[UbuntuWomen] Ubuntu, women and artwork...

[t u]

Vid Ayer wrote:
>> === Not official ===
>>
>> Aside from expressing our displeasure at people putting such images
>> online, there really isn't much we can do about the non-official ones.
> 
> Not exactly, there is a lot that Ubuntu/Canonical can do in this
> regard. See Ubuntu's trademark policy[0]. While it encourages
> "community advocacy", this freedom could be misused (here to depict
> women as in that first link).

Are you proposing that Canonical should go after the "creators" /
replicators (because, in fact, they do not create anything) of those
images via trademark lawsuits? Let alone the economic aspect of such an
undertaking, and let alone the impossibility of it (e.g. going after
individuals), can you imagine the bad PR it would bring to a brand-new
company that relies mainly on its own community?

There is nothing Canonical can do about this kind of crap but coordinate
with women's organizations in order to educate ("raise awareness") its
*own* userbase.

And that kind of education is extremely hard to accomplish -people
prefer to remain ignorant when that ignorance is functional in
maintaining their own (and sometimes others') power/privileges-... And
for a small company like Canonical, I would think that such coordination
is not yet economically feasible (they have only 30-so people, most of
which are developers). Till then, the responsibility falls on the
(volunteering) members of this team, at *least* for the issue of gender.

> IMO, freedom and creativity should be encouraged but when it oversteps
> a majority of peoples sensibilities, in this case we are talking about
> half the world's population, different cultures/nationality, etc.. we
> need to step back and think, again.

I don't think this paragraph makes much sense. You are talking about
self-censorship, which is as good as censorship.

When freedom and creativity starts to step on other people's human
rights, they cease to exist anyway, and metamorphose into (usually)
heterosexist/white supremacist/patriarchal/(neo)colonialist/capitalist
discourses with specific functions of easing some kind of oppression...

Hence, to me, one has to constantly be aware that her/his own work may
function as an oppressive discourse (a discourse that produces &
reproduces some kind of oppression). Unfortunately, mostly due to the
reason I mentioned above (about ignorance), most people are pretty much
unwilling to look at their own "creations" (sic) from such a perspective.

The starting point for an action against this, to me, is to teach them
about various ways of oppression (unless you decide to organize a
strike-like protest). Now, how do you teach a population that strongly
prefers to stay ignorant and hence comfortable? I do not know...