For a long time, TruthMachine has been the only person to have both been awarded a Molly and also been threatened with banning. Now he has to share that distinction with Walton, who has won the Molly for September.
Now pick one for October by leaving nominations in the comments. Don’t get all contrary and try to elevate some random troll, though: that’ll be taken care of a little later today when Survivor Pharyngula goes live.
Roger Ebert has a thoughtful post on the problem of not-safe-for-work images. It’s a real problem, and it’s a curious example of self-imposed censorship built on an artificial fear. I don’t care who you are, you’ve all seen pornography, you’ve all heard profanity, yet somehow, if even a tasteful nude or an obscenity neatly typed in a small font face appears in a web post, people freak out: I could have viewed that in my workplace! My eyes aren’t allowed to see a breast or a penis between the hours of 9 to 5!
There’s good reason for that, of course, and Ebert discusses some of it.
I haven’t worked in an office for awhile. Is there a danger of porn surfing in the workplace? Somehow I doubt it. There is a greater danger, perhaps, of singling out workers for punishment based on the zeal of the enforcers. And of course there is always this: Supervisors of employee web use, like all employees, must be seen performing their jobs in order to keep them.
There is also this: Perfectly reasonable people, well-adjusted in every respect, might justifiably object to an erotic photograph on the computer monitor of a coworker. A degree of aggression might be sensed. It violates the decorum of the workplace. (So does online gaming, but never mind.) You have the right to look at anything on your computer that can be legally looked at, but give me a break! I don’t want to know! I also understand that the threat of discipline or dismissal is real and frightening.
I’ve made it through two years on the blog with only this single NSFW incident. In the future I will avoid NSFW content in general, and label it when appropriate. What a long way around I’ve taken to say I apologize.
I think he misses a couple, though.
One is the one-sided nature of most erotic images that makes a workplace situation more difficult for those who are already struggling: women. Ebert himself does this, since his examples are all of lovely naked women. Why not naked men? Ebert is a male, he clearly enjoys the female form, but if he’d used examples of erotic male nudes, there’d be a little more distancing from the subject, a little more objectivity. I like looking at naked women, it tingles my hypothalamus in interesting ways; I don’t object to pictures of naked men, but I’m afraid there is no thrill here, not even a sense of forbidden, hidden fear. It’s easier for a male to dismiss images of women as simply beautiful and non-threatening, because he isn’t likely to be the target of objectification and lust, which actually are inappropriate in a working environment where women want to be treated as equals.
Avoiding even the appearance of discrimination is reason enough to avoid these loaded images, but there’s also a more universal reason that we have this problem, and it’s unfortunate. It’s the tyranny of the ideal, and it also is on display in Ebert’s post.
Whenever we talk about sexualized images and their virtues as simply representations of beauty, we always trot out examples from art of nubile young men and women in the prime of health, typically slender and unwrinkled and unburdened with any trace of experience. This is what we are supposed to look like, is the message, beauty is in this smoothness, these unmarred curves, this hidden youthful suppleness exposed. What we will regard as beauty in our bodies is such a narrow band of reality that it means that very few of us actually have a positive self-image, and not only every porn image, but every ad on billboards and television, reinforces that message that you aren’t worthy.
And of course it’s made worse for women, because the standard image of women is that ideal of young and fertile and lubricious. Are you pretty enough to be on a billboard? If not, there’s something wrong with you. Even as a man I can feel this, since no one is going to mistake me for a 20 year old Adonis, but at least I’m mostly spared the optic cacophony constantly reminding me that my body is homely and sub-standard.
But it’s not, not really. Everyone has bodies that serve them well, that carry them through life and give them pleasure and work hard, but somehow we’ve fallen into the trap of idealizing such a specific set of features that we spend most of our lives lacking the proper appreciation of them, in part due to the way the advertising and pornography industries work to promote a standard and punish anything outside that standard with neglect. This is another reason to avoid “NSFW” images — not because they’re unsafe for our eyes, an absurd concept already, but because we need to rebel against the homogenization of beauty.
Here’s a counter-example. When we talk about erotic images of bodies, we all know exactly what we’re talking about, and it isn’t my body or even the bodies of most of the readers of this article. If I posted an image of my kind of body (or, probably, your kind of body) it would be as an object of derision, something that people would mock because it’s not perfect enough, not pretty enough, or just plain ugly. I know; I posted one photo of my breast on facebook*, and got a flood of email that can be summarized as “ooh, yuck”.
Why can’t we treat bodies like we do hands? Look at this; this is not a youthful hand, it’s not an unlined hand, it’s not a smooth and perfect hand…but it’s beautiful.
We can look at a baby’s hand, a young woman’s hand, or a gnarled old man’s hand and see loveliness and function everywhere, and respect the evidence of lives lived well. We’ve been acculturated by the tyranny of a narrow ideal to only be able to approve of bodies that fall into a tiny category that we can call ‘fuckable’. Outside of the art world, you simply don’t find images of bodies that are not airbrushed and photoshopped and selected for that kind of exclusively sexualized purpose.
It’s very easy to make a case for tolerance of images of beautiful people in a state of undress. I’ll believe we’re ready to be liberal about the use of what we call NSFW imagery when the case can be made for the beauty of a naked old man without a volley of derision and expressions of disgust and disappointment because they’re not a slim naked young woman.
*There was a good reason: it was to protest facebook’s policy of censoring photos of women breastfeeding their babies. While it’s embarrassing to be mocked for the fact that I don’t have a sculpted, youthful figure, it was worth it to point out the hypocrisy of a ridiculous policy. Consider it another act of sacrilege, and that I did a fabulous job of defiling most people’s ideal of what a breast should look like.
The Molly award for the remote and distant month of August goes to … Gregory Greenwood.
Now September needs one. Leave your votes in the comments.
One of the ads on this site is serving up something nasty, apparently. I have informed the masters of the machine through a spiffy new fast alert system Scienceblogs recently installed. Now we wait to see if we’ve also got a spiffy fast response system.
We often get remarks from people that the Pharyngula comments are a cesspool, that I ought to moderate more, that people use intemperate language and even profanity in their discussions…and, you know, I just roll my eyes and ignore these silly bluenoses and their prissy airs. We’re adults here. I am not a playground monitor. I’m more of a distracted barkeep.
But I also think those critics are all wrong. They tend to focus on a few four-letter words and an angry tone that some of us exhibit, and overlook the content. And it’s the content of the message that matters. I just ran across a discussion of real problematic language from the right wingers, and I think it puts everything in perspective.
Here’s one example, from the odious Ann Coulter. Now whenever Coulter is brought up here, there will always be a few pathetic jokes made about how she’s a man, she has an adam’s apple, stupid stuff like that, but I can also always rely on the commentariat here to slap those down promptly. She’s a woman, OK? A tall, slender woman, and physically she’s not unattractive (psychologically, though, she’s a horror), and it’s annoying to see her targeted for her sex. But guess what? Ann Coulter doesn’t mind doing a little stereotyping of her own.
My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call “women” at the Democratic National Convention.
Notice that she used no profanity, and that you can scrutinize each word independently and find nothing that a good Christian could object to. Put them all together, though, and what you’ve got is an obscenity far nastier than anything said here.
I’m not going to impose censorship on Pharyngula as long as I can trust the commenters here to call out that kind of bigotry.
It’s a ferocious 3-headed dog, but still…anyway, the Molly award for the month of June goes to Cerberus, for her excellent work in guarding the gates of Hell.
Now who deserves the award for the month of July? Leave comments with your nominations here.
We are currently suffering from a surfeit of cheesiness in the ad blocks being served up — the example to the right is just one of many horrors, including ads for $cientology, various Christian and creationist groups, and even some medical quackery. Although the “build an ideal woman” does appeal to the mad scientist in me, it’s really just a tease to get your name and various bits of information into one of those “win an ipad” scams. Don’t click on it!
Actually, don’t click on any of the despicable ads. You don’t need to; the ad space is sold on a per impression, not a per click, basis, so all you have to do is load Scienceblogs and you’ve earned us a bit of money. So just ignore them altogether.
Also, take some comfort in the fact that the bad ads are hilariously misplaced — this is not the audience for creationist hucksters. So all they are doing is transferring money from kooks and quacks to the pockets of people presenting the science that opposes them.
Isn’t this just the perfect theme song for recent events?
The strike is over. We had a productive discussion with the Seed Overlords, and I think we’ve clarified issues, got some ideas for further progress, and will be working for a Better World in the Future. Don’t expect any sudden changes here, though — we’ve got a Plan, but it will take time to implement, and the most important thing is that we’re going to be holding certain people’s feet to the fire on a regular basis. We could still explode and send little fragments of Scienceblogs hurtling outward into the greater blogoverse…but we’ve also got ideas to keep it all together. Stay tuned.
People who have been concerned about the financial stability of Scienceblogs should rest easier, too. We talked with the CFO, and Sb has its own organizational structure and is largely independent of other enterprises within Seed Media Group, and we’re doing OK. We could be more profitable, but I think every CFO would say that.
We will be getting more tech support, starting next week. The only problem there is that we have a long list of stuff we want done, so it needs to be sorted and prioritized…but we should see steady progress on that front in the coming months.
Mainly, though, I’m just glad to have this nonsense over with. I’ve got things to do. That said, though, there will be a substantial slowdown in posting here for a while, not out of spite, but just because I’m going off to Seattle to hide in seclusion in my mother’s basement and finish the damned book. You can still expect regular updates of stuff to battle over, though, never fear.
Oh, also, I might like this version of the song up top, too.
Don’t panic, don’t go into withdrawal, progress is looking good. Adam Bly sounds enthusiastic about meeting my demands (which is easy, since they don’t hurt Seed at all), got in contact with us quickly, and we’re going to be having a conference call in the next day or so, whenever a reasonable number of us can make a simultaneous connection. And I have high hopes that we’ll get a better, more responsive Scienceblogs network out of this.
I expect the strike to be short-lived, which is good, because I have poor impulse control and my brain might explode if I have to keep it in check much longer.
