kidattypewriter

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Controversy corner

A recent post on the Overland blog asks the reader: 'Art and sexism: is it acceptable?' Good question. I'd like to pose a related one in this thread today at Controversy Corner: should sexism be banned because it leads to art?

On the one hand, we must admit that there are many non-artistic sexists in society today, innocently practicing their sexism without ever producing art, great or otherwise. However, the fact remains that there is a small minority of sexists who produce great art, which goes on to pollute our galleries, clog up our bookshops, and fills up our airwaves which could be better used for other things. Should we continue to tolerate a system of sexism that can be misused to produce great art?

There is of course a compromise solution: the innocent practices of sexists everywhere should be strictly regulated so that their sexism would have less danger of turning into great art. For instance, we could introduce a sexism license, administered by an appropriate government department. (At a pinch, we could probably get the entire National Party of Australia to become the relevant 'Department for Sexism', or 'Department for the Subjugation of Women', or whatever).

The counter argument must nevertheless be proposed: there are some artists who will continue to practice their art in spite of these discouragements, psychopathically creating new works to confuse and irritate the ordinary citizen. Can we ever do to much to stop these detestable villains, these invidious craftspeople? Perhaps sexism should simply be banned outright to stop them. But then, sexists everywhere would protest at these infringements of their liberties.

What is more important: the freedom to practice sexism, or the eradication of art from our society for once and for all?

That was Controversy Corner for another week!

Next week: we pose the question, 'Does racism lead to origami!' Tune in to Controversy Corner for another erudite discussion!


The Hey Hey Blackface segment: could this seemingly innocuous incident have lead to dangerous outbreaks of origami?

5 comments:

audrey said...

As the kids say, LOL!

M L Jassy said...

Racism perrenially leads to origami as bigots won't tolerate anyone from outside the fold.

TimT said...

Yes, and racists are always tilting at paper tigers.

Dan the VespaMan said...

I once knew a construction worker who's hobby was origami.

Made lovely paper cranes.

TimT said...

That doesn't sound particularly racist. Maybe he wasn't doing it right.

Email: timhtrain - at - yahoo.com.au

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