When is a picture too graphic ??

I’ll start here because I don’t know what section to post this question.It has to do with the photo section.When is a picture to graphic for Admin ? I ask that because there was a picture posted and removed because of its content?.It was a picture of a Chinese women bayoneted in her vagina,with the bayonet still stuck.It was a picture that would have made you say OMG when you seen it.There are pictures posted in the photo section “dramatic”, with a beheaded head hanging from a tree,people that are charred like charcoal,burning on fire,people being executed point blank.So where does the line get drawn with pictures?

I am happy that the certain photograph was removed. A beheading and buring is one thing but a lady with her private part being torched is another thing!
And it is the right thing to do,cause i know it’s manly men on ww2 forums but there is still alot of young ladies that visit ww2 forums and would be offended in seeing a virgina with a boayonet stuck in side.
Also,do you like seeing these bing shoved up a virginas? do you get plessure out of it? That is wrong! and who ever removed it, I thank you!

PS - a helpful hint,there is web sites that deal with these kind of photographs.

It was me who deleted it, rudeerude.
The pic was uploaded already some time ago. It got deleted by the former admin/site owner back then. So I pretty much acted in accordance with him and I’m sure also in accordance with the recent site owner Procyon.

I don’t have any problem with the publication of such pictures, especially given that the world has been saturated for the past 70 years with pictures of all sorts of horrors and wounds and manners of death inflicted on people in the course of the war and the crimes against humanity perpetrated during and before it.

I don’t see the difference between a bayonet in the vagina of a dead woman or endless pictures of dead babies or hanged people or gassed people or fire or radiation burnt people or people being shot to death or being bayoneted to death or disfigured or dismembered or decapitated or maimed or mutilated or tortured bodies and so on, ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

The more horrific and repellent the picture, the more I see a reason to publish it to bring home the horrors of war to people who haven’t experienced them, and to discourage us from repeating them.

We’ve had pictures of all sorts of horrors on the photo site and the forum, including live vivisections on Allied POWs at Harbin, which I find more distressing and repellent that that of dead woman with a bayonet in her vagina, so what makes her image so much worse that it must be deleted?

Why is it acceptable for Clara Petacci’s mutilated and hanged body to be shown widely but not the anonymous woman the subject of the complaint? Would Clara’s picture be unsuitable to publish if her skirt was low enough to expose her crotch? Why? If not, what would make it unsuitable? A bayonet in it?

I suspect that the deleted picture in this case is perceived as offensive only because of the image of a vagina and the placement of a bayonet in it rather than anything else. I suspect that this reflects inhibitions about sexual matters rather than any respect for the dead and the manner of their death, for if anybody was consistently opposed to images portraying the obscenity of death in war then they would oppose all pictures of war and related dead.

If the same delicacy had been applied to, for example, photographs of degrading conduct forced upon prisoners at Abu Ghraib the world would never have known about those abuses, and nothing would have been done to stop them being repeated.

Concealing confronting images out of squeamishness may do no more than aid future harm.

Why?

What makes that worse than, say, this?

Or this, which involves a man about to get a bayonet in the equivalent region to a vagina?

So you think men don’t find this offensive?

No.

And I don’t know any men who do.

That photo was not near as repulsive to me as the photos with dead children. Although is was very disturbing. War is hell, and as RS wrote, maybe showing these pictures will keep people from repeating history.

mmmm…valued points here about men in the same situation as a women.
I agree,a man is just as disturbing to see as well,but some one mention that the women with a spear in her virgina should be showen (or maybe it was both of you members jcompton,Rising Sun) would you be agreeing with it was you’re own daughter being displayed on the interent forum,with a spear up her virgina?
I also thought the one reason why the Nato and UN was created is to stop ww2 from happening and the war crimes that went on,so is there a need to show a photoghrapgh with a women and a spear shoved up her Virgina to stop this happing again?

As you wish with you’re answers above ,i take and knowleagde other members opinions and thoughts.

Best wishes.

That raises an entirely different issue about consent to publication of war photos, which I think has been discussed to some extent in another thread, possibly relating to US bans on publication of photos of coffins of US dead from Iraq and Afghanistan.

NATO was created primarily to fight WWIII.

I think the reason a picture like this would be deleted is the same reason as why pictures of cut off penises would be deleted.

You’re right when you say that they would only be deleted because of sexual inhibitions, but you have to keep in mind that it are images like these that deeply disturb veterans - and would have the potential to disturb visitors (at least those without perverse fetishes).

You’re also right when you say that people should be shown the horror and brutality of war, but in my eyes, there’s a line between what can/should be shown to showcase the horror, and what is simply disturbing and unnecessary.

I hate having to play the role of the moral police, but while I think that pictures like those shouldn’t necessarily hidden, I also don’t think that this site is the place for them either.

You argue that you don’t see a difference between images of bullet, stab and burn wounds and images of genital mutilation, but I say there is one, not in the reality and horribleness, but in the perception.
Almost everybody can handle images of corpses, heck we’re all too used to it, but images like those reach a whole different plane. You’re right to say that it’s only our natural sexual restraint but it sits deep and has the power to disturb a person for life.

In the end, I guess my point is that there’s really no reason that we should host these images - it’s not like we really miss out on anything but a few nightmarish images that everyone can live without.

PS: I also doubt that the reputation that would be associated to a site hosting ‘sexual’ images like those would be anything Procyon would want. Thanks to Germany’s new Internet-censorship, stuff like that might even ban it from access there!

All sound points and very well argued.

But if a site is about hosting war pictures, why exclude some pictures?

War is war.

Victims are victims.

Photographs represent whatever is in them, even if it isn’t always the ‘truth’.

If we exclude some pictures because of, say, unstated and unconscious sexual connotations then why don’t we exclude other pictures because of, say, unstated and unconscious ‘patriotic’ or other considerations?

Which on the ‘patriotic’ front could lead to an American site excluding pictures which put America in a poor light but which include pictures which put the Soviets in a poor light, or vice versa.

Or on the other considerations front, excluding pictures of innocents murdered by Zionists while including pictures of Jews murdered by Nazis, or vice versa.

My inclination is to publish everything and let those who want to be offended by the odd mutilated vagina be offended. If that’s all that offends them about pictures of war and the realities it represents then, in my view, they have an odd set of values and I wouldn’t waste my time censoring photos to meet their values.

If I understand you correctly, you say that not publishing pictures of genital mutilation is just the first step to only publishing the pictures a certain political side wants published?

Sorry, but I can’t follow that leap of logic.

On this site, everybody can publish (almost) any pictures he wants, no matter whom it flatters or whom it embarrasses. The only pictures you’re not allowed to publish are those of a sexually disturbing nature.

Once again, you’re right that, whether it’s published here or not, it’s a part of war, but I also think that it’s nothing that critical to understanding war that the site owner would risk being categorized as a pornography or even snuff site by visitors or providers, who might consequently stop visiting or block the site, respectively.

The only sensible way the site could host the images would be via a warning message and an age gate at either the site’s homepage or when trying to view the respective image(s).

But, as I said before, the potential loss in traffic would be a lot higher than the potential gain in ‘respectability’ or ‘accuracy’ or whatever gain one hopes from hosting such images.

That’s what I was thinking. The other images do not have any sexual private parts,meaning it’s ok to display the image. As for the photogragh we are talking about,it’s showing a human bean genitcals and that is obusing the under-age act! (there is alot of under-age miners that come on these ww2 chat forums)

No, I was trying to say that if some war pictures are arbitrarily excluded to suit a given sensitivity or opinion then we end up with libraries of war pictures which reflect those sensitivities or opinions, which would not be the case with a ‘publish everything’ approach.

People should be offended by all those pics.
They are history, though.

I don’t like censorship, but the forum could post a caveat concerning sexually oriented photos and I would not particularly object to it.

They seem to draw particular wierdos who do not necessarily contribute in a positive manner.

I don’t believe in hiding the reality of war-I have experienced it 1st hand and am against trivialising it.

I do think there is room in a oublic forum for some common sense and perhaps tatesful constraint.

I also think it is sexist and inappropriate to say they should be banned simply because female viewers would be more offended.