[WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

Wed May 12 17:29:37 UTC 2004

Delirium wrote:

> KNOTT, T wrote:
>
>> How can we ever know if the majority of the world finds something
>> offensive? All we ever get to hear about are the vocal minority. I think
>> it's pretty easy to make a pronouncement on body parts, saying that male
>> and female parts should be treated in the same way on wikipedia. If you
>> are worried about it we could just take a vote. All those in favor of
>> treating the penis and clit photos the same say eye.
>>   
>
> Sure, we can make such a pronouncement, but it's simply taking a 
> particular point of view on what properly constitutes offensive 
> photographs.  Here we'd be proposing the principle that offensiveness 
> of a photograph ought to be gender-neutral, which is a rather 
> non-trivial stance that would need to be argued for if one is to apply 
> it across the board, and in any case isn't the sort of principle we 
> have any business proposing.

The argument here is about whether both genders should be treated 
equally, either both shown or both not shown.  It still leaves the 
question of which of those two options would be chosen.  The logical 
alternative to that argument is that the genders should be treated 
differntly, but I see no-one trying to make a substantive argument for 
that alternative.

Ec