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The ManKind Initiative, a UK organization devoted to fighting domestic violence against men, recently put out a video that’s been getting a lot of attention in the media and online, racking up more than six million views on YouTube in a little over a week.
The brief video, titled #ViolenceIsViolence, purports to depict the radically different reactions of bystanders to staged incidents of domestic violence between a couple in a London plaza. When the man was the aggressor, shoving the woman and grabbing her face, bystanders intervened and threatened to call the police. When the woman was the aggressor, the video shows bystanders laughing, and no one does a thing.
The video has been praised by assorted Men’s Rights Activists, naturally enough, but it has also gotten uncritical attention in some prominent media outlets as well, from Marie Claire to the Huffington Post.
There’s just one problem: The video may be a fraud, using deceptive editing to distort incidents that may well have played out quite differently in real life.
A shot-by-shot analysis of the video from beginning to end reveals that the first “incident” depicted is actually a composite of footage shot of at least two separate incidents, filmed on at least three different times of day and edited together into one narrative.
A careful viewing of the video also reveals that many of the supposed “reaction shots” in the video are not “reaction shots” at all, but shots taken in the same plaza at different times and edited in as if they are happening at the same time as the staged “incidents” depicted.
Moreover, none of the people depicted as laughing at the second incident are shown in the same frame as the fighting couple. There is no evidence that any of them were actually laughing at the woman attacking the man.
The editing tricks used in the video were brought to my attention by a reader who sent me a link to a blog entry by Miguel Lorente Acosta, a Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Granada in Spain, and a Government Delegate for Gender Violence in Spain’s Ministry of Equality. He goes through the video shot by shot, showing each trick for what it is.
The post in Spanish, and his argument is a little hard to follow through the filter of Google Translate, so I will offer my own analysis of the video below, drawing heavily on his post. (His post is still worth reading, as he covers several examples of deceptive editing I’ve left out.)
I urge you to watch the video above through once, then follow me through the following analysis.
The first “incident” is made up of footage taken at three distinct times, if not more. The proof is in the bench.
In the opening shot of the video, we see an overview of the plaza. We see two people sitting on a bench, a man in black to the left and a woman in white to the right, with a trash can to the right of them. (All of these lefts and rights are relative to us, the viewers.) The trash can has an empty green bag hanging off of it.
As the first incident begins, we see the same bench, only now we see two women sitting where the man was previously sitting. The trash can now has a full bag of trash sitting next to it.
In this shot, showing bystanders intervening in what is portrayed as the same fight, and supposedly depicting a moment in time only about 30 seconds after the previous shot, we see that the two women on the bench have been replaced by two men, one in a suit and the other in a red hoodie. The full trash bag has been removed, and the trash can again has an empty trash bag hanging off of it.
Clearly this portion of the video does not depict a single incident.
What about the reaction shots? The easiest way to tell that the reaction shots in the video did not chronologically follow the shots that they come after in the video is by looking at the shadows. Some of the video was shot when the sky was cloudy and shadows were indistinct. Other shots were taken in direct sunlight. In the video, shots in cloudy weather are followed immediately by shots in roughly the same location where we see bright sunlight and clear shadows.
Here’s one shot, 9 seconds in. Notice the lack of clear shadows; the shadow of the sitting woman is little more than a vague smudge.
Here’s another shot from less than a second later in the same video – the timestamp is still at 9 seconds in. Now the plaza is in direct sunlight and the shadows are sharp and distinct.
If you watch the video carefully, you can see these sorts of discontinuities throughout. It seems highly unlikely that the various reaction shots actually depict reactions to what they appear to be reactions to. Which wouldn’t matter if this were a feature film; that’s standard practice. But this purports to be a depiction of real incidents caught on hidden camera and presented as they happened in real time.
The issue of non-reaction reaction shots is especially important when it comes to the second incident. In the first incident, we see a number of women, and one man, intervening to stop the violence. There is no question that’s what’s going on, because we see them in the same frame as the couple.
In the second incident, none of the supposed laughing onlookers ever appear in the same frame as the fighting couple. We have no proof that their laughter is in fact a reaction to the woman attacking the man. And given the dishonest way that the video is edited overall, I have little faith that they are real reaction shots.
The people who are in frame with the fighting couple are either trying resolutely to ignore the incident – as many of the onlookers also did in the first incident – or are clearly troubled by it.
I noticed one blonde woman who looked at first glance like she might have been laughing, but after pausing the video it became clear that she was actually alarmed and trying to move out of the way.
There is one other thing to note about the two incidents. In the first case, the onlookers didn’t intervene until after the man escalated his aggression by grabbing the woman by her face. In the second video, the screen fades to black shortly after the woman escalates her aggression to a similar level. We don’t know what, if anything, happened after that.
Is it possible that the first part of the video, despite being a composite of several incidents, depicts more or less accurately what happened each time the video makers tried this experiment? Yes. Is it possible that onlookers did indeed laugh as the woman attacked the man? Yes.
But there is only one way for The ManKind Initiative to come clean and clear up any suspicion: they need to post the unedited, time-stamped footage of each of the incidents they filmed from each of their three cameras so we can see how each incident really played out in real time and which, if any, of the alleged reactions were actual reactions.
In addition to the editing tricks mentioned above, we don’t know if the video makers edited out portions of the staged attacks that might have influenced how the bystanders reacted.
The video makers should also post the footage of the incidents that they did not use for the advert, so we can see if reactions to the violence were consistently different when the genders of attackers and victims were switched. Two incidents make up a rather small sample – even if one of these incidents is actually two incidents disguised as one.
Domestic violence against men is a real and serious problem. But you can’t fight it effectively with smoke and mirrors.
What about the statistic the video posts at the end, about how 40% of dometic violence is against men? Where do they get that? What does it mean? Are they talking about relationships in which domestic violence happens, incidents of domestic violence, percentage of men who report having been abused by a partner? How did they measure it?
I’m glad you’ve posted this. The whole thing smelled really off to me.
One thing about statistics: they, as of right now, paint it as female-on-male violence as a recurring throughline. They ignore gay relationships, which is problematic. I have never, not once, seen a men’s group address victims of homosexual domestic violence. (I think this is only just starting to be recognized in women’s shelters as well).
On the video: it has more cutting than a Michael Bay movie.In something like this as little editing as possible would be best; let the takes run long so it actually seems genuine and catches the details as they’re happening. As mentioned above, for all we know many of the people involved here – the intervener, the laughers – could be actors. On that note, I’d also like to point out that sometimes people do laugh when they’re not sure how to react to something, especially when it’s sudden and shocking. And yes, we don’t know what could have been left on the cutting room floor.
Also, isn’t the video a little flawed in its depiction from the offset?
Most DV occurs in private: abusers, male or female, aren’t silly sausages. Seeing such an attack in the day, with numerous witnesses, isn’t near common. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a situation like this ever happen.
@ girlscientist: Well, never trust statistics you haven’t manipulated yourself, eh? 😀
@ topic: Blergh, I can’t understand how they won’t see that they are only pointing out the toxic masculinity they themselves are reproducing. This videos don’t have a little bit of “Maybe we need to rethink ingrained social beliefs that men are supposed to be superior to women in any way.” but just “BLARGh, evil wommenz are eeeeeeeeevil, groargh!”. Seriously. -.-
@Toolbox:
Thank you for articulating what seemed so off to me about this video from the very start. The whole premise deviates from how DV usually goes in real life; behind closed doors, away from witnesses, “out of sight, out of mind”. The whole “didn’t see it, didn’t happen; your word against his, and we’d much rather believe him than you” mindset is part of the building blocks of a misogynistic society.
And yes, male victims of domestic violence are often ridiculed. By men who embrace toxic masculinity. By men who believe in men being the head of the household. By authorative personalities who believe in the law of the strongest. By Paul Elam types who think men should beat women bloody for slapping them. Male victims need somebody to actually help them, not assholes who either minimize their pain and tell them to answer violence with violence, or who use them as beating sticks against women’s rights.
Funny how the people who actually want to help male victims of DV tend to be feminist in their worldview.
I always thought Tumblr was more like Middle Earth, perfectly pleasant until you have to sit through Tom Bombadil’s singing or wade through that corpse swamp.
I’ve never been brave enough to lookup Aussie MRAs but I have to wonder if they’re still sore about the Australia Says No ads.
Also, underboob sweat is icky, anxiety sweat is painful, regular sweat is meh and my hair doesn’t seem to be affected by anything. Important Updates!
I did see a man attack a woman in public, once, back in the 80s. It was early morning, when I was on the way to work. She jumped out of a car, he followed her and shook her hard, yelling FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU B*TCH over and over.
Even though I doubt it would have helped, and possibly made things worse for her, I’ve never forgiven myself for being too scared to attack that PoS with the umbrella I was carrying.
A famous footballer and coach here, Ron Barassi, was attacked a few years ago for intervening when a man attacked a woman in public – outside a pub in a busy, popular street. RB is in his seventies; he had the courage to intervene when everyone else there was doing the bystander thing, and paid the price. I saw him a while after that happened and he looked hellish frail.
None of this changes the fact that yes, most DV does occur out of sight, but sometimes it’s public. Fuck the people who do fakes of this sort of shit.
Is it also possible that the second time around, the bystanders were largely the same group of people who had already witnessed the first incident? The same blond woman was still sitting on the curb right next to the couple, and she looked a lot less alarmed during Round 2.
By that point, most of the bystanders had probably figured out it was either a hidden cam or some sort of street theater. Particularly since they were seeing the same couple, but with the roles reversed. That would partly explain why it got less of a reaction. I wonder how it would have played out if they’d done the female-on-male scene first.
-This video is also assuming that there is gender symmetry when it comes to DV. Numerous studies have proven that there is no such thing.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/maan/cgi-bin/?page_id=331
-The statistic in the end includes familial violence, not just intimate partner violence.
– Men and women are actually equally likely to be arrested in cases of DV and also equally likely to be convicted.
http://www.nij.gov/publications/dv-dual-arrest-222679/ch1/Pages/findings.aspx
All domestic violence is bad. No victim should be ignored, whether male or female, but MRAs make it look as though men are largely ignored and are receiving unequal treatment. The truth is, domestic violence in general is ignored. 🙁
What they usually do is find anecdotal cases in which men suffering abuse were mistreated by police. Such anecdotal cases of women exist as well ( a lot of them, especially when women of color are affected).
I remember when I was a kid and my father used to beat us, my mom called the cops, they came, they saw a woman and two kids in bruises and they just said “Hey,man, don’t hit your wife”, and went away. They did nothing.
MRAs: can’t even do fake videos properly.
(I’m using the umbrella term MRAs for this lot, since they seem remarkably stupid, and have Erin Pizzey onside. Damning enough … )
There’s a great article on this at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/10858831/Domestic-violence-viral-ad-the-real-difference-between-attacks-on-women-and-attacks-on-men.html
by Polly Neate, Chief executive of Women’s Aid.
This is an extract:
‘We know that it has been reported that men, up to one in six, experience some form of violence in the home in their lifetime. Mankind’s video ends by showing a statistic that 40 per cent of domestic violence is suffered by men. This figure, while it does come from the Office for National Statistics, can be misleading. It’s important to remember that domestic violence, the type of abuse where you are living in utter fear of your partner, isn’t a one-off incident: it’s about ongoing and repeated violence. Women make up 89 per cent of those who experience four or more incidents of domestic violence.
It’s also really important to recognise that in the remaining 11 per cent, men are more at risk when they are in same sex relationships. Quite simply, proportionately very few perpetrators of domestic violence where there is ongoing abuse are female. Despite this, female perpetrators are three times more likely to be arrested than men. As men commit 96 per cent of all violent crime, it is difficult to understand why these statistics are so hard to accept.’
So, even if the video was an accurate record of genuine events, which it is self evidently not, it’s still not truthful.
All the hugs, Suzy, if you want them.
That’s even worse than the police back in the 70s, when my brother came home drunk and attacked my mother, and broke her jaw. The police’s line then was that yeah, they could lock him up overnight, but they’d have to let him out the next morning. No suggestion that he should be charged with anything, despite the state Mum was in and the smashed glass door the shit had pushed her through.
Stevie, that’s an excellent quote.
@toolbox:
Most DV occurs in private: abusers, male or female, aren’t silly sausages. Seeing such an attack in the day, with numerous witnesses, isn’t near common. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen a situation like this ever happen.
I have seen something like this: a man and a terrified woman were arguing in the street under my window. But the street was empty, except for the couple (he seemed on the verge of striking her, and she was keeping her distance from him – in the end, he calmed down somewhat, and they walked away). I watched it happen from my apartment, with my phone in hand in case he hit her. I almost called out to her in order to ask if she wanted me to call the police, but I didn’t dare, and I didn’t know if it would cause him to calm down, turn his ire towards me or escalate his anger towards her. Now I wish I *had* asked her if there was something she wanted me to do, but at the time I didn’t know anything about domestic violence.
Thank you, kittehserf! Hugs to you too.
Kittehs,
::hugs:: for the noninterference guilt.
Sorry you went through that, sorry the victim went through that, and many hopes that the PoS did get arrested for his PoS-ery.
Suzy, that’s awful! So, so much wrong…
::hugs:: for you, too.
Even if it were completely real, what do they think it would change about how feminists think? Feminists already acknowledge that society’s reaction to men being abused being framed as not serious or the men being weak is fucked up, and that all abuse is something to be discouraged.
MRAs on the other hand seem to view any violence against men (cis men, anyway), regardless of the source, as a gotcha that should make violence against women more socially acceptable.
Thank you kittehserf; I should go pack now.
Even though i understand what this article tries to say about the video, its obvious that the video editors only put in relevent parts of the video without wasting screen time showing passive bystanders. I’d bet 100 $ there was not even a single person laughing at a woman being beat up by a man and that there was atleast one person laughing at a beat up man. Im pretty sure most of the people i know would laugh at a man being beaten to a pulp by a woman or maybe im just surrounded my terrible people. 🙁
You may call it patriarchy and MRA’s may call it misandry but to an innocent bystander like me who cares about human rights, its just painful to watch.
There was a social experiment done on this where a man was intimidating a woman at th e park and within minutes the white knights showed up and the restrained the guy. When the guy was being beaten by the woman, none of people even cared to look. Over 150 people passed by the couple and a young woman with tats said ‘you go girl’ and walked away fist pumping. It took an old lady with compassion to call 911 on the abusive woman.
Google:’Reaction To Women Abusing Men In Public’ and watch the first video that pops up. Its a bit older than this one.
This is a double standard that exists in society and noone is doing a shit about it. All we can do is hope either the feminists beat the patriarchy unicorn or the MRA’s come out of their basements to actually do anything. I still cant understand how anyone with a heart can laugh at abuse. Damn, im going for a drink to feel better again. 🙁
Not DV, exactly, but: last summer a guy I knew hit a girl across the face on the middle of a dance floor. No intervention (admittedly, I was outside on the phone at the time) and he quickly fled the premises in case she “told” anyone. She was going to tell his girlfriend that he had been sending flirty messages to her. As it happened, he returned to the bar the next week, got praised by a lot of the local punters for “giving her what was coming – she was a nosy bitch” and was informed by the bar staff that he could continue to drink there so long as he didn’t bring it up. There was a running gag, I think, about how he should be hired as the doorman and give troublemakers a good “elbow”
He actually twisted it to make it sounds like she had been sending him naughty messages and was jealous of his relationship – ’cause she like, you know, totally wanted the D. His girlfriend bought this, I think, and continued to defend him. He also made it sound like she had assaulted his girlfriend in a fit of passionate jealousy, and he had merely thrown her off her. His girlfriend also encouraged this story, as did some of his friends. The girl went to the bar staff to check the CCTV footage – I think they were going to ban her – and found that he had pretty much been arguing with her and smashed her across the face when he tried to go past him. He still went there, was allowed entrance and was praised by people for taking care of the “town bike”.
So not quite DV but I do think it was this that really opened my eyes towards attitudes about male violence and how it is, in fact, quite extrapolated. By contrast, when I was around a drunk woman flipping out at her boyfriend the reactions were people commenting she was a crazy bitch and how much it would suck to date her. (The bouncers quickly removed her, shrieking and kicking, and made sure the guy was OK).
Cassandrakitty
“Am I the only person whose hair actually gets better when it’s humid? Mine is fine and curly.”
Right here! Humidity is good. Unless I try to straighten it.
Thank you contrapangloss!
Toolbox
Ughh terrible story. It reminds me of a personal experience.
I remember one time I witnessed one of my friends’ boyfriend hitting her in public, I stood up and defended her and he threatened to hit me with a coca-cola bottle made of glass. I had to back down. We were at a cafe. There were at least 6-7 people sitting close to us, but they didn’t react. My ‘friend’ continued to date him and was mad at me for standing up for her. “It’s none of your business”, she said.
The production of that video tells me that these people know nothing about making a hidden camera video. The mere fact that they used the same bystanders in some bits, and cut it like it was a first year film school project tells me that they either aren’t too serious about what they’re doing, they don’t give enough of a shit about what they’re doing to even try do it right, or some mix of both. I know amateur filmmakers whose production values, at least in areas of continuity, etc. who look like Peter Jackson next to the hack job these editors did. The inconsistent shadows hurt my brain!
On to boob sweat… 😀
Sweat soaked bras after a good workout/rehearsal are the bane of my existence. I’ve got teeny-tiny ballet boobs that don’t actually require a sports bra, but I like looking like there’s *something* under my leotard when I’m working out. So I’ll wear a regular padded bra, because they don’t make bras in my size without padding (is that insulting on its own or what?!?), and I thus end up with a pair of soaked sponges strapped to my poor itty-bitty-titties by the time I’m done. I actually have to wring the sweat out of my bra after a good workout! It’s gross.
And now on to thigh sweat. I have to sleep in leggings all summer because I can’t stand the feeling of my sweaty things sticking together! And even though my excema isn’t nearly as bad as when I was a kid, it still likes to pop up in my sweaty knees, elbows, and inner thighs. Yeah, I fucking love summer. 😛
@augzilliary im sorry if it offended you. I wasnt intending to offend people. I have no problem being a white knight. I have been the white knight for my female fruends many times just as they have been for me.