[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #431 - 16 msgs

[Stevertigo]

No, I agree - I was commenting on the general subject - and its meandering
from the core issue - namely appropriate self-censorship - within the
confines of a percieved need for such self-censorship. I was wrong to single
out one small comment by you (Kq) as an example of too much detail -
forgetting to make a basic, clear argument against this case , which is "the
perception of explicitness (at this time, in our culture)."

This is a very different time in world culture - far removed from sexy piano
legs and Elvis hips.  But every single popular figure since Shakespeare (and
before) has contributed to the same cause - namely, the elevation of the
vulgar (common) to the level of the acceptible. The Victorian era is indeed
dead (The Queen is Dead)
thank goodness, and with it can go some of the pretentions that previous
generations had to live with.

I agree that there should be some standards here - but in a nutshell, I'd
remind people not to trip too much. Once again, apologies for singling you
out Kq for being unclear - my real point was that *everyone was being
unclear.

-SM

> Is it really so unclear what I'm saying?  The idea of
> what is "sexually explicit" has at various times
> included piano legs, women's ankles, and Elvis
> Presley's hips.  In quite a few places on the planet,
> it still includes women's ankles, and I'm sure it
> would include Elvis Presley's hips as well.  For an
> example in the opposite direction, Robert Mapplethorpe
> considered his work "erotic," yet many (many) people
> consider it "pornographic."  Should I point you to the
> obscenity trials for James Joyce's _Ulysses_?  Anyway,
> tagging articles with commentary of that
> sort--"sexually explicit," etc.--is the same as
> imposing your cultural POV onto them; in other words,
> it is the same as declaring the wikipedia a developed
> nation's middle-class anglocentric-pedia.  Exactly how
> is that of benefit to us?
>
> kq