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My High School CS Homework Is the Centerfold
theodp writes: To paraphrase the J. Geils Band, Maddie Zug's high school computer science homework is the centerfold. In a Washington Post op-ed, Zug, a student at the top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, argues that a centerfold does not belong in the classroom. "I first saw a picture of Playboy magazine's Miss November 1972 a year ago as a junior at TJ," Zug explains. "My artificial intelligence teacher told our class to search Google for Lena Soderberg (not the full image, though!) and use her picture to test our latest coding assignment...Soderberg has a history with computer science. In the 1970s, male programmers at the University of Southern California needed to test their image-processing algorithm. They scanned what they had handy: the centerfold of a Playboy magazine. Before long, the image became a convention in industry and academia."
(Wikipedia has a nice background, too.)
We demand that you CHANGE EVERYTHING! Everywhere! In every thing that you enjoy or spend time doing, you must alter it for our benefit! Fuck you and fuck your history and fuck your interests!
The Mesa Teapot is an outrage to hard-working lower and middle-class developers too. To use such an upper-crust elite symbol as a teapot, partially a symbol of British oppression, is offensive to me.
This is dumb. Lena headshot is the standard image for virtually every image processing publication in the past 25 years. It's just a headshot for crap's sake.
Some people just like to complain.
Grow up.
Its a woman face and she's very proud of her picture. If there is anything about the image and the way its being used that bothers you, YOU have a problem and need to shut your uppity ass up.
You will not survive in the world if you unable to look at the face of a smiling woman in a photograph. You need to be evaluated. You aren't principled you're an uppity drama queen that no one is going to give a shit about in 2-4 years.
To take that a step further, if the naked female form bothers you in general, you also have serious issues and one has to wonder how you managed to cope with yourself this long in life? Or is it just jealousy?
Theres pretty much no way you come out of this without making it clear that your just being an uppity cunt. I presume the statue david and Venus shouldn't be in your lesson plan either?
If this post offends you, then it also applies to you, so just consider that when replying.
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No she doesn't. ITS A FACE, not a nude body.
The picture used WAS JUST HER FACE, if you want to see the full image you don't get it from the first Google search with Safe search on. You have to go out of your way to see nudity, and if they want to see nudity on the Internet, she's pretty fucking low quality nudity. A much less targeted Google search will yeild 18 year old boys HUNDREDS OF FREE PORN SITES ...
They don't give a flying fuck about Lena.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I say this as someone with a daughter in STEM.
It's a portrait. A head shot. Not a Playboy pinup. Now if the centerfold was actually pinned up in the classroom I'd have some serious objections.
What would you rather use? The whole point was to use a human image instead of a test pattern.
If we've gotten to the point that refusing to use a face because the person is naked out of the shot we're so far down the rabbit hole it's ridiculous. With that theory, we can't ever use any picture of anyone in any circumstances because they're - GASP - naked under their clothes.
The only argument she has is that they were told to search for the image, which inevitably would result in them finding the naked image. The instructor should have given them that image along with a few others to use.
We're a sexual species. If we can't ever talk about sex while we preen ourselves to look good no wonder we're so screwed up.
Agreed. There are a bazillion more suitable images one should use nowadays for *technical* reasons to legitimately test compression and processing algorithms. Yes, I'm aware of the history. Not all traditions are worthy of being preserved. Let's move on, and leave it as an interesting historical footnote.
Are people too easily offended by this? Absolutely. After all, the top half of the image is no more risqué than many covers on modern fashion magazine. Some people just don't like the fact that it was an image from a men's magazine, which is naturally associated with a female-hostile work environment. But why go out of your way to offend people when it's really not necessary, and a complete distraction from what you're trying to do anyhow?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
So, full disclosure, I am gay guy and most of my friends are women. They (we) ogle pictures of sexy guys in magazines and post them on message boards etc. all the time.
The problem here is not female nudity.
The problem is not nudity.
The problem is a RELIGIOUS legacy of people being ashamed of their bodies. Women, especially, are taught to feel ashamed of their bodies.
Note that the complaint isn't from the subject, or the photographer, or the publisher.
It is from women who have been taught to be so ashamed of their own bodies that they have to project that shame on other women who are more proud of their bodies.
These are the same women who tell a plus-size (that's "chubby") semi-pro model friend of mine to stop posting pictures of her in sexy clothing all over her Facebook feed, because there's something wrong with being proud of your body and ugh it's disgusting and blah blah all sorts of bullshit which comes down to, "My daddy/mommy told me this was bad so I'd feel bad doing it so you can't do it either."
Grow the fuck up.
And guys who think that such images are an excuse to objectify women are behaving equally awfully, but this is not the problem right here.
It is not a standard head shot. It is a sexualized model. If a woman is looking at you in a sexually suggestive way, you don't have to see her naked body to realize she is looking at you in a suggestive way. Twenty years of cheap digital cameras and we still have this shit. Damn.
. But why go out of your way to offend people when it's really not necessary, and a complete distraction from what you're trying to do anyhow?
The problem with that is *something* is *always* offensive to someone. No matter what.
If I pick a male face it's offensive because I underrepresent women. If I pick a black face it's offensive because I'm a racist. If I pick an Asian female I'm sexualizing. If I pick a cute animal I'm promoting abuse. And so on and so forth.
Whatever.
If we have to limit our actions to what doesn't offend anyone at any time for any reason under any conceivable circumstances we can't ever do anything.
Honestly it's pretty tame. I was introduced to this image at university and didn't even realise where it came from until years later.
Dear diary, today I learned that a completely ordinary photo of a woman is a cause of a hostile work environment for women. Truly, living in the USA in the year 2015 must be a life of suffering. I don't even want to imagine what other horrors women must endure. Maybe, occasionally, someone even dares suggest that the world does not revolve around each of those super unique snowflakes!
My problem with the Lena image has nothing to do with the context. It has to do with the fact that it is an entirely outdated test image with poor properties to visually assess the effects of image processing algorithms. It wasn't chosen carefully (as the historical background indicates) with this purpose in mind. Retrospectively, a variety of academics have justified its suitability (e.g., the fine detail of the feathers, the texture of the hat, contrasted with the smooth skin tone; as well as the uniquely human ability to perceive minute aberrations in facial structure), but this is really a post-hoc rationalization not supported in the face of such facts as the image as it is frequently used is not even color balanced.
I'm well aware that researchers want a way to be able to compare their results with published papers from decades ago, and Lena provides an easy way to do that. But let's be honest here: it's lazy. To truly make reasonable comparisons, you'll invariably need to test algorithms against each other over a wide variety of inputs, not just a single input; therefore, the real work of implementing earlier (even if known to be relatively inefficient, outdated, or poorly performing) algorithms is a necessary part of making those comparisons.
As for the context...honestly, if you don't know what it's like to be a woman living in a male-dominated world, it's not really your place to be able to say "it's just a face" or complain about how "feminazis make a shitshow out of everything." I don't personally object to the image's content. But I absolutely understand why others would. And that's what makes the difference in maturity level.
From a purely technical POV, it's never seemed like a great test image to me. It's soft, the red channel is washed out, the blue channel is noisy, there's absolutely no green or cyan (in the sense of pixels where green is the strongest channel, or red is the weakest channel) and very little blue.
Also, they cropped out her knockers and bum.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Hi.
Computer vision scientist here.Yes, I've taught such a practical as a postdoc, so no I had no control over the content. Yes Lena was used. Sooner or later someone figures out where the image is from and everyone, well the guys, all have a good laugh.
So yes it does create a hostile environment. I'm afraid that your armchair logic and reasoning are going to come in second to those who have not only witnessed it, but been a part of the whole thing first hand.
The new guy who took over thankfully changed the images because he rightly realised that Lena was in poor taste and was inviting problems that are very easy to avoid.
I look forward to receiving replies on how my actual real personal experience was somehow wrong.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"Imagine your mother looking directly at you in the same way. Would you be uncomfortable?"
Yeah, trying to use that specious argument makes you look idiotic. That's probably why you teach community college.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Are people too easily offended by this? Absolutely. After all, the top half of the image is no more risqué than many covers on modern fashion magazine.
If I were a K-12 teacher, I wouldn't even use a model from a magazine at the grocery store checkout. Doing so would suggest that I endorse the look of the model, as an authority figure, which I don't. The model's look is is usually the latest lame culture fad. This affects young girls more than you know, so why even bring that shit to the classroom when there are zillions of easily available appropriate alternatives.
You must have conniption fits when you go to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or the Los Angeles County Art Museum's Egyptian section. Think of the children (TM)....Er... no, if you think of the children, you're a pervert.
Join the real world, please.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
> teenage girls are not the biggest fans of pornography sites
Shows how much you know.
in the early 80's i started working in the photofinishing industry
custom color and black and white HAND enlarging and such
lenna was one of the KODAK standard test images
almost EVERY book on photography has her image ( the G RATED VERSION!!! )
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
0h come on, you could say similar about the handsome/pretty models used in workstation/office furniture magazine.
I'm naked behind my clothes. Just a kind notice in advance, should you ever see me or picture of me. I haven't found a way around having a body and taking it with me in public yet.
Bert
The pose is a face, a little bit of bare shoulder, hair, and a hat. That kind of exposure (ie, the shoulder) is common throughout the United States anywhere that's warm enough to dress that way. There are entire fashions dedicated to off-shoulder blouses and dresses for women. Women of all ages, including minors, are free to dress that way, and men and women of all ages, including minors, need to learn how to control themselves when something as sexual as a shoulder is displayed.
You want to not be tantalized or enticed? Move to a country that requires women to cover themselves. Otherwise learn to control your base instincts, you animal. If she's not displaying her sexual characteristics then your being excited is definitely your problem, not anyone else's.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Honestly it's pretty tame.
"Pretty tame" is not the same as appropriate. The image itself is not offensive, but the comments, jokes, and snickers from the teenage boys will be offensive, and will happen. There are plenty of alternative images available, and there is no pedagogical reason to raise the issue of pornography in a high school CS classroom.
You must have conniption fits when you go to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or the Los Angeles County Art Museum's Egyptian section.
Those are not for children, and they don't require mandatory attendance.
We had field trips to the Detroit Institute of Arts nearly every year throughout elementary school after 4th grade or so, and occasionally later in school, and yes, we did see the racy stuff from the 16th-18th centuries. The trips weren't manadatory, but I don't recall anybody getting opted out by their parents. But in the 70's you could dress your kid as a 50lb bag of weed for halloween and send them to their 3rd grade class and people would say "how cute!" rather than sending them to prison as an adult and confiscating your home.
What the devil do you want, an image of Golda Meir? Lena is looking over her bare shoulder at the camera. She looks healthy and attractive. She's even wearing a hat!
Her mouth isn't open, her tongue isn't visible, her eyes aren't half-closed, she's not gesturing "come hither" with her finger, etc., etc.
If that image is sexually suggestive to you, the problem is squarely between your ears.
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That same bullshit happens no matter what you're looking at. They're teenagers. They'll see genitalia anywhere they look for more than 10 minutes.
You'll note I left gender off of that... because gender doesn't matter much, here.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
But teenage girls are not the biggest fans of pornography sites
This Victorian attitude that centers on the idea that women don't like sex just needs to die. Teenage humans are fans of pornography sites. Different strokes for different folks, of course. When a man and a woman both get drunk enough to lower their standards enough to actually get laid, this is not "rape culture", dammit, because men and women both are interested in sex. It's not "lie back and think of Britain" for fuck's sake.
Only from TFS did I learn where this image came from: having first seen it in an age where 16-bit (and even 8-bit) color palettes were the norm, I just assumed it was chosen for the purple feather, the details of feather and hatband and hair (which emphasize compression artifacts) and the human face, which we're very good at seeing distortions in. It just seemed like a challenging photo to compress in the days when jpg was too heavyweight for most PCs.
Still seems like a perfectly reasonable test image.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That same bullshit happens no matter what you're looking at. They're teenagers.
Yes, teenagers will engage in adolescent behavior. That does not mean it should be initiated and encouraged by the instructor.
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc? My guess is about 100%. Even if you disagree that this creates a hostile environment, it is still an unnecessary distraction from learning about image processing.
The problem with that is *something* is *always* offensive to someone.
Except that pornography is offensive to about 50% of the human race.
If you think that, you really need to start meeting actually women instead of fantazing about them.
The Venus de Milo is showing her breasts. Michaelangelo's David has his cock out.
Countless renaissance works depict nudes.
When they excavated Pompei they found everything from dildos to pornography.
Hell, I was in the National Gallery a while back and it had a famous exhibit of a sculpted goat being penetrated by a man. Just there, in the museum. There was a warning sign that that gallery contains such works, but that was about it. Kids were roaming freely through it and past it and looking at it. No parent did anything more than "Yes, it's very funny, keep moving" and a sly smile between them all.
Nudity is slowly being outlawed, which is ridiculous, given that sex is just as much at the front of the agenda as it ever has been. I'm not naturist and I don't want to go around showing my body (especially not my body, actually) but, fuck, it's a breast or a leg or even a cock, get over it.
There's a line of obscenity, but it's not the very existence or a bare depiction of a nude body. And certainly not the Lena image which isn't pornographic in any way (the others in the series, possibly). You see worse in any historical painting, on TV adverts, and let's not actually get into the dramas, and movies, and videogames, and what they contain because, fuck, we'll be here forever.
I agree it's probably not the best thing to KEEP using but it's used because it has certain properties that aid in the judgement of imagery. Sure there are other images. But you're an adult. It's an adult woman, barely nude. Grow up.
And in any European country you see worse on the top shelf of every single newsagent, and not even in the "pornographic" section. Just things like the men's magazine's front covers.
We can never outgrow wanting to look at beautiful people, male or female, but we can sure as hell outgrow trying to ban it.
Fuck, there was a public protest in London the other month over the banning of depiction of face-sitting, so thousands gathered outside the Houses of Parliament and demonstrated what was about to be banned. We have bigger issues than a picture of a woman.
His rhetoric question is also a bona fide straw man. I would feel uncomfortable yes and having sex with my mother would make me off the scale uncomfortable (both not just because she's dead). With another woman on the other hand, not so much, but still depending on who she is.
So, different people may have different feelings when it comes to a person or a picture thereof. Someone who only digs blondes or is gay may be like "meh"; no complaints were mentioned, if any. Other people get off on shoes.
Probably it was not too much too ask that the teacher had offered alternatives so as to increase the likelihood that an even greater number in the class like doing their assignment.
You can make a problem of anything. Look for a person. Why is it a man/woman? OK, one of each. Why is it a person of that skin color? Why is it a person of that age? Pffff.
Bert
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc?
If the boys can't control themselves, they should be disciplined.
Well at some point these girls will have to learn those hard lessons that reality doesn't nor shouldn't revolve around them.
Yes, at some point they will learn that. But high school CS class is not the appropriate place. The instructor should focus on image processing algorithms, not teaching the (few) girls that, hey, the world is sexist and they should just get used to it.
I can introduce you to a bisexual necrophiliac and you can argue the point with her.
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc? My guess is about 100%. .
Not all of us grew up on Vulcan. On the planet earth that probability is 100% that teenagers tease each other about their sexual characteristics.
BTW: Does that sensitive touchy feely BS get you laid more than once every 7 years ?
No she doesn't. ITS A FACE, not a nude body.
The picture used WAS JUST HER FACE, if you want to see the full image you don't get it from the first Google search with Safe search on. You have to go out of your way to see nudity, and if they want to see nudity on the Internet, she's pretty fucking low quality nudity. A much less targeted Google search will yeild 18 year old boys HUNDREDS OF FREE PORN SITES ...
They don't give a flying fuck about Lena.
So are you in favour of prayer in the classroom? Having endless religious speakers and abstinence only advocates come in to speak?
Because your comment suggests you think it's perfectly appropriate for teachers to push their personal views on the classroom. I take the converse view, they don't get to preach their beliefs and we don't get to preach ours. And yes, using an image you know many students will find offensive or threatening just because you think they should feel otherwise is preaching.
I stole this Sig
Or c) any message will be hostile to somebody, if they really try.
I think his rhetoric question was just to show that the picture has a sexual notion. I am not so "sensitive" (and veeeryyy against modern "feminism"/"SJW's"/etc!), and i agree with you that "you can make a problem of anything", but using a picture with a sexual notion (even if not explicit) in a CS class (instead of a neutral) is inappropriate i think - many (if not most) young girls will not be so comfortable in such a situation while in class with some teenage boys.
Why wouldn't they be? Their (young girls) magazines are filled with scantily clad women in suggestive poses. So are magazines for young men. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that both young men and young women think women are more beautiful than men. I'm inclined to agree with them.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Now you're making shit up. For a visual algorithm test nobody would complain that the person on the image wasn't diverse enough. It's a test of an image, not a representation of the student body.
Hell, your entire basis for argument is a contradiction: if the picture is such a small issue that anyone who claims it offends them should shut the fuck up, then the logical conclusion isn't that the picture should be defended to the death by all right-thinking people, the logical conclusion is that the picture is such a small issue that all right-thinking adults should not care one way or the other about said picture. In order to live with the other people who make up most of the world the picture should be sidelined.
You're probably going to assume I'm implying you're racist, or sexist, or evil -ist. I'm not. I'm calling you immature and childish. As an adult human being you have to deal with everyone, including people whom you think are oversensitive. If you choose to fight them on every issue you will spend all your time fighting. And you'll be fighting people who make perfectly good friends and allies. You are wasting your time, and you are wasting your life; to defend a contradiction. Grow up.
If someone finds a picture of a face offensive or threatening, then they've got problems no amount of preaching is going to fix.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Actually I agree with you. The picture is irrelevant. I'm not fighting for it. My whole point is that if each and every one of us goes out of our way to be offended by something, then nothing will get done.
I remember one of my profs introduced a guest speaker as a long-time personal friend of his, spoke of her professional and academic credentials at length, and mentioned in passing that she was the mother of 3 children and a wonderful cook and he enjoyed going to her house and talking to her over dinner.
One of my female classmates got incredibly offended by this, to the point that she wanted to file a formal complaint of sexism against the prof, for mentioning that his long time friend knew how to cook. This was particularly absurd in that this was an urban studies class where we talked at length about the social implications of modern cities, and being able to go to a friend's house for dinner had been discussed in the class.
There are people who simply look to be offended by something.
Computer vision scientist here.Yes, I've taught such a practical as a postdoc, so no I had no control over the content. Yes Lena was used. Sooner or later someone figures out where the image is from and everyone, well the guys, all have a good laugh.
So yes it does create a hostile environment. [...] I look forward to receiving replies on how my actual real personal experience was somehow wrong.
Not wrong, you just leapt to the wrong conclusion. It's not the picture that creates a hostile environment. It's bullshit puritan attitudes towards sexuality that you, right now, are helping to promote.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
She's going to faint once she sees some of the images in her art history class.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Is everything black or white for you, no intermediate shades?
The slippery slope is not a fallacy, it's a real thing and once you slide down one, it's a long trip back up.
However, it is easy to see how a sexualized image sends a certain message to men and women in an STEM environment.
Yeah, and that message is "sex is not evil, contrary to what your child-raping priest may have said"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not saying whether it's a good idea or a bad one, but isn't the fact that it's a defacto standard, sort of the objectors' point? Yes, you're right: it's a long-established tradition, with deep roots going back to when the computer room was a total sausagefest.
That's why it's not a problem. It wasn't chosen to be offensive.
Changing the culture is an explicit part of a lot of peoples' agenda, because nobody really likes the damn computer room sausagefest (we just don't know what to do about it, which is why I really have no idea whether or not the picture is really a problem).
It's not a problem, and I know what to do about it! In this particular case, anyway. Just add in a similar photograph of a man's face, cropped from a similar and equivalent picture of a man. People photograph men, too. Sometimes with no clothes on. Yes, I know, it's shocking, but it's true. Men aren't as likely to wear makeup, so you can take the opportunity to talk about the differences in processing of the two classes of image instead of pretending that there are no differences between men and women at all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's like saying "many people try to force others into doing stupid things, so anything I want to try to force you into is good, right and holy."
Some dumb-ass school rule stands as absolutely no legitimate justification for pop-culture repression of personal and consensual choice.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There are times to tell the offended to go away, and there are times where you live with it.
In this case, since it is actually high school, you're much better off living with it because there are precisely zero school boards in the history of the universe who would defend a teacher from a) the feminists, and b) the Evangelicals. And using a vaguely porn-related photo as official class materials (when you could use fucking jelly beans) is gonna get you in trouble with both.
At higher levels you can get away with it, but since most CompSci departments are actively trying to recruit female students and a small (but significant proportion) of the female population will decide that CompSci clearly isn't for them if their assignments are about Playboy pictures (and be honest: if the class figures out where the Lena picture came from one of the 19-year-old-boys is gonna make a juvenile crack about how cool it is to work with PORN), so using it for undergrad is probably not a wise choice either.
The big problem is it's easily replaced, and not terribly professional. Better pictures are available. Better pictures are easily found. If you're a grad student writing an academic paper you can make a case that you need it to compare your tool with the ones other people have written papers about, but if you're not a grad student you really don't need it.
OTOH, the lady your prof brought in was not being unprofessional, and was not easily replaced. Thus your female classmate was easily dissuaded from making a big deal out of a little deal.
With the same reasoning, schools in Europe are taking the holocaust out of the history lessons, to avoid nasty remarks from muslim kids in the classroom.
That is a false analogy. The holocaust is an important part of history. Using images derived from porn is not an important part of learning about image processing. Using a different image would not diminish the lesson in the least.
you can keep saying it is. but the truth is only in YOUR head is that true (well YOUR head, and all the other imbeciles out there complaining about a headshot)
Be thankful its only a headshot and not a money shot
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
How exactly does it create a hostile environment?
For bonus points, explain how nudity in classic art (paintings, sculptures, etc) does not create a hostile environment in the classroom.
You don't even want to go there.
Poses in Cosmo and Vogue can often times be more suggestive than the ones in Playboy. Your precious princess is already being sexualized even without bringing pornography into it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
And part of growing up is learning to not let the comments, jokes, and snickers get you. Stop being an apologist for stupidity.
I looked at the original full image. In that image, there is no part of Lena's body that is not on public display on beaches around the world.
And - even if there were - what of it? Do the people who are offended by the image not possess the same body parts? I mean, WTF? Don't they see all of that and more, every time they bathe?
Oh, I think I get it. They don't like their own bodies, how can we expect them to like images of bodies that are in any way similar to their own?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Short answer: Reproducibility. The image is one of several which have been commonly used in the literature for decades.
Also, it's actually, it's a really good photo for testing various types of computer vision algorithms - complex backgrounds (including a mirror), varying textures and colors (e.g. the hat feather thing), and a simple grayscale conversion works well.
.: Semper Absurda
I'm seeing the context of the "Lena" image as being a standard test for image processing.
There's no technical reason for that to be true. It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines, its continued usage suggests that hasn't really changed. I don't think that's a message you want to send about a technical field.
As for art, a lot of it appears to have a sexualized component when it was created (some of it very explicit), but in the context of a class, it's being studied for its place in art history.
That's art, the sexualized component is part of the statement, a certain degree of controversy, offense, or shock actually adds to the artistic value.
I don't think the standard computer vision test image should be making provocative artistic statements.
So what am I missing? Tell me how a cropped Lena picture is any worse than (say) Goya's The Nude Maja, which Wikipedia notes was probably created to hang in a private collection, and whose subject, just like the Lena photograph, looks directly at the viewer (and unlike the Lena photograph, "Nude Maja" tends not to be cropped).
It's not any worse. But neither image should be used as a standard test image.
I stole this Sig
The context for Michelangelo's male nudes is he was very, very probably a homosexual and thus probably enjoyed painting, sculpting and viewing penises. The context for classical Roman nude art was a society that was (relatively) sexually open, with sexually explicit pictures and sculptures not uncommon.
By arguing that a centerfold is fundamentally different, you are projecting your puritanism onto the art of the classical world.
What do you think is the probability, that because an image associated with pornography was used, that the (few) girls in the class were subjected by their male classmates to jokes about tits, asses, pussies, etc? My guess is about 100%.
What is the probability that you are just making shit up that has no bearing on reality? My guess is about 100%. The subject of naked women came up a few times while I was in school, but not once do I recall anyone reacting by pouncing on the nearest female and suggesting she has nice tits too (or whatever.) I'm sure it has happened somewhere, sometime, but to claim this is a universal reaction among is worryingly delusional. I heard many more jokes about the size of male penises in classical art, coming from the females slightly more than the males.
This exact same line of reasoning is being used at this very moment to remove all pictures and mentions of pigs in children's stories and textbooks in the United Kingdom because some Muslims might be offended.
Yeah, it's "no big deal" to change this stuff, but it's a worrying precedent. Some of us are of the opinion that, while Muslims and anti-pornography feminists and others are fully entitled to their beliefs, we shouldn't be wasting ANY of our time, money and energy kowtowing to their taboos.
Look up the phrase "paternalistic". What you're saying is that women are so weak, so feckless, so lacking in agency and personal strength, that they can't handle their own media/em made by women, marketed to women, and consumed by women.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Teenage girls are not pure and fragile spun glass vestal virgins, they're just as filthy and often far more abusive and toxic than teenage boys.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Women currently have a 2:1 advantage in STEM fields, are nearly 2/3rds of college graduates and even more than that in some STEM disciplines, utterly dominate virtually every measure of academic success and achievement we have at pretty much every level, and are on average only a third or less of the homeless, and are virtually none of workplace fatalities.
If we live in a "male dominated world" men are doing a really shitty job of oppressing women.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
and can even be unsafe for her, depending on the particular young men who happen to be in the class.
No, no it fucking won't and the fact you're even saying that is testimony to how astoundingly sexist our society has become. The rate of sexual assault in the general population is 7.6 in 1000 and even less in academic settings, and when you don't specifically redefine the term "rape" to exclude female perpetrators the stats prove women commit nearly half of all rapes in the US.
It's astronomically more likely that any man in that class will be violently attacked or die just trying to earn a paycheck than any woman will be attacked.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The computer room isn't a sausagefest because people inside try to keep women out, it's a sausagefest because it's the ghetto that people outside shove unattractive or non-conforming men into. You want to change the sausagefest stop demonizing the men in it. You can't keep screaming "sausagefest! neckbeards! fuckbois!" and act like you're not the origin of that stereotype.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
It's just a tradition and not a particularly proud one since it implies the field was started by guys reading porn magazines
As a "tradition", there is surely some value in being able to compare current vs .historical efforts to analyze the same image.
True, but I'm not sure it's worth the baggage.
Also, you are implying (very un-subtly) that there is something inherently shameful, or at least "non-proud" in guys looking at porn. I would call that prudish and potentially misandric.
Not quite, I'd say there's something inherently shameful about inserting porn into a technical field not caring or realizing that there's people who won't want to view it in a professional setting. I would call that asshole-ish.
I stole this Sig
You're wrong but even if you were not, the fact remains that there's *nothing* wrong with "sexualized images." If you think teens in first world countries haven't seen "sexualized images" far more sexually explicit than the backside and reflected nipples of a woman in a tastefully shot vintage nude photograph, you're living under a very large and naive rock.
No where in any of this is there any hint that there was a parent that complained or even supported the complaint.
What is the submitter's beef? Or cheese cake, or whatever the current slang is? Or does he/ she/ it/ they not actually have enough of a complaint to express what they're complaining about?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"