Native American costumes are one of the worst examples though, not all claims of "cultural appropriation" are of things so cartoonish and so blatantly a misrepresentation of the people who belong to the culture apparently being appropriated.
So basically Disney is a terrible corporation. I can get behind that.
I was not taught that sex is damaging or that it would diminish me. I understood that far worse things happen to people all the time. I was taught to be strong and confident, to be a survivor and to realize that those who would victimize me were the ones who were weak. Bad things happen in life. We must deal with what comes our way and not just roll over and die.
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[Rape] is the only crime in which victims are discouraged from being okay. If you are beaten up or your house gets robbed, that can also be traumatic, but at least no-one says you must never get over this or you will insult other victims. I think it is sexist and a way of reinforcing negative sexual stereotypes about women and sex.
I love this idea that censoring something is just a way to create discussion lmao.
If anything, this is an attempt by a museum to extend intellectual discussion beyond the boundaries of the university. Good for them.
So actually it's censorship and cowardice, why can't they foster a discussion while the piece remains hanging?
Because actually removing it inspires precisely the kind of frustration that you're showing. Without the passion, where's the impetus for discussion?
I could just as easily argue that it's cowardice to raise such questions while leaving the painting up. If they really wanted to make a point, they'd take it down.
Ultimately, this is a disagreement over what the museum is there for. You think it's there to provide uninhibited exposure. I think it's there to mediate exposure. In other words, the museum participates in the artistic process.
My frustration is with censorship, regardless of what art is taken down, so it doesn't really foster discussion of art, not really. Take an example of something I would stereotypically hate like say, a modern feminist artist who created a piece that was just "kill all men" written in fake period blood or something stupid, that should not be taken down in order to foster discussion about male/female relations or something, it should be kept up and used as the centerpiece for the topic.
Censoring something to create discussion is a hilariously Orwellian concept. What's next, give a criminal the electric chair to foster discussion about the death penalty?![]()
Well no because then they have to contend with the perception that they're questioning underlying potentially sexist themes whilst endorsing them by leaving it up. The pearl-clutching activists literally make the exact same point in regards to no-platforming.
It does create a discussion of art though. You just have a restricted definition of "art."
That's a terrible misuse of "Orwellian."
You assume that it would be more controversial for them to leave it up while raising this question, and yet you and numerous others are raising your fists because they've taken it down... So I would contend that they've taken a risk in removing it.
The posted stickies left in the piece's empty space in the gallery (as well as general online reaction) just proves my point that, by censoring the piece they have morphed the entire discussion which was intended to be about art and underlying potentially sexist themes contained in pieces like the one removed into a discussion of censorship.
They've made it almost impossible for people who take great interest in the issues of gender representation to react in any way other than to defend the principle of anti-censorship. It's a stupid mess of the type only fart-sniffing Twitterati types could create in the pursuit of some pseudo-intellectual goal.
No it's not. Censoring art to create discussion (and therein redefining censorship as a form of progress) is exactly the kind of double-speak nonsense Orwell warned society about. It's simply a smaller scale version of when governments call warfare "peace-keeping efforts."
Orwell's projections come from the era of information broadcasting, and are not applicable to our own. Had Orwell been able to equip Big Brother with all the tools of artificial intelligence, he would still have been writing from an older paradigm, and the result could never have described our situation today, nor suggested where we might be heading.
All actions have risk, that's irrelevant to what I've said so far. Either action is controversial to some people, what would be the most controversial while on balance beneficial would be to leave it up and forge a discussion series around the art, putting it directly into the spotlight rather than removing the piece from the spotlight and then asking people to tell them how they feel about what isn't in the spotlight anymore.
It hasn't proved your point. It's demonstrated that people are different and react in different ways. Some turn the discussion into a reflection on censorship. Some acknowledge the discrepancy between gender relations today and those in the past.
I don't think you're correct because they've emphasized, more than once, that the purpose isn't to censor; and in today's information-free society, it can hardly be argued to be censorship. You can Google the image if you want to so badly. Orwell didn't live in the information age that we do. You're equating two entirely different contextual situations.
You're assume that it would be more controversial to leave it up. That's the assumption you're making. Based on the responses they've gotten, I think you're wrong.