Re: Politicaly correct?

On 3/31/2024 11:04 AM, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 20:41:47 -0700, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
wrote:
 

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 20:15:44 +0100, Jeroen Belleman
<jeroen@nospam.please> 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 here for sure. We have nude beaches and The Folsom Street Fair.
People used to pay to see naked women but it's not such a novelty now.
What restricts nudity is the climate. And if you go around naked,
where do you keep your phone and your credit cards?
>
I did once see the entire Ski Patrol come down the hill nude, skiing
in a line, holding hands.

 And practically every tribe on earth has covered their private parts
somehow, even before the missionaries showed up. Modesty is not a
Western or an American invention.
 

Tribes in hot climates do seem to wear significantly less.
There are reasons other than modesty to want to give one's private some kind of generally more robust shielding, as any tribesman who's taken a low-hanging branch to the nuts might attest