Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!ucivax!gateway
From: mydog!gcf@hombre.masa.COM
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Sex and Cards
Message-ID: <9009190945.AA00092@uunet.uu.net>
Date: 19 Sep 90 16:49:14 GMT
References: <12619962177008@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
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}... "adult" magazine or baseball cards.  The older men
}bought the magazines and the small kids concentrated on the cards.  As
}I sat, I thought about the comparisons between the two.  Kids buy
}these cards so that they can "own" a certain person - say Pete Rose.
}       ...  They learn that people are commodities.  Later in life,
}they will treat women the same way, as commodities....
}
}Does any of this make sense???

It makes sense, but I think it's wrong.

First, the function of a baseball card is to serve as a kind of
religious or moral icon.  The card depicts a hero, one who
overcomes ordinary human limitations and achieves victory in a
difficult, very competitive, and yet easily understood art.  Some
of the very highest ideals are incarnated in sports, and they are
there far more available to small boys than the spiritual, mental,
and commercial icons of their elders.  The card does not confer
possession of the hero, only a small part of his _mana_.  One
doesn't get to own Pete Rose, one gets to own _a_ Pete Rose.  Ask
any collector of baseball cards.

The skin mag, on the other hand, does not portray a religious
ideal, at least not as far as I know.  The images of unclad women
confer pleasure directly.  Many men, in fact, come to appreciate
the pictures more than the women depicted; real women are people,
after all, and people are always problematical.  And for many men
who are undesirable because of age, physical appearance, or other
involuntary conditions, these picture may be the only possibility
in this world of experiencing women sexually.  A bitter desert,
in which even a mirage is to be treasured!

It's true that _sex_ is a commodity in the second case, just as
_mana_ is in the first case, but for the small-time purchasers,
the beings in whom these goods arise are not themselves
commodities; the buying and selling of whole human beings is the
pastime of only a very few.  We may wonder why sex and _mana_ are
commodities, instead of bursting forth in the public squares like
fountains; but the world is as it is, for now.

Besides, there's no particular evidence that those who buy
baseball cards grow up to buy skin mags, is there?
--
Gordon Fitch  |  uunet!hombre!mydog!gcf