Monday, September 24, 2012

The abyss stares back

The irony is deep indeed when women who dress in a manner they hope will attract male attention object to being forced to face the fact that some men actually pay attention to them:
Campaigners are fighting to close an online forum that promotes the photographing of unsuspecting women for users' sexual gratification.  The message board on the popular website Reddit was explicitly created by users who wanted to ogle candid photos that were taken without the subjects' knowledge.  The sub-forum is called 'CreepShots', featuring images of ordinary women on the street, in the gym or even at school who are caught unawares by stealthy 'creeps' with cameras....

The images include unsuspecting women working out at the gym, waiting for the bus, standing in line at the grocery store and riding escalators. All were taken by men who simply saw them on the street and thought the subject was attractive.  The women are usually wearing nothing more revealing than jeans, t-shirts or yoga pants.
It has long been a matter of settled law that there is no expectation of privacy in a public place.  The "creeps" cannot break the law by taking pictures of people in public places when the government is doing exactly the same thing, every single day.  If you want privacy, you have to remain private.  The photographed women have chosen to dress this way, every single person who happened to notice them saw exactly the same thing that the pictures recorded, and the picture is nothing more than a public record of what they looked like at that moment.  There is nothing more salacious about the entire concept except the fact that men are paying attention to women and the women cannot ignore it.

There are three things that are at the core of this "outrage".  The first is that some women simply don't like seeing the image they actually present to others.  It punctures their rosy image of themselves.  This is understandable; it is always surprising and often a little unpleasant to hear your own voice on the radio for the first time.  The second is that this is attention being paid by precisely the wrong sort of low socio-sexual rank men for whom the women are not dressing.  Ideally, they want to look attractive for high rank men and other women while the low rank men politely avert their eyes and remain invisible.  r/creepshots is an intrinsic violation of this virtual male purdah and reminds women that even if the low rank men pretend not to be noticing them, they actually are.

The third thing is the reminder it provides of female vulnerability.  Many women like to walk around in a self-absorbed haze, defensively shutting out the world and acting as if their refusal to see others means others cannot see them.  This is why even the most pedestrian image of a fully-clad, middle-aged woman walking along the sidewalk looks vaguely threatening to a woman, because she is forced to see what a woman looks like when seen through the eyes of a potential predator.  She doesn't want to know that she looks just that vulnerable to the myriad of people who pass her by on a daily basis.

But even if the forum is closed, it would amount to nothing more than a pointless pretense.  The fact that these men pointedly refer to themselves as "creeps" indicates that they know where they stand; it would be very surprising if there were any alphas, betas, or even deltas actively involved in the forum.  Their desire for unattainable women will remain, as will their ability to see what is in public around them, whether women are forced to be conscious of those simple facts or not.  The existence of the forum is more depressing than salacious; to the extent it can even be said to exist, its sexuality is retro-Victorian.

And I would be remiss to fail to note that the campaign is, in itself, an indicator of female solipsism.  How many of those who are outraged by this have actually ever had their picture taken on the street by a stranger and posted to a public forum... and how many are emotionally involved solely due to imagining how they think they would feel if it happened to them?  It might also be amusing to learn how many of the campaigners who are fighting to close the forum are regular readers of People magazine and other tabloids that publish photos taken by the paparazzi.

25 comments:

Stingray said...

I would also wonder how these same women would feel if this forum was instead posted on some millionaire website where it is apparent high status men frequent. I somehow think the call for their pictures to be removed wouldn't be as fervent. If it was called to be shut down, it would be by those women whose photos would never make the cut.

SarahsDaughter said...

Sure, there's a campaign against this but www.peopleofwlamart.com continues to deliver endless entertainment, unscathed. :)

One day I had some extra time on my hands so I decided to engage a libtard (friend of a FB friend) from Madison, WI, who had this to say:

"When i can walk down the street naked with out fear of rape, harassment, or arrest, then i may concede the victory of having won the rights to my own body."

Talk about a self-absorbed haze. There's that (above), then there's this:

Last Halloween a friend of mine snapped a picture of my son and me walking ahead of her. I knew nothing about it until she uploaded it to FB and tagged me in it. My reaction to it was a commitment that in this year's photo, should there be one, my ass will not be even close to that big! I've achieved my goal and now use that picture as my before picture.

Now that the haze has cleared, how nice that I have a picture of my hilarious son in his inflatable cow costume.

Rollo Tomassi said...

Spend 5 minutes perusing the millions of images on any "self-shooter' gallery site and you'll realize just how full of shit women are when they say they're outraged by 'the male gaze'.

Shaun said...

summary: be an alpha

swiftfoxmark2 said...

"When i can walk down the street naked with out fear of rape, harassment, or arrest, then i may concede the victory of having won the rights to my own body."

I love it when feminists say that. It confirms that they really just want to end the human race, even if they don't consciously realize it. After all, in order for a world like to exist, you have to remove all desire to reproduce in men.

Anonymous said...

"Spend 5 minutes perusing the millions of images on any "self-shooter' gallery site and you'll realize just how full of shit women are when they say they're outraged by 'the male gaze'."

Word.

Objectification is not created equally. For women… it only happens when they want it to.

Stickwick said...

It might also be amusing to learn how many of the campaigners who are fighting to close the forum are regular readers of People magazine and other tabloids that publish photos taken by the paparazzi.

Yep. And the more unflattering the photos of female celebrities (e.g. "stars without makeup"), the more your typical woman enjoys looking at them.

"When i can walk down the street naked with out fear of rape, harassment, or arrest, then i may concede the victory of having won the rights to my own body."

What does this even mean? She might as well have said, "When I can jump into a lion's den with raw pork chops strapped to my body without fear of being devoured, then I may concede the victory of having won the rights to my own body." You can't possibly control other people or your environment to the extent that you don't have to fear anything, especially if you choose to do something deliberately provocative.

No man can walk around naked without being arrested or harassed, either, so is she concerned about men's rights to their own bodies? And even if she lived in a world in which none of those things were very likely to happen, whether or not she fears them is not up to anyone else. There is no such thing as right not to feel fear.

Rock Throwing Peasant said...

How dare you exist in my world!

Daniel said...

"When i can walk down the street naked with out fear of rape, harassment, or arrest, then i may concede the victory of having won the rights to my own body."

So, winning one's rights to one's own body involves a lifelong, streaming intake of doughnuts and a 40th birthday. That's ridiculously easy, but it's not a surprise that feminists have spent 100 years proposing less efficient means of unlocking that achievement.

Josh said...

Women only want to be objectified by alpha males, not the lower 95% of the male hierarchy.

kh123 said...

Sean Penn has a female posse.

The Stranger said...

Donuts. Yum.

There is too a right to not fear: In Washington (the state), it's a misdemeanor to make someone feel afraid of you, intentionally or not. I don't know about other states or countries, but the ladies have already successfully codified their right to not be afraid.

WA has murder and rape rates significantly higher than the national average, but we can rest easy knowing that it is against the law for the perpetrators to scare their victims.

Wendy said...

"When i can walk down the street naked with out fear of rape, harassment, or arrest, then i may concede the victory of having won the rights to my own body."

I suppose she would consider it harassment to point and laugh.

Stickwick said...

Women only want to be objectified by alpha males, not the lower 95% of the male hierarchy.

That's not completely accurate. Your typical woman enjoys getting attention for her looks from most men. There are two big exceptions to this: 1) guys who are super-low in the hierarchy (Gammas and Omegas, aka "creeps"), and 2) any Delta who takes his attraction to her and acts on it or makes her think he's going to act on it when she hasn't made up her mind about him yet. It's more accurate to say that a woman only wants a man to act on the objectification when he's an Alpha / Sigma or possibly a Beta.

CL said...

I'm having trouble seeing the big deal here. Tempest in a teacup. Is someone upset that she didn't find pictures of herself there?

Retrenched said...

@ Stickwick

Yep, which is why women post all those FB self-shots to get likes and "lookin' good girl!" comments from their beta male orbiter friends. They really enjoy the attention those men give them, even if they would never dream of dating them or sleeping with them.

CL said...

Everyone's a street photographer now. I'm kind of inspired to get out my camera and look for interesting people to photograph...

This one made me chuckle (no nudity, beach): http://i.imgur.com/TWP7f.jpg

Aeoli Pera said...

Maybe instead they should write huge poems in Italian and post those.

Dante was a creeper's creeper.

paul a'barge said...

http://www.creepshots.com

Rollo Tomassi said...

Women would rather be objectified than idealized.

VD said...

Women would rather be objectified than idealized.

Succinct. That goes on the Great Quotes list.

Anonymous said...

And I would be remiss to fail to note that the campaign is, in itself, an indicator of female solipsism.

Was the outrage, calls for, and eventual decision by Reddit to shut down their "r/jailbait" forum also an indicator of female solipsism? Why or why not?

VD said...

No. That's indicative of male and female concern for children. Women don't see themselves as children, for the most part.

Anonymous said...

@Stickwick

"She might as well have said "When I can jump into a lion's den with raw pork chops strapped to my body ..."

What a rdiculous thing to say. You're essentially saying if you saw a naked woman you would have to rape her??

Anonymous said...

"What a rdiculous thing to say. You're essentially saying if you saw a naked woman you would have to rape her???

Women's stupidity isn't men problems. If a man tells a women don't go outside butt-naked because it's too dangerous and there are a lot sick people who doesn't fear death, jail time or any authority that will approach you but she goes out naked anyway with no protection anyway, what do I care if she gets raped or not. She doesn't value my concerns for her safety, how can I value her safety. I don't have empathy for stupidity.

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