From: Ray Recchia (rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com)
Date: Thu 27 Feb 2003 - 02:28:35 GMT
An amusing article and perhaps of interest to those at Harvard, but I don't
think you can justify its presence on this list without some extreme
stretching.
Ray Recchia
At 05:42 PM 2/26/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Originally published on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 in the News section
>of The Harvard Crimson.
>
>Women's Group Debates Snow Penis
>By HERA A. ABBASI
>Crimson Staff Writer
>
>The destroyers of the nine foot snow phallus explained their motivations
>to the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) at a meeting last night,
>receiving a mixed reaction from the feminist group.
>
>The sculpture’s destroyers, Amy E. Keel ’04 and her roommate Mary C.
>Cardinale ’03, said they leveled the ice penis in order to spare others
>from being offended by it.
>
>“I think that women or men who are walking to class should not be
>subjected to a penis,” Keel said. “It was a structure put up to assert
>male dominance.”
>
>Cardinale said that she thought the sculpture was “lewd” and not
>“appropriate.”
>
>The 20 students at the meeting debated the free speech rights of the
>builders—and destroyers—of the giant penis and discussed how affronted
>onlookers could have responded to its construction.
>
>While some RUS members criticized the statue—which was erected in
>Tercentenary Theater by members of the men’s crew team on Feb. 11—others
>were less sure about its inappropriateness.
>
>“I didn’t really think of it that much,” Ellenor J. Honig ’04 said. “There
>are things to me that are so much worse.”
>
>Fred O. Smith ’04 said he thought other people might have been upset when
>the sculpture was torn down because it took a great deal of work to construct.
>
>“I wonder how much people’s upsetness is due to how much time they put in
>it,” Smith said. “I can think about it both ways.”
>
>However, Smith said that if Keel and Cardinale were threatened as they
>took the sculpture down, then that would raise the issue of “male domination.”
>
>RUS members also discussed whether the First Amendment gave the sculptors
>the right to construct the snow phallus.
>
>“It wasn’t anyone’s private property; it was snow,” said Keel. “Taking
>down a penis...is not impeding anyone’s free speech.”
>
>RUS Co-President Ilana J. Sichel ’05 said she believed the most effective
>way to protest the sculpture would have been to put up signs with
>differing opinions.
>
>“I don’t think we have a right to take down things that offend us,” Sichel
>said. “We have to put up posters to the contrary.”
>
>The group also threw out possible actions that could have been carried out
>in protest of the snow phallus’ construction.
>
>Some who were present said they had thought about building a snow vagina,
>but quickly dismissed that type of artistic protest because the two
>symbols would be construed differently.
>
>“It’s a fundamental misunderstanding or ignorance what an erect penis
>means as opposed to a vagina,” said RUS Vice President Rebeccah G. Watson ’04.
>
>Honig argued that the group would not have taken the destruction of a snow
>vagina well— just as the snow phallus builders were upset by Keel and
>Cardinale’s nighttime castration of their sculpture.
>
>“I feel like we’d be having the same discussion,” Honig said.
>
>Copyright © 2001, The Harvard Crimson Inc. All rights reserved.
>
>===============================================================
>This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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