[Gendergap] Hello and a (small!) manifesto

[Ryan Kaldari]

>  On a different, but not completely unrelated issue, how do women editors
>  feel
>  about illustrations like those used here (Warning - not safe for viewing
>  at work):
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogtie_bondage


The issue isn't limited to sex-related articles. Anywhere that female nudity can be justified (however tenuously), it is. For example, there was a debate recently about whether the lead image for the Pregnancy article should be an amateurish photo of a completely nude white woman or a professional photo of an African American woman in a maternity blouse. I'm sure you can guess which one won. And of course the Sun tanning article features the obligatory topless photo. A more interesting case is the article Ochre (a color and pigment). I tried removing the topless photo from that article a while back but was quickly reverted. The photo does have some encyclopedic merit, but having a topless photo in an article about a color seems to violate the principal of least astonishment. Speaking of which, I believe one of the recommendations from the controversial content study was to encode that principle into some type of policy or guideline. Any thoughts on how or if that should be pursued?

Ryan Kaldari