On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Anne Archibald <archibald@astron.nl> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 5:12 PM Alan G Isaac <alan.isaac@gmail.com> wrote:
On 8/15/2015 8:40 AM, Matthew Brett wrote:
It's a detail from a pornographic image
One may oppose the image without exaggerating: the original photo was merely erotic, not pornographic. And as for the cropped image that has become a reference standard, it is unobjectionable if culturally archaic.
If we're being precise about language, this image is not unobjectionable: there are indeed people who have objections to it: http://www.cmc.edu/news/every-picture-tells-a-story https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/oleary/faculty/node8.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-playboy-centerfold-does-not-belong...
An excess of political correctness is difficult
to distinguish from censorship.
We could have a discussion about culture, feminism, microaggressions, and the potential for widespread small choices to do harm. Such discussions are often ugly and divisive, perhaps because the harms under discussion are not apparent to some people. But this image is not being proposed for removal for feminist reasons. It is being proposed for removal because the license is a problem.
For my part, I think the license problem is real and reason enough for removal. The feminist issues with the image are part of why I have no motivation to attempt to obtain permission. (Perhaps one could obtain permission to include the image but only with a Playboy-bunny watermark?)
Just to be clear, I am not trying to make a case
for including the image. There may be some case for skimage.data.lena() to fetch the image from the USC-SIPI Image Database http://sipi.usc.edu/database/download.php?vol=misc&img=4.2.04 but I am not trying to make that case either. I am merely addressing an issue of the debasement of language.
Please don't play devil's advocate or language-lawyer with social-justice issues. It makes the discussions more stressful and unpleasant without actually raising substantive points.
+1 for removal. Josep Tarradellas, upon returning to Barcelona after 42 years of exile during Franco's dictatorship, is quoted as saying a local version of Ben Parker's power and responsibility phrase: "We can do anything, except embarrass ourselves." That an all-white-male committee were to determine that there is nothing objectionable with the Lena image, aside from the copyright, and thus send a representation to the Playboy mansion to discuss licensing, would certainly not pass the embarrassment test for me. Jaime -- (\__/) ( O.o) ( > <) Este es Conejo. Copia a Conejo en tu firma y ayúdale en sus planes de dominación mundial.