Offended: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's about a piece of sexual expression that deeply offended me... and what I intend to do about it.

It's called Offended, and here's the teaser:

He (William F. Buckley) said that a society has the right to decide what it's offended by... and to protect itself from that which offends it. And at one point he said -- I’m going to have to paraphrase here, since I erased the Tivo before I realized I wanted to write about it -- that a society can look at sadomasochistic imagery, and at the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and say, "We don’t want this."

And I was so offended by this statement, it took my breath away.

I don't mean mock offended. I don’t mean "offended as a useful rhetorical device" offended. I was genuinely, seriously, viscerally offended. I wanted to reach into the television and smack him across his smug little rat face. I sat there, shocked, thinking, "Did he just go on national television and equate consensual sadomasochism with Nazi Germany?"

How dare he.

How fucking dare he.

It is, in my opinion, grossly outrageous to equate a sex act between consenting adults that gives them both pleasure with the deliberate genocide of millions. It's not just offensive to sadomasochists. It's offensive to people who went through the Holocaust. It dehumanizes the one, and trivializes the other. It was one of the most offensive things I’d heard all month.

And yet at no point in my outrage did I think, "There oughta be a law. He shouldn't be allowed to do that. There oughta be a law against equating sadomasochism and the Holocaust."

Why not?

To find out more, read the rest of the the piece. Enjoy!

Comments

[Valhar2000]

Yes, well, I find the religious right offensive on a daily basis. How could I not?

[C.S. Lewiston]

"Smug little rat face". Well, that's as apt a description of Mr. Buckley as I've seen anywhere!

I once picked up a copy of his National Review out of curiosity. I turned to an article which was supposed to be about poverty. I was struck by how disconnected from reality the article's author was (not vicious, you understand, just out there in la-la land). People in Mr. Buckley's socioeconomic class have no reason to deal with reality. Privilege is an excellent insulator!

And yes, I agree with you 100% with what you said in your article about the First Amendment and freedom of expression. Let us hope that the Bush court system doesn't find a way to shut it down.