On 5/16/2011 10:32 AM, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
Reading the words of Sarah Stierch, someone could assume that a picture 
of a naked male is fine. Do we get more female contributers by treating 
them as some special, out of the oridinary? At the last meetings in 
Germany i met several women, most complaining about this rather "useless 
campaing", that they even found "discriminating".

Hi Tobias - I hate to break it to you, but, a nude male is not always the most tasteful and appropriate thing either. And frankly (sorry boys!) it's quite rare that the male genitalia is a beautiful thing aesthetically. No matter how much we could argue this, I'm sure there would be plenty of Wikimedia Commons contributors who'd rather not see

I'm glad that these German women felt that it wasn't offensive, I don't even think the image is "offensive" because there are breasts - I just can't believe people aren't thinking about who is looking at this image - it's not just Wikimedians and German women who think its tasteful.

It's also school teachers, grand parents, Asian women who dislike the stereotype, spiritually conservative people, etc. It's also a lot of women, who go "oh great, the geeks are putting their anime porn up on Wikimedia, ugh."

I do believe that the majority of the images, nudes or not, BDSM whatever, do have places in Commons, but, I disagree that just because a few women aren't offended, doesn't mean a greater community as a whole isn't. A global community, that we are working towards encouraging to contribute more.

Images like this set us back.

Back to the topic itself. Did you even know, that half of the mangaka 
are females? Works like "Kodomo no Jikan" are written by female authors. 
Sexuality is a primary topic. No one could life without it. Depictions 
of sexuallity are known for thousands of years. And that is the point 
where i start wondering. While old works are seen as something relevant, 
new works aren't. Why not? They are from our time. In the time we life.


I don't even know what a mangaka is. And trust me, I don't think I could live without sexual activity either! But, it does state that your image is a fictional character in a fictional environment, so, if mangaka's are a real group of people, then I'm not sure why your description states otherwise. Perhaps I'm just a bit confused due to my lack of interest and knowledge about the manga/anime world. Like I said, I've seen a few videos, and well, have had a few beers watching Hentai in my past at parties - not always the best introduction to the way women are viewed in Japanese cartoons. LOL.

Sarah

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Wikipedia Regional Ambassador, D.C. Region
Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American Art

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Sarah Stierch Consulting
Historical, cultural & artistic research, advising & event planning.
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http://www.sarahstierch.com/