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From: @amd.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: IEEE cover
Message-ID: <1010@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 17:32:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1010
Posted: Wed Oct 23 17:32:28 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 24-Oct-85 08:28:17 EDT
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Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
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> What is next, a call to arms to picket your local museum, because they
> have all those nasty *naked* statues and paintings in there?
>  
> Here we are in a world where toxic waste (conventional and nulcear) 
> is accumulating at a rate that is growing exponentially and we *don't*
> know how to handle it safely -- our environment is being seriously
> polluted every day of our lives -- the threat of nuclear war continues --
> people are not safe on the streets and the mongers of simplistic
> solutions think that outlawing guns and setting criminals free will
> make everything alright -- new diseases crop up regularly -- a large
> fraction of the world in general, and too many even in our own country
> haven't enough to eat -- and on and on...
>  
> And you worry that a pleasant piece of graphic art happens to include
> a silhouette of a nude woman, a silhouette that a dirty old man like
> me didn't even *notice*?  Have you looked at television lately?  Have
> you been to a movie?  Have you seen the generic violence to which no one
> seems to give a second thought?  And you are this distressed over the
> portrayal of a nude?
>
> Charlie Sorsby

Don't try to cloud the issue by saying there are more important issues that
silhouettes of naked women!  That's only relevant for discussing in other
newsgroups.  Don't you think people have the energy to be concerned about
more than one thing at a time?  (-: If so, stop worrying about what nonsense
people are discussing here and get back to work! :-)

I don't think anyone's worried about whether or not "dirty old men" are going
to see the nude.

Hey, art museums have lots of statues of naked men for those of use who'd 
rather stare at naked men.  Equal time in computer graphics!  I don't know
about anybody else, but I'm tired and bored of attractive women in computer 
graphics--I'm as fond of teapots as the next person, but why not a few
nice looking men as well as women.  Or bears!  

Television and movies are full of awful things like violence and sexism.  If
I saw a picture of somebody being beat up on the cover of some IEEE publication,
I'd object.  IEEE is a professional organization (my profession has little
to do with naked women).  Television is for entertainment (of somebody, not
me).  And it's not true that nobody gives a thought to the violence and sexism
on tv!  Maybe not your average glass teat addict, but scholarly and not so
scholarly articles have been written on the effects of violence for at least 20
years. 

> All of the problems listed above affect *women* too.

Sexism affects *men* too.

Listing issues that are beside the point of the original argument is a common
but not necessarily effective rhetorical technique.

L S Chabot   ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot