So some folks in my off-line life have asked me if I’ve watched Jasmine Saavedra’s BRAVE HERO video. I have not. And I’m asking you not to watch it either.
If you’re not aware of this, Saavedra was at a Denny’s, just eating it seems, when someone she decided was trans needed to use the WC. RawStory picks things up from there:
she walked up to the bathroom and claimed that she couldn’t use the ladies room because it was occupied.
“So, that guy is violating my right to use the ladies room here, and he’s saying he’s a lady! Stupid guy,” she said.
Entering the bathroom and filming the scene with her cell phone using a selfie-stick, Saavedra screamed at the woman occupying a stall with the door closed, telling her, “You’re invading my privacy.”
This is terrible behavior. But worse is yet to come:
As the transgender woman walked out the bathroom Saavedra pointed the camera in her face. “Next time use the men’s rooms or nobody rooms,” Saavedra said.
Is that terrible? Yes it is. You know what’s worse? Posting that video on the internet to humiliate an innocent trans person who happens to metabolize food and excrete various biological waste products.
But it gets WORSE.
Saavedra is a primary candidate for the Republican nomination for the US House of Representatives, and this video is intended to humiliate a trans person in order to show off the Brave Heroism of Saavedra to get fucking votes. That’s right, this trans person is being unwillingly used as a campaign prop by Saavedra.
I am all for exposing this completely shitty behavior by Saavedra, but this STILL gets worse. RawStory, who one might think would know better as they tend to lean left, titled their story on this:
WATCH: California GOP candidate stalks and harasses trans woman attempting to use Denny’s ladies’ room
and then included the full video embedded at the bottom of their story.
NO. If a non-public figure is being humiliated publicly by a video, the one thing you don’t do is share the video further. You’re a journalist and have to watch the video in order to do your job writing an accurate story, maybe. Just maybe. Do you really trust yourself to represent that humiliated trans person well? Does the trans community trust you? If the answer to either is no, then writing this story isn’t your job, and don’t bother watching the video. But there will be a few for whom it really is required. I get that. This isn’t directed at you.
For everyone else, including RawStory, when someone doesn’t want to be a public spectacle and someone else selfishly tries to turn that person into one, the barest minimum you can do is NOT WATCH THE FUCKING VIDEO. My friends can’t unwatch the video, but maybe some of you can stop yourselves, and think twice about watching anything similar.
Yes.
Agreed.
RawStory, over the last few years (perhaps coincidentally, after Amanda Marcotte left them for Salon.com), has gotten worse and worse with misleading clickbaity headlines, celebrity crap stories, non-news clips from tv jabber, and overall trashy-tabloid tendencies.
And somehow a few weeks ago they ended up taking over AlterNet, and are bringing the same formulae for sub-mediocrity there.
At least they don’t run as much Bill gawddamn Maher as they did a year or so ago.
I see your point about not watching the video, but does that mean we shouldn’t know anything about the victim?
It may be controversial, and I’m not claiming that everyone would agree with me, but any information that comes from this video directly or indirectly should not be used to learn about the victim.
If the victim comes forward presenting information independently, there”s no moral responsibility to avoid that and good moral reasons to seek it out, if one has the time and ability. But in the title to this post I’m speaking about Saavedra’s victim specifically and as of this time there’s been no information released by the victim.
If the victim comes forward later, I’ll happily cover any information that person puts forward, especially any efforts to hold Saavedra accountable under California privacy laws. Right now, I think the title stands: anything you read is coming from news outlets like RawStory which are taking the info from the video as the victim hasn’t given any interviews or released any information. So right now using those stories is continuing to carry forward information collected by Saavedra in her efforts to invade someone’s privacy.
Right now, then, we really shouldn’t be rewarding any of these journalists and certainly not Saavedra herself. In fact, by treating any information about the victim that came from her camera (or statements) as newsworthy, we are implying that it is in the public interest for her to videotape people in bathrooms. I oppose that implication.
I don’t want to learn about her, necessarily. I do want to use this opportunity to offer her my sympathies and respect just in the unlikely case she is reading this.
She deserves better and she deserves respect – and she has mine & I’m sure very many others.
And if she wants them (((hugs))) from me are offered.
.