"Greg M. Johnson" wrote:

> Warp wrote:
>
> > Francois Labreque <fla### [at] videotronca> wrote:
> > : most sci-fi or
> > : Dungeon & Dragon-type pics have the very nasty tendencies of showing
> > : female characters wearing only chain-mail bikinis and similar apparels
> > : which do not make much sense, in my opinion.
> >
> >   Why not? That's a perfect battle armor. ;)
>
> There was one where the woman was naked in a jail cell, the implication
> being that she was kept around for repeated rape: yes, an evil image.

You know, if I saw a picture of a woman in a jail cell who was naked, my first
thought would not be "there's a woman being kept jailed and nude so she can be
raped". My first thought would be "Look, a naked woman in a jail cell."
Unless, of course, there are other things in this image that skew it more
towards that particular interpretation.... in which case, the fact she was
naked would not be the basis of the interpretation, but the fact that she was
naked in combination with other factors would be.

I mean, maybe she's naked because she's so brilliantly resourceful that her
captors are afraid to let her have even a shred of clothing in case she does
something with it that will allow her to escape. Of course, that still leaves
the question of why she's being kept captive, but there are relatively benign
explanations there, as well.
Possibly she's killed a dozen people. I'd probably want her in jail if she
had.

And then, of course, there's symbolism. Maybe someone did a piece of artwork
depicting a naked woman in a jail cell because they equate being imprisoned
with being otherwise vulnerable -- and naked does often equal vulnerable.

So, see, I don't equate "naked woman in jail" = evil. It may be you are right
about the particular image you allude to. I don't know. It's a pretty terse
verbal description to go on. But the concept itself is not inherently wrong.

This is a fairly complicated issue. I would certainly support asking the IRTC
admins to RSACi rate their site (well, ICRA now, I guess, and I don't like
some of their delineations, but it's widely used), or put in a disclaimer, or
both. I even think that the suggestion that nudity-containing images have
blurred thumbnails was not a terrible one, although that would take work on
someone's part that the admins may not have the time for. But I do not support
banning anything. Some people are offended by nudity. Some people are offended
by blasphemy. I'm offended by banning.

I have, by the way, seen images in various rounds of IRTC I found offensive.
One of them was even on the winners' page (no, it didn't involve nudity, and
no, I'm not going to name it; that's besides the point). I accept that people
have different viewpoints on morality and acceptable depictions and simply try
to ignore that which offends me.

Post a reply to this message