Public acknowledgement of eroticism’s link to violence is more taboo than ever.

Evidence

Two hundred years after Sade, a century after Bataille and Masoch, it appears that anything which publicly acknowledges that eroticism is inseparable from violence and humiliation is more unacceptable than ever. The issue is not how “healthy” sexuality can be purged of violence, but how the violence inherent to sexuality can be sublimated. Meisel’s photographs — which, we should remember, appear in a magazine the vast majority of whose readership is not “adolescent males” but women — are “fantasy kits” which offer just such sublimations, providing scenarios, role-play cues and potential fantasmatic identifications. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 191

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to chapter 10’s claim that talk about fantasy sustains eroticism that silence destroys, and that glamour and pornography differ in staging and distance — this is the payoff of that distinction. — connects to: Sexual taboos in strict religious communities drive guilt or early marriage — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice: How to Communicate…, 557; Public art absorbed taboo content in a successive widening of transgressions through the sixties — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 642; Society’s responses to sexual behavior vary widely across cultures and time periods. — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1481

Broader Connections

• Public art absorbed taboo content in a successive widening of transgressions through the sixties #qualifies (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 642
• Society’s responses to sexual behavior vary widely across cultures and time periods. #qualifies (0.80) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1481
• Sexual taboos in strict religious communities drive guilt or early marriage #qualifies (0.75) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 557