So we, as a society, have “peeping tom” laws to protect people who might unknowingly expose themselves to the creepy peepers of, well, creepy peepers who get their thrills from seeing and sometimes photographing strangers revealing more than they meant to.
It would seem reasonable enough to consider surreptitiously taken “upskirt” photographs as violations of peeping tom laws. But not in Massachusetts: On Wednesday, the Supreme Judicial Court in that state ruled that upskirt photographs are legally ok, as the laws there are written to apply only to protect victims who are “partially nude,” not those who are merely wearing short skirts.
In the wake of the ruling, legislators and women’s rights advocates are saying that the laws — written before cell phone camera were ubiquitous — need an update.
Naturally, this has some of the dedicated Human Rights activists in the Men’s Rights subreddit in an uproar. How dare anyone challenge their sacred right to take pictures of women’s panties on public transportation without their consent!
![Demonspawn [-1] 6 points 7 hours ago (26|20) Wearing a skirt has consequences. If we use state violence to protect women from the consequences of her choice to wear a skirt, we remove her agency. This man didn't assault her, didn't touch her... all he did was take a picture of what her choice in clothing exposed to the public. How is that criminal to the point of deserving of state violence upon him? This is saying that protecting women from the consequences of their choices in clothing is more important than men's freedom. permalink save source save give gold hide child comments [–]nigglereddit 5 points 6 hours ago (13|8) You're absolutely correct. If you wear clothing which exposes parts of your body from some angles, you have to expect that someone at that angle will see those parts of your body. You can't tell everyone not to see you from those angles because you're not comfortable with that part of your body being seen; that's ridiculous. If you're uncomfortable it is your job to cover that part of your body. permalink save source save parent give gold [–]DaNiceguy [-2] 4 points 4 hours ago (11|7) Ah but you see the wrong man saw it. That makes him a criminal, right?](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/demonskirt.png?resize=575%2C448&ssl=1)
“Wearing a skirt has consequences!” What a perfect slogan for a “movement” that is about little more than tearing down half of humanity in the name of, what, a man’s right to be a peeping tom? Put it on a t-shirt, Demonspawn, and show the world the kind of creep you are.
NOTE: Thanks to Cloudiah for pointing me to this.
UPDATE: The Massachusetts State Legislature, moving surprisingly quickly, has passed a new law explicitly banning upskirt photos; it could be signed into law by tomorrow.
I thought it had something to do with mudslides.
Mudslimism sounds like a strange cult about … getting thin with mud?
Slimy mudslides that women slide down onto his penis? I’m fascinated by that sentence and still trying to make it make sense.
Communion is a shot of milk, vodka, Bailey’s, and Kahlua.
Ewwww!
(Not the mudslides, that sounds fun, but his penis being involved.)
With a spoonful of mud cake.
Wearing a skirt has consequences, huh? If all women stopped wearing skirts to avoid the consequences, I wonder who would be the first to complain about women discarding their femininity or something like that.
Uhh.
http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/7/70/079Slowpoke.png
This has nothing to do with anything, but it doesn’t get better than Monty Python + cats.
Oh drat, bloody youtube … I’m only trying to play one video!
http://youtu.be/Wx9sRt-XPk8
I’ll just leave this here …
Is that the dude from “Governments Get Girlfriends”??
“Burkhas. only answer!”
shock collars! but not on their necks….
Someone posted a link to an article about embroidered burqas and made a statement as if to show how this situation is comparable tto “how bad” the burqas are in “the middle east” (i put it in scare quotes because that person used the term in a vague way instead of specifying the country/ies in question–not all countries in the Middle East have laws about burqas). I’ve been told by Muslim women activists from countries in the Middle East that non-Muslims using conflicts in their country around sexism in certain ways can be Islamophobic. In that comment, it seems to be suggesting that the stuff over there is “so bad” and “so sexist” and awful that if anything in the US even “compares” to that it must be ridiculous and sexist and oppressive. But the US is also a patriarchy and is also sexist. To act like the “Middle East” is so much worse than we are is Islamophobic and racist–that’s what I’ve learned from Muslim feminists.
And all the comments making jokes about burqas make me uncomfortable. Covering up with burqas doesn’t make women safer necessarily. Throughout history in the West as well women have been expected to cover up and that idea still exists todays, but women can be raped no matter what they wear–and acting as if the burqa is some extreme we can talk about to compare…also seems problematic to me. Muslim feminists often talk about how us white feminists have a tendency to act as if their countries are much more sexist than ours, in order to remote superiority and a white savior attitude. I also noticed some people using ableist language like “id*otic” and “stup*d” – which are words the disabled community have spoken out against. I hope if everyone here is a feminist that we can be advocating for and working with all women, and that includes women who are Muslim, of color, and/or disabled.
I’m kind of frustrated by the number of normally-not-terrible people opposed to the new law that I’ve encountered. Comments like, “this one would be difficult to write/enforce without opening attacks on other public filming.” It took me a while to put my finger on it, but I think what bothers me is that they’re not willing to balance even a remote risk to free speech/public filming with people’s right to not be filmed under their clothes without their consent–they think free speech is an absolute right, and not having upskirt photos taken is like not being insulted for no good reason–something that would be nice, but certainly not a right. The feeling I get from them: “It’s difficult to write a law that wouldn’t affect public filming or other circumstances where you’d want filming to take place, so rather than trying to be really careful about writing the law and making sure it’s limited in scope, we should just not do it.” I mean, this law seems more limited and less likely to have an impact on non-creepy filming that we aren’t trying to prevent than existing peeping Tom laws. The way that this is off-balance, it’s sort of like saying, well, sometimes people need to kill other people in self-defense, plus I believe in the right to assisted suicide, so we shouldn’t have murder laws because some of the people in those situations would be wrongly tried for murder. (And they are!)
For reference, here is the new MA law. Also, here is a similar Indiana law. India also has an anti-upskirt law. I was trying to look up Australian laws as well–according to wikipedia all Australian states have anti-upskirt-photo laws, but wasn’t having much luck. Any of the Aussies here have any thoughts about the laws where you are?
Between Dave’s OP and the people I’m complaining about, I’m tempted to start telling people that because upskirt photos are a violation of bodily autonomy on a continuum with assault, people should have the right to meet them with deadly force. (I think we should have the right to smash the person’s camera, though that right won’t do you much good unless you’re willing to risk them deciding to beat you up or pull a gun on you for destroying their camera.)
The end of the first sentence of my last comment should include, “in order to shift the Overton window”.
@closetpuritan
I don’t even think this is much of a balance act involving free speech. I mean, the law doesn’t actually forbid any *speech* after all – not the expression of any idea and so on. It only prevents *recording* certain stuff. You have the right to say and publish whatever you want, but you can’t record ‘upskirt’ images for it – just like you can’t just enter private property in order to record stuff, and nobody calls that an abrogation of free speech. So, IMO, opposition to such very sensible (and apparently, at least in Mass., so far sorely lacking) laws is just silly… at best.
Victoria’s had a law covering this since 2007 – the Summary Offences Amendment (Upskirting) Act 2007. It’ll come up as a Word or Open Office doc if you google it.
The brief statement is this:
41A Observation of genital or anal region
A person must not, with the aid of a device, intentionally observe another person’s genital or anal region in circumstances in which it would be reasonable for that other person to expect that his or her genital or anal region could not be observed.
3 months imprisonment.
Notes
1 The reasonable expectation test is an objective one—what would a reasonable person in the position of the person being observed have expected.
2 Section 41D(1) sets out exceptions to this offence.
41B Visually capturing genital or anal region
A person must not intentionally visually capture another person’s genital or anal region in circumstances in which it would be reasonable for that other person to expect that his or her genital or anal region could not be visually captured.
2 years imprisonment.
Notes
1 The reasonable expectation test is an objective one—what would a reasonable person in the position of the person whose genital or anal region is being visually captured have expected.
2 Section 41D(1) sets out exceptions to this offence.
Fuck, I just realized that these guys don’t consider a woman’s vulva her own property.
Well, of course not. Womenthings are men’s property.
Lies.
The moment someone tries to criticize their speech, they scream “Censorship!”, as they’re very much invested on saying stupid shit unchallenged, the free speech of critics be damned.
Another point where they think free speech is relative is when they decide bigots should be allowed to speak freely anywhere even if their speech ends up effectively shunning minorities out of the space. Freeze peach for bigots, and not for their victims.
So no, they don’t think free speech is an absolute right. That’s a red herring.
Oh, if it was a man whose tackle was being photographed without his permission they wouldn’t be arguing free speech rights and would be righteously outraged. It’s just what katz said – they think women’s bodies are either public property (if we’re single) or private property (if we’re partnered, in which case our man should be with us in public). At no point are our bodies ever our property – silly wimminz, thinking stuff like that.
That MRAs often make property rights discourse central to their arguments really reveals how much libertarian capitalism informs their worldview even if they don’t consider themselves libertarian capitalists. Both groups have at least one thing in common: they both use the concept of property to justify the cruel treatment of human beings. They use the concept to erase women’s bodily rights e.g. women are considered public property as katz said, and they also use the concept to advocate the right to force women to have abortions. And those are just two examples of how inherently libertarian the MRM is.
I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear. I’m basically saying that one thing that supports a significant amount of MRA misogyny is the assumption of property rights applied to the body. A worldview that presupposes the possibility of ethically owning another person’s body is one that will likely legitimize at the same time a lack of regard for bodily integrity. After all, one can do whatever they want to their property. People who abandon the notion of property applied to the body tend to not be MRAs, I’ve noticed. I’m not saying that anyone supportive of capitalism is automatically a misogynist as well, but I think there’s a strong correlation at least.