On 9/7/11 1:34 AM, Arnaud HERVE wrote:
Western Europeans will hardly notice an ad with a naked woman.
Yes, I remember being in Berlin where every billboard was either a woman in a bikini or a man dressed as a clown. It was disturbing on multiple levels. At least in San Francisco we have a few billboards of men in their underwear (although they are still rather rare). Personally, I have no problem with nudity, but when women are the only gender being exposed, I can't help hearing Ariel Levy and Andrea Dworkin in my head talking about the commodification of women's bodies and the prevalence of rape culture in Western society. Of course, these are not easy concepts to explain to people who only see nudity as a black and white issue of censorship or freedom.
I agree with Nathan's comment that we are not going to be able to educate every person on Commons and overturn the culture there (given the demographics we are working with), so we should choose our battles carefully. We should also be very conscious about how we are framing these debates. If we frame them as "protecting children and the culturally sensitive" we will certainly be ignored. If we frame them as "making Wikipedia safe for work" we will also be ignored. In most of these cases we need to concentrate on leveraging existing policies and guidelines, as well as arguing for small incremental changes in those policies. For example, until recently we had a blatant double standard in Commons nudity guidelines regarding photos of men's genitalia versus photos of women's genitalia. Through persistent and reasoned argument, the guidelines were eventually changed. We now have a board resolution endorsing the "Principle of least astonishment", which should help to address some of these problems. We just need to identify where it makes sense to push for changes and be smart about it. We also have to realize that we aren't going to win a lot of these debates. Such is the nature of consensus-building.
Ryan Kaldari