I am an artist. I use my personal experience in my art. Some times that means using images of ‘nudity’. As in this image:
Beneath The Skin
It’s a composite of a portrait of me and a strongly demurred and obscured nude female torso – it depicts a piece of my personal history –
A Trans Man’s Transsexuality 101
I am being told that I have to remove this image from a Social Community Site because it contains ‘nudity’.
I live in Europe. In Europe ‘nudity’ is being considered in context – i.e the question of what is the purpose of the ‘nudity’ is taken into consideration before it’s deemed ‘inappropriate’ for public consumption. In the US any depiction of nudity, regardless of context or intention, is seen as pornographic, lewd, indecent and therefore immoral. Even if it’s clearly artistic or educational.
The USonians, influenced by Fundamentalist Xian Imperialism and values dating back to the Puritan Immigrants’ values of the 17th century, are so afraid that their children will become promiscuous and sexually depraved by seeing normal human anatomy and physical reality, that they actually demand that the entire world be censored to conform to their fears.
At the same time the US is the country that ‘gave’ the world MTV – where there is a lot more ‘nudity’, and sexually explicit images being cabled out than in the image I am being told to remove. The US is also the single Western country where sex education in schools are ‘forbidden’ – yet where teen pregnancies are such a huge problem, because of this single fact.
Smell the hypocrisy, my friends!
Compare my artwork to this artist’s work – Jody Scheisser – who is doing ‘fine artistic photography’ depicting nudity in a far more ‘explicit’ manner than I have ever published. Or compare to some of the most praised classical artists, such as Agnolo Bronzino’s Venus, Cupide and the Time (Allegory of Lust) – and this we ALL call fine art, and wouldn’t censor, wouldn’t deem ‘immoral’ or ‘inappropriate’ – even if we might not like it or think appropriate for prepubescent children to watch. Yet my single piece of art is deemed ‘inappropriate’ and judged as nudity, although one can hardly discern the forms or the details of the ‘nude female torso’! And that in a site that says that:
“The Ning Platform is not directed to children younger than 13 and is offered only to users 13 years of age or older.” (From the Ning TOS)
So the censoring of my art, by Ning (through the Gaia Community), is an extension of the hypocrisy of USonian society, based on the values of Fundamentalist and Puritan values of a small group of 17th century immigrants seeking freedom from oppression – a freedom they would now, through their 21st century descendants, deny me – despite my art being in no way offensive or sexually explicit in comparison to both classical and modern artists’ work.
—
When I attempted to post this entry to the Gaia Network, I found that the image above had been removed by the Gaia Ning Team without any response to either personal messages about this or comments in a thread designated for the matter of ‘nudity’ in images, I see no other recourse than to delete any all my art from the Gaia Network, and leave the Network entirely, including all groups.
I can only assume that this was the Gaia Team’s intention from the onset of this sad affair.
SOB's Grins & Grumps 