Day Books: 23-Jun-95 (Fri) 17:40 - Freeman Lake

This will be my last Dream Walk entry on Brucilla before packing it all up in the Adm. Gracie to drive down to DC tomorrow. (It is also my second entry generated in HTML for direct posting on my WWW HomeBoy Pages.) There are two things that I want to do -- make place-holders for some scans I did today, and to talk about my feelings toward this "Pornography on the Internet" issue.

I scanned the last of the photos of Greenfield Family members today, and found some Harrods stuck inside the frame of one. Since I'm archiving the "raw" scans on the Internet, these anchors will help me remember what they are when I finally get some Web pages on-line for them.

• Vincent Greenfield - my mother's father
• A very young Thelma Greenfield - my mother's mother
• Thelma & Vincent Greenfield - my only photo of the two of them together
• Hugh & Thelma Greenfiled - my mother's brother and their mother
• Me and my sister - circa 1957
• Me and my sister - 24-Jul-81
• My father at age 10
• Prentice & Lauran Pollard - My cousin Lynda's children (ages 5½ years and 3½ months)

I've been using the "NoNudes" icon as a warning on my WEB pages when there will be URLs to GIF files of "immodestly clothed people" or partially nude women or men. As a further concession to my own current moral values, I am not allowing access to "immodest images of questionable taste".

In case you haven't read much about me, I am an American born Muslim (raised Roman Catholic) who used to take pictures of naked women for a living. I gave up photography and the objectification of women (and became a software professional) over ten years before I embraced Islam.

I have been able to rationalize my current attitudes between modesty in Islamic culture and immodesty in American culture by the simple conviction that "I'll find out on Judgement Day if I've done the Right Thing or not."

So, here's the dilema. On the one hand, Islam denounces "portraiture" on several grounds, including "pride" and that "graven image" thing. Pictures of immodestly clothed women are strictly haram, which is, like, Totally-Burn-in-Hell-For-Eternity-Forbidden. OTOH, Islamic "modesty" for women is your traditional Nun's habit - everything covered except the face and hands, loose and baggy so as to conceal the figure.

On the other hand, Western Culture has varying degrees of tolerance for female nudity, based on Biblical art. Since Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden of Eden, artist have portrayed them as such for centuries. The "fig leave" that cover their genitals, and Eve covering her nipples, have led to an acceptance of pictures of human nudity so long as the "Naughty Bits" are covered. This is refered to by one author as "The Adult Coinspiracy", implying that some things should be kept from children until they are old enough. OTOH, mothers in Europe and America can be seen nursing their babies in public, so "nipples" are permitted to be shown in paintings and on statues in public venues, such as "Liberty" partially draped in a flag with one breast exposed. (There are several paintings like that in the U.S. Capital.)

Now we have this talk of restricting access to "feel-thee peek-shurz" on the Internet. Yeah, like that's gonna happen! Well, actually, it might, and I've got a few ideas about how it should be done.

First, you create a category called "immodest". You agree that much of what is seen on TV today (full nudity from behind in a "shower" scene, for example) is immodest, as are some Public Works of Art and Biblical Paintings. You don't want your children to see them until they're older. (This category also includes National Geographic Magazines, which show female breasts as long as they are not white breasts.) The point is that "nudity in the appropriate context" is not "dirty".

Now, just because something is "immodest" does not mean that it is "obscene" or "pornographic". Let's not try to argue what those words mean, but let's just agree that (a) there is "art", (b) there is "smut", (b) "immodest" means "art" that is not "smut", but that some people don't want it in their homes.

In a nutshell, you put a "tag" on files that reflects a "Modesty Content":

• None (default) - No nudity or partial nudity.
• Immodest - Partial or full nudity, but no "naughty bits" except in anthropological context (e.g., PBS programming).
• Erotic - The intent is to arouse sexual feelings (e.g., Playboy Magazine centerfolds)

Notice that the list does not include "pornography". That's because it doesn't matter how finely you try to distinguish "erotic" - if it has genitals, it's erotic, regardless of age, gender, or what's being done with them or not. Everybody agrees that children under the age of puberty should not have access to seeing it!!

All we need to do is define a "buffer zone" between "modest" and "immodesty", and I'm willing to use my previous work (which includes some very objectionable but highly valued works), and my perspective as a former Roman Catholic and a repentant Sunni Muslim, to try to set up some guidelines and standards that we can all live with under the First Amendment and the Watchful Eye of The Almighty.

-=DAH=- 23-Jun-95