Icons and livejournal

[watervole]

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.

Comments

[watervole.livejournal.com]

That one hits no problems on the nudity front, but comes close to giving me a headache from the alernating image.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I do think that the ideal is sex equality on the nudity front, despite cultural pressure.

The icon is slow enough not to hurt my head. But this this better?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Much better!

Equality on the nudity front is complicated as nature has played a trick on upright apes to switch the main erogenous zone from the buttocks (which do not show as strongly when upright as when on all fours) to the breasts, which are essentially buttock mimics.

Females do not react to male breasts in the same way that males react to female ones. We like a nice bum, but it is not such a strong trigger as female breasts are for males.

Hence, exposing the breasts can be seen as a sexual invitation - which is annoying as I'd be perfectly happy to go around stark naked if this were not the case.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely convinced by the buttock explanation of breasts. But more importantly, 'can be seen as a sexual invitation' is a red herring. We're language-using: no matter what, the obligation is to explicitly ask for consent.

We wander naked at home, unless we've visitors (if we remember they're here :-)