[WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

Sun Feb 13 06:48:54 UTC 2005

Jimmy-

>We went through this with 'clitoris'.  We used to have a photo there
>which was terrible and in poor taste.
>
I beg to differ. So far, I still haven't seen any reasonable argument on 
what was wrong with the original picture. And, as I recall, it could be 
tracked down to a website about the clitoris, not to a porn site. You 
will have to accept that many people are not happy to follow someone 
else's opinion on what is "terrible and in poor taste"."

Aesthetics is not something which is easy to argue about, obviously. In 
the clitoris discussion, I got the impression that some people 
deliberately were looking for "ugly" pictures in order to make sure that 
any sexual arousal by the image is prevented. Someone even suggested a 
truly horrible and inaccurate illustration from 1866, when women weren't 
even believed to be capable of orgasm. Is it objective to say that a 
vagina or penis which is unattractive is more tasteful and encyclopedic 
than one which is attractive?

Truthfully, the distinction between "taste and aesthetics" and 
"offensiveness" is not as big as you seem to imply. The perceptions of 
both are very much based on personal experiences and values. I think we 
should stick first and foremost to criteria which are easy to compare. 
Is the picture accurate? Does it add information to the article? Is the 
copyright situation clear? Are any personal rights being violated (being 
in an encyclopedia for the next 100 years might not be agreeable to the 
subject of a photo)?

Only when we have images which are identical in all these matters, the 
feelings of the community could be the deciding factor. For example, I'm 
sure there could be an illustration of autofellatio in the style of the 
sex position images which would be generally considered more tasteful 
and less offensive in an encyclopedia article. But I would not want to 
remove an image which satisfies the above criteria -- not saying the 
autofellatio one does -- on the grounds that we could potentially have a 
nicer one in the future. That just seems like an invitation for people 
to use their personal views of what is tasteful or non-offensive as a 
justification to push an agenda. The outcome would be a very culturally 
biased project, though results would vary from page to page.

I have no problem in principle with the removal of the autofellatio 
photograph on copyright grounds. But aesthetics alone is, I think, a 
fairly weak argument, and really very similar, if not often identical, 
to the general argument about offensiveness. The correct answer to that, 
I believe, is labeling of the content with metadata to allow people to 
hide it based on their preferences of what they want to see.

Let's be honest here: Someone who really wanted to know about 
autofellatio -- out of the desire to know about the subject, not out of 
the desire to discuss its merits as we do -- probably would like to see 
that photo, even if it's not the best possible one. So I think, if the 
other criteria were fulfilled, which does not appear to be the case, 
that it should be available until a generally more popular replacement 
can be found.

Regards,

Erik