[Gendergap] Hardcore images essay

[ChaoticFluffy]

I'm a bit late to the party on this, but for the record, I do not find
sexually explicit images offensive. There is nothing inherently
unencyclopedic about an explicit image, and often they do a better job than
a line drawing might (see [[Coital Alignment Technique]], for example. If
that line drawing actually gives you an idea of what's going on, you have
better x-ray vision than me. A photo would work far better).

There of course exist images that make me personally twitchy, in an "ew I
don't want to see that" sense. But that's true of many areas. I will not,
cannot, load the [[spider]] article, for example. Can't. I'd have
nightmares. I solve this by not being an active editor on the topic of
spiders.

There is perhaps a valid argument to be made that our stock of sexually
explicit images is unbalanced toward featuring more women than men, and
possibly that some of the photos depict women in degrading positions.
However, this is true of the sexually explicit world in general, and it is
intensely unfair to assume that any woman depicted in a sexual image was
being abused or exploited, or not enjoying herself. Any of these things *could
*be true; none of them are certain to be so. Though I absolutely assume the
best faith of everyone discussing this topic, it can give off potential
concern-troll vibes to assume that women in explicit pictures need to be
protected from the evil men photographing them, or that they didn't want to
be photographed, or that they didn't know that their photos would be used
for illustrative purposes.

-Fluffernutter

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On 14 February 2011 16:23, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> Why don't we try this: let's ask every woman here to answer the
> question solely from her personal perspective. Let's refrain from
> speculating about what other women might think, and let's hold back on
> assessing or judging what anybody says. And let's take
> censorship/intervention/etc. off the table --- all we're doing here is
> information-gathering, we're not talking about implications.
>
So the question is: female editors, have you come across explicit
material on the Wikimedia projects that you find offensive, degrading
or discouraging?


> Thanks,
> Sue
>
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