in any posts here, but it seems that pro-censorship people are being treated as malicious enemies of freedom, and I really don’t get that. Most of the “THINK OF THE CHILDREN” stuff, yeah, I understand that. But there comes a point where certain attitudes, harmful attitudes, get written into society, and enforced by various media–as much by porn as by, say, a tabloid magazine. Some censorship advocates are just searching for a solution to that. Beyond viciously socializing the young and impressionable with the proper attitudes, what is the solution to this? It isn’t censorship, that’s apparent. . .but it’s also not implying that everything ever created is not only a healthy medium of expression, but a healthy medium to consume, by everyone.
This site has always seemed very. . .concerned (too negative a word, but a better one escapes me at the moment). . .with the dignity of the people in pornography, that they should always be portrayed positively, rather than being slut-shamed and whatnot. I feel like this attitude is on the same side I’m on. Something just doesn’t sit right with me about these sermons. The intent is good but the delivery fails to acknowledge that it can be problematic to people who aren’t one step away from book-burners.
Actually, I don’t find that surprising at all. Perhaps if you spent some more time in the wide world of the erotic materials that you don’t find appealing, you’d understand a bit more about 1) what many people who claim to object ‘to porn’ think they mean by the term and 2) why they find it objectionable.
I would like to say at this point that I am still pro-porn and anti-censorship. But while you may think that using ‘porn’ to mean misogynistic, unpleasant, unthinking porn is a straw man, I don’t think it is less so than talking of ‘porn’ when what you mean is empowering feminist artistic free expression.
And what I meant by the last sentence is ‘not any more so’.
S, the problem with that analysis is that one man’s (or woman’s) “misogynistic, unpleasant, unthinking porn” is another’s “empowering feminist artistic free expression.”
These are not objective categories, they are value-laden evaluations. Which is fine if you’re using those evaluations to determine whether a particular bit of porn is to your own taste, but is problematic if you’re trying, as opponents of porn inevitably do, to make an argument against that porn in any broader context.
Knowing Faustus pretty well, as I do, it’s my belief that when he says “porn” he’s probably talking about pretty much anything that’s likely to be considered in that category, not using the word in some counter-intuitive fashion to denote some limited subset that’s more likely to be palatable to one or another group.
Hi Bacchus,
Sorry for the delay, I have been lacking internet access. I hope you get some kind of notification of these…
‘These are not objective categories, they are value-laden evaluations.’
I completely agree, and was not trying to use them as such. Whether a particular bit of porn is ’empowering’ or oppressive and upsetting to any one person is incredibly subjective, depending on stuff like their preconceptions, any information they have of outisde context (e.g. familiarity with the company and how well/badly it treats its models), previous experiences with the themes addressed, etc etc. There are plenty of nuances to be had.
However, I think it is unfair to act as though any misogyny, racism, unpleasantness or unthinkgness I see in porn is entirely in my own head or otherwise a nonissue.
For the record I have plenty to say about the misogyny and unpleasantness of say your average romcom too. Perhaps I was reading too much into things or expecting this post to address topics that Faustus would consider irrelevant to his point in this post. I know the previous discussion we had is influencing my opinions. But to explain where I was getting it from in this one: in the paragraph beginning ‘Now, where freedom of the imagination is concerned,’ Faustus equates porn with pleasure, innovation and imagination, and equates the people who object to porn as on some fundamental level objecting to/being discomforted by those aspects of porn. I was trying to point out that this is not the whole story of porn and objections to it or wishes to constrain it.
It just seems to me like it’s really taking the easy way out to only ever speak of criticism of porn in the context of ‘crush/ghetto/proscribe/The Knights Of The Wee Bairns’ (all quotes) moral superiority and censorship stuff – whether that’s coming from ‘Christianity’ or from ‘feminism’. In my opinion there is more to it than that. And I think taking a wander through the more uninterestingly, pedestrianly unpleasant parts of the porn internet world would help Faustus understand why many sensible people have serious objections to ‘porn’, in the way that they are using the term.
Again, perhaps I am simply in the wrong venue for that sort of discussion, and here the topic will begin and end at free speech, and not go into more problematic areas of treatment of people in the porn industry, perpetuation of harmful and damaging stereotypes, etc. Ultimately I agree, and I will happily accept that as the end of the conversation permitted here if that is stated policy. I’m less comfortable with (apparently) not even noticing that there is a whole chunk of stuff missing. To me Faustus’ representation of people who are uncomfortable with porn is a bit like holding Fred Phelps up as a representation of Christians.
S, there’s a limit to how far I can go in that conversation without trying to speak for Faustus, and I have the impression that he’s got rather less free time than I do, so I can’t predict whether he’ll choose to respond himself.
That said, the principle reason I responded to your first comment was because of your implicit suggestion that Faustus was somehow ignorant of whole swathes of porn that he would necessarily find “misogynistic” or “unpleasant” if he were only aware of it. (I repeat, these were implications I took from your #5, and I found them a bit condescending — while being fully aware that you might not have intended the condescension.)
Now, however, you have repeated and amplified the condescension, and I feel I need to respond to it even though I’m not free to respond for Faustus to your main point. Your “I think taking a wander through the more uninterestingly, pedestrianly unpleasant parts of the porn internet world would help Faustus understand” contains a rather aggressive assertion that he doesn’t “understand” your viewpoint because of ignorance of the subject matter that informs it. You’ve seized on some fairly vague introductory remarks of his (“I don’t spend all that much time with porn”) to justify that claim of ignorance, which is neither logically rigorous nor, I think, at all plausible. The porn you’re suggesting he hasn’t seen has in fact been seen by anybody who ever typed “porn” into Google.
The reality, which I suspect is as clear to you as it is to me, is that there’s actually an intellectual disagreement between the two of you; and I further suspect you of understanding yourself that the disagreement is an informed one. Whether you truly believe that Faustus would see things closer to your way if he weren’t some neophyte who hasn’t been around behind the barn to see the donkey show, I can’t tell for sure. But it’s the unfounded assumption of his ignorance, followed by use of that assumption to suggest that his disagreement with you would not persist were the ignorance only remedied, that I am challenging here.
This rhetorical device is common among social reformers, including many anti-porn activists, which is why it has raised my hackles even though your actual views seem quite nuanced and unobjectionable even if I, or Faustus, may differ with them. Drugs, alcohol, prostitution, gambling, it doesn’t matter; whatever the vice there’s always one sort of campaigner against it who, rather than engaging in debate with the intellectual defenders of the vice in question, tries to change the subject by saying “If only you’d been out on the streets with me to see what I’ve seen. If you’d seen those sites, you wouldn’t be disagreeing with me now; you’d change your opinion! It’s only your woeful ignorance of the squalor and human misery resulting from this vice that lets you challenge me now…” It’s a dishonest rhetorical trick in my opinion because it seeks to undermine the arguments of one’s interlocutor without reference to the actual merits of those arguments. (I’m sure there’s a fancy Latin flamewar tag for this approach that some helpful forum warrior could provide.)
When we get down to the substance, I see you reaction to an argument by Faustus that I can’t find in his post. Reduced to its barest skeleton, I read Faustus as saying “I value freedom of intellectual expression. The opponents of pornography are seeking to limit one category of intellectual expression. Thus, I am in solidarity with pornographers, even though their successful suppression would not affect me, much.”
You wrote: “Faustus equates porn with pleasure, innovation and imagination, and equates the people who object to porn as on some fundamental level objecting to/being discomforted by those aspects of porn. I was trying to point out that this is not the whole story of porn and objections to it or wishes to constrain it.” My problem with this is that I don’t see where Faustus does the second equation. If his first equation has merit (and I think it does) the second one isn’t necessary, because resisting people who want to “constrain” porn is valuable no matter how base or noble their motives may be. Their motives are, in fact, pretty much irrelevant; which is why your high-minded ones aren’t cutting any onions with me.
Which brings us back to you in #7. My point is not that your objections to porn are “entirely in your own head”; rather, it is that your objections to porn are not sufficiently objective that the porn you object to can be reliably sorted out from the porn another person who shared all of your identical values would also object to. Which makes attempting to “constrain it” a fool’s errand.
I’ve got no problem with mockery of bad porn; I used to do that a lot on this blog before I mostly got bored with shooting fish in a rain barrel. But I don’t have any interest in the impossible game of trying to separate out the “bad porn” from the “good porn” so that we can get on with condemning those nasty pornographers while still maintaining our solidarity with values like freedom of expression.
The proper response to bad porn, in my view, is “don’t buy it.” Don’t support it. Don’t celebrate it. Try not to make it. Work for a society in which fewer people will be aroused by it. Stuff like that. But even this is complicated, because of the way a single image, or three frames in a forty minute movie, can have an erotic appeal all their own, even though surrounded by drek and dross. Much of my sex blogging career revolves around celebrating accidental erotic gems, flashes of inspired erotic art made, accidentally, by some pedestrian plodder of boring or yucky porn production who somehow failed, for thirty seconds, to conceal the erotic goddess within his skinny, tired, underpaid model.
That’s why I’m not very interested in the conversation about all the things that are wrong in porn. I’m all for people spotting those things on a personal basis and governing themselves accordingly. But there’s no way to broaden that conversation without treading on freedom of expression, and the people who seek to broaden that conversation (especially to the point of “constraint”) are thus, in my view, trying to accomplish something I’ve got no interest in accomplishing.
At the end of the day, therefore, it doesn’t really matter to me whether your suggestion was a strawman, when you suggested that Faustus equates enemies of porn with people who object to its “pleasure, innovation, and imagination” attributes. I do think that may be a straw man, because I don’t think motive matters to the argument Faustus is making. It certainly doesn’t matter to the argument I have made over the years. Believe me, I get why people find so much to hate and despise in porn. But I’m convinced on a fundamental level that there’s no principled way to attack the hateful bits without constraining both freedom of expression in the abstract along with actual bits of expression that I think are vitally important.
Hi Bacchus,
Thank you for your detailed and well reasoned response.
I apologise for my tone if it crossed the line towards seriously patronising. For what it’s worth, Faustus came across as very patronising to me in both this post and his previous one.
I completely agree with the bare bones anti censorship argument as you describe it, however I think there was more to the post than that, which I picked out. Whether you or I are interpreting it ‘correctly’ is not something I think we will be able to come to a resolution on.
Perhaps I reacted so strongly because it’s a mistake I myself made – my first encounters with visual and video porn (as opposed to written) were actually through venues like yourself, Susie Bright, beautifulagony, and so on. I thought girls who had a problem with their boyfriends watching porn were sex/pleasure phobic/jealous/controlling/etc – which I still kind of do. But when I actually went and properly looked at the stuff that you get when you type ‘porn’ into Google I realised that urrrrrk, I’m not sure how comfortable I would be with a partner watching some of this stuff myself.
I’d always been aware it was there, I’d even seen it before (and clicked away without seeing much), but it wasn’t a major part of what I thought of when I thought Porn, even though it’s vast. Whereas for some people, who have had a different route into porn, it is. I know it’s not just me. Quite often when I see pro porn vs anti porn arguments, the porn that the pro porn people are thinking of while they defend the abstract ‘porn’ is stuff the anti porn people would actually find entirely palateable, and the other way around.
I wasn’t trying to divide good porn from bad in an absolute manner, but rather saying that if you look around at stuff that doesn’t turn your crank instead of clicking away to find something more appealing, you are likely to find stuff that makes you really uncomfortable in a ‘this is genuinely harmful/bad/wrong’ sort of way. And while I think ‘okay, ban this stuff!!’ is an unhelpful reaction (and a fool’s errand, as you say), I don’t think it is an incomprehensible instinct, nor pleasure/innovation/sex-phobic. Which is what, from what I read, Faustus was saying.
If that is one big misunderstanding then I apologise for wasting your time. It looks like I’m not completely alone though – hi Jamie! Basically, I’m with his last sentence: ‘The intent is good but the delivery fails to acknowledge that it can be problematic to people who aren’t one step away from book-burners.’ Or from my previous comment: ‘It just seems to me like it’s really taking the easy way out to only ever speak of criticism of porn in the context of […].
I know you get it – it shines through on both the commentary on this blog and in your selection of what you post, which is why I enjoy it so much. You clearly do have to wade through a lot of dross to find what you do. I just really don’t think that same ‘getting it’ comes through in Faustus’ posts.
Oh finally, on my as yet unidentified ‘rhetorical device’ and the ‘ignorance’ thing – I wasn’t trying to say that if only Faustus had Seen What I Have Seen he would jump over the fence and deeply want to censor it into nonexistence. But rather that he would perhaps see why there are some fairly rational types in the ‘anti-porn’ camp (who are not one homogenous group) and why they are there, because as I and Jamie mentioned, that understanding is really not coming across.
I know I took his first sentence and ran with it a bit, but I hope you understand now what I meant – like if you’re not looking at the bits that are upsetting everyone so much, and proud of it, no wonder you find it so easy to defend. As I said above I don’t think he would stop defending their right to produce it, but there wasn’t any kind of indication of having that kind of dilemma in his post – no recognition of ‘there is stuff there that is disturbing to my own sense of ethics, but I don’t think censorship isn’t the answer’. Just that he ‘pities’ people who are ‘misguidedly disdaining one of the best things sentient existence has to offer.’ This to me is missing the point of a lot of objections to porn, certainly the ones I and the people around me (nonreligious arty Oxford misfit types) have.
I think that about wraps it up! I am very happy to continue this discussion for as long as you are happy to have me here, but I’m going to refrain from starting new threads like this in the future. Thank you for the intellectual workout, anyway :)
S, thanks for that. On the substance of the argument, I think anything I said would be just repeating myself and inviting you to repeat yourself, which leads swiftly to tedium. But I very much appreciate you taking the time to lay out carefully what your problems are with his views, and with mine.
One of the reasons I appreciate it is that I’m fascinated by human communication and its difficulties, and this to me has been an interesting case study — unusual in that I’ve been in a position (as publisher, and as Keeper Of The Comments) of analyzing criticism of a post that I didn’t write, and thus have less of an emotional connection to.
And what’s fascinating to me is that not only do I see what I think is a misunderstanding here, but I even have a theory to explain it, or at least a taxonomy in which to place it.
As I indicated before, I still think you’re misreading Faustus. I’m not convinced that you’re right to conflate the various nice things he said about freedom of thought with his views toward porn, much less all porn; and it now sounds like your biggest objection is that he may not share an assortment of negative views about which his post does not speak at all, yea or nay. Which conclusion you are reaching (it seems to me) from tone and context and negative inference rather than from his explicit statements.
I don’t know your gender, S; so, if you’ve stated it, I apologize for missing that detail. But your reaction to Faustus, as you’ve now explained it, reminds me very much of some stereotypical conversations I’ve had with (usually) women, in that old familiar pattern that goes like this:
Me: Precisely worded statement designed to address tricky emotional situation while avoiding obvious landmines.
Her: Hurt or angry response indistinguishable from expected response if I’d blindly stepped on obvious landmines.
Me: “Why are you angry?”
[optional “I’m fine” “No you’re not” “yes I am” “then why are you crying” “I’m not crying” “well you were” “my feelings were hurt by what you said” “what did I say that hurt your feelings?” steps here]
Her: “You hurt my feelings when you stepped on that land mine by saying XYZ.”
Me: “But I didn’t say that! In fact I spent three days planning my words so that there would be no possible way you could possibly interpret what I said as saying that.”
Her: “No, but that’s what it felt like you meant.”
Me: “What the fuck…?”
Of course I am exaggerating (a little). And, I should hasten to add, I know that this pattern is not necessarily gendered; I have known men who don’t limit their conversational reactions to the things actually said, too. But I really do think, S, that you’re now explaining your negative reaction to Faustus by speaking about states of his inner mind that he hasn’t shared with us yet. And it seems to me you may be drawing your inferences about those mental states from two sources I, but not The Nymph who loves me, would consider illegitimate: from positive things Faustus had to say about something else, and from the absence in his post of negative things said about the subject that concerns you.
I’m further aware that I live in a world where about half of all people consider that a perfectly normal way to proceed, even if I’m part of the half who consider it mildly bizarre and completely inexplicable.
Of course I could be misreading you, or misreading him, or both. But I thought that after dragging you, and anybody else who’s still with us at the bottom of this thread, down this long and bumpy road, it was only fair for me to look back over the territory covered and give my best survey of how (it seems to me) we got here.
Well, thank you again. I disagree with your assessment but I doubt going over it again is going to lead anywhere productive. I would be curious to see if anyone else felt the same way I did about the post, but failing anyone else chiming in that will have to remain a mystery.
I will say though that I think if you are aware enough of the possible landmines so as to be constructing elaborate routes around them days in advance, it’s often more productive instead to simply mention them and explain. Which, in keeping with your analogy, Faustus did not do in this post any more than you did in that dialogue.
I mean, it certainly is possible to set emotional ‘land mines’ off around sensitive issues simply by striding purposefully through the area without any reference to them. The other person in that exchange seems to be unaware that you are taking such pains, so no wonder they’re not cutting you any extra slack, and are picking up on stuff that you didn’t intend them to pick up on. Another possibility is that through, you know, not being a mind reader, you’re not avoiding the land mine triggers 100%.
(Also, the line about crying kind of creeped me out. And I wonder if your feeling that this is gendered thing is simply because you end up in these conversations with women more often than you do with men. I’m sure if you ask straight women or gay men they would say they’ve had plenty of conversations with their boyfriends in which they felt like stuff was read into their words in this way. I know I have. This is all getting rather offtopic though).
I’m fascinated to note an example of the conversational pattern in question, buried within our conversation about it. How recursive!
I wrote “I know that this pattern is not necessarily gendered” and you responded with a comment about “your feeling that this is [a] gendered thing”. I’m not sure where you’re getting your information about my feelings, but the failure to credit my words is precisely the conversational pattern I was attempting to explicate.
Okay I’m actually getting a bit annoyed now, and we’re clearly talking at complete cross purposes, so this will be my last comment. I did read that sentence and understand it. However in context:
‘I don’t know your gender, S; so, if you’ve stated it, I apologize for missing that detail. But your reaction to Faustus, as you’ve now explained it, reminds me very much of some stereotypical conversations I’ve had with (usually) women’
followed by ‘I know that this pattern is not necessarily gendered’
If you really thought it was gender neutral, why the speculation about my gender? Saying that you know it’s not necessarily gendered doesn’t erase the fact that you’ve just done a ‘are you female? because this sounds like a typical woman to me’ the paragraph before.
I am crediting your words. What I’m not doing is reading them in exactly the way you would like to have them read when IMO that is not a reasonable interpretation of what you said. If you think I’m totally off the mark then that’s fine, and your right to do with any criticism that comes your way. But I don’t think you’re coming across as clearly as you seem to assume.
I should of course have followed my own advice and made it clear where I was getting my aside from, given that you clearly thought you were avoiding the sexism landmines with great agility. My only excuse is that it was reeeally late my time and I was trying to keep it brief.
And…you’re still doing it. I call particular attention to the bogus quotation marks around what I can only imagine is intended to be a (not at all precise) paraphrase of my words, and especially to the manner in which the paraphrase (if such it be) includes an interrogative not present in the original.
At the heart of my interest in this debate is the differing extents to which people honor and respect the meanings of words. S, you’ve admitted, more honestly than many, that you’re doing an “interpretation” of what I say, and then discarding the literal meanings of my words when they differ from your interpretation: “What I’m not doing is reading them in exactly the way you would like to have them read when IMO that is not a reasonable interpretation of what you said.” This reflects a fundamental philosophical difference between us; what you call “the way I would like to have them read” is what I call “their meanings” and I find it somewhat offensive that you’re willing to casually discard those meanings in favor of your opinion about what you think I meant but didn’t actually say.
The reason this bothers me so much is that it makes fruitful conversation impossible. True, there are no absolute meanings, and some of the modern schools of textual interpretation have taken that insight and stretched it to a meanings-destroying breaking point; but if words are not to be utterly meaningless, than you are abusing their wondrous fluidity of meaning when, as you did in #12, you “interpret” a statement as the exact logical opposite of what was actually said. That’s not respectful enough of the meanings of words to support useful conversation.
Which is a complicated way of agreeing that we’ve beaten this horse to death, or at least determined that we lack the common tools by which two people might normally compare their opinions on the liveliness of a horse.
I am sorry that you’re going away annoyed, and I sincerely appreciate your willingness to dive into some thorny and interesting issues with civility and passion, even if we didn’t make much progress or find much common ground.