Gay Scene Cut From UK Torchwood

[Mandalore_15]

I have no great faith that anything in this world operates as it should when it comes to sexuality issues, but we should expect better than that. To simply suggest that this is how it is and we should get used to it is not a helpful attitude.

I'm not really going to engage with the argument about how significant the numbers of UK gay license payers are because I don't think it's terribly important, but it's not the insignificant minority you seem to think.

Well, feel free to hold that view if you want. I personally think it's pretty paranoid. I can't think of any other personal characteristic over which the general populace can be lambasted for having no interest in.

I said it was a minority, not an "insignificant" minority. In 2005, it was estimated that about 6% of the UK populace was gay or lesbian (see for yourself: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/dec/11/gayrights.immigrationpolicy ). That would qualify as a minority.

I have some serious problems with utilitarianism as an idea, but leaving those aside for now. For all the adaptability of philosophy, you cannot transpose terms out of their discursive environment. What does moral good mean in terms of broadcasting? How do you define it in that context, and more importantly how would you measure it in the outcome? Simply equating 'more ratings' with 'good' is not utilitarianism. In order to take a utilitarian position you need to establish a moral good which can be observed in the outcome of the situation. You do not determine good by looking at how effectively something functions, you determine it by looking at the outcome produced.

The wider problem with utilitarianism is that it predicates itself on a liberal assumption that human needs and thus moral good can be quantitatively measured from an objective standpoint because all human beings and their happiness is substitutable for one another. It's not possible to establish that objective standpoint because ultimately, we have no way of measuring other people's pleasure or happiness or the fulfilment of their desire. I don't think it's possible to seriously uphold utilitarianism as a viable concept in the wake of psychoanalysis, we can't keep pretending that people are all the same and all have the same quantifiable and equal needs. It doesn't work.

Sure, you can talk all you want about the difficulties of utilitarianism, but applying it in this case give you a powerful tool that you don't have in a political context: the ratings. If people continue to tune in to the show week after week, then it's pretty safe to assume they're happy with/enjoying the show. If people start tuning out, they're no longer happy watching it. Utilitarianism is the greatest happiness for the greatest number. You can't divorce the notion of happiness from the notion of the majority and still call it utilitarianism.

I have a lesbian friend whose favourite film is 'In the Realm of the Senses'. If you've seen that film, it's basically 2 hours of constant unsimulated sex scenes. Is my friend aroused by the sex scenes. No, because she's a lesbian. Is she moved by the emotional context in which it all takes place. Yes, very much so. The film has a massive effect on her despite being incredibly sexual and incredibly heterosexual.

Something most gay people learn quickly is that very little visual media is aimed as them. That is starting to change, and certainly in fields like advertising you can see the ambiguity creeping in, but in cinema and in visual media generally. No, it's still absent. Most gay people never watch queer cinema, some do and find it a bit stylistically annoying.

If a normal film has a sex scene, the purpose is not generally to give you something to masturbate to. It's to illustrate something about the characters and/or their relationship. That meaning transcends sexual orientation. You don't need a specific sexual orientation to enjoy that, and if you genuinely find that you can't enjoy such a scene because it isn't specifically gay/straight/furry/whatever then you're either taking it on the wrong level and assuming you should be able to masturbate to everything on television or you just have a wider problem.

You want to know what one of my favourite films is? Philadelphia. As you may or may not know, it's about a gay man that loses his job and pretty much his whole life once people find out he's gay after being diagnosed with AIDS. Also, it won two Oscars. In 1993. Are you seriously trying to tell me that gay issues are completely repressed in cinema? What about Brokeback Mountain?

Your problem is you can't seem to dissociate the depiction of gay people from the depiction of gay sex. The purpose of seeing a sex scene in a film isn't to masturbate as you so crudely suggest, but to watch something exciting. Films work because they allow people to imagine themselves in other characters' situations and escape from reality, and people get a buzz out of that. Now, show me a straight man that is going enjoy imagining himself having sex with another man. You could search from now until you die and you couldn't do it. The reason straight men find watching gay scenes uncomfortable is they associate what they see in entertainment with their image of themselves. If you're gay and exposed to lots of straight media, you're going to form a skin to it. But straight people generally aren't exposed to gay media, seeing as they're in the majority, and as such "queer cinema" as you put it is relatively underground.

Becoming one with the rest of society' requires society to make some accommodation. You can't expect gay people to assimilate perfectly into a society which is still remarkably homophobic and at the very least heterocentric, because that's just effectively asking them to shut up because society should only be catering to the needs of heterosexuals and everyone else should just accept that they're not important to the grand scheme of things and live miserable closeted lives. It's a terrible thing you're asking.

Seriously, it's clear you know nothing about sexuality issues or ideological history in this area, so maybe don't be quite so strong in your opinion. It makes you sound.. more than a little judgemental.

And this is where the special treatment comes in. Society is heterocentric because, as discussed, 94% of people are heterosexual. Now, you can discuss exactly what "heterocentric" means 'til the cows come home, but at the end of the day you're going to have to ask yourself: what does equal treatment mean to you? If it means, to use an admittedly lazy example, that for every "straight" bar on the street you should have a gay bar, then that's just kinda dumb. Again, why should society structure itself for a disproportionate benefit to a minority of individuals?

Homosexuals are of course not the worst culprits here. For example, major supermarkets now stock only halal meat for the benefit of a minority of muslims. But seriously, you need to have a long and hard think about just how underrepresented you really are...

Gay rights issues? Last time I checked you had the same civil liberties as everyone else (the only exception I can think of being adoption, but there are strong reasons for prohibiting this). It might be time to let that one go...

I'll let this one go, but only because if I argue with you about it I'm going to get myself banned. Needless to say, you know nothing. You clearly have no specific knowledge, no relevant experience and very little understanding of what I'm talking about.

Then enlighten me.

No, that's the person you think you are.

What you are far more likely to be is a person who has become so used to have everything around you exist to cater specifically to you that as soon as anything disrupts that contented little bubble by, you know, daring to shift the spotlight to someone else or provide something someone else wants you feel you're being prejudiced against.

Really, I could say that almost everyone who has ever used the term 'political correctness', because nothing displays such a complete ignorance of real minority issues than wheeling out that completely meaningless Daily-Mail-ism.

Oh, sorry, I forgot you had direct access to my brain... I'm sick of defending myself on this, whatever you think doesn't matter to me.