Bingo.  I was doing some housecleaning yesterday (aka “i have how many gigabytes of porn on my old external drive?!"), and I came across some of this genre (pretty sure it was faked, but it doesn’t really matter) that I must have downloaded 6 years ago, waaay back in high school.  It just made me think, “WTF, I can’t believe I found this arousing.  It’s just creepy!  Ick”.  And then I deleted it, which is a big deal for me since I have a huge tendency to delete nothing, no matter how old or useless it is; I just found these too weird and offensive to justify keeping.

You know, when you’re fourteen and you have difficulty remembering your own name when talking to a girl you like, it can be easy to feel like there’s a differential in desire and power over sex. Or to paraphrase Jesse Taylor in a recent piece, it’s amazing how much the politics of cultural resentment resemble the feelings of constant persecution that accompany puberty.

Then you grow up.

I’m really surprised this isn’t covered by sexual assault laws, cuz well, duh.

Yeah, but that’s not a “paradox”.

Argh.  It’s true you have no expectation of privacy in a public place.  But the area under your clothes is not a public place. 

Draw the analogy to a non-technological example.  Person walking in public, and someone comes up to them and tears all their clothing off.  That’s a violation of privacy, right?  Taking the picture is the same thing.

Even if it’s not covered under criminal law, that’s what the invasion of privacy tort is for.

The thing that really pisses me off about these discussions is that everyone earnestly believes that the porn they like is empowerful, feminist, non-exploitative porn. You can’t have a discussion about the way that pornography objectifies women without a chorus of people proclaiming how very different their experience of masturbating to pictures of naked ladies is from all those other people’s experience.

Hmm. This may already exist, but if they had a camera that took “nude pictures through clothes” (like those new airport scanners) would it not be a huge, gigantic, BIG deal if guys were taking those cameras to malls and snapping shots of women???

How is this any different?

Also, strangely, I did some research for a paper a long time ago based on hentai games (thank you, Something Awful). Hentai games are like interactive porn games, laregly from Japan, and largely involving violent rape fantasies (on the part of the guys who play them). Now that I think of it, “upskirt shots” were featured prominently in these games; “normal” (empowered?) bikini beach shots were not.

but also in that process to make a suggestion of and arouse the desire for those very parts that it conceals?

So, this is where the mind-boggling (to me) sense of entitlement comes in.  The whole point of our culture of conspicuous consumption-clothing and accessories with labels, McMansions, fancy cars-is to make others jealous and arouse desire for what they have.  And yet, no one would ever seriously argue that this means it’s understandable for me to rob someone wearing an Armani t-shirt.

but also in that process to make a suggestion of and arouse the desire for those very parts that it conceals?

I wear skirts sometimes because they feel comfortable. If I write “This skirt is for my comfort and is not inteded to arouse”, may I please be exempted from upskirt hunters?

Assholes.

You know, when you’re fourteen and you have difficulty remembering your own name when talking to a girl you like, it can be easy to feel like there’s a differential in desire and power over sex.

But to feel that way you have to think teenage girls never feel nervous when talking to boys they like. It’s obviously part of being a teenager to think you’re the only one who ever suffers, and that your trauma is deeper and more meaningful than anyone else’s. What’s weird is how that natural teenage self-centeredness grows into a cancer in so many adult men.

I had never heard of upskirting.  It seems a very strange fixation to me, but it’s obviously a popular pastime, just going by the number of Google hits. 

I can remember in high school how the boys were always trying to look up girl’s skirts.  A lot of them made it really obvious too.  This is like that.  An attempt to claim ownership of someone else’s body.  Check this guy out:  http://www.davesdaily.com/pictures/481-upskirting.htm

He is upskirting in a very public place with people all around him.  I wonder if the woman in the picture could track him down and sue him.

No, Ellen, it’s not enough for us to dress without the explicit intention being to arouse.  Rather, it is our responsibility to dress with the main goal being to not arouse, and to not make ourselves even appear to be possibly, maybe sexually available, lest a man be overwhelmed by your presence and have no choice but to sexually harass or assault you.

Remember: the most important thing for you to consider, in all your actions, is the comfort of the men around you.

I have to second the idea that it takes an enormous amount of entitlement to suggest that because my dress arouses you, I dressed with the intention TO arouse you.  I don’t exist for your pleasure dumbass.

You know, I hate to come across as holier-than-thou Canadian, because it’s not like misogyny and racism aren’t alive and well in the Great White North, but:

Illegal in Canada:

http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=2ca8a0f6-ecf0-4e24-b5c7-873ca26120d2&p=1

Question: do progressive Americans ever feel like they’d be better off with having things like criminal law be strictly federal? In Canada we only had to pass one law at one level of government to render this illegal. In the U.S. you’d have to pretty much convince every state legislature, right?

“Its [sic] all so very sexy getting a flash of that forbidden public zone.”

This really says it all. They already consider women so lowly that their bodies are public no matter what they wear and no matter where they are. It just gives me the creeps.

But, acallidryas, the way you put it it sounds like there’s some way to win!
Remember that if we _don’t_ wear skirts and makeup and heels and wonderbras we are hideous ugly hairly legged feminazis who hate men and want to be men and cannot get a man and other mutually contradictory things! The men around us will not be made comfortable so easily.

Question: do progressive Americans ever feel like they’d be better off with having things like criminal law be strictly federal? In Canada we only had to pass one law at one level of government to render this illegal. In the U.S. you’d have to pretty much convince every state legislature, right?

I second this, as an American, and not a legal scholar (disclaimer). I think it’s ridiculous that say, a 18 year old and a 16 year old can legally have sex in their home state (Romeo and Juliet laws) but run afoul of pedophilia laws when roadtripping through, I don’t know, Indiana or something.

@ Danica ... I couldn’t decide if that’s what he meant, or if it was a typo and he meant pubic.

I’m kind of relieved that no one has shown up yet to defend this practice, but given how some recent threads have gone, I’m bracing myself for the arrival of the trolls.

Danica, it is probably much easier to sneak a panty shot and classify these things as forbidden than to stop being the kind of total douchebag who can’t even manage, as a douchebag, get in those panties.

forbidden public zone

Is this the first time that anyone intended to write “pubic” and got “public?” Because the other way around, that always mortified me when I had to type my department’s name (Public Affairs). 

There’s also only a brief mention of the celebrity version of this.  I’m not sure it’s meaningfully different, but I think it’s at least a distinct phenomenon, at least in terms of the stakes of payoff for the paparazzi.

This may already exist, but if they had a camera that took “nude pictures through clothes” (like those new airport scanners) would it not be a huge, gigantic, BIG deal if guys were taking those cameras to malls and snapping shots of women???

Well, yes and no. Yes, they already have it. No, it wasn’t a huge, gigantic, BIG deal - it was a deal, but not much of one, because, well, you can probably guess as well as I can. Sony made it, and I was trying to find a safe link to describe the kerfuffle, but surprise, I can’t.

Acallidryas and MissPrism,

I feel that the only “acceptable” thing to do is never leave my house. I wonder if that is the intent? Ugh.

Conversely, I could leave my house frequently, dress “to arouse” and then just drop skirt and mount up any time anyone looks at me twice. To really be a Good Woman, though, I would have to return to the house and stay in there while I gestate and carry all the babies this would result in.

Where do I turn in my shoes for Good Woman status?

As a psuedo-legal scholar, the general reason we have state laws and federal laws because there’s this idea that different states have different needs; based on geography, values, et cetera.  Speed limit laws are excellent examples of this.

The men around us will not be made comfortable so easily.

Particularly when they seem to think it is our job to gatekeep rather than their job to control their own damn selves. 

Man up already!

“He is upskirting in a very public place with people all around him.  I wonder if the woman in the picture could track him down and sue him.”

Since he posts them, I think you’d have a good cause of action for misappropriation of right of publicity, which would be a novel way to go at it.

Well, yes and no. Yes, they already have it. No, it wasn’t a huge, gigantic, BIG deal - it was a deal, but not much of one, because, well, you can probably guess as well as I can. Sony made it, and I was trying to find a safe link to describe the kerfuffle, but surprise, I can’t.

Sorry, Auguste, I can’t tell if you mean it wasn’t a big deal that these cameras exist (because sales were low?) or it wasn’t a big deal that these cameras exist and are being used frequently at public places (because women have no rights in this regard).

If ( a ) these cameras do exists and ( b ) they are frequently used in public places, it is news to me (I don’t get out much, it seems), and I will confine myself to quarters until my angry letters do something productive!

But - and I’m serious here - if I was at the mall and some guy openly snapped a “see through your clothes” picture of me, I would try to take the camera and let him file charges. Because that is both scary and ridiculous.

Conversely, I could leave my house frequently, dress “to arouse” and then just drop skirt and mount up any time anyone looks at me twice.

Needless to say, that would be unpopular too. Almost every dude who talks like that ("she dresses to arouse") is deathly afraid of actually having a vagina presented to him in a straightforward, unfurtive manner. Never mind having to get back to the house and gestate: If you tried that, you’d probably never even have sex.

Oh, sorry. I meant “big deal” in the same sense I thought you did: “Would there be a hue and cry about it.” The answer being no, there wasn’t one, not really.

Part of that is because, I assume, the sales (and misuse) were, indeed low. And partially because fewer people cared than should.

(The “x-ray” feature was an apparently unintended side effect of the Sony “night vision” mode, for the record.)

Hmm, here is what I have learned today:

1. Women should dress conservatively so as not to arouse, but not so conservatively that they hurt men’s egos by “looking” like a Stereotypical Lesbian.

2. Women should be sexually available to anyone who wants them (first come, first serve) so as to not hurt feelings, but they should not be so available that the men feel used or unimportant.

3. Women should not use birth control or abortion because it hurts the baybees, but they should not get pregnant during all this sex because men shouldn’t have their sperm stolen to get child support out of them.

4. Women’s bodies are public places for public pictures to be taken of them, but women’s bodies are not so public that they can breast-feed in public because that’s just icky. Geez.

Did I leave anything out? Crystal clear. Let’s get to it!

Several years ago I talked to a woman whose daughter was harassed this way at middle school.  Seems the boys had declared a certain day “skirts-up day.” The daughter was crying, the mother was furious, the teachers and administrators at the school were all *shrug*—nobigdeal—what’s your problem,lady?  I was so, so glad that I had no kids in middle school any more.

However, when I did have, they were (both the boy and the girl) subjected to so much harassment that I went looking for self-defense classes for them.  There were none, but I found a class in “self-defense for women” and I took them with me.  Would you believe that every member of that class had one or more kids behind her, practicing the same moves!  So I guess this is an endemic problem.  Mostly my kids have gone to small private alternative ("hippy") schools, wqhere thy’ve had much less of this soirt of thing.

Those self-defense classes were awesome though.  One of the kids nearly did the other a serious injury while they were just horsing around.  A sobering experience for both of them, and a demonstration of how useful it might be in real life.

Ellen, I’d like to say that is the immature man’s view of his universe ... but my sons are already dopesmacking those attitudes out of their peers, insofar as they can.

That said, there is one simple rule to remember, always, when being a woman about town: it is ALWAYS about the men!

I have seen ads for these websites before & I’ve never understood it. Like Amanda mentioned, you see WAY more in a Victoria’s Secret catalog. While I’m sure that people who photograph the women or the ones who just like to look at the pictures probably think it’s fine because they’re out in public and fully clothed. They really are peeping toms, except their not hiding in the bushes outside your house. This might even be creepier than that.

I’m gonna assume that loser meant “pubic”.

“Forbidden” is the money word here-- it it wasn’t, there’d be no titillation.

I thought this phenomena had died out.

IIRC the camera mentioned upthread used a near infrared sensor to supplement the regular sensor in low light mode, and it turns out that a fair amount of women’s clothing is transparent in the near IR.

older:

If your daughter had decked one of the slimeballs who were pulling up her skirt then those teachers and administrators would suddenly become active and involved, and come down on your girl like a ton of bricks.  There’s something about moral or physical self-defence that enrages the bureaucratic mind.

I can only hope that if I ever catch something like this going on, I have the guts to warn the woman. Porn with strong nonconsensual elements really, really bothers me, and short of rape on film this is pretty much the pinnacle.

Oh, sorry, Ms. Kate, I guess I should have made it clear that I don’t believe that every/most man/men believe such nonsense. I have a good brother, a good father, a good boyfriend, and good nephews. And I’m so thrilled that your own boys both have their heads on straight and are helping to straighten out their friends.

Sadly, I don’t even really believe that the misogynists believe all these contradictory notions - they’d be easier to mock if they did. No, the Rapists believe that women dress to arouse and the Religionists believe that women should veil all but their eyes (and even then, those eyes are asking for it...). I don’t know what the answer is, outside of education.

And even education...speaking of hentai games that feature rape, there’s a fairly popular one (or so I gather) where the main male character actually BECOMES a woman...and is then raped repeatedly. It sounds like a clever piece of anti-hentai education ("see how YOU like it, mister") but it’s still supposed to be an arousing fantasy. Beyond bizarre, the male-turned-female character always comes to enjoy the rape because it’s just so physically good. I can’t tell if this is how some guys actually view rape (who was the “lay back and enjoy it” politician? I can’t be bothered to google) or if it’s supposed to be some desparate propaganda on the part of the game-maker company. Very, very weird.

IIRC the camera mentioned upthread used a near infrared sensor to supplement the regular sensor in low light mode, and it turns out that a fair amount of women’s clothing is transparent in the near IR.

Only women’s clothes? If so, does anyone know why? I’m curious.

If your daughter had decked one of the slimeballs who were pulling up her skirt then those teachers and administrators would suddenly become active and involved, and come down on your girl like a ton of bricks.  There’s something about moral or physical self-defence that enrages the bureaucratic mind.

Now there is a lawsuit I would love to see. But I hate for any child to be subjected to this crap.

There is also a trend of hiding cameras in private locations, such as the stalls in public restrooms, changing rooms, etc., and getting shots of women changing or going to the bathroom.  It’s all part of the same spectrum.  It’s just another instance in which the law needs to catch up with technology.  Cameras are small enough to fit on the top of a person’s shoe—they’ve caught guys endlessly riding escalators so they can shove their feet under a woman’s skirt and catch her that way.

Oh, sorry, Ms. Kate, I guess I should have made it clear that I don’t believe that every/most man/men believe such nonsense.

Oh, I realized that Ellen - my point was that it wasn’t immaturity that drives this, it isn’t simply “boys will be boys” ... this is misogyny!  It isn’t crudely expressed budding sexuality or juvenile behavior like a fart joke that girls just have to put up with.

I can’t remember, does this site usually cut more or warn for triggering things? I only say this because this subject is never something that’s warned about. And sexual assault is sexual assault, as you said, and well, some people might need more warning. Crying and beginning to dissociate sucks. I have an ex who was into this. He too pictures as well as collecting them. He posted pictures of me without my permission, among other things.

Your summing-up of these guys is dead-on. It’s all about the loathing and the possession.

Excuse my incoherence.

I wonder what all these little pricks do when their upskirt cam catches male bumps in the trap?  It might be fun for young women to don short skirts and prosthetic junk just to horrify these little dweebs.

In some states upskirting is illegal on voyeuristic grounds.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t carry a heavy sentence, but at least it’s something.

...the male-turned-female character always comes to enjoy the rape because it’s just so physically good. I can’t tell if this is how some guys actually view rape…

I really believe that many men do see it that way.  The book Men on Rape, despite it being a few decades old, was pretty illuminating in that regard.  More than one of the men interviewed for the book took the attitude that, since they find sex to be so wonderful and good, then how could it be that women (sometimes—like when they’re being raped) don’t.  I wish the author had asked those guys how’d they feel about a plunger up the ass.

When I was in middle school, the boys would lift skirts without any punishment meted out. So one morning, as I was putting on my cute little denim skirt, I decided to put a pair of light shorts on underneath. When the boys lifted up my skirt, they were furious that they had been “thwarted” from seeing a pair of panties. I mean, how dare I? Didn’t I know that I had absolutely no right to wear a skirt and not get my panties stared at?!?

Did a little googling to answer Ellen’s question.  Nothing yet, though I did stumble upon a company run by scumbags:  Kaya Optics - the link goes to a page demonstrating their IR filter and its ability to enable images to be taken through clothing.  They aren’t even pretending to be selling it for anything other than straight up violation of privacy.  Their products are pretty much all aimed at the pervy shithead market.

A number of men likely like the upskirt stuff since the woman’s face isn’t shown, she isn’t a model. Both of which scare these men.

As for the comment about hentai keep in mind the hentai games most people in the states see are a minority of the translated ones. There are very vanilla ones that don’t have rape at all. They may have some fetish stuff that could be a bit unnerving if you had never heard about it but on the whole it’s just something you can skip. Also Japan is both very conservative and very liberal at the same time. Hence the extremes they can go to with their censorship. Private parts are blurred out but there is often some very extreme stuff they can show in exchange.

“ I wish the author had asked those guys how’d they feel about a plunger up the ass.”
Odds are a number of them would enjoy it.

This discussion has reminded me of something I had nearly forgotten. When I was a little girl, I wasn’t allowed to wear skirts because my dad didn’t want boys looking at my underwear. Typing that now, it makes him sound almost creepily overprotective, but he’s not like that at all, and when I was a teenager, there was never the expectation that I wouldn’t have a sexuality (not that he was totally comfortable with that - just that he understood that it was his problem to get over, not mine). I think what he wanted was for me to able to run and play and climb without feeling restrained by modesty or subject to leers. But it comes back to restraining your own behavior so other people don’t have to restrain theirs.

It’s psychological---for women who get assaulted, it’s a peek into the heart of darkness, a violent reminder of how much many men just hate you.  For being female.  For being alive.  For owning your own body.  For thinking you can just exist without asking their permission.

Ugh. I feel that way more or less every time I leave the house alone. I can’t walk to or from the BART station without being asked my name or for my phone number or if I have a boyfriend. I’m dressed in jeans, Converse All Stars, a t-shirt, and some ill-fitting outerwear; my hair is piled into a sloppy bun; I don’t wear makeup. If I ignore these men (or, worse, tell them to leave me alone), they call me a “cunt” or a “bitch” or claim they’re doing me a favor by showing me attention. I come home angry at those men and angry that our society allows this. Once I had trouble getting out of bed because I knew I’d have to walk to the station alone that day.

A few weeks ago I was groped in my university library while I was taking a nap. I immediately woke up and (I think in large part because of the way people like Amanda have helped me understand and articulate sexual assault as a manifestation of hatred and control), instead of being embarassed or confused, I was pissed as hell. I ran the fuckface out of the library after a good two-minute chase. I was yelling “Stop that man!” the whole time but no one except the library employees did anything (probably less out of misogyny than our cultural fear of “butting in"). You have to be a dickhead of epic proportions to exert your sense of control and power by preying on sleeping women (or women who don’t know their pictures are being taken).

Thank goodness, the library employees and the campus police took me and my claim extremely seriously. They thanked me for coming forward, because this guy had struck several times before and some of his victims were too embarrassed to file a police report. My heart breaks for anyone who is assaulted who isn’t taken seriously, or who feels they were responsible for being assaulted. At the same time, I haven’t been emotionally able to go up the second floor of the library since then, and I’m terrified of dozing off in the library lest I be assaulted again and then considered somehow “responsible” for it because I fell asleep.

That was a long story (sorry), but Amanda’s insights and everyone’s comments reminded me how fucking serious this issue of sexual and social control is. I don’t know how to protect myself emotionally from it. Either I live my life normally and get assaulted, or I stay in my apartment for the rest of my life and let those assholes exert their control on me by controlling my behavior.

::high fives Rebecca C.:: Good on you.  Wish he’d tripped. 

::ponders:: Maybe issuing bolas to students/staff would help.

How big is your campus?  Population-wise.

Man, that’s twisted.

Coupla thoughts here:  why not turn those creepshit IR cameras against men?  I mean, the men who do this crap? You spot some perv doing something, you aim your “Little General Destroyer” camera at his crotch and put HIS pic up on flickr for all to see?

And second, train our children to yell LOUDLY when some creep manhandles them. So that when they’re in the library and some shithead does his thing, they yell because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s all about empowerment, not coddling the “rights” of shitheads to do perverted shit.

The Salon responder quoted in this post (whom I noticed when I read the original article) reminds me of a scene from Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player. I don’t remember it all that well (it’s been a looooong time since I’ve seen the movie), but it’s basically a rant from a creepy goon about how women go around half-naked in public, with their skirts and all, and they shouldn’t be surprised when men go out of control.

Ugh. Cinéma vérité indeed.

“It’s true you have no expectation of privacy in a public place. “

Well, yeah.  But on the other hand, if you walked around naked in public you would get arrested for indecent exposure.  So, why shouldn’t it be against the law for someone to try and get naked or semi-naked pictures of someone in public?

Pssst.  Men are pigs.  Pass it on.

unclepervy, I know that this has been said a million times, but the whole “men are pigs” thing is just a way of placing the onus on women to control the behavior of men.  Men are not pigs, and no one here is claiming that they are.  The men taking these pictures are pigs, and their behavior should be considered beyond the pale by respectful people both women and men.

It’s true you have no expectation of privacy in a public place.

The more I think about this, I don’t like it, as regards cameras and permanent images.

If someone takes a picture of the Washington Monument or their dog at a dog park, and you just happen to be IN the picture, sure you don’t own the image, sorry. But if someone takes a picture OF you, for the sole purpose of capturing your image, shouldn’t you have some say in how the image is used, if you are a private figure (not talking politicians, celebrities, etc.).

I’d have a hard time seeing these upskirt guys claiming with a straight face that they were TRYING to get a picture of the mall ceiling and those panties just sort of got into the picture somehow.

Unclepervy, I don’t hate men like you do, but if you really believed men are pigs, don’t you think the only logical conclusion is to restrict their movements like we do those of anyone who is a known monster?

Pssst.  Men are pigs.  Pass it on.

That’s stupid. Pigs don’t take surreptitious pictures of women’s knickers in public places, post them online for other pigs to wank off to, and then claim is all in good fun, now do they? They don’t have thumbs, for one thing, and it’s the rare pig with internet access. Do you actually know any pigs?

See, men - at least the men I know - are human beings and, thus, it’s not beyond the pale to expect them to act as such. Just because you can’t act like you’re from somewhere doesn’t mean the rest of us be-penised Americans have to be jackasses, too.

I only want to make one point (of many that could be made) here.

While this upskirt horseshit may be whacking material for some people make no mistake, it’s not porn.  Porn is something produced with consent of the people involved and with the intent of it being distributed.

This upskirt stuff is totally different.  It is not porn and talking about porn in this discussion only adds confusion.

The law always lags behind society.  We all know of many examples of this and this particular discussion is just one more example.  Add in that the law is mostly made by men, older, white men (of which I am one) and you have even more of a lag.

Another example, one that won’t add clarity but one I will recount nonetheless.

I’m a working photographer and I post some of my material on Flickr for a number of reasons.  I’ve noticed, of late, a larger and larger group of people “favoriting” some of my images.  Here’s a general description of the person I’m talking about.  They have very pictures of their own, frequently none, posted.  They often belong to many (and I mean a couple of dozen or more) different Flickr groups.  All of the Flickr groups are dedicated to wringing some masturbation value out of images posted there that are not photographs created for that reason.

My personal example.  I recently shot some young girls at an indoor swimming pool for a client.  Several of these people had favorited some of the shots.  More recently, some ballet images I shot, again, young girls, ages nine to fourteen, were favorited.

Because I can find out who is “favoriting” the images I can, and do, go through the users and block them from seeing anything I post.  But it’s become a more and more time intensive process to the extent I’ve considered moving my 30K images off Flickr to another site.

Now, it’s not illegal to “favorite” an image on Flickr.  It’s not illegal to belong to a Flickr group called “girls in spandex”.  But there’s no doubt in my very porn accepting mind that what is going on here is wrong and possibly actionable, were it in another context.  But there is no law, hell, there’s no Flickr guideline that comes close to address this.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the appeal of this form of porn---it’s for guys who see women in ordinary settings, and because of loathing and probably as revenge for some imagined slight (being hot but not being his possession), wish they could sexually assault these women, but are restrained by the twin fears of an ass-kicking and of law enforcement.

I think you might be misjudging that - upskirting looks like an outgrowth of voyeurism, which gets its jollies out of secret transgression.  Crucially, as opposed to Rebecca’s harrassment or the skirt-lifting mentioned above, the purpose is not to get caught - it’s not a direct attempt to assert control, to impose her status as a sex-object on the female.

I don’t think the psychology behind voyeurism and assault is similar.

Crudely, if the upskirters hated women that much, wouldn’t they be all about the letting the women know that they had been reduced to mere cunts, like Rebecca’s harassers above?

Ice, I think most people think of “porn” as wank material, and so the use of the word is appropriate.  A lot of porn involves no actual human beings.  There’s erotic writing and animated porn, for instance.

Piator, not really.  Because they don’t want an ass-kicking or being arrested.  It’s clearly the favored form of misogyny for cowardly misogynists.

I don’t think the psychology behind voyeurism and assault is similar.

I’m not so sure - I remember reading that most stranger rapists (as opposed to the much more common “guy you know / date / are related to” rapists) start out as voyeurs.

Also, the mentality that “women exist to please me” that fuels guilt-free voyeurism is a necessary component of rape.

Plus, regular porn is transgressive because it’s still not something you’d want your boss to see you looking at.  The point is transgressing against actual human beings who you have major issues with.

Oh yeah, what Ellen said.  I have a friend who works in law enforcement and says they taking peeping toms seriously, because they generally will move on to rape.

the whole “men are pigs” thing is just a way of placing the onus on women to control the behavior of men.  Men are not pigs, and no one here is claiming that they are.  The men taking these pictures are pigs,

Men are not pigs, but the men taking these pictures are pigs.  Therefore, logic would dictate that you are saying that men are not men, and that’s just insane.  Maybe you’re trying to say that the men taking these pictures are not in fact men.

There is also apparently a fine line between lust and misogyny that I’m having a hard time defining clearly.  Is there such a distinction?  Can I feel lust towards an attractive woman and not have it be misogyny?  How do I express that?  Is it not OK to express lust at all?  Or only in certain carefully-demarcated “lust zones”?  If a woman dresses provocatively I’m supposed to avert my eyes or take no notice?  How much notice can I take, is there some sliding scale I need to be aware of?

For the record, I think all non-consensual photography should be illegal.  It is indeed a form of rape.  At the same time there would need to be some sort of exception carved out for investigative journalism or law enforcement.

Unclepervy, I don’t hate men like you do, but if you really believed men are pigs, don’t you think the only logical conclusion is to restrict their movements like we do those of anyone who is a known monster?

If men are pigs, surely we should be farmed for breakfast meat? People just don’t think these things through…

Unfortunately, it doesn’t carry a heavy sentence, but at least it’s something.

What sentence would be appropriate for this?  Upskirting, along with other forms of voyeurism, is gross and a violation of people’s privacy, and it ought to be illegal.  That being said, do people really think it should “carry a heavy sentence”?  What sentence would be appropriate?  It seems to me that a fine of some sort would be the appropriate punishment here.  Do people really think that there should be jail time for this?

Amanda beat me to it, but really, it’s a distinction without a difference. Perhaps many of these guys would not commit physical violence against another person, but whether they physically touch a woman or not, they still are asserting control and imposing a sex-object status on the woman. The woman doesn’t have to know. The man knows. I suspect that is part of the thrill for them.

There is also apparently a fine line between lust and misogyny that I’m having a hard time defining clearly.  Is there such a distinction?  Can I feel lust towards an attractive woman and not have it be misogyny?  How do I express that?  Is it not OK to express lust at all?  Or only in certain carefully-demarcated “lust zones”?  If a woman dresses provocatively I’m supposed to avert my eyes or take no notice?  How much notice can I take, is there some sliding scale I need to be aware of?

You’re how old and you still haven’t figured out how to gawk discreetly and the basic social mores of how not to be threatening when you hit on someone?  Epic, epic fail, dude.

Yes, liberal.  And if it’s so hard for you to imagine lust that reciprocal and consensual, then you have problems that comment section on a blog can’t fix.  We’ve been over this before.  Staring is rude. Even small children understand staring is rude. We all know in practice the difference between observing casually and boring holes in someone with your eyes.  Do you think women don’t notice how men or women look?  Men who claim that men cannot be held to a standard that we hold 3-year-olds to are engaging in the real man-hating that I can see.

Now, back to the topic, which is men who are unambiguously engaging in certain behaviors, not how much ogling liberalrob gets to engage in.

John- Personally? I would think a significant fine for a first offense.  Repeated offenses and yes, I think jail time would be appropriate.  Minimum security, probably some mandatory counseling.

John, at least a fine and some training on sexual harassment.  It also needs to be escalating for repeat offenders, like Gavel said, because voyeurs do often turn to rapists if they’re not stopped.

Liberalrob,

This is just one woman’s opinion, but here is how I would expect things to play out in Real Life.

I’m wearing something that you consider intentionally provocative / arousing. You see me in a public place and give me an appraising look - your eyes kind of dart up and down taking everything in and there’s a smile there that you like what you see, but not in a leering, pushy sort of way, just a “Hey, don’t you look awfully nice, ma’am. Rowrr.”

I respond one of two ways, either with a “Yes, thank you, I know I do,” kind of look with a smile and a little nod, or (if your attention is not appreciated) with a minor frown, shake of the head, or other “clsoed” body language. In that case, you take on an appropriate “Oops, I misunderstood, message received” look (one part chastisement, two parts good humor at how easy it can be to get the wrong message, three parts more-than-willing-to-go-on-about-my-business-normally) and then follow up by going on about your business.

That’s just one scenario. I’ve had that play out many a time and never felt like the guy was a “misogynist” or a potential rapist or anything else - just someone who misread a cue and then appropriately responded to my “Do Not Want” body language.

If this is still confusing, maybe a body language book could be recommended to you?

Bitter Scribe,
Wrong movie. It happened in Breathless, where the thief (Belmondo) complains about how women’s dresses are too short and provocative, and they should have the dress up where guys can see it all. His girlfriend (Seberg, who dresses in slacks) dares him to do that to the next woman he sees wearing a short dress, and he gets out of the cab, runs up behind a woman and lifts her dress up to show her ass.

ice weasel, I had the exact same thing happen with my Flickr images.  I had a picture of me sanding a wood floor,and I was wearing one of those gas masky things.  Some creepazoid added that picture to their “favorites”, all of which were women wearing gas masks.  The person had none of his own pictures, and no information on his profile. 

Ugh.

Ellen: I’m not so sure - I remember reading that most stranger rapists (as opposed to the much more common “guy you know / date / are related to” rapists) start out as voyeurs.

Point.  Thank you.

Amanda: Plus, regular porn is transgressive because it’s still not something you’d want your boss to see you looking at.  The point is transgressing against actual human beings who you have major issues with.

Regular porn isn’t transgressive.  Doing it at work is just inappropriate.

The upskirt thing is a violation. I’m just thinking that perhaps there’s a qualitative difference between violating privacy in order to get your jollies from having “counted coup”, and an actual verbal assault designed to have an immediate impact on the person in question.

I’ve been on the receiving end of both privacy violations and verbal harassment (excellent motivation for either losing weight or topping yourself, those), and actually the former hurt more.  But there was a difference between the type of people doing them.

Ok, liberalrob, I must admit I was imprecise in my language.  Does this clarify what I was trying to say?

Men are not, as a whole category of humans, possessed of the behavior that is commonly classified as piggish, but the individual men that take these pictures are.

all of which were women wearing gas masks

I think i’m going to have to use that one for my next game of Internet Fetish Bingo.

(think of a fetish, google it, lowest number of legitimate related hits wins!)

@ liberalrob ... I’m going to assume you are commenting in good faith, but please, just please, can we have one thread where a man does not come on and ask how he can express his lust in an acceptable way to feminists? I have been a straight woman and a feminist all my life, and dozens and dozens of men have found ways to express their attraction to me without turning me into an object. Many of these men were not men I dated. I’m not just talking about boyfriends and partners - I’m including men that hit on me or that I interacted with in other ways. All it boils down to is just not being an asshole, and treating the other person like a human being.

It’s getting really tiresome. There’s a post about how it’s wrong to make derogatory comments about women’s breasts, and a bunch of men come around saying “But how can I let women know I find their breasts attractive?” There’s a post about how it’s wrong to take up-the-skirt photographs of women without their permission, and you come around asking “But is it wrong to feel lust for a woman?” Of course, lust isn’t misogyny. No one said it is. If you think this post is about lust, you’re buying into the idea that these expressions of control over women are really just men so horny they can’t help themselves. And that’s bullshit.

Papa zita, are you sure? I’m pretty sure there was a scene in Shoot the Piano Player where the goon is part of a team kidnapping the hero and his girlfriend. IIRC, shortly after the goon’s rant, they escape when the car gets into an accident, drawing a cop.

Don’t get me wrong---I believe you about Breathless. (I saw that movie, too, but remember even less of it.) Maybe the moral is, there’s something about the French New Wave that leads to obsession with women’s skirts and dresses.

Off topic, but with regards to this Flickr conversation:

Am I blaming the victim when I say that I cannot understand why anyone would post pictuers of themselves online? I’ve had the obligatory online stalker that it seems like everyone gets, so I’m not claiming to be special here, but it was pretty scary. After that, my next boyfriend’s family was annoyed that I wouldn’t let them put photos of me on their family webpage.

This family webpage was, in my probably-not-too-humble opinion, practically a form of public masturbation - one of the women in the family literally went without sleep for days, unable to rest until she had scanned in and posted EVERY PHOTO EVER from everyone’s childhood - and I do mean ever. The webpage had people’s first names, general city / state / school district information for everyone, including two minor children, and had pages and pages of write ups about what each person had done that month, accomplishments, life events, weddings, job offers, etc.

I was horrified. My concerns about identity theft, stalkers, and child molesters were seen as just so many bleatings. It was NOT well-received that I didn’t want any photos posted of me under the *Boyfriend’s* Birthday Party heading. We’ve been broken up for a while now, and I honestly hope nothing bad ever happens, but if it ever did, I would (privately) not be surprised.

Seriously, does that make me a bad person? Do I need to adjust my thinking? I mean, I don’t think it’s wrong to post pictures of myself, but I would never do it because I don’t think it’s safe - am I part of the problem?

Perhaps many of these guys would not commit physical violence against another person, but whether they physically touch a woman or not, they still are asserting control and imposing a sex-object status on the woman. The woman doesn’t have to know.

Er, no.  If she doesn’t know, then they haven’t imposed that object-status on her, they’ve only reduced her to it in their own heads.

This, however, brings up Ellen’s point.

The man knows. I suspect that is part of the thrill for them.

Actually, that would be the whole thrill.  Otherwise, as Amanda said, there are more and better pictures around.

Now, back to the topic, which is men who are unambiguously engaging in certain behaviors, not how much ogling liberalrob gets to engage in.

I addressed that.  I think pretty much everyone here would agree that “upskirting” is antisocial, hurtful, and should be prohibited.  Does it take 70+ comments to establish that?

I was more interested in discussing the declaration that these “upskirter” choads are all misogynists.  I don’t think it’s universally accepted that inappropriate expressions of lust=misogyny (I don’t think these morons think that far down the road, they just get off on sneaking pics of the “forbidden zone").  If you don’t want to talk about that, no worries.

I don’t think it’s universally accepted that inappropriate expressions of lust=misogyny

Inappropriate does not equal unwanted.  They know perfectly well that their “targets” do not want their attention.  And yes, that does make it misogyny.

I don’t think these morons think that far down the road, they just get off on sneaking pics of the “forbidden zone”. 

Yes, that’s the point.  They don’t think, even for a second, about the actual person involved.  Just “zones” that they’re being denied access to.  That’s misogyny in a nutshell.

Perhaps many of these guys would not commit physical violence against another person, but whether they physically touch a woman or not, they still are asserting control and imposing a sex-object status on the woman. The woman doesn’t have to know. <blockquote>Er, no.  If she doesn’t know, then they haven’t imposed that object-status on her, they’ve only reduced her to it in their own heads.

I disagree - there’s more people involved here than merely Woman and Photographer. There’s also all the people who access the photo online and salivate over it. The Woman becomes Sex Object for many people, regardless of whether she ever becomes aware of it. Even if she never finds out about the photo, it can cause damaging repercussions for her years later - everything from a lost job because of her “indiscretion” (ridiculous, but you know it could happen!) to a stalker / rapist / murderer.

The woman’s knowledge of the violation does not mean she has not been violated.

If a woman is raped while she is unconscious and never becomes aware of it, is she less violated? But maybe that example is too extreme.

Hmm. I fail at nested quotes. Excellent. :(

Er, no.  If she doesn’t know, then they haven’t imposed that object-status on her, they’ve only reduced her to it in their own heads.

Er, no. No matter what he does, it’s still in his head. I’m a human being, not an object, and that holds true whether someone takes a picture of my underwear or whether they grope me while I’m sleeping on a train.

Or to turn it around, in the case of the upskirt shot, the person doing this has actually created an object out of the woman - the picture - that he can use whenever he likes. The “imposition” is entirely real and not imaginary.

Am I blaming the victim when I say that I cannot understand why anyone would post pictuers of themselves online?

I have family all over the world, and putting photos online is a way we can share in each other’s lives. My wedding pics all went up, for instance.

Then I don’t want to restrict access to them because I don’t want to get involved in family drama about who has access and deal with my mother over it.

I don’t think it’s universally accepted that inappropriate expressions of lust=misogyny

If an expression of lust violates privacy, then it’s necessarily dehumanizing the object of lust - which in male-female cases would make it misogyny.

Of course, lust isn’t misogyny. No one said it is.

Amanda did.  Right there in the title of this post.

If you think this post is about lust, you’re buying into the idea that these expressions of control over women are really just men so horny they can’t help themselves. And that’s bullshit.

Is it?  Is it an expression of control over women?  Did these fellows consciously think “I’m going to go out and establish my dominance over women today, and I’m going to start by taking an upskirt pick of that woman there?” That’s the problem I have with this particular assertion.  I don’t deny that “I was so horny I couldn’t help myself” is a bullshit excuse for being an asshole.  At the same time, men do get horny and/or do stupid shit.  Obviously taking upskirt pics is way over the line but where is the line?  And is it really misogyny, premeditated all-consuming hatred of women, or is it just being a lust-crazed idiot with poor impulse control?

Oh for fuck’s sake. The title of this post does not say that lust=misogyny. It says that these men are misogynists. Which they are.
Mind you, if you’d only tasted whisky and Coke mixed together, you’d probably not know the difference between them either.

Did these fellows consciously think “I’m going to go out and establish my dominance over women today, and I’m going to start by taking an upskirt pick of that woman there?”

No, they thought “i’m going to get upskirt photos of that stupid bitch and jack off to them, and she won’t even know har har har.” It boils down to the same thing.

Obviously taking upskirt pics is way over the line but where is the line?  And is it really misogyny, premeditated all-consuming hatred of women, or is it just being a lust-crazed idiot with poor impulse control?

Stuff like this is not at all on the same line as misogynist impulse-free lust.  I, for one, don’t actively seek to piss off the people I lust after.  There is no “line” you step over - you’re either horny in a way that treats the object of that lust like a person whose feelings on the matter are important, or you’re horny in a way that treats them like an object, whose consent or lack thereof is meaningless or at least of no interest to you.  They’re two entirely separate things you’re seeking to conflate, and it doesn’t speak well of you that you see them as two points on the same line.

Is it?  Is it an expression of control over women?  Did these fellows consciously think “I’m going to go out and establish my dominance over women today, and I’m going to start by taking an upskirt pick of that woman there?”

Well I’m sorry the garden-variety perv isn’t as hooked into his Freud as you’d like, but YES, this is misogyny, but the actual thought process--probably more like “Want. Mine. Take"--essentially means just that. 

This isn’t lust, this is two football fields over from lust. Again, if you honestly think men are unaware that there’s a way to express and feel lust without ASSAULTING UNWILLING WOMEN, you have problems that you need to fucking address on a therapist’s couch.

this is misogyny, but the actual thought process--probably more like “Want. Mine. Take"--essentially means just that. 

That “but” should be “and.” Sry.

If you look at the quotes in the original article you see that what these douchebags are lusting after is the fact that they have pictures of theses “zones” that were not consented to.  If an individual gets off on women having their rights taken away (the right to privacy in this case) that individual is a misogynist.

Every one of these non-consensual pictures that gets taken is misogynist, even if the woman in that particular picture never finds out, because failing to punish and humiliate the douches that take and post these photos creates a space where some men find this shit acceptable.

Equating this with lust seems disingenuous, rather like (though less severe than) comparing rape to sex.

You’re doing it again. She didn’t say lust is misogyny. She said taking upskirt shots of unsuspecting women is the act of a misogynist. YOU are equating lust with taking upskirt shots of women and then equating lust with misogyny.

And you’re basically saying that if someone doesn’t stand up and say “I’m a misogynist,” then he’s not a misogynist, by which standard, no one is a misogynist. I guess you could try to make an argument that not seeing women as fellow human beings is not the same as hating them, but I wouldn’t take much comfort in it.

Mind you, if you’d only tasted whisky and Coke mixed together, you’d probably not know the difference between them either.

MissPrism wins the internets.

Can we make this our motto, the next time this topic inevitably comes up? Plz??

“the whole “men are pigs” thing is just a way of placing the onus on women to control the behavior of men”

Not only that, but it gives a man license to act like a pig.  “Hey, I can’t help it, no matter what I do I’m an asshole, so I might as well act like one!”

“regular porn is transgressive because it’s still not something you’d want your boss to see you looking at”

Well, I wouldn’t want my boss to see me using the can, either.

regular porn is transgressive because it’s still not something you’d want your boss to see you looking at

Probably the “boss analogy” wasn’t apt, but I agree that regular porn is transgressive. I especially liked Slacktivist’s reduction of “conversion scenes” in books to “porn” because both take an intimate, private act/action/scene and make it public and gaudy.

I’m all for kinky fantasies, but photographing or groping real live unwitting/unwilling bystanders as props? Creepy.

Am I blaming the victim when I say that I cannot understand why anyone would post pictuers of themselves online?

Not really. The fact is, it’s very difficult to control access one’s on-line identity, and photos are a part of that identity. I don’t post any photos of myself on-line, but I live with the fact the others do. A few photos of myself in other people’s flickr accounts or on clients’ sites with my name on the caption isn’t the worst thing in the world. If someone considers that wank material, they’re welcome to it as long as they don’t contact me about it.

I am, however, very much opposed to people posting identifiable (by name or location) photos of their young children in public forums. That’s one of those situations where security should definitely trump convenience, because the kind of guy who wanks off over kids might be tempted to find the object of his “affections” in person.

Either I don’t think regular porn is transgressive or I don’t get what you mean by it.  What’s being transgressed?

liberalrob - if you haven’t already, go see the post on Objectivist dating that Amanda just put up. All those guys whose ads she quoted are misogynists. In their defense, they may be misanthropes generally, but they hate women even more than they hate men. And I’d bet you money none of them believe themselves to be misogynists. After all, why would they be looking to date women if they hated them? If you can read that and not see what I’m talking about, then I don’t think I can explain it to you.

Mind you, if you’d only tasted whisky and Coke mixed together, you’d probably not know the difference between them either.

You have a point there.  I’m no expert on misogyny.  I have my own definition, and it’s entirely possible that what I see as unconscionable lack of self-control and respect for others is in fact active dislike and hatred.  I just find it hard to believe that desire is really hate, I don’t at all believe these men are even thinking in those terms when they’re taking those pictures, and I don’t think most people are going to understand if you try to explain it to them in those terms.  It’s like when radical Marxists go around interpreting all economic phenomena in terms of the class struggle of workers vs. the bourgeoisie.  If you say everything is misogyny and don’t admit the possibility of alternative explanations, there’s no real discussion.  I don’t have a problem with that if that’s what Amanda really wants.  I’m basically here to learn, but I think part of that process is putting my opinion out and defending it.  That gets me labeled troll a lot, but I don’t know what else I should do.  Agree all the time with everything?  Just lurk?

I just find it hard to believe that desire is really hate

No you don’t.  You’ve said you understand why this kind of behavior is unacceptable and that it involves contempt and resentment more than lust.  And you understand that that’s what misogyny is, even if that definition doesn’t match your own extremely narrow and inaccurate one.

If you still can’t separate lust from angry resentment expressed in a sexual manner, maybe you should lurk more before trying to comment again.

Either I don’t think regular porn is transgressive or I don’t get what you mean by it.  What’s being transgressed?

I will defer to Slactivist:

Religious ecstasy, like sexual ecstasy, is difficult to portray directly in a work of art. It is too intimate, sacred and transcendent—and any portrayal that fails to respect that will seem reductive and cheap. A good artist knows when to fade to black (or, as in Dante’s “Paradiso,” to fade to white), when to suggest rather than to show, when implicit metaphor will be more truthful than explicit detail. Pornographers—be they sexual or spiritual—don’t care about such things. They neither acknowledge nor seek to convey anything transcendent in their subject, replacing transcendence with titillation. Their audience is never caught up in the mystery and ecstasy of rapture, only teased with the cheap thrills of a great snatch.*

The conversion scenes in LB, like all pornography, require the reader to overcome an instinctive reaction to look away when stumbling across such intimate scenes, choosing instead the tresspassive thrill of voyeurism.

These scenes have something else in common with pornography: They take an event that is—or ought to be—primarily about love and portray it as something from which love is absent or irrelevant.

liberalrob,

Maybe you need to stop making everything all about you and spend a little time thinking about what it must be like to be one of the many women in this discussion who have had the displeasure of men who I’m sure think of themselves as real stand-up, progressive-minded gents deciding that their own sense of arousal trumps any respect or privacy for a woman in public.

What would be a reason for taking these pictures that does not involve misogyny? As several others have pointed out, if you just want a hot picture, there is a ton of stuff out there to choose from that is way hotter than surreptitious panty shots. What’s “hot” about these shots is that they are everyday, ordinary women, like the ones you pass every day in the street, and they don’t know that they are exposed before millions of men. How do we know this? We have their own words from comments on sites devoted to this kind of picture. Please tell me how this does not express contempt for the woman involved. And where does contempt stop and hatred begin?

You say you think misogyny is active dislike and hatred for women. Given that unlike people of different races, people of different sexes and genders live all jumbled up and amidst each other, what would a misogynist look like to you? A rapist? Plenty of rapists are married, claim to love their wives, love their daughters, love their mothers. But they rape women. They may even rape women they claim to love. Because they do not openly profess their hatred of women, are they not misogynists?

I’m not someone who thinks all sexism is misogyny, just like I don’t think all racial prejudice is the same as racism, but having a standard that someone must be open and honest and forthright about their hatred before we can label them a misogynist just doesn’t make any sense.

Ellen - Yeah, i’ve seen the Slacktivist thing.  I guess I don’t really see sex as particularly sacred, or requiring “transcendent” treatment, or always being about love.  Farther down that path lies virginity fetishes and other creepy things.

Since when is some fuckard’s “poor impulse control” anybody else’s problem? 

Sorry, but you don’t get a pass for not being able to behave yourself.

you understand that that’s what misogyny is, even if that definition doesn’t match your own extremely narrow and inaccurate one.

Uh, no, I don’t understand that, that’s kind of my point.  I don’t see contempt and resentment behind taking these pictures.  I see lust and disrespect, but that’s not misogyny.  Not by my definition, which I don’t see as extremely narrow and inaccurate; rather, I see yours as overly broad and inaccurate, and I was trying to point that out and explain why I think that.

it’s entirely possible that what I see as unconscionable lack of self-control and respect for others is in fact active dislike and hatred.

No, liberalrob, the dislike and hatred come with the power dynamic that make it a woman’s problem to deal with this lack of self control and hatred on the part of some men.  That isn’t about desire in the least ... it is about the sexual arousal that comes from dominating a woman in a way that the perv thinks she can’t do anything about.

In short, it is about men getting a pass for unacceptable behavior because ‘it’s only lust ...”.

Please provide an actual example of what misogyny would look like to you.

Ellen - Yeah, i’ve seen the Slacktivist thing.  I guess I don’t really see sex as particularly sacred, or requiring “transcendent” treatment, or always being about love.  Farther down that path lies virginity fetishes and other creepy things.

Depends on how you define ‘love’, I think. Slacktivist would agree with me, I believe, that the English language is poorly served with only one word to describe our feelings for our soulmate, parents, friends, sexual partners, and pizza.

I have “loved” ever man I’ve slept with at the very LEAST in the sense that I love my fellow human beings and I cared about the emotions / feelings of the man in bed with me. I think we can all agree that these Upskirters do not “love” these women in any sense of the term - in fact, their absence of love is indistinguishable from a presence of hate, when you look at their actions. Hence, “misogynist”.

BTW, these are my views - I don’t claim to speak for Amanda.

I don’t see contempt and resentment behind taking these pictures.  I see lust and disrespect, but that’s not misogyny.

For the final time, if it’s lust that’s the aim, then these pictures are really poor excuses for porn and no one would ever use them.  Clearly it’s the disrespect (I call it contempt) that’s the attractive part because otherwise they would hold no appeal.  Respond to chigona’s post two above mine, she nails it pretty damn well.  There’s just no other reason that these pictures would get people off if it wasn’t about upsetting and violating the person.

liberalrob:

of course the guys don’t necessarily understand what they do as misogyny. They don’t have to, because they’re guys, and they get to decide. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then you don’t get to keep claiming it’s just someone being unconscionably uncontrolled in a way that just happens to consistently resemble ducks.

And the whole “not illegal” thing: there’s a big difference between what’s colorably illegal and what a (mostly male and overwhelmingly male-identified) corps of police and prosecutors will go after.

Ellen - Sure, but we’re not talking about Upskirters, you were talking about regular porn.  Leaving aside how tough it is to find regular porn that’s not hateful and disturbing these days (and it’s getting more and more difficult) I don’t think porn that’s about people happily getting it on for the benefit of the viewing public is transgressive in that sense.  It can contain a lot of humanity.

What drives me nuts about these discussions, and I knew it was coming, was that somehow women who are the objects of misogyny are too biased to be able to accurately call it out. Men, who are the perpetrators of it, are unbiased, so they get to define it.

chigona - No, no, it’s just that we are able to keep a clear, rational head when dealing with these things, unlike overemotional ladies, so naturally are the best ones to judge.

(I am of course not even remotely serious here.)

What really irks me is that most trolls (and I don’t think liberalrob is a troll, just not a feminist, but this goes for him too) will preferentially give credence and a serious response to other men in the thread.

PiaToR: Er, no.  If she doesn’t know, then they haven’t imposed that object-status on her, they’ve only reduced her to it in their own heads.

Ellen: I disagree - there’s more people involved here than merely Woman and Photographer. There’s also all the people who access the photo online and salivate over it. The Woman becomes Sex Object for many people, regardless of whether she ever becomes aware of it.

Sorry, I’m not articulating myself correctly there (which often happens when I’m trying to think these things out while discussing).  Pardon me if the following fumbles a bit.

The active word in my sentence is “imposed”. Consider the verbal harassment Rebecca reported - the whole purpose of that was to let her, specifically that person Rebecca, know that she was nothing but a c**t.  The whole point was to force that definition on her, and by her I mean an actual singular person - Rebecca.

I think this is distinct from what is being discussed. The point is not to put that (singular) person in her place.  It is to use her as a means of counting coup.  They’re not *interested* in her as a person, even in the sense of getting their fun from the reduction of that person to a thing (as in Rebecca’s case).  The woman (note, small-case, singular, actual-person) does not become a Thing.  Rather the things (the underwear crotch shots) are used as a substitute for women (plural).  They’re collecting tokens, and the sharing of them is a form of homo-sociality - bragging rights.  Like counting coup, or photos of birds, or stamp-collecting - it’s a way of saying “this is what I’ve done, this is what I’ve achieved, aren’t I clever?”.

What you mentioned ("Woman becomes Sex Object for many people") is a side effect of this, not the purpose.  They’re not interested in the woman, nor in turning Woman into Sex Object.  Rather, as a result of the treatment of the sexual parts of women as tokens for women (or for displaying their cleverness), the status of Woman as Sex Object is reinforced.

(I’m mentally substituting “fat guys” and “objects of derision” in the appropriate places to work through my analogies)

This may bring us back to your point about stranger-rapists - I think the more worrying cases would be those who sought out those types of shots and didn’t share them. Should that occur, I think it would show a desire to possess those women rather than use them as a means of counting coup.

Ellen - Sure, but we’re not talking about Upskirters, you were talking about regular porn.

I guess I see “regular” porn as transgressive because, at the very least, it makes a private event public. And, often, the Viewer is not supposed to be part of the Event - if by “regular” porn you mean the “Suzy has sex with John, let’s watch” movies on Cinemax.

Leaving aside how tough it is to find regular porn that’s not hateful and disturbing these days (and it’s getting more and more difficult)

There may be an a priori reason for that. I can’t say.

I don’t think porn that’s about people happily getting it on for the benefit of the viewing public is transgressive in that sense.  It can contain a lot of humanity.

I’ve never seen porn that does, but I’m afraid I’m not anything close to an expert. The point of porn, in my opinion, is to get off without having to consider the needs of others (either because you can’t be bothered or because - more banal and innocent - because you have no other currently to get off with). Since porn, by my definition, is about avoiding humanity, I do not understand how it can *contain* humanity.

But I could totally be wrong - as I said, I’m no expert, and I have no real dog in the porn fight.

Ellen - Yeah, I don’t agree with your definition at all.  A lot of people watch porn with their significant other, which doesn’t fit with either not having to consider the needs of others or not having an other.  Sex is fun, and it’s fun to watch as well as to have. Whets the appetite and can give you new ideas.  I think of it as people inviting the world into their bedroom (because it is an invitation, they know they’re being filmed for that purpose) to share the joy and the fun.

My current theory on why it’s getting more and more difficult to find that kind of porn is kinda connected to Susan Faludi’s “Backlash.”

Rather the things (the underwear crotch shots) are used as a substitute for women (plural).  They’re collecting tokens, and the sharing of them is a form of homo-sociality - bragging rights.  Like counting coup, or photos of birds, or stamp-collecting - it’s a way of saying “this is what I’ve done, this is what I’ve achieved, aren’t I clever?”.

I understand the distinction you are making in that this is not necessarily the same kind of person operating with the exact same motivation as the groper or the street harasser, but it still think this turns the woman into an object. To make your analogy, you had to compare photos of women’s crotches to stamps.

Gavel Down, I don’t think I realized you were a man until that last post.

Hm.  I’ll take that as a compliment.

chingona—I believe I called it up at comment 6.

I DEMAND A COOKIE.

Sorry, but you don’t get a pass for not being able to behave yourself.

Let’s be clear, I’m not giving anyone a pass for this kind of behavior.  I’m saying it’s not necessarily misogyny.  It’s still reprehensible and should be prohibited.

That isn’t about desire in the least ... it is about the sexual arousal that comes from dominating a woman in a way that the perv thinks she can’t do anything about.

But is that really what’s behind it?  I’m not sure.  It may be true in some cases, but I’m not sure it’s universally true.

if it’s lust that’s the aim, then these pictures are really poor excuses for porn and no one would ever use them

Clearly not true.  Have you heard the expression “we all like different things?” We’re not discussing the porn-worthiness of upskirt shots, we’re discussing whether it’s misogyny or simple lust motivating the people taking them.  Well, I’m trying to, anyway.

There’s just no other reason that these pictures would get people off if it wasn’t about upsetting and violating the person.

That’s a generalization that I’m not prepared to accept.  I say they aren’t thinking about the person at all, except as an object of lust.  Feminists want to call that misogyny, hatred of women, OK, but I don’t agree.

Well, it wasn’t an insult. There just wasn’t anything in your earlier comments on the thread that actually identified you, and I guess on some level, because you were making an argument that was similar to and in sync with those being made by women on the thread and making them against a man, I just sort of assumed you were ... a woman. Sad, isn’t it? But seriously, it’s always a relief to me that some men actually get it. And then I feel silly that I’m surprised, because I know many men in real life who get it as well.

Gavel Down, I can see why I wouldn’t have come up with your definition on my own - I am a pretty private person, all things considered, and I would never invite strangers into my home to watch me, whether it was having sex, going to the bathroom, or watching me chew my food. However, that does not mean that my definition of porn is right - thank you for broadening my horizons.

Perhaps I should say that porn which is not framed as an open, willing, everyone-can-watch-and-participate act, then that porn is transgressive (the Slactivist distinction would be, I think, between conversion (private) and testimonial (public)). Muddy waters, it seems.

Liberalrob,

I feel like you are in danger of derailing the thread, but I’ll bite and comment anyway.

1. Do you accept that the majority of Upskirters realize that the women they photograph would be upset if they knew what had happened?

2. Do you accept that doing something to a stranger that would upset them if they knew about is considered socially “bad” behavior (hateful, sociopathic, call it what you will)?

3. Do you accept that doing something “bad” to a stranger who has not hurt you is a form of dismissing them as a human being?

4. Do you accept that misogyny is about the belief that women are lesser beings (or less important) than men/humans (or at least your own special self)?

liberalrob, I don’t want to just dog pile on you, but when you say “I say they aren’t thinking about the person at all, except as an object of lust.  Feminists want to call that misogyny, hatred of women, OK, but I don’t agree” I have to ask, why don’t you agree?  It seems that to view a female human as an object rather than a complete person, and to not do the same to male humans, is indicative of some degree of emotion directed towards women that falls on the hatred end of the scale.

chigona - Aw, thanks.  I just love watching misogynists twist themselves in knots trying to address my arguments without being able to just fall back on the “you’re just ugly and can’t get a man” tropes.

liberalrob -
There’s just no other reason that these pictures would get people off if it wasn’t about upsetting and violating the person.

That’s a generalization that I’m not prepared to accept.

If that wasn’t the case, then I don’t see the appeal of upskirt photos over porn in which people are actually naked and actually having sex.  Unless you are turned on specifically by fruit of the loom.  <--joke.

I say they aren’t thinking about the person at all, except as an object of lust.  Feminists want to call that misogyny, hatred of women, OK, but I don’t agree.

It never, ever, gets done to men.  I am always, even by gay men, viewed as a person first and a hot piece of ass second.  Misogyny isn’t just hatred of women, and I think that’s where you’re getting hung up.  You don’t hate a vending machine.  But you swear at it and hit it when you put in your quarter and candy doesn’t come out.  And the experience of being treated as an object and the experience of being hated for acting like you’re not an object, but a person with rights and feelings, are pretty much the same to the person experiencing it, and they fall under the same label.

Rebecca C:
What a loathsome experience.  Kudos for handling it so dynamically and superbly.

I ran the fuckface out of the library after a good two-minute chase. I was yelling “Stop that man!” the whole time but no one except the library employees did anything (probably less out of misogyny than our cultural fear of “butting in").

In defence of people who didn’t intervene it is difficult for many people to know what their rights are to intervene: what does the law allow them to do?  This is especially important in a litigious culture like the USA where it is culturally imprinted on aware people that they can be sued for anything and that big money is often jury-awarded to small brains on smaller merit.  And that’s just civil torts.  The criminal angle is complex, too.  No doubt the law varies from state to state, but the Canadian example is illustrative; here, it is legal to make a citizen’s arrest for an indictable offence (i.e.: a felony) but one can’t do it for misdemeanours.  The person seeing your pursuit has no way of knowing whether you’ve been assaulted (in which case they can restrain and even arrest the person) or nicked $10 from your purse, in which case they have no legal rights to detain them.*

Do NOT take this as a critique of you, nor a sniffy insistence that you should have been yelling something like “stop that man who has just assaulted me which is a Class C felony in our fine State of Wherever!”.  No, you did great, IMHO.  I just understand why some people who actually had the ability to rapidly think about the situation might have frozen in place.  And that leaves aside many others who froze simply because they just weren’t prepared to handle a sudden and unexpected event.

Again, well done, Rebecca C.

* - (This is of no small importance here, because cops often get reaaaaallll squiffy about citizens doing “their” job.  It has been the experience of criminal defence lawyers of my acquaintance that while cops love to lecture the public on their obligation to intervene they are often equally in love with charging everybody in sight at the end of just such a scuffle and letting the Crowns and judges sort it out.  [Ten people grabbing the guy?  They don’t do that.  One person doing so?  All of a sudden it’s he said v. he said.  I’ve heard some lawyers refer to it as the shop steward mentality: citizens enforcing the law are doing work reserved for the bargaining unit!  We’ll see about THAT!)

The point of porn, in my opinion, is to get off without having to consider the needs of others (either because you can’t be bothered or because - more banal and innocent - because you have no other currently to get off with). Since porn, by my definition, is about avoiding humanity, I do not understand how it can *contain* humanity.

I like to watch porn while having sex with my boyfriend, so i don’t think it’s about avoiding humanity… i like it because watching sexual acts turns me on…

Mighty Ponygirl - She DID ask, y’know. I thought it was an interesting discussion, and apparently so did Ellen. Is all the porn I watch the good sort?  Dunno.  Hope so.  Am I trying to brag about how awesomely feminist I am by talking about how ”different my experience is? No.  Is porn generally exploitative to women? Yeah. Will there be porn, of a sort, in the post-patriarchy?  Hope so.

Misogyny isn’t just hatred of women, and I think that’s where you’re getting hung up.  You don’t hate a vending machine.  But you swear at it and hit it when you put in your quarter and candy doesn’t come out.  And the experience of being treated as an object and the experience of being hated for acting like you’re not an object, but a person with rights and feelings, are pretty much the same to the person experiencing it, and they fall under the same label.

Awesome analogy!

but it still think this turns the woman into an object.

I’m not certain the woman, as a person, exists within the process. They’re not getting off on her realising she’s been violated, after all.

To make your analogy, you had to compare photos of women’s crotches to stamps.

No, I compared the process of collecting pictures of women’s crotches to stamp collecting.  Your point is noted, but you’re making the assumption that women start off as people in this.  That’s the case for harassers - it’s turning them into c**ts which is the point - but I think here the women start off as just opportunities for displays of cleverness.

When you think about it, victims getting in their face and demanding to be dealt with as very very pissed off human beings must come as an awful shock to these assholes…

No, Bitter Scribe. In that one, after Aznavour and Marie Dubois are kidnapped, one crook tells the other about women and their sexy underwear - one even admits to trying a pair of panties on and getting off on it. and think that’s why women wear such things. Aznavour then tells a joke which his father told him “when you’ve had one woman, you’ve had them all”. After which they all laugh and due to a struggle, the kidnapper blows through an intersection and gets stopped by a cop.

Unless you have sex with the lights of you are objectifying whatever it is that turns you on. Actually, I’m not sure if any form of sex is possible without objectification. I’ve never been aroused by a deep discussion on the meaning of life (or the like).

I like to watch porn while having sex with my boyfriend, so i don’t think it’s about avoiding humanity… i like it because watching sexual acts turns me on…

My initial response to this is that you ARE “avoiding humanity” in the sense that ( A ) you are getting sexual pleasure from people you don’t have to pleasure in return (i.e. the porn actors) and ( B ) every moment you watch the porn you are focusing on yourself and your pleasure while ignoring your boyfriend. Which would not be “wrong” but it would be “avoiding” him, or at least “not focusing on him”.

But, really, I don’t care and I’m happy to be wrong - I was just trying to elaborate on Amanda’s initial point in a way that I hoped would make sense.

<blockquote>Unless you have sex with the lights of you are objectifying whatever it is that turns you on. Actually, I’m not sure if any form of sex is possible without objectification. I’ve never been aroused by a deep discussion on the meaning of life (or the like). /blockquote>

Really? I definitely have been.

My boyfriend recently turned me on, in fact, through a meaningful discussion of redemption tropes in Suikoden 2, but I’m a geek.

And I always leave the lights on because I like to see his eyes.

Shorter liberalrob: “They don’t HAAAAAAATE you, they just think you’re the equivalent of an interesting rock or malfunctioning machine. It’s totes DIFFERENT.”

Gavel—um, ok… this is awkward. I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about someone else who was making everything all about them. So… stop making it about you, m’kay?

Unless you have sex with the lights of you are objectifying whatever it is that turns you on. Actually, I’m not sure if any form of sex is possible without objectification. I’ve never been aroused by a deep discussion on the meaning of life (or the like).

Really? You’ve never been aroused by anything but the genitalia/body part of choice? I thought that was a myth.

Add me to the “aroused by intellect” crowd. I’ve definitely jumped a guy after an involved political discussion or upon discovering some sort of deep sympatico in conversation.

Ellen:
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. No, that’s gender discrimination.  Misogyny to me is active hatred of women for being women.  It’s prejudice used to motivate and consciously justify antisocial behavior.  I don’t think you can be passively misogynist (who would care?  who would know?).  It has to be something you actively set out to do, premeditated, you meant to hurt this woman because she was a woman.  I don’t think upskirters get that far in their thinking; some might, but I doubt that all of them do.  (Really I doubt that more than a few do.  I think they’re mostly just lecherous choads.)

Fatman:
Misogyny to me requires emotional involvement.  You have to actually, actively hate women.  To hate someone, really hate them, requires more than just objectification.  It has to be more personal than that.  I don’t think you can simultaneously care so much about someone’s existence that you hate them for it and yet be so detached that you don’t really think about them at all except in some nebulous physical sense.

Misogyny to me is active hatred of women for being women.

Alright, you’re entitled to your own definition, but this might be a good time to point out that unless your last name is Webster...you don’t get to set the ground rules of what words mean for Amanda et. al. (as you did when you complained about the post’s title).

You should also (as I did when talking about porn) get these unusual definitions out in the public initially so we can avoid a lot of hassle getting to this point. Because that is not the definition of misogyny that most of the posters here are working with.

Hmm ... I don’t know about that, Mark. My husband and I are both pretty big blowhards who talk too much (as my good friend once said of us, “Thank god they have each other"), but sometimes, after we’ve been talking and vigorously debating something for a while, we find ourselves all hot and bothered for each other because all that talking reminded us why we like each other so much. And then we do it.

And I don’t think we’re that unusual in that. Attraction is a weird amalgamation of all sorts of things. I’ve certainly been physically attracted to and even had intense chemistry with people I didn’t like that much, but liking someone usually makes them more attractive to me. And I think you can find a person’s body or even certain body parts particularly appealing without “objectifying” the person.

I don’t see the appeal of upskirt photos over porn in which people are actually naked and actually having sex.

We all like different things.  Remember when exposing the ankle was thought to be the height of scurrilous sexual provocation.

So how would we know a misogynist if we saw one? Can we extrapolate anything based on behavior or must we also have a mind-reading machine that tells us not only the conscious thoughts but also the subconcious muck roiling beneath it? I don’t get it.

you’re entitled to your own definition, but this might be a good time to point out that unless your last name is Webster...you don’t get to set the ground rules of what words mean for Amanda

Of course not.  But when I disagree with her, I have two options:  say so, or stay silent.  I know many would rather I had adopted the latter course…

Misogyny to me is active hatred of women for being women...To hate someone, really hate them, requires more than just objectification.  It has to be more personal than that. I don’t think you can simultaneously care so much about someone’s existence that you hate them for it and yet be so detached that you don’t really think about them at all except in some nebulous physical sense.

I eagerly await an explanation as to how someone can hate half the people on earth - which seems pretty fucking general - when “hate” is narrowly defined here as something intensely personal.

Because by your definition, Liberalrob, a “misogynist” is a contradiction in terms and cannot exist.

Of course not.  But when I disagree with her, I have two options:  say so, or stay silent.  I know many would rather I had adopted the latter course.

See, and here is where you are a troll.

Here is what you could have done: You could have said, “That’s odd. I define ‘misogyny’ this specific way, which doesn’t seem appropriate here. How are you defining misogyny? Am I wrong?” That would have been fine.

Instead, you whined about Amanda’s post saying “lust = misogyny” and finally, 100 posts in, you offer your specialist definition of ‘misogyny’. And this specialist definition is presented, no less, as something that we’re supposed to agree with. And you don’t think, for even a moment, that maybe being a privileged male, might mean that you have less insight on the topic than say, anyone else on earth.

THAT is why you are called “troll”. For your future reference.

I think that we can all agree that somebody who shoves a camera between a woman’s legs and takes a picture without her consent is a misogynist, or, alternatively, an amoral shitbag who produces digital pictures for misogynists.

Seeker,

I certainly agree.

Why do these sorts of posts so often turn into a dude or dudes asking for handholding, and/or insisting that women don’t really know what constitutes misogyny, and/or nitpicking over how much resentment is too much?

Can we extrapolate anything based on behavior or must we also have a mind-reading machine that tells us not only the conscious thoughts but also the subconcious muck roiling beneath it?

I believe you enter dangerous waters trying to extrapolate based on behavior.  Extrapolations based on false premises are what got us into Iraq, for example.  I think you need to be very sure of yourself before declaring that this behavior is a direct result of that cause.

I believe you enter dangerous waters trying to extrapolate based on behavior.

Are you familiar with the idea that what you DO says more about you as a person than what you BELIEVE or, rather, what you SAY you believe?

PiaToR:

but it still think this turns the woman into an object.

I’m not certain the woman, as a person, exists within the process. They’re not getting off on her realising she’s been violated, after all.

No, they’re getting off on the violation itself. The woman as a person isn’t non-existent in the process, she is the “thing” upon which the process is enacted. Besides, isn’t “the woman, as a person, doesn’t exist within the process” pretty much the textbook definition of “objectification”? As others have already mentioned, if you’re not turning an actual woman into a sex object, upskirting isn’t titillating in the slightest. The violation itself isn’t just the means of arousal or used as a tool for public humiliation, it’s the whole point of the process.

What you’re effectively arguing by claiming that the woman as a person doesn’t exist within the process is that upskirting is a victimless crime. Whether or not she realizes that she’s been violated is irrelevant. To say otherwise is like claiming that it’s not really identity theft until the victim realizes that they’ve been victimized. In short, you’re committing the Wile E. Coyote fallacy.

liberalrob, I don’t think you are attempting to be a troll, but perhaps you should lurk for a while, so that you can pick up on the common understanding of terms that are used here, so as to avoid coming off as one. Hell I lurked here for years before commenting.

Dan, what is this nwe fallacy of which you speak? I’m intrigued.

I’ve never understood upskirting either but a lot of the posts here make sense. I think we’ll see even more of it and more of all forms of voyeurism as the years march on, the intertubes get even more advanced and people put more and more of themselves online. Just like the poster who mentioned a guy taking her gas mask photo, I dont know if i see that as wrong if they just favorite it, tough one.

I dont know how many times ive seen a poster like liberalrob, many many times I believe but like a lot of people it seems he struggles with, to choose a feminist framing, the “intent vs impact” issue. A woman may intend to wear whatever, baggy jeans or a miniskirt but it seems odd to some that she focuses solely on the intent and not at all on the impact. Im not sure why some guys fuck that up so badly but that seems to be how a lot see it and if you frame it that way, it can make sense some times but most times wont. As far as people trying to offer advice or chiding because someone doenst know how to hit on someone else or check them out correctly....bleh, too many variables, no one person gets to set the rules and there is a huge variety, even taking misogyny out of it, mistakes will be made.

liberalrob:

I believe you enter dangerous waters trying to extrapolate based on behavior.

If that were really the case, then the fields sociology and psychology would have no more credibility than UFOlogy and snake-oil salesmanship.

Mighty Ponygirl - oooops, sorry. 

Why do these sorts of posts so often turn into a dude or dudes asking for handholding, and/or insisting that women don’t really know what constitutes misogyny, and/or nitpicking over how much resentment is too much

I think it’s because they get off on the attention.

liberalrob - No, sorry, you don’t get to make up your own definitions of things and demand that we hew to them.  You’re being a presumptuous ass, and arguing over definitions in a pathetic attempt to excuse behavior we all know is wrong, wrong, wrong.  It’s not a pretty sight.

We’ve all agreed that upskirting is something that should be banned.  Prohibited, proscribed, illegal, whatever.

Because by your definition, Liberalrob, a “misogynist” is a contradiction in terms and cannot exist.

I don’t see it that way.

Here is what you could have done: You could have said, “That’s odd. I define ‘misogyny’ this specific way, which doesn’t seem appropriate here. How are you defining misogyny? Am I wrong?” That would have been fine.

So now we’re moving on to critiquing my posting style.  OK, I’m sorry I wasn’t less confrontational.  That’s just not how I talk.  Even face to face, I’m direct and to the point.  I don’t circle around obliquely.

finally, 100 posts in, you offer your specialist definition of ‘misogyny’.

Because you demanded it!  Or chingona did.  Actually I think you both did.  Someone did…

And this specialist definition is presented, no less, as something that we’re supposed to agree with.

It’s what I believe.  Agree with it or don’t.  I’m not asking for handholding, I’m trying to discuss something I thought was relevant to the main post.  I have questions of my own, I want to test my viewpoint in the public square.  I want to know if I’m really so objectionable to feminists, who I consider myself a friend of philosophically, and why, and whether there are things I haven’t thought of that might make me change my opinions.  If Amanda wants me to stop I’ll stop, it’s her board.

Ellen:

Dan, what is this nwe fallacy of which you speak? I’m intrigued.

The Wile E. Coyote Fallacy is when you claim that gravity doesn’t actually exist until you look down and realize that you’re floating in mid-air.

In this case, it’s the claim that someone who doesn’t realize or believe that they’ve been victimized hasn’t really been victimized. Hence my analogy with identity theft. It’s such a patently ridiculous argument on its face that I’m always surprised when I come across someone who actually thinks its valid.

Dan, thank you. I like to collect fallacies, and I couldn’t find yours easily on Google. I shall remember for the future.

If that were really the case, then the fields sociology and psychology would have no more credibility than UFOlogy and snake-oil salesmanship.

They don’t, in some quarters.

liberalrob, I don’t think you are attempting to be a troll, but perhaps you should lurk for a while

Yeah, you’re right.  I’ve reached diminishing returns.

Amanda knows I’ve been in and out of Pandagon quite a bit over the past several years.  I’m not a newbie, I know the score here.  I am aware of all Pandagon traditions

Ok, so we’ve established that you hold a definition of “misogyny” that is pretty much an empty set, as there’s no way to hold intensely personal hatred towards half the population.  You also think that liking degradation and humiliation is a “personal taste” on the same level of being aroused by (i dunno) fur or something, and doesn’t tell you anything at all about the person.  I believe I can say with some confidence that you don’t have much if anything in common with feminists.

I am aware of all Pandagon traditions

Then you should have bothered to learn what we mean by misogyny.

I’ve noticed, of late, a larger and larger group of people “favoriting” some of my images.  Here’s a general description of the person I’m talking about.  They have very pictures of their own, frequently none, posted.  They often belong to many (and I mean a couple of dozen or more) different Flickr groups.  All of the Flickr groups are dedicated to wringing some masturbation value out of images posted there that are not photographs created for that reason.

I once posted photos of some friends at the beach.  Since we are adult women of the post-Victorian era, we were all pretty much wearing bathing suits, including many bikinis.  Those photos have more views than any other photos in my stream, by the thousands. 

This begs the question of what, as a woman who socializes frequently with other women, am I allowed to do?

If that were really the case, then the fields sociology and psychology would have no more credibility than UFOlogy and snake-oil salesmanship.

They don’t, in some quarters.

True, but I’m sure you’re aware of what happened the last time a prominent Scientologist attempted to express his opinions on commonplace social sciences.

I think “misogyny” can be harder to comprehend than it needs to be because of the analogy to something like racism or homophobia.  In those cases, it’s rather easy to imagine the racist or homophobe honestly thinking and openly saying “I hate blacks,” “I hate gays,” etc., or wishing that they were eliminated entirely.  It’s much less likely that we come across someone openly saying, and meaning, “I hate women,” all women, as a group.  So if that’s your standard for what a misogynist must believe, very few people are going to meet that standard.  But that might not be the standard.  Maybe it helps to think about it as “I think in general Xes are inferior beings” rather than “I wish all Xes were dead.”

I like Gavel Down’s vending machine example quite a lot.  If you thought the vending machine was a subject rather than an object, you would never treat it the same way.  Conversely, the fact that you treat it a certain way is strong evidence of what you think it is, and what you think it deserves.

LiberalRob, as a final nod to you (congrats on the derail), I would like to point out that the world’s worst, most unrepentant serial rapist is not, by your definition, a misogynist. Because, you know, he doesn’t actively hate women, he just doesn’t give a damn that his need for power and control hurts women and ruins their lives.

Or, as Gavel Down, said, you’ve defined “misogynist” such that no such person exists.

Or, for a shorter LiberalRob: “I’m not a feminist, but I’d like to be one...just as soon as I explain why they are all wrong.”

One last little toss of the caber for Gavel Down:

Ok, so we’ve established that you hold a definition of “misogyny” that is pretty much an empty set, as there’s no way to hold intensely personal hatred towards half the population.

You lack imagination.  I can easily envision it.

you should have bothered to learn what we mean by misogyny.

Well, now I know.  Mission accomplished.  And you did get that I was trying to be humorous, right?

FlipYrWhig:

Conversely, the fact that you treat it a certain way is strong evidence of what you think it is, and what you think it deserves.

Indeed, which is why it’s ridiculous to claim, as liberalrob did, that extrapolating underlying beliefs from outward behaviour is “entering dangerous territory.”

Men who treat women like they would a vending machine — if it doesn’t give you what you want, hit it — are expressing their fundamental belief that women are things which exist solely for their personal satisfaction and convenience, not equally autonomous people with needs and wants of their own. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist — or even a trained psychologist or sociologist, for that matter — to figure that out.

Men who treat women like they would a vending machine — if it doesn’t give you what you want, hit it — are expressing their fundamental belief that women are things which exist solely for their personal satisfaction and convenience

I would only add that men who act in these ways (not just taking pictures; including catcalls, groping, etc.) don’t necessarily think that _all_ women are things, but by their acts they reveal that they think that _some_ women are things.  And that’s enough.

Just when I thought I was out, Ellen pulls me back in (I’ll keep it short):

congrats on the derail

What derail, misogyny was right there in the title of the post, and we all agreed that what the post described was reprehensible.  The discussion on that was over.  I focused on one aspect of Amanda’s point that bothered me.  I didn’t “derail” anything.

I’m also not trying to be a feminist, nor am I explaining why they are all wrong.  I challenged ONE contention, that the upskirt choads are driven by misogyny.  That’s all I did.  And we had what I thought was a fairly good discussion about it.

I don’t know why you think it’s so important to test my definition of misogyny to see if specific individuals would fit the bill.  I don’t care if the world’s worst serial rapist is provably misogynist or not, I want him off the streets permanently because he’s a sociopath.  Why is the label so important?  Is it important that there be misogynists to point to?  Does feminism fall apart if there are no misogynists to ostracize?  I don’t think so.  Are there misogynists?  Probably so.  But probably not as many as feminism seems to want to claim, with such a broad all-encompassing definition of what constitutes misogyny that few males could possibly avoid it.  That’s the point I wanted to make, I said it, and I’m done.  See you on another thread sometime.

So if we cannot safely say that a rapist is a misogynist (doing so would be extrapolating from behavior), what other motives for rape are there? Well, see, he does it for his own personal gratification, and he’s just not thinking about how his actions might affect the victim, and I agree he’s a douchebag and it’s wrong, but thinking of women as empty receptacles for your will isn’t the same as hating them.

seeker6079: I absolutely agree that people feel like their hands are tied when they witness something they think is wrong. I can’t blame someone for not butting in, especially when the situation is as ambiguous as someone chasing someone in the library (or someone saying “That man took a picture of my underwear"). How can you tell if someone is joking? All of a sudden you’ve kicked someone in the junk for no reason.

I do wish, though, that folks felt safer (culturally and legally) intervening when they observe someone getting hurt. Somewhere in the back of my mind this ties in with our culture’s resistance to believing women when they claim they’ve been sexually or physically assaulted.

Okay, so I posted before liberalrob claimed he was out, but I have to respond to something in his last post. Maybe he’ll read it. I don’t know.

The definition matters very much to feminism because how we define these things shapes how we address them. If we’re talking feminism and we’re talking misogyny, we’re talking classes of behavior against classes of people. We’re talking large-scale social problems that can be addressed through changing the way our society views those classes of people. If we’re not talking about misogyny and we’re only talking about individual douchebags and assholes, there’s no point in trying to reduce this kind of behavior because like the poor, assholes will always be with us.

It seems to me that it is objectively the case that rates of sexual violence have gone down as feminism has advanced the position of women in society. Amanda has cited statistics on this. I’m not in the mood to Google it. If sexual assault was not motivated, at least in part, by how the perpetrator views women as a class, then rates of sexual assault would be unchanged.

That’s why it matters.

What you’re effectively arguing by claiming that the woman as a person doesn’t exist within the process is that upskirting is a victimless crime.

Nope.

For what it’s worth, someone in Vancouver prevented a man from groping a woman on the train.  When the man made his move 3 others stopped him and pulled him off the train at the next stop for authorities to take into custody.  way cool.

thinking of women as empty receptacles for your will isn’t the same as hating them.

I think the sticking point is elsewhere.  Judging by previous discussions of misogyny, the definitional problem arises in going from

“treatment of one woman” (an act)
to “opinion of one woman” (a belief)
to “opinion of all women” (a belief system? an ideology?)

IMHO the misogyny-doubter isn’t invested in denying that thinking of women as empty receptacles for your will is tantamount to hating them.  He’s basically saying that the guy who takes pictures like these has violated _one_ woman, which is indefensible on its own merits—but the guy has not indicated anything about his views of _women-as-a-class_, including thinking of them as empty receptacles.  Misogyny isn’t the same thing as “hating all women.” But the way a man mistreats one woman begins to show a pattern of what he thinks of _some_ women, and that can be misogynistic too.

I don’t actually think liberalrob is a troll.  In fact, I don’t even think he’s derailed the thread, at least not in the same manner as those in the breastfeeding thread. 
But I DO think he’s letting other men off the hook by defining “misogyny” out of existence.  Upskirting is not an expression of lust.  It is a violation motivated by misogyny.  These scumbags are turned on by the lack of consent.  I guarantee they’d be horrified if a woman at the mall spread her legs and invited them to take a picture.

Rebecca C: I see where you’re coming from.  I would at least hope, though, that the incentive to intervene is higher in situations like yours where there is no perceived connection between the woman who has been assaulted and her assaulter*.  Anybody who has had any experience of what the cops insist on calling “domestics” knows how quickly a rescuer might be assaulted by the person (s)he was helping.  [Mountie of my acquaintance: “I’d rather tackle an armed bank robber than do a domestic any day.” Startled me: “Why?” Mountie: “Because I know that the bank clerk isn’t going to jump on my back and try and claw my eyes out screaming, LEAVE HIM ALONE! as I try and cuff the guy."]

* - (Note: I’m not saying that either is more or less important than the other, or that either merits a stronger response.  Only that “keeping out of others’ business” makes public-spirited responses to “domestics” sadly rare, and I would hope that public responses to stranger attacks would, at least, not be as bad as to “domestics”.)

Where I in a situation where I was witness to an incident like yours I’m fairly sure that my main worry wouldn’t be tackling the fellow (because I’m fairly stupid and fairly violent, when need be—hockey!!!!) but a worry about the cops and the lawsuits.  I’d like to think that I’d push that sort of thing to the back of my mind and do the right thing, but one never knows.  Would I risk losing my law license because of some cop that hates “do-gooder heroes”?  Would I risk losing what little savings I have to some smirking groper in a civil suit before a particularly stupid judge or jury?  Again, I don’t know.  Our culture has become systemically intolerant to the notion of direct citizen action in stopping criminals, or performing any direct action for that matter.  It is why the notion of “good samaritan” laws protecting people are starting to pop up here and there.

LadyH.
Yay! Got a link?  I couldn’t find the story.

Misogyny isn’t the same thing as “hating all women.” But the way a man mistreats one woman begins to show a pattern of what he thinks of _some_ women, and that can be misogynistic too.

There’s a reason why misogyny fits in so nicely with the virgin/whore complex.  Some women are good and saintly—like, say, your mom—but all the others are bad and dirty.  And God forbid that a woman in the “good” category should do anything that shows she’s a human being, because that instantly makes her bad and dirty just like all other women.

PiaToR:

What you’re effectively arguing by claiming that the woman as a person doesn’t exist within the process is that upskirting is a victimless crime.

Nope.

Maybe things are different where you come from, but out here in the real world, simply saying “NUH-UH!” isn’t generally considered a valid argument.

Whether or not the person taking the pictures considers the women they’re violating as actual people does not and cannot change the fact that they are actual people. If you’re really going to claim that they’re not, or that it doesn’t matter that they are, how are you meaningfully different from the perpetrators themselves?

I don’t really know exactly how or when you acquired your reputation around here as a rape apologist, but given what you appear to be arguing here, I’m beginning to think that it’s probably justified.

I suspect most commenters have a moment like that with PIATOR. You go months wondering what the big deal is with him, and then you have an interaction that makes you go “Oh. That’s why.”

“I have to second the idea that it takes an enormous amount of entitlement to suggest that because my dress arouses you, I dressed with the intention TO arouse you.  I don’t exist for your pleasure dumbass.”

This reminds me of when my daughter was in her early teens, she thought her attractiveness was like a bullet, only hitting boys her age, and for that matter, only hitting boys her age to whom she might also be attracted.

One day when she was 15 we were walking through a parking lot when a young man, probably 20 or 21, did the swivel head thing to get a better look at her. She said “Eww! That guy’s old! Why is he looking at me?”

I think she realizes now that a woman’s attractiveness is more like a bomb than a bullet.

If it is not misogyny--not the intent to shame and lord power over women, why post the images on the internet?  If it is just lust, take the picture, get off on it, keep it to yourself. 

Last summer I had a upskirter get me on an escalator.  As we got to the top of the escalator he brushed past me with his phone still out and whispered “I have your pussy” in my ear.  I was sick for a week.  Kudos to those able to muster an immediate response.

Maybe things are different where you come from, but out here in the real world, simply saying “NUH-UH!” isn’t generally considered a valid argument.

Indeed.  But one person choosing to attack another based on misstating what the first said is also not generally considered a valid argument.

I suspect most commenters have a moment like that with PIATOR.

Well, I could always argue as Dan does, I suppose.  That might be entertaining.

For the record, I don’t think you were saying it’s a victimless crime. But I still think the distinction you are making is not particularly significant in the real world. Pennylane’s story is a pretty good example of how these guys are not necessarily that different from the harassers you are contrasting them to. Both/and, not either/or, and all that. And I can see how insisting so strongly on the distinction might make some people wonder what exactly you are getting at.

I guarantee they’d be horrified if a woman at the mall spread her legs and invited them to take a picture.

You know, I’ve seen a fair amount of porn - genuine, straightforward porn - where the woman is clearly doing just that.  Y’all probably know what I’m talking about: it’s in the “Public” or “Voyeur” category, she’s looking either straight at the camera or making sure that no passersby are looking, and she’s flashing one body part or another.  In the harder-core versions, they record people having sex on what are supposed to be security cameras or telephoto or somesuch (given away by the fact that the subject(s) are clearly playing to the camera).

If it was about lust, “upskirters” would be staying home and collecting a library of such stuff, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who do just that: they’re seeing naked women and/or sex acts, transgressively displayed in public, but by willingly exhibitionistic subjects (if only because they’re being paid to be so).  Their voyeurism is indulged without anybody getting hurt.  What more could they want?

But that’s not what these douches are about.  They aren’t satisfied to look at porn, and even if they could find a woman to flash a camera for them, you’re right - they wouldn’t be interested.  For them, it’s about getting past a woman’s defenses - and of course, posting the trophy later.  She may think she’s (a big-shot lawyer/so hot/so smart/too good for me), but underneath it, she’s got a cunt just like the rest of the bitches, and here’s the proof.

Big difference, I’d say.

I still think the distinction you are making is not particularly significant in the real world. Pennylane’s story is a pretty good example of how these guys are not necessarily that different from the harassers you are contrasting them to. Both/and, not either/or, and all that. And I can see how insisting so strongly on the distinction might make some people wonder what exactly you are getting at.

I’ve often wondered that myself - it’s usually the source of the trouble when PIATOR comes into conflict with the rest of us.  It’s kinda like the MRA crowd when they try to figure out the exact point where merely assholish behavior and sexual assault (in the sense of a prosecutable crime) begins.  PIATOR doesn’t show any other MRA traits, though, so I have no idea what it’s all about.

merely assholish behavior ends and sexual assault begins

God, I’m really sick of men who’ve never been on the receiving end of the hate dripping off a sexual predator telling me it’s all in my mind.  You know women.  We are so silly with our hallucinations that guys who follow you, abuse you, or try to hurt you have something against you.  Sheesh.

Thing is, we have guys seeking the “line” to which they can abuse and misuse women without being considered a rapist or a sexual deviant, and that disturbs me.  But when men seek you out in public to exert control over you, there’s absolutely no doubt---he doesn’t doubt it and neither does the victim---that it’s about just that.  If men in this thread get aroused at the idea of women not consenting, and therefore seek porn like upskirting that involves sexual assault, that is their mental problem, and not that of the women in this thread, who are all potential victims.

And I really resent the idea that it’s gray.  I’ve been raped, and I’ve had sex.  There’s a fucking difference, and if you believe that I’m a person and not just the obstacle around the cunt, you’d get that.  I’ve had men flirt with me and harass me, and there’s a huge difference.  And men can tell the difference. In my direct experience, 100% of men who can’t “tell” where the line is are being willfully ignorant for one reason: They want to harass and assault women, but they don’t want to get in trouble.  Therefore any man seeking out the “line” they can stay behind strikes me as in that category---they’re interested in hurting women, and want to find out how far they can push it.  If that’s not true on the internet, then why?  In real life these questions are always accompanied by body language that makes the creepy intent clear.

Seeker (at 11:25)—actually we did have some trouble with the principal at my son’s school.  He (my son) kept being called to the principal’s office for “infractions” (like fighting back, ineffectively).  He spent the winter holiday on crutches because a kid in his class had deliberately jumped on his foot and broken a bone just before the holiday.  After it healed, and after the self-defense class, I went to the principal and said “I’m always in here because some bully has been hurting my kid.  I just want you to know that we’ve gotten him attack training and the next time I’m in here, it’ll be because *he* hurt someone.” There followed a lot of bluster and threat, (because *of course* I was the bad guy here) but I intimated that I could probably get an article in the local paper, and we never had the problem again.

Them hippies may look peaceful, but never git between one and its cub.

Sorry, that’s seeker at 12:30.  It’s past my bedtime.

older: I hear ya.

Part of the problem is that many people within educational bureaucracies gravitate to the management positions for the same reason that people do in other organizations: they like to tell people what to do, and they like easy victories.  Stopping a bully is hard.  Bullying a victim is easy.

That isn’t made as a blanket statement.  It’s just that I’ve seen it happen so damned often it gets annoying.  I’ve told my little girl bluntly that if it’s a matter of her safety I want to see her in the principal’s office rather than the hospital.  Period.

When my home state made upskirting illegal, there were claims that upskirting is connected to other forms of harassment, domestic violence, and rape.  I don’t have the stats on that, but I imagine that state legislators and the experts they called in when crafting the legislation know more about this subject than I do.

If that claim is true, that men who take upskirt photos of women are more likely than men in the general population to harass, beat, and rape women, then liberalrob and his ilk really need to shut the fuck up.

I haven’t read the whole comment thread yet but had to comment on this one.  This has happened to me and while it’s not something I think about often, the article made me feel rather ill.  It wasn’t so much the asshole who upskirted me who bothers me to this day but it’s my friends’ non-reactions that really get to me. 

There is absolutely no doubt upskirting is about misogyny and hatred and an attempt to humiliate.  The guy who did it to me had a long-standing grudge against me and he’s gay, so it had nothing to do with arousal.  He took the pic at our regular Sat night drinks while I was dancing, wearing a mid-calf big gauzey-type skirt (ie. it’s a lot of skirt, big and bustly).  I was probably the only girl there (I’m asexual/queer and often the only woman in our crew) and everyone else was a gay man.  He took the picture so that he could show it around to all my friends and not one of them said anything to me.  My closest friend in the group called me the next day to tell me and I immediately took it up in a huge text message row with the asshole upskirter.  The kicker was that he himself had been harrassed at work because of his sexuality (nude girly pics put in his locker by co-workers in his particularly macho industry etc) and back when we were friendly I’d been supportive of him in pursuing legal action against his old employers.

I’m still bothered about my friends’ non-reaction which I put down to a number of things I won’t get into now.  To an extent it was better that I didn’t have it ruin my night and cause a huge hullabaloo while we were partying but that’s of course not the point.  But yeah, it’s a feeling of violation and it was utterly clear from my situation that this had nothing to do with arousal and everything with using the fact that I had a vagina to put me in my place because he was pissed at me.

Misogyny to me is active hatred of women for being women.  It’s prejudice used to motivate and consciously justify antisocial behavior.  I don’t think you can be passively misogynist (who would care?  who would know?).  It has to be something you actively set out to do, premeditated, you meant to hurt this woman because she was a woman.

How is this NOT upskirting?  It’s not done to men, it’s done to women as a class.  A particular woman might be a victim in a few cases, but most of the time it’s random women used for their ‘collections’.

It’s prejudice that motivates and justifies the behavior--I’m taking a picture of this bitch’s underwear b/c I want to and it will piss her off but who cares?  She’s just a bitch anyway.  That’s prejudice justifying behavior!  They know the women do not want these shots taken, but they do it anyway and that’s part of the thrill.

Upskirting isn’t accidental; it is premeditated--you have to take a camera and plot how to get your unwilling victim’s shot. 

Again, this is not done to men, only to women, because they’re women and not real people deserving of respect.

Shit, Rob, by your own definition, which belongs to you and you alone, upskirting is misogyny.  It is an active act done to hurt women justified by the man’s hatred of them.

Do upskirters take the time to parse through their actions and calmly state: I plan to oppress women who won’t sleep with me by taking embarrassing pictures they don’t want me to take and posting them on the internet for myself and other men to jack off too.  That’s what they get for not fucking me on demand.

No.  They don’t need to think about the motivations for their behavior.  They just have to feel privileged enough to think they can do whatever they want to a woman and get away with it.  They don’t have to understand that they are being patriarchal assholes to be patriarchal assholes.  That’s the beauty of the patriarchy--if you’re a man, you get automatic bennies.

And it’s not your “style” of posting that was the problem.  It’s not that you were “confrontational”.  It’s that you are sure that you are 100% correct, that Amanda doesn’t understand the proper definition of “misogyny”, and that your definition is the only acceptable one, even though if the rest of Pandagon agreed to use Misogyny as Defined by Rob, upskirters would still be guilty of it.

Shit.  Your stupid burns.  Anytime a man treats a woman’s desires as irrelevant, he’s being a misogynist, because he’s failing to treat her with the same respect he would give a man.  That’s hate, man.  Objectifying and dismissing the rights of a person because she’s female is hate.

keshmeshi:  I’d like to disagree without disagreeing.

Given that the act of upskirting is clearly a sexual assault* the fact, theory or possibility that its perpetrators may or may not commit other sexual assaults or interpersonal crimes is, to me, immaterial in evaluating the seriousness of upskirting.  People defending it impliedly or directly need to STFU, agreed.  (And I take no position on the liberalrob imbroglio, so I’m not slamming him or anyone else on the sly.)

* - I don’t personally restrict “sexual assault” to where there has been physical contact.  To accept such a restriction is to be a complete idiot about mental trauma.

I am older, as I have always admitted, and I am not so easy about using the term “misogyny.” In a practical sense, it doesn’t matter to me whether I am treated with disrespect because I am seen as not worthy of respect for some personal reason, or whether I am treated with disrespect because I am seen as not worthy of respect because I am a woman.  I believe I am entitled to be treated respectfully.  Period.

As it happens, I have always been kind of aggressive “for a woman.” I’m sure I’m not over the limit for a man.  And I have raised a bunch of kids who are willing to stand up for themselves, the girls as well as the boys.  I like to think that their mother’s example had something to do with that.  I’m not confrontational, and I’d always like to avoid a fight, but I will, absolutely, stand up for my children’s rights.

I regret that it’s necessary.  Haven’t we learned yet that if we’re not all respected, we’re not any of us respected?  Apparently not.

Haven’t we learned yet that if we’re not all respected, we’re not any of us respected?  Apparently not.

There are those who seem to think there’s a limited amount of respect to go around, and if someone else has any, they have less.  As long as people believe that, they’ll never learn.

Yes, I did come back to read the responses.  All I will say is I stand by my earlier statements.  Thanks for a lively discussion.  I’m sure we’ll have more.

PiaToR:

But one person choosing to attack another based on misstating what the first said is also not generally considered a valid argument.

In other words, your complete rebuttal to what I said is “nuh-uh, because I said so.”

The fact that you’re incapable of thinking all the way through the things say isn’t proof that no one else is, either.

Beyond bizarre, the male-turned-female character always comes to enjoy the rape because it’s just so physically good. I can’t tell if this is how some guys actually view rape (who was the “lay back and enjoy it” politician? I can’t be bothered to google) or if it’s supposed to be some desparate propaganda on the part of the game-maker company.

I had a (virgin) guy in high school tell me that he thought the girls being raped by the giant tentacle monsters common in hentai must enjoy it. In his mind he assumed that the body would be under such torment that the mind would have to focus on what little pleasure it could find in order to survive the ordeal.

In a darkly-ironic twist, he and I had an unrelated incident of non-enthusiastic consent (aka rape or date rape, I have never really decided what it was), it being my first time it could be described as mucho unpleasant; his theory did not prove true.

***

As for upskirts and public privacy my thought was always that “sure women don’t mind wearing skirts in public but I don’t think they would be cool walking on a second story if the floor where glass”. Were a business to do that there would be a law suit and the plaintiff would win.

Can we take a moment to let Dale at 8.52 know he’s a wanker too, for telling his daughter it’s her own fault if she gets leered at?

“A woman’s attractiveness is more like a bomb than a bullet.”

No, actually it’s not remotely like any kind of deadly weapon, what with not being deadly or a weapon. It’s the way a human being looks, and if it causes some men to respond with hate and harrassment, that’s because those particular men are shits.

Oh God. I feel so sorry for Dale’s daughter.

Did you actually say that “bomb/bullet” thing to her face? What a horrendous mindf*ck-- way to bring your kids up with a healthy attitude to sexuality, there.

You know what would have been a good thing to do for her? COMMISERATE. Teenage girls hate being leered at by creepy older guys. Saying “yeah, that guy’s a creep” would have gone a long way to help her feel better about the experience, affirm to her that it’s not her fault.

But you don’t believe it’s not her fault, Dan, do you? That much is obvious because you framed your post as a reply to Amanda’s remark about the idiotic entitled self centredness of believing that just cos a woman is dressed up, she’s putting on a show for you.

And you respond to that by making the very obvious point that there’s no filter for controlling who is attracted to you and then you illustrate your remark with a story about some guy leering at a 15 year old.

As if there is no difference between being attracted to someone and objectifying them.

As if you can’t be attracted to someone without being disrespectful, without staring at or intimidating them, or, hell, trying to photograph their underwear because you feel you’ve got a right.

As if men just can’t help themselves. Pussies-- in skirts!-- are just that dangerous and powerful. Like weapons, BOMBS no less, which obliterate men’s minds and turn them into helpless, drooling, catcalling, camera clutching automatons.

All I will say is I stand by my earlier statements.

You mean those statements where you try to define “misogyny” in a new and unique way that only means premeditated actions taken in order to keep women down?  Despite the fact that definition still includes upskirting?

Quelle surprise, Rob.

I have to give it to it. This thread does try to be about upskirting..

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After reading this thread, I’m almost feeling paranoid about wearing a skirt again.  And it’s not just men who feel entitled to take pictures of your underwear, I’ve played pool with guys who thought it was funny to lift my skirt with the pool cue.  Har, har.  Or hell, my years in Catholic school and the boys who thought it was funny to lift your skirt.  It wasn’t until I was about 18 or 19 when I stopped wearing shorts under my skirts.  Or those strange, creepy men who like to drop things on the floor to try and get a better look.

It’s actually pervasive, men who feel entitled to looking up women’s skirts.  I can’t stand scenes in movies where this happens - it’s always presented as playful, but it never really reads to me that way.  I mean, there’s a difference between “Sure, Honey, you can look up my skirt if you want to” and some random guy doing it because he wants to.

Also, if you don’t think that this has an impact on women as whole, you’d be wrong.  Even if this only happened to a few women, other women would take note of this, because they could be next.  What’s to really stop the perpetrator of these crimes, especially if you see that they get away with it?  And if women - as a group - walk around, scared that it might happen to them, that would be terrorism, would it not?  Hmm...sounds almost as if it’s a reaction to say, rape or other forms of sexual assault?  I mean, if a woman does everything “right”, takes self-defense classes, doesn’t be a whore, only hangs around with people she knows, and still gets raped, assaulted, upskirt pictures taken, whatever, then would that not create fear in the class at which these acts are aimed at?

But it’s still not misogyny, right DUHMonster?  :eye roll:

Liberalrob, after all this, the only conclusion that makes sense is that either you’ve upskirted before but don’t want to consider yourself a misogynist, or you have a buddy who’s done it and you don’t want to consider him a misogynist.  You never did give an example of a behavior you WOULD consider misogynist.  (or is the whole point that you don’t consider behavior misogynist, just intent?)

But it’s still not misogyny, right DUHMonster?

Oh, of course not!  Did my post imply that or something? /snark

Just like it’s not antisemitism if a person spray paints “Death to Jews!” on the side of a temple, but doesn’t personally hate anyone who attends.  No one was actually hurt, so what’s the big deal?  Honestly, that’s pretty much the same argument.  Of course the guy doesn’t hate Jews personally, he just wants them all to die.  See?  It’s simple!  It can’t possibly be misogyny if he doesn’t personally hate the woman he’s terrorized, he just wants women to know where their place is!

(I tried not to gag while typing that.)

I’ve never figured out why some other men are such manhating pricks.  And yeah, I feel really sorry for Dale’s poor kid.  Like a bomb.  Jesus.  Does that mean when her friends come over to hang out, she has to worry about ole’ dad exploding all over them?

(Really, truly sorry for the imagery there)

I’ve had men flirt with me and harass me, and there’s a huge difference.  And men can tell the difference. In my direct experience, 100% of men who can’t “tell” where the line is are being willfully ignorant for one reason: They want to harass and assault women, but they don’t want to get in trouble.

Bingo.  They always know, and when it’s just other men around, the pretense of being innocent pups who just want to learn is dropped in an instant.

Hats off to you people still in here swinging for women’s rights to be in public, even to be attractive in public, without apologizing to men who are angry that you don’t suck their cocks immediately.  Threads like these demonstrate amply how any society could slip into the mandatory burqua if bitter men with not-minor misogynist streaks get their way. And everyone else is poorer for it. 

Same story with guys who roam around shaming women for being dressed in a way they consider “sexy” by either cat-calling them or upskirting them, or even showing up in threads and claiming the feminists have something against male lust.  The truth of the matter is that it’s because I appreciate male lust---healthy, mature male lust that treats sex as a consensual matter---that I think it’s a shame to shame women into covering up, or claiming that opposition to sexual assault is somehow anti-sex.  Mature, intelligent men lose out when women feel like they have to dress dowdily in public to deflect unwanted attention.  A decent man who knows the difference between flirting and harassment (because he wants to know the difference) doesn’t deserve to be deprived of female beauty because some childish assholes can’t handle it.

Though I would add to your excellent point, Amanda, that no matter how dowdily women dress, some men will find some way to objectify them. In Egypt, the women sexually harassed most often are the ones wearing abayas, not the ones in Western clothes. If we all dress like those women from the fundamentalist Mormon church, they’d be lifting the skirts to snap pictures of ankles.

Amanda—I was talking to a friend about this last night and I give you a hearty right on.

Sexual desire is not something that men alone can lay claim to. Women have the right to their sexuality, their desires, and their own fashion expression that can describe their own sexual identity as much or as little as they like. And this is healthy and good—people allowing egalitarian, respectful expressions of sexual expression and sexual identity makes everyone a better person and I would posit leads to more and better sex. Then you have these upskirters and molesters and harassers who can’t handle that and they take something that is good and beautiful and fun and try to make it shameful and authoritarian and possessive. And they come into threads like this to try to defend their actions, which makes about as much sense as “well, if you didn’t want me to drive my riding mower over your garden bed, you shouldn’t have planted such beautiful lillies.”

And men, who by now should understand that it’s easier to begin a conversation with a woman at her ease, should absolutely be at the point of trying to eliminate predatory, exploitative and abusive behavior like upskirting and harassment, because it makes their lives and pursuit of partners easier.

SarahMC makes an accusation which I feel I have to address:

the only conclusion that makes sense is that either you’ve upskirted before but don’t want to consider yourself a misogynist, or you have a buddy who’s done it and you don’t want to consider him a misogynist.

Both conclusions would be incorrect.  Check your assumptions about me, they are false.  I have never and would never do such a thing, and to my knowledge none of my friends would either.  Of course I don’t have any close friends these days…

You never did give an example of a behavior you WOULD consider misogynist.

If I did, you (or someone) would either a) loudly trumpet what a misogynist I am for having such a narrow definition of misogyny (which would be repetitive of what chingona already said), or b) embark on a series of “but what about this, and what about this” followups to try to get me to move the definition until you finally hit on one I wouldn’t agree was misogyny, at which point you (or someone) would loudly trumpet what a misogynist I was for having such a narrow definition of misogyny.  Why waste time?  This isn’t my first rodeo.

is the whole point that you don’t consider behavior misogynist, just intent?

The whole point is that I believe you cannot extrapolate intent from isolated examples of behavior.  It is entirely possible that Amanda is right and every single one of these upskirter asses is a dyed-in-the-wool woman-hating sociopath substituting upskirting for rape (certainly all the anecdotal evidence posted here supports that conclusion).  I’m saying it’s also entirely possible that many if not most of these people (except the true sociopaths from the anecdotes) are just sophomoric mental adolescents who do it because it’s titillating and satisfies a fetish they have.  I think it would be better to keep an open mind to the possibility that not every instance of rude and insensitive behavior is driven by misogyny or is part of some male-female dominance game being played.

I just realized what this thread was reminding me of.  The old existence preceding essence thing from intro to philosophy. 

The essentialist holds that a man is a misogynist, therefore he engages in hateful behavior towards women, while the existentialist holds that a man engages in hateful behavior towards women, therefore he is a misogynist. 

Sorry if that was too much of a digression.

Same story with guys who roam around shaming women for being dressed in a way they consider “sexy” by either cat-calling them or upskirting them, or even showing up in threads and claiming the feminists have something against male lust.

What a burn.  I’m not claiming that, I’m asking if that’s really what you want to be saying because that’s what I’m getting from your writing.  You see everything in terms of male oppression whether it is really there or not; you just assume that it is and off you go.  I think it’s a bad blind spot and it detracts from your message, but of course now I’m “concern trolling” by trying to explain why I even commented in the first place, right?  I can practically write your responses myself at this point.  Go ahead and hate on me, Amanda, I’m tired of trying to gain your acceptance.  I am not your enemy no matter how much you try to paint me as one.

liberalrob, look at your original post. Here are your words:

There is also apparently a fine line between lust and misogyny that I’m having a hard time defining clearly.  Is there such a distinction?  Can I feel lust towards an attractive woman and not have it be misogyny?  How do I express that?  Is it not OK to express lust at all?  Or only in certain carefully-demarcated “lust zones”?  If a woman dresses provocatively I’m supposed to avert my eyes or take no notice?  How much notice can I take, is there some sliding scale I need to be aware of?

For all your protestations of innocence, you very clearly invited this discussion by conflating ordinary heterosexual lust with behavior that you yourself agree is criminal and wrong.

I never called you a misogynist. I never even called you a troll. I did call you out.

Everyone else is on the other thread. Come and play.

I did invite the discussion, and I think all in all it has been a good one.

I think Rob’s hugging the panda.

Considering a group of people as somewhat less than human doesn’t always take the form of explicit, “I wish they were dead or at least very far from me” hatred. Sometimes it’s pity, mockery, or other forms of looking down on them.

Lust isn’t misogyny. But acting on lust regardless of the feelings of the target of that lust means subordinating their feelings to yours. Which means you see them as less than yourself.

It may not be explicit hatred, but you can round it up.

@ chingona,
And even if we didn’t have statistics to prove it, at least we know things have gotten better because men like liberalrob don’t want to be called misogynists, they know that being a misogynist is a Bad Thing, and even though they hold opinions that make it evident that they think that rape and violation are problem of the individuals and not of society, and they clearly don’t understand it, they don’t want to be tagged with the misogynist cooties.  This is definitely better than being in a society where people are still proud of their misogyny. 

@DUH,
Yeah, these kind of crimes are DEFINITELY terrorism.  They makes women afraid to wear certain clothes, to walk by themselves, to go places at night, to go get a drink alone.  And it might not sound like much to misogynists and rape apologist who say “Well, just stay at home and wear pants, then!” because there are lots of important things that happen at night, including work and cultural events that you might miss out on unless you have a boyfriend or someone to drive you (so, again, only the pretty and compliant get the cookie).  Equal rights should include that we all feel safe to do the same things.  Who’s to say that women don’t work late because they are afraid they will be assaulted in the parking lot, or that they go through the needless expense of buying a car because they are afriad of being harrassed in the train?  I guess Amanda said it well @10:48, women are still fighting for a right so basic as the right to be in public.

If you are taking pictures of a place on someone’s body they intentionally hide by, you know, wearing clothes over it, you might as well just rip the skirt right off.

Please read the Terms of Panty Viewing CAREFULLY.  When you have read and understood the Terms, check the box and click “I Agree”:

If The Panty Showing Party("She")willingly, and under no duress, lifts their skirt or otherwise modifies their clothing for The Panty Viewing Party("You"), and only during such time that She is willingly displaying them to You: You may LOOK AT the Panty Showing Party’s panties.  Further terms beyond, but not excluding, these above restrictions may be enforceable, at ANY TIME, at the Panty Showing Party’s discretion.

[_] Please check here that you have read and understand the Terms of Panty Viewing, then click “I Agree” to continue.

|I AGREE| |CANCEL|

What is it? , black gangbangs,

For the record, I don’t think you were saying it’s a victimless crime. But I still think the distinction you are making is not particularly significant in the real world.

I thought about just that while taking some time off, and there is one very real consequence to the distinction.

The harassers, those like the guys attacking Rebecca, are attacking a person.  Confronting them is dangerous in that they may move from verbal to physical assault.

The upskirters are not dealing with a person.  Getting in their faces, forcing them to acknowledge a very irate personhood, will result in them running.  Call them cowards, if you like.

Dan: In other words, your complete rebuttal to what I said is “nuh-uh, because I said so.”

No, in other words you are misstating my comments to the point of complete falsehood.

For example, you attempt to pass off my comments as “What you’re effectively arguing by claiming that the woman as a person doesn’t exist within the process is that upskirting is a victimless crime.” in response to my post in which the very last line reads “When you think about it, victims getting in their face and demanding to be dealt with as very very pissed off human beings must come as an awful shock to these assholes…”

I can only conclude that you are either very very stupid, or deliberately attempting to paint me as saying something I haven’t.  Since I don’t think you’re stupid, I must therefore conclude you are malicious.

Asshole.

Man, I’d rather have little teases of pantie shots where the girl’s smiling, maybe blushing, but knowing and consenting to the image.  You know, like fanservice stuff in teen or open audience aimed media.

Without that, it’s just dumb, creepy, and really beating the dude with a stick should be called self-defense.

Yeah, these kind of crimes are DEFINITELY terrorism.

raspberryjamba, you and I obviously don’t see eye to eye on much with gender relations, but this is absolutely spot on.

How do we not see eye to eye?  All you’ve said is that you dissaprove of upskirting… Where we ever on opposite sides of thread wars?

Eric, perhaps women would wear something underneath their skirts printed with the likes of
this: Faust 2.0

BZ, is there any reason you’d rather worry about who has what between their legs instead of comparing what’s between one’s ears?

Bitter Scribe,
I apologize because you are correct (I last saw the film 12 years ago). One of the thugs in Tirez Sur le Pianiste does complain that women dress the way they do to excite men. Unfortunately, in my life I’ve had two women (both good friends, BTW) tell me exactly that - they dress the way they did to get men’s attention. It was one reason why they were only friends - they had no need to try so hard, yet they’d dress like they’re going club-hopping when at work. It’s hard for me to be too judgmental against the crook since that experience. Or the women, for that matter. They may have been doing so to appeal to men in a patriarchal society, but they unapologetically did it just the same.

You know, I agree than men who get all hot looking at upskirt shots are pervs; and probably have some issues they need to work out with how they relate to women.  But just because it’s unacceptable (yes, it is assault) doesn’t mean that it’s misogyny, or that the underlying cause is hatred of women or some perceived slight.

Vastly more likely is that the root cause is something much more basic: desire for the forbidden.  You aren’t *supposed* to see a woman’s undergarments, etc. in public places, and especially without permission, so it’s likely to be titillating to break that taboo.  This also explains why the same men don’t get turned on by beachwear—in the context of the beach, there is no taboo in seeing the scanty clothing.

None of that makes the behavior any more acceptable—violating someones personal privacy in that way is very clearly inappropriate—but unacceptable doesn’t automatically mean “hateful”.

It’s not very helpful to feminism—and I say this as a feminist—to make claims of misogyny lightly.

Darren -

You’re missing the point.  If this was their interest:

desire for the forbidden.  You aren’t *supposed* to see a woman’s undergarments, etc. in public places...so it’s likely to be titillating to break that taboo.

That’s not misogyny.  If that’s your thrill, you can look at the endless gigs of “Public” or “Voyeur” porn out there, knowing that your fetish is being indulged without anybody getting hurt.  Better yet, find an exhibitionist girlfriend.  If people can find partners willing to be whipped or drink their urine, then it can’t be that hard to find a woman willing to flip up her skirt in public for you.

This, however -

and especially without permission

- changes everything.  If the thrill is that the woman hasn’t consented, that is misogyny, and calling it out as such is not making the claim lightly.

Speaking of movies, in “Splash” (1984:  Darryl Hannah played a mermaid), John Candy quickly established his character as a loathsome dweeb by pretending to drop some coins so that as he crawled around picking them up, he could look up women’s skirts.  So, perhaps mainstream mores are working okay, at least in this respect.

Good time. And , ghetto whores,

Darren.
A funny story that shows the “forbidden” side of it. A friend of mine and I went to the lake for the day just to hang out and get a tan. I had regular trunks, she wore just her underwear. There weren’t a lot of people there, but nobody gave her a second look.

This thread is obviously dying out (and starting to be spammed nastily too), but this needs saying: I wonder how many people who get hung up on “misogyny” deriving from a Greek word that can mean “hate” are equally hung up on the term “misanthrope”, which has been used for centuries to describe someone who has a pessimistic/derogatory view of humanity and our penchant for fucking things up, but is not used to describe someone who actively hates their fellow humans.  The etymology of a word is not the be-all and end-all of what it means in current usage.

Welcome friends! , teacher fucks,