As reported by The Guardian:
"Virginia’s state flag and seal, depicting the Roman goddess Virtus standing over a slain tyrant, her drooping toga exposing her left breast, has been banned from younger students in a Texas school district.The district, Lamar consolidated independent school district, near Houston, took action against the image late last year when it removed a section about Virginia from its online learning platform used by third through fifth graders, typically encompassing ages eight to 11, sparking a row, Axios reported on Thursday...The group said that after it filed a public records request, the school district acknowledged that “Virginia” had been removed from the website due to the lesson violating the school board’s local library policy banning any “visual depictions or illustrations of frontal nudity” in elementary school library material...In 1901, Virginia officials ordered that the depiction of the bared breast be included to show clearly that the figure of Virtus was female."
The idea that a third grader should not see a woman's bare breast, or that a fifth grade boy who has access to Pornhub on his phone should not see "full frontal nudity" is totally ludicrous.
Addendum: see also the adjacent post "A Denmark television program shows children the varieties of the naked human body."
Next Onion headline: "Texas Bans Potty Training Until Age 13 Lest Children See Their Own Naughty Bits"
ReplyDeletethese the same people that are so hung up on, and incapable of separating nudity and sex, that they wrote ‘art shouldn’t get a free nudity pass just because it’s art’ and didn’t even stop for a second to realise how bonkers that is. the article goes to some (barely readable) lengths to elaborate on its point, but it really says it all in the headline: nudity is a big ‘despite’, to be sceptical of, and best to be avoided completely. it is inherently tainted, even when ‘in the service of good’. as you said, ludicrous.
ReplyDeletearchived link to source because there’s no need to give some conservative rag more views: https://archive.is/ygnT3
raphael
This shouldn't be ludicrous. But in today's world it is. After all, most kids have already been exposed to all sorts of nudity. They have...but they shouldn't have been.
ReplyDeleteIn earlier years, it would have been completely understandable that we did not want children exposed to such things (even though the Virginian flag is, by any reasonable standard, utterly innocuous).
We only mock this now because we have allowed so much water under the bridge that it really is all but too late to do anything against the over-sexualization of children's minds. And that is heartbreaking.
Had we held to a stronger standard, our children would be "protected" from sexualized exposure longer. And, frankly, although I learned about the birds and the bees at the age of 8, I wish I hadn't known about it for several more years.
Consider this - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/world/europe/denmark-children-nudity-sex-education.html (I'll blog it later)
Deletealternatively, one could accept the reality that nor is nudity ‘sexualised exposure’, neither is it harmful. you know, get with the empirical evidence. no matter how you stand on religion and its practise, insisting that something is harmful despite it somehow not causing harm should nevertheless be a bare minimum expectation.
Deleteor, at the very least, one could obsess less over an issue that, if we want to forego calling imagined will be forced to call it completely irrelevant, and maybe work first on the very real issue that your kids are regularly getting exposed to lethal doses of airborne lead at school and all you do is ‘shooter drills’.
raphael
After all, most kids have already been exposed to all sorts of nudity. They have...but they shouldn't have been.
DeleteWhy not? What's wrong with nudity? After all, they see themselves nude. And presumably some of their family.
The problem is that too many people equate nudity and sex. But these are not the same thing. Nudity is nothing more than the natural state of the human body. There can not be anything wrong with that, unless you want to teach self-hate. Nobody can avoid seeing themselves naked.
Sex, on the other hand, has to do with hormones and making love. That is entirely something else.
Something, quite frankly, that young children are barely aware off. Just like they're barely aware of other adult subjects such as finance, international law, poker rules and microtechnology.
So really nothing much to worry about.
And yes, Stan's link.
PS: I would like to argue that even sex is nothing to be worried about. Because sex is something very different from porn. But again, a lot of people think sex and porn are the same thing. Which is also nonsense. But I'm getting off-topic.
South Park kinda explained things well:
https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/81y5rv/south-park-when-a-man-a-woman-fall-in-love
https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/rnob49/south-park-onto-double-penetration-boys
Best SP episode ever. Or was it two?
>After all, most kids have already been exposed to all sorts of nudity. They have...but they shouldn't have been.
Delete>Why not? What's wrong with nudity? After all, they see themselves nude. And presumably some of their family.
I can't speak for the original poster, but when I read that statement I immediately assumed it referred to the significant problem of sexual abuse and assault of children, at least in the USA.
I immediately assumed it referred to the significant problem of sexual abuse and assault of children
DeleteSexual abuse has nothing to do with nudity. That's why it's called sexual abuse and not nudity. Different words mean different things and should not be conflated.
Nudity is not an invitation for abuse.
One of the most important Texas flags is the San Jacinto battle flag. It sits behind the Speaker's rostrum in the Texas House of Representatives. Brought by a group of soldiers from Tennessee during the Texas Revolution, it has an exposed breast just like the Virginia sample.
ReplyDeleteor that a fifth grade boy who has access to Pornhub on his phone should not see "full frontal nudity" is totally ludicrous
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, you must live in a free blue state. Nobody in Texas, including 5 year old boys, has access to Pornhub.
https://zealousadvocate.com/resources/texas/why-is-pornhub-banned/
Imagine if small children, I dunno, squirted through someone's crotch and then immediately were shown and shoved at a gigantic woman's bare breast. That would scar them for life. They'd never get over it.
ReplyDeleteCensoring that flag is nuts, imo. This reminds me of a relevant quote from Alan Jacobs: "when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts."
ReplyDeleteTempest in a C cup.
ReplyDeleteJust a little reminder: Tennessee is the Mother State of Texas.
ReplyDelete? AaronS, I'm not sure what your point is. "Mother State" in the sense of... And this is important, why?
ReplyDeleteNot arguing - just wondering where this comment is heading. If Tennessee is worse than Texas (?), does that make Texas less bad?