Hello,

I am crossposting to the Wikimedia LGBT list. The issue is whether a photo of a nearly nude female fashion model should be featured as a Wikimedia Commons picture of the Day. There is consensus that Commons should host such pictures; the debate is whether such pictures should be featured in public channels where people who are not requesting this sort of content would see them.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Picture_of_the_day&oldid=608951801#Discussion_regarding_possible_picture_of_the_day:_Michele_Merkin>

@Risker - I disagree with your critique that the picture is insignificant in the fashion industry. The person featured in the picture identifies as a fashion model and the picture was donated by her designee as a portrayal of her in accord with her personality rights in the photo. It seems like the picture was donated to Wikimedia Commons in the context of her fashion career. These things and the cultural context of the fashion industry led me to form the opinion that this is a fashion photo meeting the professional standards of a leading model who has worked deeply in the relevant industries over a long and respectable career. By the career described in the Wikipedia article, the person featured in the photo seems among the elite of contemporary fashion models and thus I interpret the creation of the work to be the product of choices made by a person with more agency to make decisions than most other people on this earth. Such as it is, it exemplifies an utterly familiar style in contemporary societies worldwide, and for this reason, I assert it has a place deserving respect in Wikimedia projects.

@Val, as you say, posting sexually objectifying pictures of people of any gender or sexuality harms women, and putting this image in a public place would harm women. In supporting discussions about broadly advertising such images on Wikimedia Commons image I acknowledge that I am intentionally harming women, and I regret that I advocate for the positions which lead to my harm of women. I wish that the harm was not a result of my position, but I keep my position because of benefits associated with it and not harms. I trust you have already had conversations with people in the gay rights movement and have heard that the movement has practiced decades of advocating for healthy gay male gender expression and sexuality, which is different from other kinds of gender expression and sexuality and includes practices which unintentionally challenge the expectations of people who are not gay males. Any community which restricts the expression of sexuality and gender diversity is an unsafe community for persons of all minority genders and sexualities, and for that reason, it is in the interest of sexual and gender minorities to oppose restrictions against such expression. If you wish to talk more about this then I am at hand, but I wanted to acknowledge the harm that I do to you and say that I regret it and seek a reconciliation of ideas or routes to continue the harmful actions while also lessening the harm and making amends.

@ Nathan, yes, Val is presenting a common and compelling perspective. Ryan's notion of a sexualized environment is a great way to think about this - gay males are more likely to find acceptance in such places and any female's risk of harm is increased in such places, so there is tension between the groups because they each shape the environment in a way that makes the other unsafe.

@Moriel - I do not feel strongly about this particular image of a swimsuit girl. I just do not want to propagate a culture of sexual shame, because that kind of culture causes a lot of health problems in the gay male community. There is completely a double standard about the effects of objectifying women versus sexually objectifying males; males simply are not as harmed as women are from this. I regret having to disagree with you in saying that it is always time to talk about sexual health issues because a range of problems including HIV still exist.

I remain grateful for our Adrianne, recently deceased, and her promotion of gay male bondage erotica by coordinating Wikipedia outreach to the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles. I do not mean to speak for her in mentioning this, so it is enough for me to say that it is uncommon to find women who are sympathetic to the cultural value of transgressive gay pornography. I myself would not have been comfortable encouraging such a countercultural group to be among the first gay activist organizations to partner with the Wikipedia community, but acceptance for all kinds of people seemed to be one of Adrianne's values and I am grateful that she supported their greater prominence when other people did not.

Thanks for your other comments. I am glad that the gender gap board is a positive place for respectful discussion of sexuality, and that all the forms of expression at LGBT events are treated with respect on Wikipedia even if they are minority views.

Please be aware that in the month of June as part of Wiki Loves Pride some sexualized media may be proposed to be featured in various channel feeds on Wikimedia projects. Please follow
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Loves_Pride_2014>
to become aware of content discussions should they occur. I have no particular plans or expectations for Wiki Loves Pride but I would like Wikipedia to become a safer place for gay males and LGBT persons generally. As always, Wikipedians can contact me for voice or video chat which is so much better than text talk.

yours,


On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 11:37 AM, Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com> wrote:
Well, first off, this isn't a fashion image and isn't utilized as one; it's an image of a mostly nude woman.  (Go ahead, try to persuade me that it would qualify as a featured image of a monokini.  Yeah, see, not a fashion image.)  A number of the FP supports explicitly support because of the (for lack of a better term) "arousability index" of the photo.  I don't think it's even a particularly good glamour photo; it's just the best we happen to have, and I'm not sure it would pass FP in 2014.  It's nowhere near as good as most of the images in [[Erotic photography]] - and there is currently a discussion to merge [[Glamour photography]] into [[Erotic photography]]. 
 
(The paragraph below may be off-topic)
 
Secondly, I'm not convinced that seeking, curating, and featuring images that objectify subjects in a sexual manner is a particularly useful or encyclopedic goal, absent some genuine artistic merit. Most LGBTQ people I know don't parade around in the nearly-nude even at Pride Week events. Many of the people I know who embrace a more fluid sexuality find that media attention on Pride Week (and LGBTQ issues in general) tends to focus very disproportionately on the prurient and exhibitionist, and the excessive focus on highly sexualized imagery promotes the fallacy that those who are "non-straight" are obsessed with sex to a much greater degree than the "average straight".   I sense that most participants on this list would consider sexual orientation/gender identification only one important trait of an individual, so perhaps in that sense *we're* atypical. :-)  But I have to say that my favourite unquestionably "gay" image on the project is of two men getting married, and it would be a huge coup to have an image like Michael Sam kissing his partner Vito on NFL draft day to illustrate   [[Homosexuality in American football]] - and probably half a dozen other articles. 
 
Risker/Anne


On 14 May 2014 09:56, Lane Rasberry <lane@bluerasberry.com> wrote:
Hello,

I wrote to a company which does male fashion and I might write to more, asking them to donate media.

Fashion is controversial but as an industry it has driven world history. Part of fashion is sexuality and Wikipedia is harmed by suppressing sexuality and the world is harmed when Wikipedia does this. Fashion is both what is marketed and how people present themselves in any context.

Two Wikipedians, Dorothy Howard (user:OR drohowa) and Jason Moore (user:Another Believer) are coordinating a Wiki Loves Pride event to commemorate June as LGBT Pride month. Especially if we could present other photos equally objectifying and celebrating a range of genders and body types then this kind of picture presentation could become a more positive experience among a general call for appreciation of sensual beauty in all its forms, rather than just pop-media marketing ideas.

The Wikimedia Commons challenge will also be LGBT-themed for June
so perhaps people can upload sexiness and fun from various gay pride events around the world in June. Flickr in particular has and will continue to have lots of LGBT pride pictures from around the world. See also

I would love to see this controversy turn into a discussion about acceptance of all kinds of people and praise for healthy expression of sexuality.

yours,




On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 8:57 AM, LtPowers <LtPowers_Wiki@rochester.rr.com> wrote:

> So where is the dude cheesecake? :) 

 

We don't appear to have any that has reached Featured Picture status yet.

 

I'm kind of torn on this one. I don't think we should be making value judgments on whether or not a particular FP is "worthy" of being featured on the Main Page or not; if it's good enough to be FP, it should be good enough to be POTD.  But the opponents are right that this would turn off a lot of editors and potentially cause a firestorm.  That makes this seem like a case of maintaining our ideals versus being practical about the impact, but maybe that's oversimplifying?

 

 

                        Powers  &8^]

 

 

 

 


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