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From: tracy@hcrvx1.UUCP (Tracy Tims)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: What's degrading?
Message-ID: <1114@hcrvx1.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 21:12:29 EST
Article-I.D.: hcrvx1.1114
Posted: Mon Feb 11 21:12:29 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Feb-85 03:12:42 EST
References: <2285@randvax.UUCP>
Organization: Human Computing Resources Corp
Lines: 37

	decvax!randvax!edhall:

	A photograph of someone turns them into an object.
	Through the photograph, the photographic subject becomes
	completely passive.

A photograph of someone is an object, it doesn't turn that person into one.  I
think that degradation is caused by people who confuse (in negative ways) the
photograph (or the written description) of the person with the person.

A person who understands that the two are not AT ALL the same thing will not
personify the photograph with "passivity" and will certainly not project that
passivity onto the real person.

Taking a photograph produces a photograph, not degradation!  Degradation can
exist with or without photographs, and photographs can exist with or without
degradation!  It's obvious that any essential correlations between the two
will not be true to fact!

You can say that frequently, photographs are perceived in degrading ways by
certain people.  But that's only a statistical observation and says far more
about the person watching than it does about the photograph itself.

Is a photograph alone in a forest degrading?

                              Tracy Tims    {linus,allegra,decvax}!watmath!...
   Human Computing Resources Corporation                     {ihnp4,utzoo}!...
 Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  416 922-1937                   ...hcr!hcrvx1!tracy

PS.	If you want to say that because photographs are more immediately
	real than other images or symbols of human beings this makes
	it easier for unsane people to project their degraded ideas onto
	the real person, I might agree with you.

	It's the unsane people with the degraded ideas that are the problem.
	Talking about photographs is shifting responsibility away from the
	true problem!