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Silence the women - "peace on earth" christmas card


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I'm horrified by this.

 

One of the first legal codes written down was recorded by the ancient Assyrians.  One of the laws said that women who spoke up publicly should have their teeth bashed in by bricks. Men silencing women has been a running theme of civilization.  It isn't a joke when instruments of torture (the scold's bridle) were invented and used to silence women.  With all that background, why on  earth could anyone find this humorous or funny? 

I'd really like to know how the dad explained this to his son.  Did he tell him it was funny to make mom keep quiet?  One of the worst traits of the Patriarchy is elevating the boys above their mothers-- in essence teaching them that they don't need to listen to their moms because moms are silly and over-protective. To some people this photo might just be a joke but for that boy it is a lesson.

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Yeah, tying up and gagging my family doesn't say "Christmas" to me. She could have given the Father and son earmuffs and it would have been stupid and sexist but not actually creepy and horrible.

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Well, reading this thread I realize I've been mispronouncing your name, @blessalessi!  I've been 'thinking' it as 'blessa lessie, instead of bless alessi!   Huh!  I guess those dastardly Duggars influenced me!  

Also, I cannot imagine my husband, or anyone I know for that matter, thinking of or suggesting this kind of family photo. I don't find it cute or funny or clever. 

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If the tape was on the kids, I could see some humor in this.  Parents getting some quiet during the season!  But the way it's done instead says that women and girls need to shut up.  This could be a joke between friends if a wife was exceptionally gabby, and their friends understood the reference, but my huge problem here is they had children get involved.  How do you think they explained this to the kids?

8 hours ago, thebestusername said:

Well here are my thoughts. On the one hand facebook is a private company and they have every right to take down whatever they want for whatever reason they wany. On the other hand, I do not believe in censorship of any kind. On the third hand, I think IF you are going to engage in censorship as Facebook does then this picture is certainly fair game.

Actually Facebook is a public company.

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9 hours ago, Grimalkin said:

      I really dislike the stupid husband jokes. I saw something recently on FB "I don't know who is harder to raise husbands or kids" I just roll my eyes. I'm glad I don't feel like my husband is an idiot.

 

     My sense of humor is a bit twisted but I thought that picture was awful. My first thought was " this woman has no self respect". 

I have seen a FB meme a lot lately that says something like "your husband will always be your biggest child who needs the most supervision". Eventually, I am going to be so sick of it that I am going to respond, "Nope, not mine; I married an adult. Too bad for you that you didn't choose better."

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14 hours ago, Fascinated said:

Well, reading this thread I realize I've been mispronouncing your name, @blessalessi!  I've been 'thinking' it as 'blessa lessie, instead of bless alessi!   Huh!  I guess those dastardly Duggars influenced me!  

Ha, I didn't know enough about the Duggars to know I was choosing my username badly! I was a little surprised at first when people here kept referring to me as "blessa". :my_biggrin:

I guess I can cope with being the lesser of the Blessas if I must!

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12 hours ago, Jingerbread said:

If the tape was on the kids, I could see some humor in this. 

This a million times, although even then I'm not a fan of really duct-taping kids' mouths shut but I would find it less offensive (providing they remove the lights)
There are other ways to go for a peace on earth theme: earmuffs, broken violins/recorders/instruments for the kids, smashing megaphones...

I do wonder if my gut feeling about it would be the same if it was a sent as one of many cheesy xmas photos from a family I knew vs it being strangers who have gone viral on the interwebs. It's hard to tell.

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......and duct tape, even the crafty kind is really sticky, I never put it on my face but I think it would hurt getting it off.

 

        So the people against it are getting backlash. Hey, you have your opinion and we have ours. 

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I always kind of find it humorous when people post things *to the whole wide world* and then act mystified when everyone isn't all clappy-happy. 

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I agree that the message is seriously bad/wrong, but I agree with @Catey that our outrage is misplaced toward this particular family.  These mysogynistic concepts have roots in the culture just as many other damaging concepts do.  It's part of the paradigm and yes, it needs to be changed.  Individual people CAN stand up against the mainstream paradigm and we should celebrate and encourage when people do that.  But I don't see the usefulness of picking one out of a million who fail to do that, and making them shoulder all the blame.

To offer a somewhat less contentious (but no less important in my personal opinion) comparison, I think it's disrespectful, damaging, harmful, and shameful when people exhibit "conspicuous consumerism" and don't minimize their own resource footprint.  But I don't think it does any good to shame or single out the people who live that way, since they are just going along with the culture.  Instead I choose to congratulate and support and endorse those who choose to defy the cultural pressure and instead live in a more resource-conscious way, and to live that way myself and to share both my motivation and my specifics with those who are interested, to demonstrate what is possible.  

 

tl;dr -- I think it's unrealistic and unfair to point at any given person and say "YOU should know better" when the rest of the culture is saying "eh, no big deal" or even "hey, that's funny."  Encouraging the right thing, yes -- but shaming for the wrong thing, in this situation, just doesn't accomplish anything, IMO.

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23 hours ago, blessalessi said:

Her photographs are pretty badly executed imo.  The ones taken through the sight of a bow are just ugly.  

And the caption "The family that shoots togther, stays together".  Um... she needs to work harder, even at being offensive.

Nancy Lanza frequented  shooting ranges with her son and he shot her.

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Whoever brought up the "normalizing images of abuse" thing nailed it. This image is disgusting to me because it uses pretty common rape/abuse imagery. 

The duct tape, the bindings, the dejected/defeated tilt of those little girls' heads, their fearful/ashamed downcast eyes...all you'd need to do is swap out the "Peace on Earth" message for that day's newspaper to have a creepy proof-of-life photo.

There's nothing remotely funny or cute about this photo. When your Christmas photo looks like it could be ripped from a Criminal Minds episode about a father training his son to keep those damned chattering women in their place (probably a dank basement somewhere), you're doing it wrong.

[I also immediately thought of the scold's bridle. :(]

 

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On 12/16/2015 at 10:05 AM, Cats B4 Quivers said:

Considering the number of a victims of spousal and parental abuse in the world, this photo is an asshole move by the parents. Normalizing the depiction of abuse lightens and brightens it and that is just not on. Perhaps the couple in the photo are the best, loving couple leading the best bunch of kids and this photo was just a joke except for lots of people it absolutely is not. Unless the parents grew up in a utopia where abuse was not tolerated and virtually unknown, these two are a couple of jerk wad assholes. Granted, this is a private family photo and not for a wide public audience so I'm not getting ragey about it. 

I cannot imagine my parents ever planning and setting up a photo similar to this, and they had 8 kids, six of which were daughters.  Many times, my dad would get the camera all set up and we'd take several group shots and for the last one, everyone would make a goofy face.  No one was put down, no one had duct tape placed across their mouth, no one was "bound and gagged."  Whoever finds humor in this photo has got something wrong with them. 

I hate the sexist meme that females talk too much and oh the poor men who have to live with such yakkers.  That man is damn lucky he has a wife and children - too bad he doesn't treat them with the respect they deserve.

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I totally don't think the photo was funny either, but I am going to go against groupthink here for a moment...

Is there any possibility, even a remote one, that this photo was the mother's idea intended to be a political statement that women and girls still don't have a voice in today's society? If not, then what kinds of things would the photo have to have in order to convey that message?

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I don't feel outraged but I am disgusted, and if I appear to lack a sense of humor maybe I do but honestly as Handmaiden of Dog pointed out this theme has been around forever. There is nothing clever or original about the picture. This theme has been done literally MILLIONS of times. That's the best thing you can come up with? Did it take you days and days to plan it? Have you ever heard of Pintrest because I am certain there is a wealth of genuinely original and clever ideas you can use for inspiration.

 

Lastly, I will repeat what I said earlier my first thought is not dad is a douche but mom has no self respect.

 

          

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1 hour ago, madpsych78 said:

I totally don't think the photo was funny either, but I am going to go against groupthink here for a moment...

Is there any possibility, even a remote one, that this photo was the mother's idea intended to be a political statement that women and girls still don't have a voice in today's society? If not, then what kinds of things would the photo have to have in order to convey that message?

The family were friends of the photographer who thought the image was funny.  The photographer attends a fundie church.

 

The "groupthink" therefore is grounded in observable fact.

It would have to be a completely different photo of a completely different family to convey any other message, imo.

 

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On 12/16/2015 at 3:51 AM, Hisey said:

No one is saying this photographer's "art" should be censored. They are saying they find the "art" disgusting and repulsive. Why is expressing disapproval the same as censorship? That sounds like fundy-talk.

It's true that the parents in the picture may have been "expressing their creativity," as you say. I'm not sure I would call it art, but whatever.

However, the kids in the family had no choice. They are not expressing their creativity. They are doing what their parents told them to do.

Did the father tie those little girls' hands together? Do you feel that's "art," tying a second-grader's hands with cord? Who put the duct tape on the kids' little faces--their dad, probably? Putting duct-tape on an eight-year old's mouth is "art"? Making a joke at her expense is "art"? 

It's great you are an Artist (though I'm not sure why you used capitals). But that's something that anyone can call themselves. Do artists have carte blanche to take pictures that denigrate little girls? But regular folks don't? How do you know this photographer is even an artist? Maybe she is a SAHM with 1-2 photography clients a year.

Or do you mean the parents are artists? Well, you aren't an artist just because you have an unusual idea for an Xmas photo. Being an artist takes hard work, dedication, practice, skill. Not just an unusual idea and a call to a photographer.

You say that you'd be offended if they'd written "I want a peaceful Christmas so I will be binding and gagging my wife and female children". But writing is a form of art, too. Why hold one form of art to a different standard than other? ("Oh, they are binding and gagging them in a photograph, oh, then that's OK. I thought they were writing about it. That would've been awful.")

I'd be interested to know if those little girls even understood the joke. Did they see the card? Did someone explain it to them? How'd that go?

Little girl: Mommy, why did Daddy put duct tape on my mouth for the Christmas photo? And tie up our hands?

Mom: Well, honey, Dad and Brandon think we talk too much. So, in the card, they have us gagged and then they are happy. They also think we touch too much stuff, so Dad bound our hands, too. Now the guys are really glad, because the girls in the family can't talk or touch anything! Isn't that a funny joke? Wait till Grandpa sees it!

Doing things that involve hurting children is not art. Or Art.

 

What a great post. Thanks for ripping the masking tape off the hoity toity pretension.

To call that heinous card "art" is ludicrous. It's a misogynistic piece of crap. A very revealing visual expression of hostility to female persons.

If that is art, so are Nazi swastikas and the Confederate flag. I mean, somebody had to dream those up too, right?

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On 16/12/2015 at 0:21 PM, thebestusername said:

Well here are my thoughts. On the one hand facebook is a private company and they have every right to take down whatever they want for whatever reason they wany. On the other hand, I do not believe in censorship of any kind. On the third hand, I think IF you are going to engage in censorship as Facebook does then this picture is certainly fair game.

Yeah if you want total unfettered  free speech,  post your shit on your own website.  Pay for the hosting yourself.  Private companies and individuals shouldn't have an obligation to support content that they view as offensive - and I rightfully hope they remove this rapey/Talibany "Christmas" photo. 

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To me it's just stupid.  The whole family is all kinds of messed up. (as is the photographer) I'd like to hear from the family and friends that were to receive this card.

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On 12/17/2015 at 10:39 AM, church_of_dog said:

I agree that the message is seriously bad/wrong, but I agree with @Catey that our outrage is misplaced toward this particular family.  These mysogynistic concepts have roots in the culture just as many other damaging concepts do.  It's part of the paradigm and yes, it needs to be changed.  Individual people CAN stand up against the mainstream paradigm and we should celebrate and encourage when people do that.  But I don't see the usefulness of picking one out of a million who fail to do that, and making them shoulder all the blame.

If we spread the anger evenly on all people who do this sort of thing, then we might as well not bother getting angry over anything.  That family chose to have this publicized, and in the age of the internet, we all know not to put stuff online if we don't accept the risk of it going viral.  When something like this happens, it mobilizes people and lets us magnify our voices, which has more power then spreading our whispers over a large number of people who do this.

That family isn't shouldering the blame.  They're just a visible representation of the problem, and if we defend the poster families, then we may as well not bother doing a damned thing at all about any problems.  Complacency lets problems continue.

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I am definitly not shoked by this photo. It even made me laugh a little bit, partly because I thought it was worst. :my_blush: I'm kind of used to seeing a lot of sarcastic drawings and stuff, I love "black humor" and personally think we should have the right to laugh of everything (except if it's hateful).

Anyway, I understand why a lot of you are shocked and bothered by this photo. This is a hard topic and we don't have all the same sensibility. (And in the same time, I would have loved if the photo was taken to denunce the violence against women and girls, à la Charlie Hebdo.)

I wish I could express my feelings better, sorry. I also hope I don't hurt anyone's feelings.

 

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