[Gendergap] Nudity vs Islam in Western Europe

[Ryan Kaldari]

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