But it happened. OK, a couple of youtubers were jerks and grabbed women and gnawed on their leg carried them around, but then the response was damning and rational. And then the grabbers were kicked out of a conference. And people had excellent discussions about rape culture.
There is hope!
I’m happily shocked and surprised. :)
It’s getting better. Awesome.
I don’t want to seem cynical, but I think that a big part of that is that nowadays people are starting to understand that you are not truely anonymous online and that what you say can be traced back to you.
YAY! Massive thanks to the courage these people are displaying and massive thanks for providing a grounding in reality.
Peptron:
That’s absolute bullshit.
“That’s what TOR is for”
Doesn’t surprise me too much, seeing the venue. John and Hank Green are good people for the most part,, and they really seem to try to push that in all their work.
Boo for the video. Yay for the reaction!
C.J. Redwine’s letter = fucking awesome.
What? “Rational” “skeptics” freak out and throw abuse at those who report harassment, while youtubers handle the issue in a responsible, mature, civil way? What kind of weird parallel universe have I stepped into?
It is almost as though leadership by example can tame even the most unruly crowd. Which should signpost clearly where the fault lies in the Skeptics community.
Well, there’s video, donchaknow, so you don’t have to rely on the words of the wimmen-folk to believe it probably happened.
Interesting aside: in some other forums I’ve been watching over the last little bit, and it might simply be unrelated correlation, some of the people screaming in outrage at accusations became a lot more mellow and accommodating of the idea that something actually happened as soon as there was confirmation of the reports (or at least the general behaviour)…coming from men. I suspect the irony of the situation may have escaped them.
C.J. is wonderful. A great writer too!
John and Hank Green, the creators of VidCon, and their channels, including the Vlogbrothers channel, are basically fantastic, and the best example of people being good and responsible with YouTube and everything associated with it.
Men can be trusted, because they’re the good guys and women are the enemy. I seriously think that they think in those terms.
I always thought it was more subtle than that.
Wow.
Harassment happens at a convention.
Conference organizers condemn harassment.
Harrassers kicked out and not invited back.
Responses are supportive rather than misogynistic.
More, please? Pretty please, with two cherries and whipped cream on top?
With all due respect to Fruzsina Eördögh, I must call her out on the ageist bullshit in her article, to whit:
“Why do these teens and the young men and women of the YouTube generation get it, while the adults on the rest of the web do not?”
If she had bothered to peruse the accounts of those dismissing the incidents as mere “pranks” and “just a joke”, she’d find the lion’s share of them to be of the same demographic as the criminals who made the video, IOW, some of her aforementioned “young men” of the “YouTube generation”. No doubt there are a dismaying number (although any number would be a dismaying number) of adults who are similarly immature and would defend the assaults as “pranks”, but that does not excuse her blanket condemnation.
In fact, as adults would be more likely to be a parents, it should be obvious to her that a stranger grabbing a child (however old the child – to a parent, their child is always their little one) would to them fall under the category of “not fucking funny at all”.
I’ve been meaning to read C.J. Redwine’s work for awhile. She just got bumped to the top of the list. Rock the fuck on. ‘Bout time for some good news on this front. YAY!
And then we have this: The rape of a 16-year-old girl by two football players in eastern Ohio– a case brought to light by social media — is being used by a federal prosecutor to educate athletes in West Virginia about being responsible when texting and making posts on the Internet. In other words, now they’re teaching predators: if you’re going to do something reprehensible don’t post it online. I’m sure they’ll include a word or two about how, maybe, you shouldn’t do the thing in the first place. But you know kids; they get drunk or high or feeling all entitled and shit, and the next thing you know they’re off on a spree, the little scamps.
From Redwine’s post:
So simple.
This kindof freaks me out because it happened to me for real. Once when I was a teenager out with a bunch of other girls, a man came up to us and grabbed me and started running away into the bushes with me, and he didn’t appear to be making a “joke” video, or at least he wasn’t yelling “can’t you take a joke” after I panicked/flailed and broke his nose and we all ran away.
On a related subject, I’ve just seen Mr Deity’s latest. Specifically the part after the credits (about 5:15 onwards). Ugh!
Watching the video from the link at this article ( http://flipthemedia.com/2013/08/this-week-at-vidcon-no-randomly-grabbing-girls-is-not-okay/ ), I was struck by the reactions. Several of the targeted women were clearly unhappily surprised or used nervous laughter. One woman at 1:32 was clearly angry, and points out that her assailant is a creep.
The next segment (at 1:53) shows what I think is the best part. Three women intervene, and I think they deserve credit for taking action. The article at Flip the Media identifies one of the women as musician Sarah Shay. They not only challenged these violations of personal autonomy, they took names and made a visible point of taking notes about the incident. Shay apparently had already explained the importance of asking people’s permission before touching them, because she reminds the Vanilla Ice guy about this when tries to move her into a better camera angle.
I want to thank these women for confronting these clowns.
Well, so much for donating to Mr. Deity ever.
Except that no such agency cares what you say online.
Jesus fuck. What an asshole.
*gasp* My god, internet, it’s like you know tomorrow is my birthday.
Between this and the removal of Beale from the SFWA, I’m in a freaking great mood. *starts humming Woman King*
In a just world, the perpetrators here would be sentenced to a month living on a desert island among bodybuilders, MMA fighters, and other general badasses who happen to be gay. Let them learn about all the things women have to think about daily when surrounded by potential rapists who can overpower them any time they choose. Maybe one of the badasses wearing the rainbow speedo will decide to pick up said perp and carry him around without as much as a “by your leave”. Somehow I don’t think they’ll find it so funny.
I don’t find that any funnier than prison-rape jokes, in all honesty.
There is nothing cool or funny or remotely appropriate about even insinuating rape or assault.
#21 Daz
Ughhhhhhhh. Thankfully I don’t watch many videos, though I did watch many of Mr. D’s early seasons after I heard about it here. Won’t be doing that again. I couldn’t even watch it all that was so disgusting.
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#27 scienceavenger
Fuck off. Rape is always wrong. Always. Not funny. Not cool. Not for retribution or punishment. Fuck off for advocating for it.
@30 Oh fuck off right back for missing what should have been the obvious point of my post, which was to empart a bit of empathy in those men for what women have to deal with every day. Having to wory what someone looking at you is thinking, or about “date rape”, a misnomer if ever there was one. I didn’t, nor would I ever, advocate rape for any reason, and if you read that in my post, then you are an idiot. Delete the “maybe” clause if that helps your obviously limited attention span. I’ve actually been in the position of helping women recover from rape, no fun project to be sure, so few take it as seriously as I do, so again, fuck right off for being too lazy to get the obvious meaning of my post to imply it means something it didn’t.
In the process, you suffered a lapse of empathy.
If you think about it, it was probably a bad idea to raise the idea of punishment rape, fear of rape, and the violation of a person’s sexuality on a forum where many people have been victimized via precisely those sorts of abuse.
#31 scienceavenger
@30 Oh fuck off right back for missing what should have been the obvious point of my post, which was to empart a bit of empathy in those men for what women have to deal with every day.
Right. And your idea of teaching empathy is to immediately be a hypocrite and subject them to inhumane treatment? BRILLIANT! I say, just fucking brilliant.
I’m not the only one would who read that as advocating for rape. You think they’re idiots too? Maybe, you’re a shitty communicator OR what you said was wrong. Nobody, and I do mean NOBODY, should have to be fearful, threatened or worry about being raped. Plenty of people can empathize and understand without being a victim or being threatened.
Funny, all the calls of “Be nicer to people!” on recent threads yet here’s an example of someone clearly just blowing off the polite comments with nary a care or glance and only coming back for the venom.
That’s good. No sarcasm, that’s good on your part. Doesn’t mean it exempts you from being wrong. Wanna go down the “I do good so give me a cookie and don’t ever criticize me” route? I’ve got my trump cards ready.
Card #1 I’m actual victim of rape.
Wanna keep going or you actually going to think about what you said and why it was wrong instead of just pulling “Intent is magic and I’m an ally so be nice to me!”?
Damn the borkquote. First paragraph is scienceavenger.
@scienceavenger
Still not cool and making it a hypothetical doesn’t change anything. We draw a hard line here and I personally think that’s a pretty good policy. If you want to muse about such things, do it elsewhere.
This kind of thing is what you’ll see a lot of creeps saying, only they substitute “empart a bit of empathy” with “teach the bitch her place.” The fact that many of those creeps don’t go off to actually do it doesn’t make it any less creepy. Likewise, the fact that you’re not literally intending to do what you describe is similarly irrelevant.
Let’s just agree that musings about rape, loss of bodily autonomy and violations of consent are always creepy. I don’t think we lose a lot by giving up such subjects.
Finally, maybe you’ve heard the statement “intent is not magic”? Well, this is a perfect example. What you said was out of bounds. It doesn’t matter what your intent was. In that vein, your previous work supporting victims, however laudable, is irrelevant for this.
So, accept the correction and move on. At this moment, you response to the criticism makes you look worse, not better.
scienceavenger, how is your “fuck right off for being too lazy to get the obvious meaning of my post to imply it means something it didn’t” different from the grabber guys “You should get a sense of humor”?
Speaking of which, what has Mr leg gnawer got to say about the recent bombshells regarding all the creepers within the atheoskeptic community? Seeing as a lot of the worst offenders raised a huge stink about the awful, hysterical feminists, I am wondering in hindsight whether Thunderf00t might have some skeletons in his closet as well? It would not surprise me.
Oh and fuck that bullshit at the end of Mr Deity’s latest video. Atheism needs to shake off its old boy’s club image badly.
To do that, it’d have to stop being an old boy’s club, which is what some people are fighting so hard against unfortunately.
True. I did not mean to imply that Atheism solves this problem the GOP way e.g. say you support minorities and women while screwing them over every chance they get. Hopefully, with these revelations over the past week or so will turn the tides.
“In the process, you suffered a lapse of empathy.”
That’s genius!
I think I know why people can’t have their cake and it eat too. It’s because they never had cake. This is not to say they can’t possibly have cake, but that they did not bring cake.
If being right is a matter of cake then being wrong shows me you aren’t right to have cake.
I’m sorry, you lost me at “cake”.
@LykeX
We can’t have cake when it’s not there to have. We can only have cake when it is there to have.
Now look..
““In the process, you suffered a lapse of empathy.””
If this is true, the person is wrong by default for contradicting their behavior/position.
re: scienceavenger
Not cool about the rape threat as suitable punishment thing, but also not cool about the homophobic thing either.
p.s. I think Redwine’s analogies in her letter were more acceptable ways of showing the perpetrators’ sense of entitlement when it comes to women vs. men. Not quite the same as what you were going for, but then, we don’t want any culture, even hypothetical ones, to hold the same risks as women (& some male prisoners) face every day for real. That’s just condoning rape and rape threats as long as the cause is “good”. Sorry. The cause is *never* going to be good. Rape is wrong. Period.
Will scienceavenger ever stop failing at humor and ever stop responding to well-deserved criticism with egotistic, self-important whine-rants? Stay tuned, folks!
scienceavenger
Deliberately placing people in a situation where they genuinely fear some form of abuse is, itself, a form of abuse. In fact, in many cases of spousal and child-abuse, it’s the main form of abuse. Believe me, I know what it feels like, and I would wish it on no one.
I haven’t seen Mr. D in a while, but am I wrong that the character is supposed to be an asshole? Then … if the people who produced the videos are supporting MS, then why do they choose to have Mr. D sticking up for the “Anonymous reports are bad!” line?
Either I’m massively misunderstanding something (quite possible), or the whole approach the Mr. D folks are taking makes no sense at all.
Fetchez la Vache
It wasn’t presented as the Deity character. It was a direct “lecture” to camera. As further evidence that it’s not meant as parody, he’s defended the stance in comments.
Ah … that’s what I get for skipping around. Thanks, Daz. (I just don’t like the videos enough to watch all the way through, regardless of this particular content.)
I’m going with the Internet Porn theory. Jerking off three times a day will lower your sperm count.
scienceavenger @27:
I am fucking appalled at your blatant homophobia you disgusting shitbubble.
So appalled in fact that upon my first reading I missed that you were essentially wishing they would encounter prison rape.
God, I was tired and falling asleep. Now my blood is boiling.
Sigh. All they would have to do would be to ask permission – there are lots of performance-art / public theatre peices that are a little edgy, but isn’t it more fun to turn casual passers-by into impromtu and enthusiastic actors than commit illegal battery and sexual harassment for “lulz”?
Shit even those silly boob-reveal compilation makers ask the women’s permission first.