SJF,

You are quoting things I didn't say, and putting inflections words that weren't spoken. You are arguing with your own imagination now, not the ideas you see on the screen before you.

As for what is next - nothing, of course. I was trying to understand your point of view, and if I succeeded in that add my two cents. Your point, if you had one, is lost on me and I suspect anyone else reading this thread. The damage it sustained was totally self inflicted. Even if I was in a mind to persecute you, I doubt I could improve on that.

SJF>"If you honestly believe that unfettered freedom of artistic expression has turned the female population into..."

Huh? What the hell are you talking about? rstuart is right,

rstuart>"You are quoting things I didn't say, and putting inflections words that weren't spoken. You are arguing with your own imagination now, not the ideas you see on the screen before you."

All I said was that women have chosen to sell their bodies for $$$ and promote themselves in such ways. You obviously have some hang-ups which your attachment to hateful anti-female feminism is closely interwoven.

Everything I've said is correct. You think you support women, but you do precisely the opposite by attacking women who have exercised their own free will. How sad as people like you perpetuate the hate against these women. Do you hear men complaining about sexualisation? No, because they have not been taught to hate other men by the religious and feminists like Melinda Tankard Reist who advise people like Harradine (a Catholic) and whom are Right-to-Lifers.

SJF “What I care about is the thoroughly misguided belief that there should be absolutely no boundaries at all – legal or otherwise – on the work of those who wield influence over the cultural domain or over public opinion. “

Re "Thoroughly misguided"

I would like you to define, preferably referring to statute (for legal at least), exactly what a “thoroughly misguided belief “ is,

Because you need to do that before you can judge anything.

Regarding “those who wield influence over the cultural domain or over public opinion.”

Could you please define when someone wields influence and when they do not and maybe name a few who do and although it might be nice, it might be too tough trying to name those who do not.

Now regarding those who do not wield such influence?

Should their artistic endeavours be similarly censored to those who do influence public opinion?

The dangers to which we are exposed from experiencing “absolutely no boundaries at all”

Pale into insignificance

Compared to the dangers from authoritarian definitions and limits on what "artistic expression" is allowed and what is disallowed (censorship).

Example, Gustav Klimt was labeled “degenerate” and his work vilified in the Nazi exhibition of the same name which toured Germany before WWII.

Personally I find Klimt an excellent and sensuous artist with an abstractive attention to detail, beautifully balanced with a lavish use of colour.

But I am just an individual, expressing personal opinions. If I thought it was a load of crap I would likely say nothing and move on.

No point in publicizing the banal.

Which is what “public opinion” can do

and, with the passage of time (of course), does.

Steel

‘Everything I've said is correct.’

Good for you! You must be a very exceptional person.

Rstuart

For goodness sake! Can’t you see when you are being sent up?

The fact that this was completely lost on you is proof that this commentary thread has well and truly descended into caricature.

Col Rouge

‘I would like you to define, preferably referring to statute (for legal at least), exactly what a “thoroughly misguided belief” is […] Could you please define when someone wields influence and when they do not and maybe name a few who do...’

I have stated more than once on OLO that I make a point of not rising to ‘please define’ or 'name names' baits. Nine times out of ten they are just empty provocations, not genuine requests for clarity. I can always sense the one in ten who is genuine - and you are not one of them.

SJF, you must be suffering a cold. Your sense of the genuine is not working.

I was sincere in my request of you to define what “misguided beliefs” are.

You are advocating the suppression of “beliefs”, only a fool would not be able to define what they seek to suppress. Am I to presume you are a fool?

The alternative is for me to presume you find it all too difficult to handle and are simply seeking some government authority to make decisions for you.

Now we know what happens to people who let governments do that for them, they end up queuing to watch the book burnings and laugh at the degenerates.

Without seeming to be dramatic, you are basically inviting what Pastor Martin Niemoller’s described to happen.

I wonder, who will you turn to

when this benevolent authority, this great guiding hand, the sole arbiter of public taste and decency, which is going to decide what is good and what is not fit for public exhibition or publication,

resolves that something you do is “misguided”?

So, maybe you could answer me that, if my requests to the beliefs and personalities which you find it too hard to identify are to remain unresolved.

Usual Suspect

"Society values male strength and female beauty. It must be terribly confusing for kids of parents who would rather lie to their kids and say it's not so, rather than admit it is so, but teach them they don't have to conform."

You talk about teaching children that they don't have to conform. And yet you yourself are setting a totally conformist example by failing to question that most basic and most constraining and damaging of assumptions that men have to be strong and women beautiful. To me, putting our kids into these straight jackets is much more of a lie than the questioning of the status quo that people like Melinda, Pelican, SJF, and myself are engaging in and of which you are so critical.

Even if we do accept that an integral part of being female is being beautiful, why should that beauty be dictated to us by the fashion industry? If we are really going to teach our girls that they don't need to conform, we have to break the dominance of the one prevailing model of accepted beauty and allow other models to emerge. We have to let girls be girls, to play and find their own way in the world and develop their own style and in their own time. This is what people like Melinda are arguing for. It's not about censorship or imposing moral codes on others. It's about breaking the conformist corporate shackles that dictate to girls how they should look and lock them into worrying about their appearance at an ever-younger age.