Yes it is, Identguy, yes it is. Also, I should make clear that before I was an attorney, I worked in the pathology departments of many hospitals for something like 15 years, and also participated in many autopsies -- forensic as well as the usual pathology exam. Interestingly, while erections are very common in strangulation victims, they are not there 100% of the time. The intent part of my arguement has more to do with the context of the artwork ... what is being depicted ... rather than the fact of an erection, and that a dipiction of autoerotic strangulation would - by the very intent of the artist and the person being depicted - be one of sexual arousal. The image of a person being murdered by strangulation - even if that person had an erection - would not be a depiction of sexual arousal ... it would be a depiction of a murder of which the erect penis was nothing more than a physiologically correct addendum. So the part about strangulation during a murder does not fall under the term autoerotic. That is a specific term of law and forensics and does not apply in that instance. Logiloglu (wow, that's hard to type), I understand that you think the philosophy of the scene is one thing and I see it another way. That's part of what makes it art. Voodoo is a religion, absolutely. It is a religion that has been known to participate in human and animal sacrifice. I'm not certain what you mean by "please stop sometimes to have a opinion,we have to learn things we never known before," but I think that's just your English. But, let me say this, my opinions have never stopped me from learning things. I have opinions on many things, religious, historic, medical, artistic ... and yet, I still expose myself to (and learn a lot about) the things on which I have opinions. I do this, in part, because I for one don't put much faith into the opinions of people who don't take the time to learn about the thing on which they are expressing their opinion. To me, those people are mere bigots, and not worthy of my time. That's what I like about this discussion ... people are expressing opinions based on what they know or on what they have experienced. That's a good thing. Now, if what you learned about that particular statue is based on something that was displayed along with the work of art, great ... the good thing would be to share that with the viewers before they come up with their own interpretation. Another example .... not so extreme, but a little weird. A space alien comes to Earth and the first place he walks into is a Catholic Church. Old church .... old depiction of Christ on the Cross ... crown of thorns ... lots of blood. Is he supposed to immediately grasp the complex symbolism behind the bloody image?? Heck, I can show you people who've considered themselves Christian their whole lives who don't understand half the symbolism embodied in that image. I'm not a Christian, but because I enjoy Christian art (got a lot of exposure to it in college), it's key for me to have studied the religion in order to understand the nature of what is being depicted. (Without understanding the slaughter of the innocents in the larger context, it becomes nothing more than a horrible image of soldiers sticking babies on pikes.) You know, getting back to that image that I discussed earlier where I mentioned that the person posting it was worried she (I think it was a she) would offend other religions ... the moderator made a great suggestion, which was to use the commentary space reserved to the artist to explain the symbolism behind the image such that the viewer would understand that the image was not intended as an insult, but (as in this case) created as a metaphor for the marital union of people of different religions. Photo of Voodoo statue without full explanation of the symbology just ends up looking like a bound captive being fed to the lions by a guy with a woody. (Sounds like a really warped fortune cookie ... doesn't it?)

Could be worse, could be raining.