Has political correctness actually gone mad?

jojojo

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Don’t see a lot wrong with that, I’ll be honest!
Absolutely. From my perspective, it's more a demonstration of why it's still necessary to protest about fundamental principles. I should have made that clearer.

Far from political correctness going mad - it's a reminder of how far we are from "respect" being a minimum expectation.

Incidentally, the clubs are back in the news again today with Camden and Islington United (Candi) refusing to play MHFC in the QF of the Cup. Candi are the current Cup and League title holders.

Initially they were told they'd be disqualified from the competitions for refusing to play, that's now been revoked during "the investigation" into MHFC. What that investigation entails other than looking at the screen captures of their social media accounts, I'm not quite sure :smirk:

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ott-second-fixture-against-mhfc-over-misogyny
 

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Absolutely. From my perspective, it's more a demonstration of why it's still necessary to protest about fundamental principles. I should have made that clearer.

Far from political correctness going mad - it's a reminder of how far we are from "respect" being a minimum expectation.

Incidentally, the clubs are back in the news again today with Camden and Islington United (Candi) refusing to play MHFC in the QF of the Cup. Candi are the current Cup and League title holders.

Initially they were told they'd be disqualified from the competitions for refusing to play, that's now been revoked during "the investigation" into MHFC. What that investigation entails other than looking at the screen captures of their social media accounts, I'm not quite sure :smirk:

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...ott-second-fixture-against-mhfc-over-misogyny
I’m surprised the league even allowed their registration with a name like that. They can’t just be called MHFC surely? They’d have had to submit their full name.
 

Jippy

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Shame to trash a historic curio, however gruesome.

Harvard will remove binding made of human skin from 1800s book


https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/28/harvard-book-human-skin

I saw the Evelyn tables at the Hunterian Museum, 17th century medical training 'vein maps' taken most likely from executed prisoners in Genoa and they were fascinating things. By that same token you'd destroy these and loads of other historic artefacts.

 

moses

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I have no idea either, yet.
Shame to trash a historic curio, however gruesome.

Harvard will remove binding made of human skin from 1800s book


https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/28/harvard-book-human-skin

I saw the Evelyn tables at the Hunterian Museum, 17th century medical training 'vein maps' taken most likely from executed prisoners in Genoa and they were fascinating things. By that same token you'd destroy these and loads of other historic artefacts.

100%. Acknowledge that it was barbaric but it's not like it's a statue glorifying it.
 

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100%. Acknowledge that it was barbaric but it's not like it's a statue glorifying it.
I get what you two are saying and part of me agrees. But in the end it’s human remains, forcefully taken, that should be allowed to rest, I guess. It would be different if they had been donated.
 

moses

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I get what you two are saying and part of me agrees. But in the end it’s human remains, forcefully taken, that should be allowed to rest, I guess. It would be different if they had been donated.

Yeah. I hear that. It's a tricky one. I love history because it's really important to acknowledge the horrors of history in the context of societal evolution. Here in Ireland people would rather focus on the 'we don't do that anymore' which is good but I think the horrors of the past are put to best use highlighted and not airbrushed. Not that this is necessarily airbrushing as much as maybe a clumsy attempt to rectify.
 

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I get what you two are saying and part of me agrees. But in the end it’s human remains, forcefully taken, that should be allowed to rest, I guess. It would be different if they had been donated.
You can acknowledge the people now and the brutality of the objects reflects the history of the time and how we've moved on.
When so much time has passed -and oftentimes no-one knows who these people are- you don't have the living family members problem. I agree they need to be exhibited properly, contextualised and not glorified. Flipside being passage of time doesn't allay guilt...
 

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Yeah. I hear that. It's a tricky one. I love history because it's really important to acknowledge the horrors of history in the context of societal evolution. Here in Ireland people would rather focus on the 'we don't do that anymore' which is good but I think the horrors of the past are put to best use highlighted and not airbrushed. Not that this is necessarily airbrushing as much as maybe a clumsy attempt to rectify.
I think it’s mostly an ethical difficulty here. At what point could we argue that our scientifical thirst for knowledge and our desire to preserve memories of the past become more important than a persons right to their own body? I don’t think it’s possible to identify that point in a fair and objective way. Therefore destroying these bindings seems like the only fair solution to me, even though I agree that it’s a drastic step. We definitively lose something along the way if we go into this direction. But as cheesy as it sounds, we also gain a lot if we uphold ethical principles. Especially in cases like these.

Ideally we would do a digital copy or something like that of these bindings to preserve these memories, these warnings of horrors and atrocities. Seems like the fairest compromise to me.
 

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Yeah. I hear that. It's a tricky one. I love history because it's really important to acknowledge the horrors of history in the context of societal evolution. Here in Ireland people would rather focus on the 'we don't do that anymore' which is good but I think the horrors of the past are put to best use highlighted and not airbrushed. Not that this is necessarily airbrushing as much as maybe a clumsy attempt to rectify.
This exactly. In order to learn from the past we shouldn't hide its mistakes, but show them as such; mistakes not to be repeated.
 

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Though I do realise that the same argument I just made could be used for some mummies and the like. It’s a tough one.
 

SilentWitness

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There's a big push in museums and the heritage industry currently regarding ethics and human remains, particularly in the US due to issues when it comes to indigenous remains but also in the wider scope regarding consent.

I hear people's thoughts regarding learning from past mistakes but I think that's very different when you start to consider that the past mistake is human skin of a patient that gave no consent for their remains to be used in such a way. Photographs of the piece can be preserved and used as a reminder for example.
 

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I get what you two are saying and part of me agrees. But in the end it’s human remains, forcefully taken, that should be allowed to rest, I guess. It would be different if they had been donated.
Well seeing as there hasn't been a string of gruesome unexplained deaths surrounding the book, you'd have to think she's cool with it.
 

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There's a big push in museums and the heritage industry currently regarding ethics and human remains, particularly in the US due to issues when it comes to indigenous remains but also in the wider scope regarding consent.

I hear people's thoughts regarding learning from past mistakes but I think that's very different when you start to consider that the past mistake is human skin of a patient that gave no consent for their remains to be used in such a way. Photographs of the piece can be preserved and used as a reminder for example.
That's fair enough actually.
 

oneniltothearsenal

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I don't see much positive about the museums decisions. Feels more like sweeping things under rug and trying to ignore barbaric practices of the past than anything done out of some higher moral principle. Don't see much point in destroying it. If that was my ancestor that feels far more disrespectful than displaying the historical object for what it is.

For me, I don't think photos really have the same effect as seeing the actual object which forces people to think about things in a way a photo might not. At least when I think about high school age me, a photo doesn't do the same thing as actually seeing the physical object.
 

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They dig up bodies in bogs now and again that are perfectly preserved. I doubt they fancied being ogled behind a piece of museum glass, but if 5000 years has passed we say tough shit. Which tells me somewhere between 200 and 5000 is the sweet spot.
 

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My reaction to reading the article was similar to the point raised by @oneniltothearsenal, that it feels like a way of almost sweeping the barbaric past under the rug rather than confronting it. And then funnily enough, I had a completely different reaction to the related article beside it on the Guardian website about the American Museum of Natural History removing its large collection of human remains.

In both cases the human remains were obtained through non-consensual means, in both cases the institutions are trying to 'return' or find a respectful resting place for them, but I still can't help but feel that Harvard book removal is in some way being insincere about the past, leaving it there would be the more honest stance, while feeling that the Natural History Museum's human remains removal is the right response to reflection on how those bodies were used for eugenics and past crimes.
 

SilentWitness

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My reaction to reading the article was similar to the point raised by @oneniltothearsenal, that it feels like a way of almost sweeping the barbaric past under the rug rather than confronting it. And then funnily enough, I had a completely different reaction to the related article beside it on the Guardian website about the American Museum of Natural History removing its large collection of human remains.

In both cases the human remains were obtained through non-consensual means, in both cases the institutions are trying to 'return' or find a respectful resting place for them, but I still can't help but feel that Harvard book removal is in some way being insincere about the past, leaving it there would be the more honest stance, while feeling that the Natural History Museum's human remains removal is the right response to reflection on how those bodies were used for eugenics and past crimes.
Why is it insincere?

Removing the skin isn't erasing history in the same way that removing statues during BLM wasn't. It's how you narrate the history after doing such things that determines if it's erased or not.