Let’s face it. Book banners and art-haters base their disgust on their own sexuality. The first image is what right-wing haters want to see. Humanists and art lovers prefer the second image. Why?
Ironic of you to denigrate the Christian religion when Michelangelo's greatest masterpieces were comissioned for and by Catholic popes. And contrary to your misinformed opinion, works depicting the beauty of the human body were praised by many Christian Neoplatonists for demonstrating the God created beauty of the human physique. But of course it's much easier to brand all conservatives as philistines, despite the fact that high art was made by and for conservatives.
Katie, I’m hoping you misread what I said. First, I’m Christian and Catholic. I was responding to recent articles about Republican-maga Mothers for Liberty in Florida and elsewhere who are banning books with nude art. There have been many articles about The David because they have heard about the statue: they in all likelihood aren’t as smart or sophisticated as you or anyone with an art or history background. I’m not talking about all conservatives—just a fringe of haters. Thanks for your honest response. I hope you’ll re-read it.
It's disheartening to see such valuable pieces criticized without understanding the depth of their historical and artistic significance. Keep championing the love for art and its timeless legacy! Your eloquent defence of art and the appreciation for the human form is truly inspiring.
Diane, this was perfectly written. I grew up in the South and the hangups were there then so it definitely wasn’t due to these beautiful works of art, books that talked of anything sexual were on the shelves in libraries at school, as well as the city library.
The Southern Methodist church was the “wilder” church, other than the Catholic Church which was the devil’s house because they professed that they “prayed to Mary” instead of GIF and the worshipped the Pope who claimed to be God (their words not mine)
Now the small town Methodist church wants to break away from the current Methodists because of Same Sex Marriage.... for some reason they believe people will “turn gay” if “they” are allowed to marry.
This thinking, the way everyone was told for years, is the reason I no longer believe in organized religion, especially because I cannot believe in a God who would allow things that happen each and every day. Free will? BULLSHIT.
I missed the hymns and fellowship but none of the rest.
The beauty of the body is what makes humans become well adjusted. To hide anything that wants everyone to not see it? That makes people want to see it and think of sex & the body as a dirty action.
feeling organized religion is more political these days than when we grew up. Even young people who grow up attending church leave church in college never to return except on visits home.
It’s best for the evangelicals and conservatives with all of their hangups to visit Florence Italy on a Monday. The museum is closed.
With a height of 17 feet, that’s three times taller than a 5’-8” male, with everything else proportionately sized. Sorry, that’s hard math for a Florida voucher or home school education, multiplying feet and inches and proportions.
It’s the only display in the room. Almost everyone enters and is surprised by the size, then their gaze continues upward from the halfway point.
Diane K24: I wonder if Tennessee, which banished Art Spiegelman's "Maus" on grounds that the Tennessee-Right would assure us has nothing to do with their own anti-Semitism, would they also banish "Othello" for "they make the beast with two backs"?
I started reading the dialogues of Plato at circa age 17, when the beauty and humor of Plato's presentation won me forever to Philosophy and idealism and led to the liberation of my mind.
The dialogues are full of homosexual flirting.
Now, in the 1960s, for this teenager, that was an adjustment. I was going to a school run by the Christian Reformed Church, which is NOT Fundamentalist, and which has very intelligent teachings entirely in the spirit of the Calvinist Reformation, with its central teachings as so beautifully expressed in the comforting words of the 16th Century "Heidelberg Confession" (Heidelberger Bekenntnis). Through the Reformed, I learned a form of Christianity with roots in the Nicene and Apostle Creeds, and the classical confessional statements of the Calvinist Reformation (closely related to the Puritanism I studied through Nathaniel Hawthorne in his "Scarlett Letter"). This classical, Reformation Christianity was presented in a formal, academic manner with sound intellectual content.
(The Reformed Church does NOT resemble Fundamentalism.)
Through the Reformed Church and my high-school readings of Plato, I became comfortable with the homosexual flirting in his dialogues.
More importantly, because of the intellectual encouragement of the Reformed Church, my texts of Plato were uncensored and a young, teenage boy was exposed to the entire work of Plato, which led me into studies of the Renaissance and ultimately to the philosophy of Hegel and Heidegger.
The Tennessee action led me to buy "Maus" and review that memorial to the Shoah. I am thankful to Art Spiegelman.
The grounds, other than the anti-Semitism they deny, was one of the cartoons displayed Spiegelman's mom in the bathtub (mark this: As a mouse, with two little round humps, standing for her breasts). The scene was her suicide in despair after her trauma from the years of the Shoah. I can assure you, as a man with a lively imagination, and back in the '60s as an adolescent boy with a vivid imagination, in no world would I have ever had sexual thoughts or the like from Mr. Spiegelman's depiction. Indeed, to have such prurient thoughts would be highly wrong, as this was a suicide scene. And the cartoon drawing was general and not anatomical at all.
In short: Tennessee urged SPURIOUS grounds for censorship of an invaluable work of art from Art Spiegelman on the theme, "NEVER AGAIN"!
Diane K24: The House and Senate are as important as the Presidency.
And the state legislatures.
In Florida, State Senator Ileana Garcia proposed a bill to pay out of taxpayer money to Trump the amount of $5 Millions to cover his legal costs. State Senator Garcia only removed the bill from the State Senate when the Governor, the Honorable Ron DeSantis, stated he would veto it.
After a man is done, he is done...in many cases, he rolls over, mumbles, "Was that good for you, babe," and starts snoring, unaware that his lady is NOT satisfied.
Meanwhile, women have an organ whose sole purpose is to give them entertainment.
I read that Playboy Playmate Nicole Narain went on one of the TV "doctor" shows to talk about her sex addiction. I'm sure every male reader of the magazine groaned on hearing that, knowing that they would not get to meet her.
She talked about how she spent an entire day pleasuring herself, and realized she needed serious therapy.
My take was that men resent women being able to do that, and that's why they try to deny women power. And it probably dates back to Ancient Rome.
Well, back when I was learning the "facts of life," yes, I read "gentlemen's magazines," but I also read women's magazines, which had a lot of material for women on that subject.
However, as I'm an Aspergian, and have the social skills of a British Challenger tank, I rarely got intimate...I actually had a three-year dateless streak while I was in the Navy, stationed in Japan. I just gave up...the American girls on the base pursued or were pursued by Marines and Seabees, while the Japanese girls off-base said only one sentence: "No Engrish...you take me to States?"
It’s a minefield out there - for both sexes. Personally I think life would be a lot less difficult if sex work was legalized/monitored (health) and allowed. Much less crime, fewer assaults, happier people.
(Full disclosure: I spent almost all my teenage years in a county where that was acknowledged - excuse the expression - as a fact of life.) sorry about Japan experience. I suspect you’re not alone in that.
In Germany, a lot of beautiful Slavic women are abused and exploited heavily by the men (in German called their "Zuhälter" -- I'll translate this ONCE: (their pimps)).
Their Zuhälter recruit these Slavic ladies through false promises of meaningful work to integrate into the German society and become citizens. These Zuhälter abuse them and the women can never work off their "debts".
Where free, consulting adults are involved, with mutual respect and dignity, that is entirely one thing.
But I can say: There are situations in Germany that are extremely exploitative and cruel.
I wrote about the horrible life sex workers have in my piece "Don't Undress Her With Your Eyes, Undress Her With Her Consent."
I joined one of our newspaper's most empathetic female reporters as she interviewed two sex workers for our series on AIDS in Hudson County, NJ. She asked about the AIDS hazards, I asked about "the life."
The ladies told me about violence by their clients, their pimps, how much they hated both (one only enjoyed sex with her female roommate), the danger of STDs, the lack of health coverage, poverty, drug and booze addictions, and their utter lack of self-esteem.
It left me convinced that the true villains in the story are the clients and the pimps...the sex workers should be treated as victims.
It annoys me that male society glorifies them..."the hooker with the heart of gold" in movies like "Pretty Woman" and "Trading Places," or high-priced escorts and escort services like Ashley Dupree, who brought down Eliot Spitzer, and the "Mayflower Madam," Sydney Biddle Barrows, and Xaviera Hollander (real name: De Vries, she's South African), the so-called "Happy Hooker."
Nonsense.
Only one thing worse: the ruthless exploitation of teenage boys and girls. And that's where this industry starts. Boys and girls who tumble off the bus from Minnesota in Port Authority Bus Terminal, seeking to run away from abusive homes and to gain "fame and fortune."
Ironic of you to denigrate the Christian religion when Michelangelo's greatest masterpieces were comissioned for and by Catholic popes. And contrary to your misinformed opinion, works depicting the beauty of the human body were praised by many Christian Neoplatonists for demonstrating the God created beauty of the human physique. But of course it's much easier to brand all conservatives as philistines, despite the fact that high art was made by and for conservatives.
Katie, I’m hoping you misread what I said. First, I’m Christian and Catholic. I was responding to recent articles about Republican-maga Mothers for Liberty in Florida and elsewhere who are banning books with nude art. There have been many articles about The David because they have heard about the statue: they in all likelihood aren’t as smart or sophisticated as you or anyone with an art or history background. I’m not talking about all conservatives—just a fringe of haters. Thanks for your honest response. I hope you’ll re-read it.
It's disheartening to see such valuable pieces criticized without understanding the depth of their historical and artistic significance. Keep championing the love for art and its timeless legacy! Your eloquent defence of art and the appreciation for the human form is truly inspiring.
Thanks so much, Winston. Art is the lifeblood of humanity providing us hope for love of humanity.
Diane, this was perfectly written. I grew up in the South and the hangups were there then so it definitely wasn’t due to these beautiful works of art, books that talked of anything sexual were on the shelves in libraries at school, as well as the city library.
The Southern Methodist church was the “wilder” church, other than the Catholic Church which was the devil’s house because they professed that they “prayed to Mary” instead of GIF and the worshipped the Pope who claimed to be God (their words not mine)
Now the small town Methodist church wants to break away from the current Methodists because of Same Sex Marriage.... for some reason they believe people will “turn gay” if “they” are allowed to marry.
This thinking, the way everyone was told for years, is the reason I no longer believe in organized religion, especially because I cannot believe in a God who would allow things that happen each and every day. Free will? BULLSHIT.
I missed the hymns and fellowship but none of the rest.
The beauty of the body is what makes humans become well adjusted. To hide anything that wants everyone to not see it? That makes people want to see it and think of sex & the body as a dirty action.
Thank you for a wonderful post.
Thanks, Pamela! You aren’t alone in
feeling organized religion is more political these days than when we grew up. Even young people who grow up attending church leave church in college never to return except on visits home.
Exactly!!
It’s best for the evangelicals and conservatives with all of their hangups to visit Florence Italy on a Monday. The museum is closed.
With a height of 17 feet, that’s three times taller than a 5’-8” male, with everything else proportionately sized. Sorry, that’s hard math for a Florida voucher or home school education, multiplying feet and inches and proportions.
It’s the only display in the room. Almost everyone enters and is surprised by the size, then their gaze continues upward from the halfway point.
Yes, you are right!
Diane K24: I wonder if Tennessee, which banished Art Spiegelman's "Maus" on grounds that the Tennessee-Right would assure us has nothing to do with their own anti-Semitism, would they also banish "Othello" for "they make the beast with two backs"?
I started reading the dialogues of Plato at circa age 17, when the beauty and humor of Plato's presentation won me forever to Philosophy and idealism and led to the liberation of my mind.
The dialogues are full of homosexual flirting.
Now, in the 1960s, for this teenager, that was an adjustment. I was going to a school run by the Christian Reformed Church, which is NOT Fundamentalist, and which has very intelligent teachings entirely in the spirit of the Calvinist Reformation, with its central teachings as so beautifully expressed in the comforting words of the 16th Century "Heidelberg Confession" (Heidelberger Bekenntnis). Through the Reformed, I learned a form of Christianity with roots in the Nicene and Apostle Creeds, and the classical confessional statements of the Calvinist Reformation (closely related to the Puritanism I studied through Nathaniel Hawthorne in his "Scarlett Letter"). This classical, Reformation Christianity was presented in a formal, academic manner with sound intellectual content.
(The Reformed Church does NOT resemble Fundamentalism.)
Through the Reformed Church and my high-school readings of Plato, I became comfortable with the homosexual flirting in his dialogues.
More importantly, because of the intellectual encouragement of the Reformed Church, my texts of Plato were uncensored and a young, teenage boy was exposed to the entire work of Plato, which led me into studies of the Renaissance and ultimately to the philosophy of Hegel and Heidegger.
The Tennessee action led me to buy "Maus" and review that memorial to the Shoah. I am thankful to Art Spiegelman.
The grounds, other than the anti-Semitism they deny, was one of the cartoons displayed Spiegelman's mom in the bathtub (mark this: As a mouse, with two little round humps, standing for her breasts). The scene was her suicide in despair after her trauma from the years of the Shoah. I can assure you, as a man with a lively imagination, and back in the '60s as an adolescent boy with a vivid imagination, in no world would I have ever had sexual thoughts or the like from Mr. Spiegelman's depiction. Indeed, to have such prurient thoughts would be highly wrong, as this was a suicide scene. And the cartoon drawing was general and not anatomical at all.
In short: Tennessee urged SPURIOUS grounds for censorship of an invaluable work of art from Art Spiegelman on the theme, "NEVER AGAIN"!
Maus should be required reading in every high school in the country. It’s part of the canon in our house.
We are probably going to see more attempts at censorship, and people should fight it.
Diane K24: The House and Senate are as important as the Presidency.
And the state legislatures.
In Florida, State Senator Ileana Garcia proposed a bill to pay out of taxpayer money to Trump the amount of $5 Millions to cover his legal costs. State Senator Garcia only removed the bill from the State Senate when the Governor, the Honorable Ron DeSantis, stated he would veto it.
https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/state/2024/01/23/a-florida-senator-proposed-using-taxpayers-5-million-for-trump-legal-defense-desantis-put-a-stop-to/72318951007/
How MUCH MORE UNHINGED can the Republicans get?
Penis envy?
Name the body part, they envy every one.
I think the truth is that men have clitoris envy.
After a man is done, he is done...in many cases, he rolls over, mumbles, "Was that good for you, babe," and starts snoring, unaware that his lady is NOT satisfied.
Meanwhile, women have an organ whose sole purpose is to give them entertainment.
I read that Playboy Playmate Nicole Narain went on one of the TV "doctor" shows to talk about her sex addiction. I'm sure every male reader of the magazine groaned on hearing that, knowing that they would not get to meet her.
She talked about how she spent an entire day pleasuring herself, and realized she needed serious therapy.
My take was that men resent women being able to do that, and that's why they try to deny women power. And it probably dates back to Ancient Rome.
Men stink.
In so many ways.
The ‘dammit how’d you manage that?’ Eternal question....
Well, back when I was learning the "facts of life," yes, I read "gentlemen's magazines," but I also read women's magazines, which had a lot of material for women on that subject.
However, as I'm an Aspergian, and have the social skills of a British Challenger tank, I rarely got intimate...I actually had a three-year dateless streak while I was in the Navy, stationed in Japan. I just gave up...the American girls on the base pursued or were pursued by Marines and Seabees, while the Japanese girls off-base said only one sentence: "No Engrish...you take me to States?"
Uh...say that again, please?
It’s a minefield out there - for both sexes. Personally I think life would be a lot less difficult if sex work was legalized/monitored (health) and allowed. Much less crime, fewer assaults, happier people.
(Full disclosure: I spent almost all my teenage years in a county where that was acknowledged - excuse the expression - as a fact of life.) sorry about Japan experience. I suspect you’re not alone in that.
Patris: I would be careful about the sex-worker.
That is a highly complex world.
In Germany, a lot of beautiful Slavic women are abused and exploited heavily by the men (in German called their "Zuhälter" -- I'll translate this ONCE: (their pimps)).
Their Zuhälter recruit these Slavic ladies through false promises of meaningful work to integrate into the German society and become citizens. These Zuhälter abuse them and the women can never work off their "debts".
Where free, consulting adults are involved, with mutual respect and dignity, that is entirely one thing.
But I can say: There are situations in Germany that are extremely exploitative and cruel.
So, I can agree, but with reservations.
I wrote about the horrible life sex workers have in my piece "Don't Undress Her With Your Eyes, Undress Her With Her Consent."
I joined one of our newspaper's most empathetic female reporters as she interviewed two sex workers for our series on AIDS in Hudson County, NJ. She asked about the AIDS hazards, I asked about "the life."
The ladies told me about violence by their clients, their pimps, how much they hated both (one only enjoyed sex with her female roommate), the danger of STDs, the lack of health coverage, poverty, drug and booze addictions, and their utter lack of self-esteem.
It left me convinced that the true villains in the story are the clients and the pimps...the sex workers should be treated as victims.
It annoys me that male society glorifies them..."the hooker with the heart of gold" in movies like "Pretty Woman" and "Trading Places," or high-priced escorts and escort services like Ashley Dupree, who brought down Eliot Spitzer, and the "Mayflower Madam," Sydney Biddle Barrows, and Xaviera Hollander (real name: De Vries, she's South African), the so-called "Happy Hooker."
Nonsense.
Only one thing worse: the ruthless exploitation of teenage boys and girls. And that's where this industry starts. Boys and girls who tumble off the bus from Minnesota in Port Authority Bus Terminal, seeking to run away from abusive homes and to gain "fame and fortune."
All they have to do is "make love to this guy."