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Wearing a Skirt Has Consequences: A Men’s Rights Redditor defends a man’s sacred right to take upskirt photos

Women: If you wear skirts here, some MRAs think you should be punished for it
Women: If you wear skirts here, some MRAs think you should be punished for it

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?

“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.

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Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Buttercup Q. Skullpants
10 years ago

Libertarianism relies on everyone else to keep up their end of the social contract. They’ll happily drive on well-lit, well-paved roads that other taxpayers have paid for, but don’t ask them to contribute.

Re: upskirting, I think there might be a market for panties printed with “FUCK YOU, CREEPER”. Preferably in LED lights.

kittehserf
10 years ago

I still go for mandatory creepshot-recognition technology in phones – that make the phone explode or melt down on the creeper’s hand.

emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

Yeah, filming the police doing bad things is already illegal in some places

Including Massachusetts, last I checked.

Libertarianism relies on everyone else to keep up their end of the social contract. They’ll happily drive on well-lit, well-paved roads that other taxpayers have paid for, but don’t ask them to contribute.

This is exactly my main objection to Libertarianism. Anarchists, at least, have proposed models of community-level governance that might keep people aware of how their actions hurt others, or at least keep them honest. Libertarians seem to think that in the absence of government, people would just police themselves. It’s like they’ve never even read Lord of the Flies.

Or else, they think they’d be the ones on top of the heap, and don’t care what happens to the rest of us.

My favorite is the ones who want to get rid of things like workplace safety and labor laws, claiming that The Market will favor the more humane employers or something. We tried that, fairly recently, and it didn’t work. Anyone who was awake for the Industrial Revolution portion of US History should be aware of the breadth and depth of human suffering when there are no labor regulations. Hell, anyone who was awake in the last couple of years should be aware, thanks to shit the Bangladeshi factory fire or the Apple plant suicides. How anyone can claim we’d be better off without worker protections is beyond me.

emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

This case is actually a pretty good example of Libertarian-style theoretical liberty versus actual freedom. Without a law against upskirt photos, there are fewer actions restricted; people are both free to wear skirts and free to take upskirt photos. In practice, it leads to many women “voluntarily” losing their freedom to wear skirts because if they do wear skirts they have a relatively high risk of being targeted for upskirt photos.

I had a similar thought during the last Presidential election, when one of the Republican candidates (probably Ron Paul) said he supported a business owner’s right to refuse to serve black customers. I was like, but wouldn’t that business owner’s refusal limit the freedom of the black people in the community? Especially since, should racial discrimination become legal again, they probably wouldn’t be the only business to make that choice? But Libertarians are so focused on the individual (usually themselves), they don’t think about the social context we’re currently in. Anti-discrimination laws are another one of those things that exist precisely because the Free Market didn’t magically solve them.

emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

I got modded! Did I use a verboten word? Am I posting too frequently? Should I post more cat videos?

Bina
10 years ago

Ah yes, libertarianism: men’s freedom to harm women is much more important than women’s freedom from being harmed.

Bingo. Our “freedom from” is a terrible infringement on their “freedom to”. Meanwhile, their “freedom to” takes away more and more of OUR “freedom to”! How sadly ironic is that?

Libertarianism relies on everyone else to keep up their end of the social contract. They’ll happily drive on well-lit, well-paved roads that other taxpayers have paid for, but don’t ask them to contribute.

Yup! And yet they have the temerity to refer to everyone who uncomplainingly contributes as the “looters”, “moochers” and, my personal favorite, “sheeple”. When the revolution comes, their heads should be the first ones on pikestaves.

weirwoodtreehugger
10 years ago

American libertarians really need to read about the Triangle Shirtwaist incident. I think some of them probably think the things that have happened in Bangladesh recently wouldn’t happen in the US, but they can and have happened here.
I can’t speak to what libertarians in other countries believe, but American libertarians seem to be corporate fetishists with undertones of white male supremacy.

sparky
sparky
10 years ago

I’m not sure where I’ve heard this; it may have been here, so I apogizing if I’m repeating someone! There’s a county in Oregon where the people keep voting against raising property to pay law enforcement. Crime is sky-rocketing:


http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2014/03/crime_cave_junction_josephine.html

The Oregon State Police are taking up the slack, but that’s not their job:


http://www.opb.org/news/article/state-police-bailing-out-understaffed-sheriffs-department/

American libertarianism in action!

Sindhu S.
10 years ago

Reblogged this on sindhuspace and commented:
What about ‘upfront’ photos?

closetpuritan
10 years ago

American libertarians really need to read about the Triangle Shirtwaist incident.
Or more recently, the Hamlet chicken plant disaster. IIRC, that, the Shirtwaist incident, and the recent Bangladesh one all were caused in part by locking the exits. Another example where not making laws and enforcing them makes people less free; they were literally locked up!

vaiyt
10 years ago

I can’t speak to what libertarians in other countries believe, but American libertarians seem to be corporate fetishists with undertones of white male supremacy.

As far as I know, it’s the same thing here.

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

Libertarianism used to be a broad and diverse movement that was mostly concerned with, y’know, liberty. Noam Chomsky used to call himself a Libertarian.

Libertarianism was hijacked by corporate interests in the 80s. Anybody who still calls themselves a Libertarian is either a corporate stooge in on the con or is a victim of the long con.

A few words from Wikipedia.

leftwingfox
10 years ago

Ah yes, libertarianism: men’s freedom to harm women is much more important than women’s freedom from being harmed.

Yeah. They like to throw around “The right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”, but pair it with a lot of twisting to make the victims look like aggressors. (Criticism is censorship! Boycotts are discrimination! No-one is harmed by bigotry or sexism!)

hellkell
hellkell
10 years ago

emilygoddess: RP, the libertarian poster boy, sets off the mod filter.

emilygoddess
emilygoddess
10 years ago

Thanks, Hellkell. I figured it was probably that.

grumpycatisagirl
grumpycatisagirl
10 years ago

Pardon me for my slowness, but why exactly does RP set off the mod filter? You mean just mentioning his name?

Howard Bannister
Howard Bannister
10 years ago

It’s like the one troll who had to call everybody a wh*re. One person’s obsession with the word makes it unusable for the rest of us.

It’s better than the other way.

Viscaria
Viscaria
10 years ago

@grumpycat, you got it. Just mentioning his name will send your comment to be moderated. Too many of his fanboys came to vomit talking points all over the comments.

grumpycatisagirl
grumpycatisagirl
10 years ago

Oh, okay,. Eek. Well, I guess that makes it extra good he’s not POTUS.

Chaos Engineer
Chaos Engineer
10 years ago

From across the Atlantic, I get the impression that these days, most US-Americans self-identifying as “libertarians” are actually just conservatives (and that also means social conservative) who especially hate paying taxes.

I don’t think that captures it – all US conservatives especially hate paying taxes. (Even low-income conservatives who don’t have to pay taxes are upset that taxes exist. Because the collected tax money is going to Those People.)

A US Libertarian is basically a Republican who: (1) Isn’t a fundamentalist Christian and (2) favors an isolationist foreign policy.

You’re right that they tend to be social conservatives on most issues…provided the issue can be justified with any argument other than “The Bible says…”. They’re willing to accept arguments like, “It’s always been this way, and it works to my advantage, so it must be the natural order of things.” So casual racism and sexism are fine, but creationism isn’t.

kittehserf
10 years ago

A US Libertarian is basically a Republican who: (1) Isn’t a fundamentalist Christian and (2) favors an isolationist foreign policy.

I knew a US Libertarian who was a fundamentalist Christian – a born-again, no less.

Bina
10 years ago

Doesn’t Vox Day call himself a “Christian Libertarian”, or didn’t he use to? As I recall, he did…and his opinionations sounded identical to those of any Nazi propagandist.

Octo
Octo
10 years ago

Yeah, I’ve met plenty of self-declared “libertarians” on the net who were basically Christian fundies. I guess the difference is that standard conservative doesn’t like government, while the “libertarian” drones on all the time about privatizing the entire government could really work (hint: it wouldn’t).

mildlymagnificent
mildlymagnificent
10 years ago

Libertarianism used to be a broad and diverse movement that was mostly concerned with, y’know, liberty. Noam Chomsky used to call himself a Libertarian.

My only familiarity with the term was in the 70s. It was more or less the wholly owned property of hippies and anarchists and some other leftie loonies. Against restrictions on drugs and on sexual behaviour – and very little more than that for the most part.

Bina
10 years ago

Yeah, I’ve met plenty of self-declared “libertarians” on the net who were basically Christian fundies. I guess the difference is that standard conservative doesn’t like government, while the “libertarian” drones on all the time about privatizing the entire government could really work (hint: it wouldn’t).

And Chile is an excellent case in point…and by “excellent” I mean it’s a failed state in every respect but the media won’t report it as such, because that would indict the CIA, the Chicago Boys, and Uncle Miltie Friedman. And also because that would make its alleged “return to democracy” look perilously like a sham.