Am 16.05.2011 18:03, schrieb Sarah Stierch:
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.
You are currently only talking about women at the first place . In my experience it lead only to more problems, if you try to enforce some kind of change in gender related topics. If we want to reach equality, then we should give it time. A good example are companies that try to reach some kind of male/female ratio. To get more women as workes you introduce special conditions. The typical reaction is a conflict between male hardworkers (some that really do) and female hardworkers. In the end both aren't treated equal, leading to even bigger problems.
What i mean is: The current actions separating women and men even further. If you really want to support equal terms, then don't do something special. It will fix itself over time.
About children, teachers, and so on: Currently we don't have an age restriction or mechanism to control the access. In my case we wouldn't need such filters, since anything, seen as dirty or not, has it's own right. But if you really intend to control the access, then you should implement it first. Otherwise you introduce some kind censorship, that is not up the decission of the viewer itself. If a girl want's to see a penis it could find an image anywhere (not our problem). But if it want's to see one on Commons and deactivates the filter, then it is done with her own intention, out of own interest.
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.
Thats why i wrote earlier that knowledge is needed for a rightfull judgement. Any Japanese that draws comics and publishes them is considered a mangaka. That sounds not very interesting. But you have to know, that Japan is with distance the world leader in Comics (Manga) and Cartoons (Anime). Most of the works are directed at an adult or older youth audience. On top of that, only a very small portion is so called hentai, that you have seen at your parties. But still, there are a lot of works bound to sexual topics. Japan itself is much less restrictive about such topics and manga aren't considered as "for kids". They are aiming at any possible age, including puns on politics, history or gender. You will find any aspects inside anime and manga, which are written by males, as well by females. I would really suggest that you will watch an anime like Bakemonogatari or a manga like Kodomo no Jikan. Both contain nudity. But it plays a very much different role as you might think.
Greetings from Tobias