Gregory Maxwell wrote: > There are also people who are honestly offended that some people are > offended by human sexuality content— and some of them view efforts to > curtail this content to be a threat to their own cultural values. If > this isn't your culture, please take a moment to ponder it. If your > personal culture believes in the open expression of sexuality an > effort to remove "redundant / low quality" sexuality images while we > not removing low quality pictures of clay pots, for example, is > effectively an attack on your beliefs. These people would tell you: If > you don't like it, don't look. _Understanding_ differences in opinion > is part of the commons way, so even if you do not embrace this view > you should at least stop to understand that it is not without merit. > In any case, while sometimes vocal, people from this end of the > spectrum don't appear to be all that much of the community. > > >
I apologize for the late reply, but since this issue is of a long term nature, hopefully not much harm will come from only commenting on it now. I fully admit I experienced a "Hey, I resemble that remark!" moment regarding the middle part of the paragraph. My culture is certainly near the end of the spectrum mentioned, being as I am from Finland (if it tells you anything, we usually consider our neighbors to the west, the Swedes, as hopelessly repressed sexually --- and I am not even kidding) While I am sure there are people to whom the whole paragraph applies fully in every respect (and I would imagine as you say they will likely be a vanishingly small percentage of the community), my personal angle to the issue is completely different, and I doubt I am alone. I am not at all offended that people have the capacity to be offended by whatever gets their goat. I too have the capacity, but perhaps with respect to other things. I absolutely have no problem with that. Personally what was offensive was not people not bowing down before my cultural values, so to speak. What *was* offensive however was that people from on high chose a matter of such obviously subjective import to privilege a *specific* standard of mores. Not the fact that it wasn't *mine*, but that it was a specific one. This problem is compounded by the fact that such action hugely legitimizes the argument -- while being certainly untrue -- that Wikimedia is not genuinely an international project. *This* is the real issue that needs to be addressed, if any real progress is to be made, in healing most of the wounds the community has incurred. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
