Added: 2 months ago
From: ContraPoints
Views: 1,949
Sort by time | Sort by thread (beta)

Link to this comment:

Share to:

All Comments (87)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • One of the reasons I abhor porn is that it portrays mostly bad sex. Ppl who watch porn rarley think about most of the positions used are for camera angles, not cuz they actually feel good, lol. Besides - porn is what paints sex as dirty... How many titles/descriptions have that word in them? Like "Dirty cum sucking whores.." Can't go about painting sex any dirtier than that.

  • Ugh, that term "sex negative"... Critiqueing bad stereotypes in pop culture has nada to do with sex that feels good.

  • Advertising appeals to our basic desires, and this includes sex. Regardless of the gender of the person portrayed in an advertisement they are there to assist the appeal to the basic desires of the consumer & are thus turned into a marketing object regardless of whether sex is used. The idea that it is sexist to portray women in an erotic manner is one that is often espoused by sex negative feminists, but in my opinion it only reinforces the idea that female sexuality is shameful & degrading.

  • @VictorianFuturist The objection of "sex negative feminists" (I suppose including myself) is not that merely that women are portrayed erotically. It's the specific way in which they are portrayed erotically, it's the passive objectivity, the dehumanizing aspect. It's the production of a certain kind of female sexuality that is in fact degrading. To think that this sort of sexuality is the only female sexuality there can be is the effect of having been relentlessly exposed to it.

  • @ContraPoints Perhaps I should word my point a differently. I feel like having to walk a fine line between understanding objectification & how people are turned into marketing objects used to sell products (often with not the healthiest portrayals of sexuality) and arguing against those who would use the idea of objectification to argue for anti-sex and socially conservative ideas such as banning pornography, banning prostitution, and restricting other forms of sexual expression.

  • They're just selling Astronomy pictures...

  • What? Are you saying all scientists are Nazi?

    Just kidding. On the topic, I don't think the dualism you are talking about comes from scientists, but from popular culture that equates beautiful to good and inhuman to bad. Surely I do despise fictionalized sensationalist "popular science", but hey, that's what you get with market in charge.

  • Aren't the pictures..... just pictures of what the scientists were looking at? I'm wondering how you would purposefully make them more ugly without loosing the image clarity?

    You know, lava flows and fireworks are pretty also but if you get too close to them they will kill you. Some people think bears are cute, but they will tear you apart under the right circumstances. Being beautiful and deadly are not mutually exclusive.

  • I think the hubble pictures are serving the ideology of scientism. Yes, it is an ideology, that should be distinguished from "science" as a truth-seeking activity. Just read Michael Shermer's article "the shamans of scientism" in scientific american. In a way, it contributes to the discourse of "beauty of the universe" discourse which addresses the dimension of "meaning", something which leads many people into being religious.

  • YOU STILL MISPRONOUNCE WOMEN!!!

    Great vid:P

  • Yes, it is true that stupid people will believe that the world is as depicted on tv and in the movies. However, I think most people understand that not every woman in an ass kicking ninja vixen...and that not everything in space is a beautiful portal to heaven. Duh?

  • It doesn't have to be "taking a stance" in what you perceive to be an "ideological war". The enhancement of the images is driven primarily by marketing of the telescope and similar projects. I doubt the people responsible for enhancing the images even considered such a "war" as a motivation. And yes. It's poor science. A good marketing tool, but poor science and not necessarily a positive influence on science nor society.

  • I remember finding out a while back that the Hubble photos had been coloured, and at first I was shocked and irritated. But as with all moods that was just then lol When you reflect you llok at things from different perspectives. For example, you can compare the amzing colours in deep sea. but you may argue--they are only 'there' because of the lights from camera. but they ARE therre. Now with the universe--have you ever wondered what it could be like to see it inspired with psychedelics?

  • @zezt 2~~have you ever seen someone's eyes when you've taken psychedelics? They are like jewels. is THAT real? what is real? Is seeing things dull real, for example, If a child finds magic in a wood and the parent doesn't --which is real? lol and I agree with Matt. Dont we DIVE INTO reality. I mean all is Mystery--neither orthodox religion or science really encourages diving in

  • A positive connection between a product & a state of penile tumescence makes marketing easier.

    Is the universe 'beautiful' or desolate and will devolve into waste of lifeless soup are equally unresolved. A lot of people claim that the heat death of the universe is an absolute scientific certainty dictated by entropy and the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. Penrose & others disagree.They postulate a cyclic universe model. Neither position can be falsified & none of us will be around to do btw.

  • Meant:

    none of us will be around to do SO btw.

  • Those women in those films are usually fake titted too.Exactly. You got it right at 2:33

    Yes, ignoring women's minds by putting fake titted, cheekbone implanted, collagen lipped bimbos. I don't see power in those images. I see it as misogynist. It always puts a strong woman as a fake titted one. It leaves out the real images of powerful women. Porn does the same thing but also degrades them as merely fuckholes. Porn is racist too.

  • I've been talking with my hubby about this video... explaining why I thought it was so funny, what was so brilliant about it, and what I ultimately took away from it - namely, "people should be aware (and beware) of being manipulated. Thanks again for this fun vid.

  • This is a fantastically funny and astute video!!

  • Quantum mechanics teaches us one thing: the way history is, is not the way history had to be.

  • Everything is a metaphor. Even science.

  • You are saying male protagonists are not sexed-up in exactly the same way?

  • i love ya, kid. but sometimes you need an editor.

  • Sure, but that's only one perspective. Those movies could also be seen as a female domination fantasy. The way in which these issues are put into perspective is dependent on the individual watching the film and the meaning they prescribe to it. Also, True Blood and Twilight are pretty good examples of how men are also sexualized. Besides, there are other variables to consider: the infatuation with gore and violence is WAY more unhealthy than something as benign as a cute butt. IMHO, at least.

  • 3:07 Hold up! Women are people too? This changes everything.

  • I had been letting your new videos slip by in my subscriptions, but I gave you a chance on this one, just because "sexy girls" seemed so out of place in a video title for you.

    Then I watched your other videos on this subject too, and wanted to say thank you! I can never keep up with every philosophy reference, but these are fascinating points, and I was reminded of why I started following you. You had almost lost me on the jump to the new channel, but I'll call myself a fan again.

    ..I'm a fan.

  • Good video

  • "The universe is a dangerous, temporary place" and "the universe is beautiful aesthetically" do not contradict each other.

  • So ideological fetishes are transferable? Interesting observation, and quite a Zizekian one if I may say so.

  • dl;dw.

    < 5 min rants are more watchable.

  • Comment removed

  • @ContraPoints You keep saying "ideological" in reference to science and the Hubble images.

    Perhaps you would provide your definition of that word, because you certainly are not using it according to the dictionary definition.

    Science is a method of acquiring knowledge. Not an ideology.

    The beautiful Hubble images reveal things that are there, but have light waves beyond our visual perception. That's not ideological, it's pragmatic. What would be the point of a blank picture?

  • Oh hey, I wondered where you went. Glad I found you again.

  • Interesting irony about the half-naked woman kicking ass onscreen. I've noticed this irony before, when female stars supposedly demonstrate they are "empowered," "independent", "strong," "brave", by doing a naked photo spread, or some overly raunchy sex scene, or just by becoming a shamelessly horrible woman.

    A 'feminist' narrative in msm which hasn't been lost on me is that there is a right of passage for females that happens when a woman happily volunteers to objectify & degrade herself.

  • Overall impression of this video reminds me of a friend of mine describing difference between modern and postmodern: Henry Miller thinks that life is made of shit and it is bad and you must be sad about it, he is a modernist; William S. Burrgoughs thinks that life is made of shit, but he can make great mudpies out of this shit and does it for his and your pleasure, he is postmodernist.

  • Aren't the Pillars of Creation named so because they are nebulas, where stars form?

  • As I listen to your video while playing Sonic the Hedgehog I'm wondering why you think the states of beauty and unfeeling nastiness are mutually exclusive. There are a lot of people who if you knew nothing about them other than a photo look beutyfull but may have a horrible personality.

  • I can totally see why people would vehemently deny looking at woman as people than objects...afterall some of us are very pleasing to the eye. Nothing wrong with beauty but some folks can't get past the aesthetic elements that make a woman appealing. Thus, we lose our humanity when we only look at outward appearance. We forget to look at woman as people and religious dogma has a lot to do with that. Maybe that is our inherent flaw as humans to deny the reality of situations and people.

  • I can totally see why people would vehemently deny the claims of looking at woman as people than objects...afterall some of us are very pleasing to the eye. Nothing wrong with beauty but some folks can't get past the aesthetic elements that make a woman appealing. Your analogy I feel is spot on. We forget to look at woman as people and religious dogma has a lot to do with that. Maybe that is our inherent flaw to deny the reality of situations.

  • Thank you. You've summed up what feminists have been trying to say for a long time now since antiquity it would seem. And people still just don't get it. I feel because it is for the reasons you've stated so eloquently in this video. Religion ideology wrapped up in aesthetically pleasing images of woman and galaxy. No one ever critiques woman's beauty or the galaxy for that matter. It's just a given instead of finding out what is behind the curtain so to speak.

  • All the problem with this discussion/pondering: beautiful is undefined or at best so vaguely defined as to be of little practical value.

  • You've made your point well and I understand what you were talking about before, now. Quite interesting. Thanks for the videos!

  • Also, I've met many a lady that drools over the abs and pecs on display in a movie like 300. I don't know if, or to what degree, that sort of thing is marketed towards women, but intentionally or not it certainly has appeal for them.

  • Hubble images aren't beautiful in the same way that something that has evolved to have a beautiful appearance or something that has been created to appeal to human sensibilities of beauty, is beautiful. They have visual interest, they may be appealing, but they're not creative works of beauty.

    On the contrary, the 'sexy female arsekicker' archetype is an utterly fake and dishonest fantasy. Combat-capable women do not look like that. Women that look like that cannot be combat effective.

  • The universe being a cold amoral thing and people finding aspects of it beautiful aren't necessarily polar opposites, are they? I doubt people would find a pulsar as beautiful if they were close enough to be obliterated by it.

    It's like concept art for games and movies. I do it myself and find it beautiful, beyond its purpose. If a grisly cyborg were really mauling people though, as often depicted, I think that appreciation would be lost.

    I think wall of separation is an important aspect here

  • Thumbs up! That's all.

  • I think the universe is a pretty challenging and harsh place, one that requires us to put forth effort in philosophy to come up with a meaning, one that takes effort in science to navigate and understand it. The beauty doesn't lie in the universe, it lies in the chance it gives us to put our capability to abstract thought to good use. Unfortunately only very few people see it that way.

  • You're admitting yourself that the Hubble images aren't that big of a deal when related to that topic. But I don't find it hard to say that I've been more than just a little disturbed with the trend of people, especially atheists, exclaiming what a beautiful thing the universe is in their attempt to use it to fill the void that may be left after abandoning God. I don't think that the universe fits that role, and the attempts of justifying putting it there have been lacking imo.

  • SPACE!!!

  • "We cannot choose the time we live in. We can only choose what we do with the time we are given." -- Gandalf (Lord of the Rings)

  • sexy girls, not sexy men? hmm

  • So what is it you're advocating? That NASA doesn't combine pictures of different spectra? This is not just a method to make them look more beautiful, but to convey more information. There's absolutely nothing ideological going on there, the ideology comes in later. Making the pictures less "pretty" won't change a bit, just as making the female protagonist in a dumb action movie less sexy doesn't turn the film into an in depth character study.

  • Gave this a thumbs up anyway because it made me think.

  • Contrapoints, one step closer to an inevitable nihilism :)

  • I thought there was someone sitting behind you till I realised it was a mirror.

  • @ContraPoints Anyone looking at the sky at night can see that the universe is mostly empty space. Hubble shows us what we can't see. NO ONE looks at a Hubble photograph and forgets that the universe is mostly empty space. If we weren't in a unique spot, in a galley, if we were floating out in empty space we would see in all directions something similar to the Hubble Deep Field. Thats how the Universe actually looks and thats what Hubble shows us.

  • I have a question. How is a woman in spandex showing off their boobs any different than the male spandex hero with unrealistic muscles that show rediculous bulges as well?

  • @Enuvrack I would say the difference lies in the fact that these movies are generally produced by men for men. The male spandex hero is not exactly deep and multidimensional either, but I wouldn't call him a sex object.

  • How males and females are depicted in popular culture and the inequality this is truly means something bad - for both genders. What do we have to gain when we are pumped with this propaganda about what the typical female and the typical male should be, but one can wonder what came first: the hen or the egg / the values or the this kind of portrait? When it comes to Wagner I despise both his politics, and his operas! 

  • @HerrWarja Regarding the hen/egg question I think the values and the media representation confirm and reinforce each other, like an animal trying to imitate its own reflection.

  • princess warrior programming,and for the boys there is the dark hero programming...

  • I get what your saying, however I think some are somewhat unavoidable. For instance, the "cold dark and empty" vs. "look at the pretty dirt and gas". We are limited to our perspective here on Earth, and when we look around us, we see a sky full of stuff, not just an empty black blotch of nothing because we can "see" almost out to the point of last scattering and everything in between. So from earth, space around us looks full, even though there's billions of lys of nothing from here to there.

  • if an image from hubble gets people to research into or just appreciate the wonders of space and preghaps and get a few into sctentific research then its done its job 

  • @jmm1233 The images probably do do that.

  • On how women are presented in films: Arnold Schwarzenegger, how much was he wearing in Conan?

    Another set of words, Dolph Lundgren - Rocky IV, how much was he wearing.

  • @zarkoff45 Yes but who produces and watches those movies? These are muscly male power fantasies, not sex objects.

  • @ContraPoints What about porn? The man is reduced to a single part of his body, the penis, without which he would be completely irrelevant, while the woman's presence is enjoyed for all of her appearance. Who is more degraded here, the man or the woman???

  • @CitizenOccidens Most porn is made for men to look at. The male porn star is reduced to a penis so that the men who watch him can put themselves in his place, and not have to worry about homosexual impulses that might arise if his face and body were displayed more prominently.

  • @ContraPoints But we look at men's faces and bodies all the time! If anything, focussing only on the penis might be ESPECIALLY a cause for concern! (for anyone insecure enough to worry about those kinds of things to begin with)

    I see what you're saying though.

  • @ContraPoints And what about when women go to strip clubs and oogle over men the same way men do at female strippers? Like it or not, sex has a way of reducing people to objects. And sex always sells. Movie stars, female or male, are generally very attractive people or at the very least are in very good physical shape. When women watch Brad Pitt on screen, do they say, "Wow, what an intellectual - I really love his mind and personality"

  • @ContraPoints And Twilight? Where Jacob takes his shirt off every five seconds? Women can be just as shallow as men. Sex sells for both genders, right? I don't think there's anything wrong or depowering with showing off some skin; I was under the impression that it was objectifying if the person is only reduced to what they look like, but if they are given a personality that doesn't revolve around their looks, then this stops being the case.

  • @ContraPoints Muscles are a signal of sexual health. Nick you are stuck in the 60's women who are out of shape are wearing tight clothes and men are now trying to look like a model in GQ with perfect abs. Catch up to modernity hommie.

  • Yes, of course, it's good to take things apart & see what's affecting us & why...

    but ultimately, there's no escape, no final truth; Life is an ongoing game of illusion after illusion, story after story. It wouldn't be Life otherwise. We're continually finding fresh ways to see... because we enjoy it.

  • @TWITfromURANUS I'm not waiting around for a final truth. But I think we can at least become less ignorant and being aware of the way the stories and illusions work on us is a part of that.

  • @ContraPoints I agree... & that's all 'within' what I was trying to express.

    I was perhaps being a little whimsical with 'illusions & stories'. Maybe 'perspective after perspective' would be more ... 'realistic'.

  • @TWITfromURANUS "but ultimately, there's no escape, no final truth"

    To say that there is no final truth is to make a claim of final truth.

  • @forestloves lol. yeah, i know. paradoxes are inevitable in that kind of talkery

  • By your reasoning there are attributes about women which the "kick-ass" women do not show, where these attributes that are omitted are tangible things which you could identify. To complete your analogy, Which attributes are masked about the universe by Hubble showing the more beautiful features of the universe?

  • @ScienceRob In the Hubble images we see a universe filled with light and color and brilliant phantasmagoria, we don't see the dark, the cold, the empty space.

  • @ContraPoints Well nothing but the colour is really added to those images, again not everything in those images we would see with the naked eye, but if we could see all wavelengths we would see all those details, thats the main purpose, to allow the details that can only be seen in ultraviolet, or infrared, or xray and such, to show the full detail of something.

  • @wolfwing1 yup.. to a degree. There are limited factors such as lens effects, and tracking accuracy which can have affect the final image. Star spikes, for example, are cause by a secondary mirror obstruction from a reflector telescope. And the glare from the stars + exposure time will make stars appear much 'larger in the image than they actually are. In reality, the stars in the hubble images would be pinpoints less that 1 pixel in size.

  • @ContraPoints I do get that point but I sort of feel this is universal with most things. People highlight the advantages of each area, the beauty and greatness while not highlighting the disadvantages and this is what they show to the public, the laypeople. Once you get into more involved and complicated facets of intellectual discussion you get into the negative facets of a subject.

    So I think the hubble shots are primarily for the laypeople.

  • @ScienceRob I agree. Much of what I'm saying here could also be said of most nature photography.

  • Why'd you have to go all "postmodern", now I find it much more difficult to disagree with you. =P

    Say something controversial that I won't agree with!

  • Lady meat is an excellent phrase. Men suffer from the same thing, how many action movies have a protagonist who is a male under 5"5. They're always portrayed as over 6".

    It's not just women who suffer this.

  • @ImaginedWriter Oh yeah, the portrayal of men in movies is also pretty awful. That's a whole other video....

Loading...
Alert icon
0 / 00Unsaved Playlist Return to active list
    1. Your queue is empty. Add videos to your queue using this button:
      or sign in to load a different list.
    Loading...Loading...Saving...
    • Clear all videos from this list
    • Learn more