Re: Politicaly correct?

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 23:27:14 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 3/30/2024 3:15 PM, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 3/30/24 17:37, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net> wrote:
>

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 01:04:38 +0100, jim whitby
<mr.spock@spockmnail.net> wrote:
>

This is from an rss feed today.
>
On Wednesday, the IEEE Computer Society announced to members that,
after
April 1, it would no longer accept papers that include a frequently
used
image of a 1972 Playboy model named Lena Forsén. The so-called "Lenna
image," (Forsén added an extra "n" to her name in her Playboy
appearance
to aid pronunciation) has been used in image processing research since
1973 and has attracted criticism for making some women feel
unwelcome in
the field.
>
Why? What could possibly be demeaning about a (above the shoulders)
female
photo!

>
The full photo is ahh ... fuller.
>
.<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Fors%C3%A9n>
>
And she is famous in image processing.  I doubt that the IEEE can
change that.
>
War story:  Maybe ten years ago, my wife and I took my 15-yo nephew to
Sweden, where I had lived and have friends.  We were walking through a
park near Stockholm's City Hall, where the grassy plaza is lined with
many bronze beauties in full glory.  My Swedish friend stopped at one
of the beauties and commented that the model for that particular
statue was the mother of one of his childhood friends.  Nephew was
floored.

>
There is a tendency to forget that beautiful women are just people like
the rest of us.  A woman whom I knew as a folk dancer and the mother of
two children once said to me: "If you wonder what I look like naked, go
and see the statue in xxx Town Hall, I was the model for it.

 
There is this attitude, especially in the US and muslim countries,
that nudity is reprehensible, more so than physical violence. This
is weird and borderline insane.

>
Not much to do with "attitudes about nudity."
>
a) Use of the image in this context violated copyright to begin with

The copyright is owned by Playboy Enterprises, who did and does not
object.  Lena never owned the copyright.

b) She asked people to stop using it
>
c) It has no unique value as a test case for image processing in the
21st century, was used for (dumb) historical reasons only.

I think that her reason for asking people to stop is quite simple. She
is not at all interested in being a football in a US political fight
which she knows little and cares nothing about.

The problem is that if you've been raised in that environment,
it's almost impossible to change.
 
Jeroen Belleman

>
I can't say about Muslim countries, but Americans that well-understand
the concept of "consent" and "bodily autonomy" are fairly rare.
>
Much more common are citizens that would of course ruthlessly defend
what they figure is "theirs", but figure anyone who isn't them (women
and children induced) is fair game to be touched, prodded, poked,
grabbed, commented on, have their pictures and videos re-posted, and
lives generally pried into until the end of time.
>
And tend to find the idea that even if consent is given, that it can be
unilaterally revoked at some later time particularly galling.
>
That is to say I think the reason we don't have many nude beaches here
finally has less to do with some abstract concept of Puritanism (given
how many habitual adulterers we've had as President that seems
laughable), and more to do with that the number of men who'd show up
just to try to grab every boobie in sight, then run home and grab a
handgun and open fire on everyone there if a woman tried to say "no", is
large.

Well, I have another war story:

Decades ago, to took a holiday at the Club Med located on the
Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.  I didn't know it, but they had nude
beaches, not for swingers so much as for French tourists (Guadeloupe
being a department of France, their Hawaii).

In the middle of the week, an airplane full of French schoolteachers
and their families arrived.  Next day, there they all were, entire
families all baking in the sun, completely naked.  Who knew that
French Schoolteachers were such a comely lot. 

After three days I stopped looking, my neck having worn out from all
the swiveling.

Joe Gwinn