At 2:43 PM -0500 12/10/99, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
[...]
> I do wonder why it is, too, and it seems you are totally correct in
>saying, that homosexual artists also produce stereotypical, objectifying
>images?
While it is true that being rejected by "society" can give a person
a perspective that people who fit the mainstream definition don't
get, most gay men (and I'm speaking from experience here (but I would
never presume to speak from authority)) seem to change their perspective
enough to allow for how they want to live their lives but stop short of
turning it into a general questioning of other stereotypes which are
not an issue in their day-to-day lives (another example is
premarital-sex-having,
birth-control-using "catholics" who rail against equal rights for gay people.)
So many ways to look at the issue. If the main issue with the objectification
of women in porn is objectification->control, how does this map to porn of
men for men? Men for women? Women for women? More explicitly,
S&M porn of women for women? Isn't any photograph of a person by definition
objectification?
> I also saw so SO MANY "GENERIC" figure studies of men that it was rather
>disappointing. By generic I mean that the photographers had simply taken
>cheese cake poses which I first saw in the 50s as a child or in the 70s as a
>fashion photographer and put men in the place of women,
On one level this is _extremely_ subversive, since nude images of men
were illegal until fairly recently while nude images of women were
if not acceptable, at least legal.
I'd rather move a step farther and ask why "nude" is a fundamentally
category from other representations of humans.
> It was shown at a
>West Side New York Gallery so it must be art...right? I mean, seriously,
>the beefy boy sitting backwards, naked in the saddle, while beautifully lit,
>looks EXACTLY like a pin-up I saw in 1955 on my older brother's wall except
>then it was a "Cow Girl".
I saw that one. I assumed the photographer was being ironic, and the guy
did have a beautiful butt.
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