Gaspode5

I was going to update my journal with an apology for my long absence. At the end of the summer I went home for a few weeks. Shortly after I came back we had a string of visitors which kept me busy for another few weeks. Work has been hellish and my already low opinion of Adobe is even lower.

Then something else happened.

Some weeks ago I logged in to DeviantArt and found a message that said “Your deviation, Summertime Memories, has been deleted as a violation of Deviant Art Policy”. It went on to tell me, “Based on a staff review prompted by a filed complaint it has determined that the model(s) displayed in this material in a nude, erotic or sexually compromising manner in this photograph appear to be under the age of eighteen (18).”

My immediate reaction was to turn my back on the site and never come back. I felt violated. Oh, I know I broke the dA rule that forbids nudity in people under eighteen. Had they just told me that, I would have accepted it. However, to me this image was so innocent that I barely registered the nudity as such. That somebody else had looked at it, only seen the nudity and found it offensive...

Some years ago I was searching dA for something, I don’t remember what. But in the midst of my search I came across a picture of a man, naked, on his hands and knees with his backside towards the camera as he cheekily looked over his shoulder, meeting the eyes of the viewer. His testicles were tied together with string and I swear I could see his prostrate.

The picture surprised me but that was all. ‘Whatever floats your boat’, I thought and moved on. What galls me is we live in a society with such backwards morality that a picture of a father playing in a river with his, admittedly, naked three year old daughter is considered more offensive than a naked bloke showing you his lower intestine.

Somebody looked at my niece playing with her father, with the summer sun in her hair, and in their petty, narrow, bigoted and very, very dirty mind, they only saw something provocative. Now, that’s fucking twisted.

So here is the image again, closely cropped so no one will be upset, tempted or soiled by the naked flank of a laughing three year old girl.

On a side note: Allowing yourself to be offended is a choice. We have created such a touchy society that people get offended at the drop of a hat. Stephen Fry once said “...Being offended is a whine...” We are now adjusting ourselves to the lowest common non-whining denominator and one day our world will be so inoffensive, so bland, it will be like living inside a civil servant’s pencil drawer.