[Puffer Fish]

A nude painting named Juno, which was painted by baroque artist G. E. Schröder and has hung in the dining room of the Swedish Parliament for 30 years has been taken down for fear of offending the sensitivities of feminists and Muslim visitors.

Explaining the ban on the baroque breasts, a source from the parliament said: "You have to think of the foreign guests, especially those from Muslim countries."

The deputy speaker of Sweden's parliament, Susanne Eberstein, also a prominent Social Democrat, added: "I think it is more a feminist issue. It’s tiresome (looking at) a bare-breasted woman when I sit at public dinners with foreign guests. I think it feels a little hard to sit there with men who look at us women."

A picture of the painting can be seen here.
(Doesn't seem that "offensive" to me)


Once again, demonstrates the double standards of the Left.
Could you imagine 30 years ago if Christians wanted to take such a painting down? There would have been an outcry.

Similar double standards demonstrated in the Netherlands where they have no problem now taking their public school children out on field trip to pray in a mosque.
Things the Left never would have put up with from Christians, now when it comes to Islam they're gleefully embracing it.

And I would point out how ridiculous this in a country like Sweden which is much less prudish about sexuality and public display of nudity, and especially all the more so when it comes to art.
There are small little signs but it looks like the society is slowly changing to accommodate muslims.

It's also highly ironic that they would cite "feminism" as a reason to go in a more "conservative" direction and cover up an image of breasts, tasteful as it is. It's well known that European feminists have staged demonstrations going out in public bare-breasted, and there has been a feminist movement to give women the right to go out in public bare-breasted. But everything seems to have changed when Europe took in a big wave of muslim immigrants and the feminist movement reoriented its alliances out of political expediency.

Or perhaps showing an image of breasts is okay, but only if the artwork is by a woman.
If the artwork was done by a man, to be enjoyed in older times in the company of men, then it's seen as "exploitative".


news sources:
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4 ... nd_muslims
(link no longer working but article archived here)
(first reported by Swedish newspaper The Local)
Juno Exiled, by Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, Dec 20, 2013

[Potemkin]

Mmmmmm…. Boobies…….

[Deutschmania]

This seems similar to the controversy over the covering of the Spirit of Justice statue , in the United States of America . The more prudish Puritanical U.S.A. has been no stranger to such controversy. Funny enough , it would seem that it's the conservative Christians in the U.S. that have been at the forefront of such censorship , rather than Islamists or feminists . Conservatism must vary from country to country. European conservatives consider nudes to be part of their classic cultural heritage , while their American counterparts might deem them to be indecent. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cover-up-at-justice-department/ , https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna8360632

[late]

Dollars to donuts the fact that Juno is a bit chunky had something to do with it.

[ingliz]

indecent

Bare Breast Standing Liberty quarter.

The Standing Liberty Quarter Dollar issued in 1916 and early 1917 shows Liberty holding a shield and baring a breast. Walter Breen claimed in his Complete Encyclopedia of U.S. and Colonial Coins that the design was modified in 1917 to cover the offending breast because of pressure from Anthony Comstock’s New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, a morality police that disbanded in 1950.

Coins issued from mid-1917 show chainmail covering the offending breast.

[Potemkin]

[Rich]

My parents tried to make me into a Christian, not in an active way .They presumed that making me go to Church or Sunday School would turn me out as a Christian. And indeed I took on certain Christian teachings that have remained dear to my heart this day. The Bible taught me that we need a relentless, merciless culture war against our enemies that sometimes needs to be carried out as a physical war. In particular we need a relentless struggle to cleanse our societies of filth.

All well and good, except I quickly realised that it was the Bible that was the filth, that needed to be cleansed from our culture. As i grew older and gained a greater historical knowledge, I came to understand that the filth came from alien Judaic culture that infected and infested our Germanic / Celtic / Slavic / Latin / Greek cultures. But also that the related Islamic Semitic culture that has more recently infected and infested our cultures is even worse.

So things were relatively simple. The sixties saw a great movement for heterosexual liberation and also the beginnings of the movements to liberate women and gay people and the movements to treat people of African and Asian descent with respect and equality. This was all good, However this was before the rise and dominance of demented Cultural Marxism. We are now in a 2 front culture war ,or maybe even a 3 front culture war, surrounded by Christians, Muslims and Cultural Marxists.

[Puffer Fish]

This seems similar to the controversy over the covering of the Spirit of Justice statue, in the United States of America . The more prudish Puritanical U.S.A. has been no stranger to such controversy. Funny enough , it would seem that it's the conservative Christians in the U.S. that have been at the forefront of such censorship , rather than Islamists or feminists . Conservatism must vary from country to country. European conservatives consider nudes to be part of their classic cultural heritage , while their American counterparts might deem them to be indecent.

I had thought about touching on this, but thought it would just be too complicated.

Yes, there is an irony that in the traditional Conservative-Progressive conflict, Conservatives have been the ones in favor of censorship of nudity and sexual things, while Progressives have been the ones wanting to push the envelope and celebrate sexual liberation and openness.

But I think at some point, Progressives have progressed so far that they are now beginning to regress, having come full circle.

Now, since we are talking about super-sexualised Sweden, conservatives in Sweden haven't been against public display of nudity since maybe the 1930s, or perhaps even going back to the 1870s, well before the modern Left even existed.

Certainly by the early 1980s, mainstream Swedish society had progressed to the point that hanging up a painting of a bare-breasted woman in a diplomatic reception area did not raise any eyebrows. Especially a tasteful and baroque era artwork alongside many other classical artwork pieces in the palace.

If you want to back to the point when conservatives opposed public display of images depicting bare-breasted women, I think you would have to go all the way back to before the Swedish Renaissance, maybe 1600 to 1730.

Of course the British and Americans have always been a bit more prudish. (or I should say held out longer)

I could perhaps imagine some evangelical Christian groups in the United States being disapproving or raising some eyebrows if such a painting had been hanging on public display in a government building in the 1990s, maybe a portion of society would have viewed it as a bit too risqué, a little questionable and not the most appropriate for an official White House diplomatic reception. But after the 1990s it became a very different field.

It is of course a huge irony that something that was at one time a progressive thing has become a conservative thing, and something that was once, and in some nations, a conservative thing has now become a progressive thing.

[Puffer Fish]

Bare Breast Standing Liberty quarter.

The Standing Liberty Quarter Dollar issued in 1916 and early 1917 shows Liberty holding a shield and baring a breast.

The United States had always been willing, since its founding, to accept nudity so long as it bore resemblance to Greek statues of antiquity and was done in an artful context, rather than erotic.

(Breasts were acceptable so long as the statue did not seem too sexually sensual, male genitalia was sometimes tolerated so long as it was very small in size and not emphasised, but display of female genitalia was seen as too obscene, especially if any detail was depicted, in the statue. Such might be suitable only in more private collections)

The issue can scarcely be simplified to an entirely black and white thing.

I do think a painting like Juno would have been too risque for public display in most parts in the United States up until the late 1960s, but it perhaps could have been seen in a museum.
Maybe such a painting might have been found in a gentlemens smoking room, which was a more private space.

[ingliz]

@Puffer Fish

I thought it amusing that America found Liberty indecent. It doesn't surprise me, though, as for all their talk of freedom, it is remarkably unfree.

With over 2 million people incarcerated and an incarceration rate of 629 per 100k (1000 per 100k for Black residents), 25% of the world's total prison population, the United States currently has the highest number of people in prison in the world.

It locks up more of its citizens than China.

[Puffer Fish]

I thought it amusing that America found Liberty indecent. It doesn't surprise me, though, as for all their talk of freedom, it is remarkably unfree.

It depends what type of freedom you are talking about. Some people might find some freedoms much less important than others.
It also depends what time period you are talking about.

A government coin isn't really the best symbol of freedom, since government can implement whatever design they think is best on it.
(And I suppose you could say the same of a painting displayed in a government Parliament building)

[Puffer Fish]

With over 2 million people incarcerated and an incarceration rate of 629 per 100k (1000 per 100k for Black residents), 25% of the world's total prison population, the United States currently has the highest number of people in prison in the world.

Well you seem to be unfairly changing the topic.
I suspect part of the reason China locks up fewer people is because their government cares less about ordinary crime and is much more focused on any crime they think could be a threat to the government.
Chinese also follow the law more than the population in the United States. If you took a large group of completely random people from the United States, forced them to learn Chinese and made them live in China, I think a larger percentage of them would end up getting into trouble.

[Potemkin]

Well you seem to be unfairly changing the topic.
I suspect part of the reason China locks up fewer people is because their government cares less about ordinary crime and is much more focused on any crime they think could be a threat to the government.
Chinese also follow the law more than the population in the United States. If you took a large group of completely random people from the United States, forced them to learn Chinese and made them live in China, I think a larger percentage of them would end up getting into trouble.

In other words, America is full of criminals. No wonder it behaves like a criminal nation on the international stage then.

[Tainari88]

In other words, America is full of criminals. No wonder it behaves like a criminal nation on the international stage then.

The Chinese have an anti-crime gene in their DNA. While Italians are born with an Al Capone gene of Mafiosos in theirs.

The Chinese are authoritarian state capitalist believers who work hard and build infrastructure projects through a code that happened on a Chinese steppe from 1078 AD.

Black Africans were made savage through the light of the African sun that hit their afros and it made them criminals. But America (the USA) needed the brawn and athletic muscles of these enchained slaves brought off ships, but their dumb intellects built them up into perfect field slaves. It is all about a gene in some unidentified past.

What other brilliant points is Puffer Fish exploring today?

The Scottish are misers and skinflints because they put on a cardigan sweater made of wool and the contact went to their brains that said---become a cheapskate and tightwad with money. The wool in their clothing and eating too many oats and salmon, forced their hands to grasp on tight to lack of spending. They would sit on the money and prefer to suffer in order to not spend a penny.

It is the fucking wool in Glasgow that did it! Made those Scottish people depressed and tight-fisted I say!

You can't run from your genes.

I tell you....the inferior races like my race, are just DUMB people who only know how to dance.

The genes are in charge of things like education and creativity. Do not invest in schools and teachers. Babies are born knowing how to do it all according to a gene in their DNA that says....you shall speak English, Russian, Spanish, Mayan, French, Greek, etc. because you are taught all that through a fucking gene code, and not through social exposure. Nothing is learned. It is all done before you were born.

[Tainari88]

In other words, America is full of criminals. No wonder it behaves like a criminal nation on the international stage then.

The Gringos love stereotyping people to sell a product.

Here is a commercial for Safeway the grocery store chains in California advertising Scottish thrift.

Lol. You guys have a reputation to uphold of CHEAP behavior. It is great!!