Bronwyn “artists using photographs of naked children in a day and age when the same sort of photographs are being circulated in large numbers on the internet and harming many children as a result.”

The issues are mutually exclusive.

This is the point, you are attempting to connect artistic appreciation with some salacious and perverted appreciation.

I know the difference, we all know the difference.

And you will not curtail the salacious by censoring the artistic, especially when no one can define “Artistic”.

“Besides which, I don't consider photographs to have the same creative merit as most other forms of artistic expression.”

I referred to Klee previously. His dissertation in “Der Blaue Reiter”, to the separate states which art transcends are

1The idea in the artists mind
2The artists execution of that idea
3The piece of ‘art’ itself
4The impression of the art piece on the viewer
5 the viewers response to that impression

(that’s from memory, cannot find any google or my the original source)

The use of photography in that series of events is 2) and you did not get involved until 4) yet have the audacity to judge the intention of the artist 1)!

I consider photographs as no different to oil or water paint. The people who have acquired Man Ray images think so too.

The point with “art” is that it is subjective, not objective.

“Consider” what you want, it does not make it fact.

“Photography” is the medium, not the “art”.

“I just think Henson should have shown more sensitivity and not ventured where he has, that's all. I'm not calling for bans. So jump down from your libertarian high horse.”

Nietzsche suggested "Who wishes to be creative must first blast and destroy accepted values."

Which challenges Peter Bowden’s “still life: knitting socks sat in armchair” approach to “philosophy”.

How ‘sensitive’ anyone is remains within their personal gift.

As to dismounting,

That will always be my choice and something you will never command.

“Hi O Silver….”

knuckles seems to have found a dictionary (some tell him, sentences consisting just of adjectives sound silly).

Next come the polar bears...

As a further exercise in reasoning, consider just what position pedophiles would adopt over this issue: “Naked children, moral philosophy and photographs”. I make the specific reminder here that the essential topic of our debate is “adults making and/or using photos of naked children for entertainment purposes”. So where would pedophiles' opinion, taste, and “margin for error” or “risk assessment”, fall in this discussion?

Now such consideration would not be irrational or unsuitable; it would not pose the same risk of simplistic polarization, discursive degradation, or unwarranted stigmatization as, say: “Milton Orkopoulos was a member of the ALP, therefore members of the ALP have more or less the same tendencies”, etc. Photos of naked children are germane to this very discussion – as distinct from such irrelevant and distracting ephemera as party membership, state of birth (SA, for example!), religion, diet, ethnicity, citizenship, age, or even gender.

That is why I identify here the parallels and similarities between avowed art-libertarian opinions with pedophiles' much-recorded views on individual liberty in that same context of photographed naked children (and beyond).

As I stated earlier, such patterns of belief and thought process invite “a conclusion that Bowden and OLO have once more provoked response from those more pathologically motivated among the Hensonites.” So to shift Col's analogy into a proper place, that above conclusion would be just as apt as somebody, say, concluding that “in-principle” supporters of fast car pics likely contain a higher proportion of those who have caused grievous injury or death from speeding, or were so disposed towards such recklessness on our roads.

If some OLO respondents are offended by such identification and comparison of their own statements, well, I would only mean them to be so offended if: 1) it brought to wider attention the seriousness of issues at stake; 2) it elicited a more substantial case from opponents of Bowden/supporters of Henson, Papapetrou et al, or 3) they happen to be pedophiles.

So far, most of what we have from Hensonites is a rehash of liberalist and libertarian conceits.

I missed rougy's repeat indulgence in name-dropping. Nietzsche! To be specific, was that quote pertaining to “The Genealogy of Neurosyphillis” or “The Revaluation of All House Valuations”?

Nietzsche was a brilliant scholar who went stark staring mad after catching a nasty dose of clap. Unfortunately for us, his more passionate, headstrong and inconsistent musings and rants intensified and proliferated after that illness had already begun to take effect - and then publishers became very interested. After the publishers, Nietzsche became a wellspring of inspiration for many others, from those interested in dignifying neo-Darwinian brutality and those stranger notions of “race” supremacy in nationalism, to that bizarre crowd of misanthrope quacks known as “eugenicists”. If we check any nutter-ideologue from that time we almost invariably find some reference to Nietzsche: handy catch-phrases and aphorisms all easy for recital by any simplifier who wants to make a pose of profundity.

Rougy's further posing returns us, full circle, to the ideological problem in Hensonites' passion for artistic kiddie porn. Mystical and mythological notions of the “artist” and “creativity” all promise those same threats of ideological, social and cultural degeneracy which I highlighted earlier by identifying the fascistic quality of both the art and its supporters' arguments. Any notion of radical artistic brahmanism, conferring on artists some special, hallowed domain, higher status and immunity from traditional moral constraint, leads logically and philosophically into that Berlin cavern where it was last discussed between Speer and his own more infamous artist-mentor boss in April 1945.

Very silly also to misrepresent Bronwyn's straightforward comment as “audacity to judge the intention of the artist” - it is obvious she did no such thing. By that measure, rougy seems to betray a profound alienation, and a pretentiousness that goes far into conceit territory; he really emphasized that haughty repulsiveness when twisting Bronwyn's original equestrian metaphor.

Stick to that Nietzsche pocket book - o great, solitary man with bold heart and free mind, hardy soul raised in harsh mountain clime, will become the ultimate, towering self, unswayed by the small man, unchangeable by all except true Nature, etc.