I find the girl licking her gun repulsive. An instant boner killer. I hate guns, and she's a total fake, too. She may be "soliciting" alright, but the whole pose is off-putting.
The criteria by which something is "sexual" may be debated, but there is one thing that is 100% certain: it doesn't revolve around your personal preferences.
> I don't know if it's virtue-signalling, sexual frustration, or something else.
I think de-sensitization [*] may play a big role here; I'm convinced that the more porn you look at, the higher your threshold goes. I've not consumed any porn for years now (as I write in my other comment), and I find the lady in the picture extremely sexual. Yes, she's not suggesting / soliciting / provoking; she is just standing there. I agree. Yet she's no less sexual for that fact.
[*] edited comment for fixing my wrong use of the term
I think I would agree that she's sexy / attractive depending on terms, but I don't think that makes it a suggestive or sexual photo strictly I guess. I can be turned on by a partner fully clothed and showing a little shoulder, if I'm in the right mood! But that wouldn't make it a sexy outfit, I'm biased by my emotions about her.
I think this is why there's a lot of pedantry and "know it when I see it" to the discussion
I came here for your comment. That stock photo is strikingly sexual; it immediately makes me horny. (I'm a cis-het guy nearing 50 years of age, I have an active and satisfying sex life with my wife, and I've not looked at porn, or engaged in self-pleasing, for several years now. The reason I find the photo sexual is not that "I'm not getting any". I've been getting plenty, thank you very much.) I had had regular sex with my wife during all of her pregnancies; if anything, pregnancy makes women more arousing to me (without it being a "kink" for me).
Is something being arousing enough for it to be sexual? Fully clothed women in fashion magazines can be kinda arousing, but surely that's not pornographic.
Some people suffer/enjoy getting aroused by cars, does that mean every car picture is sexual? Probably not.
While fun to hear about others perspective, "suggestively sexual" usually requires at least some attempt at being suggestive, a pregnant woman just existing probably isn't suggestive, even though you find it so because of your sexual preferences.
I don't know how old you are, but this paragraph from the article felt strikingly accurate (and familiar):
> Every person’s idea of “adult” imagery is different. A young child or an adult won’t automatically think any image including breasts or nudity is sexual, but a horny teenager (generally) will.
I wasn't debating "suggestive". The fine article claimed (and the parent quoted), "Absolutely nothing sexual"; that's what I disagree with.
I agree that the photo is not suggestive; in other words, I fully agree that in the picture, she's not "soliciting" or even "provoking" (even without having any actual intent to participate). That's fine. She doesn't have to be suggestive, or to do anything other than exist and be visible (like this), for me to find her sexually (very) attractive, and to make me horny.
I don't think an image can be defined as sexual based on whether or not it produces an arousal response in you or anyone else. If you looked an image featuring women who are from a culture where partial nudity is normal and not considered sexual, but you have an arousal response, does that make the image sexual?
(slow answer because HN is blocking my throwaway account "AdkamEup" from commenting quickly, so now I've created a new throwaway, and am commenting via a proxy too)
It does, in the one particular context where I would be looking at it.
(I understand that this response of mine is unusable for labelling images, without the context that they are displayed and viewed in. That's fine. I'm indifferent wrt. labeling pictures on the internet, for the purposes of lawmaking.)
Consider this. Assume you have a nice big poster "featuring women who are from a culture where partial nudity is normal and not considered sexual". Assume you take it to your workplace, to an office where several ladies work, and you put it on display on the wall of your cubicle. I think the picture will be defined sexual in that context, and most women at the office will be uncomfortable with it. I, as a man, would get an arousal response, and therefore, in that context, I would also immediately feel uncomfortable with the poster (and I would also request that it be removed). Indeed I very frequently disagree with being exposed to arousing impulses, and I may try to protect my senses from that. Either way, such a picture is sexual, most of the time. It does depend on the context, so I guess I agree that without context, classification is futile (lacking sufficient nuance). Assuming some "default Western context" though, I still claim that the picture you are proposing is sexual. The context where that image is not sexual, is that culture where the picture originates from. But we are not that culture.
Again, I'm neither supporting nor opposing politicians in labeling and/or restricting images. I'm only talking about what the pregnant woman's picture in the fine article makes me feel, and what urges it generates in me.
Sure, I just think it's important to be precise about the language, and this type of distinction is important in a lot of other aspects of life. Generally if an image is intended to evoke a sexual response, we would classify it as pornographic (though not always). An image that wasn't intended to evoke that response may still do so, but that will be context and viewer dependent.
So your argument is that because you happen to find the person attractive, the image itself is sexual? That would quickly lead us to classifying 90% of everything on the internet as sexual, as there is a wide range of stuff that makes people aroused, like people having sexual attraction to cars.
Maybe being able to discern our own perspectives and sexual preferences from a wider labeling of content might be beneficial?
> So your argument is that because you happen to find the person attractive, the image itself is sexual?
Yes, with one tweak: it's because I find the person sexually attractive. It's not the kind of attractive that urges me to start "socializing" with the person, for example; "trust", "friendship" etc are not my first impressions. My first impression is that I'm horny as heck.
> That would quickly lead us to classifying 90% of everything on the internet as sexual, as there is a wide range of stuff that makes people aroused, like people having sexual attraction to cars.
I'm confused by your repeated allusion to "sexually aroused by cars"; I've never heard of that. Other than that however, 90% of everything everywhere (not just on the internet) is sexual. Absolutely everything is advertized with attractive women (clad to various levels of decency, dependent on the medium), precisely because sex is the #1 drive for men, and so "sex sells" (to men). It may be subliminal, or it may be "in your face", but a huge proportion of all ads is sexual.
> Maybe being able to discern our own perspectives and sexual preferences from a wider labeling of content might be beneficial?
Oh definitely. I have absolutely no personal interest in the "content labeling" debate, as I've not been a consumer for several years now. It's just the fine article's qualification of the picture -- which the author tried to use as a representative, for driving the point home, IIUC -- that I disagreed with.
Also, my English could be failing me here (I'm not a native speaker): you seem to use "sexual" and "arousing" as two (at least somewhat) orthogonal concepts. To me, they mean the same thing: "stuff that makes me horny". If I cared about cars, I guess I might call some cars "exciting", but that's not "arousing". Arousal implies excitement, but not the other way around, in my vocabulary.
Of course you can. Viewer reaction is difficult to predict, and exists as a spectrum. Even the same person will have different reactions at different times based on their mood and what else they've been looking at.
That's you though (also you're oversharing a bit lol), everyone will respond differently to the picture, mostly depending on culture and associations. The question then becomes, who gets to decide where the boundary lies? Anthropologists, mixed sauna-goers, nudists, hippies and gynacologists, or prudes, christian/muslim fundamentalists, Victorians and payment providers?
