General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It is not about the swimsuit issue it is about basic respect for women [View all]rrneck
(17,671 posts)It's about how people feel about them. Feelings are subjective. It's easy to overstate one's feelings for any number of reasons. And the problem is that since feelings are subjective nobody can prove how much is too much. All you have to do is raise hell and then whine when nobody takes you as seriously as you think they should. Then you get to be outraged about nobody sharing your outrage. It's very manipulative.
It should be obvious I'm not intimidated at all. I like it. I find the debate fascinating. But then again images and how they are interpreted are sort of a specialty of mine. But let's say we decide that certain media images are bad and should be regulated. "There oughta be a law". How are you going to regulate fiction? They're all fiction you know. Every image you see has been squeezed through Photoshop, not to mention the process involved in making it. What kind of law would you write to regulate that? How would you get it passed? How would you enforce it? Political capital ain't cheap. Do you think it's worth the fight? Most of DU doesn't. Hence the jury results.
Rather than hand wringing about how somebody might feel about images, a much better solution is to make people visually literate. Do you realize that the vast overwhelming majority of images you see every day are brought to you by a corporation? Those images are designed to do a very specific thing, and people have come to assume that an image is supposed to do that. Nothing could be further from the truth. So instead engaging in the Sisyphean task of regulating fiction, it would be much better to teach people to deal with what they see. That way you will have a more literate, compassionate and reflective population instead of a bunch of consumers that devour everything in their path, including ideology designed to sell.
You know why the democrats and moderate liberals are so easily accused of being communists? It's because we don't have enough radicals. There aren't enough bat shit crazy bomb throwing anarchists in our ranks to embarrass us. Somebody will always get called an extremist, and we don't have enough of them to take the blame. The Berlin wall fell on them and buried them. That bunch on the right is overrrun with extremists. I'm a little jealous.
It looks like the best we can come up with when it comes to extremists on DU can be found in the protected groups. They are the hard liners, the ideologues who won't give a fucking inch. Good for them. We need them and that's why they have those protected groups. But damn, with all the shit going on in this country why do our extremists have to worry about what guns look like and bare bottoms on magazine covers? Why don't we have a Communist Eat the Rich protected group that has to block a boatload of members?
And actually, you don't own this site in any way shape or form. At most you are renting it and it would be more accurate to say you are paying for a service.