watervole | Icons and livejournal

I'm sure most of you will be aware of the current furore over whether breast-feeding pics should be allowed as default icons. Personally, I have no problem with them at all and I gather that the fuss may have in fact been started by someone who complained about breast-feeding icons as a protest when someone complained about his icon of a naked woman.

The problem for me, is that some people are now using icons of naked or semi-naked women (not necessarily with babies) as a protest against the censorship.

I can understand this, but it makes me uncomfortable.

I don't actually like bumping unexpectedly into pictures of naked women when I'm just chatting with my friends. (I've no objection to them in places where I expect them and I'm fine with pornographic art - when I'm looking for it)

Comeing across a naked picture in a social setting sends out a message that the user sees women primarily as sex objects and that makes me uncomfortable. I'm not going to start complaining to LJ, just asking people to think twice before becoming too whole-heartedly involved in the fight against censorship.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Things get bad when issues get polarized. What annoys me about negative reactions to women breast-feeding is that it says that people should feel ashamed of breast-feeding, and that's just WRONG. Breast-milk is the best thing for babies, and should be encouraged, not discouraged. But if people say "oh, we don't want to see it, you shouldn't show images of it, you should hide away when you do it" -- gah, it makes me mad.

Why do people protest about it? Is it because a naked woman's breast is automatically pornographic? But if that's the case then the user sees women primarily as sex objects, which I agree with you as not being a good thing.