Calmly Addressing CreepShots (or, Alex Tries Empathy)

We can all agree the internet is pretty great.  It might be the most democratic invention in history, and it sure is swell for sharing media, too.  Of course, sometimes that media comes in the form of a bunch of photos taken of unsuspecting women in public places by a crop of Darwinian rejects trying to capture their "raw sexiness" because they apparently have a "right to it".

(Disclosure: I'm really, really biased on this topic, so if you plan to start quoting Rights of Men pamphlets to me in the comment section, I humbly request that you fuck all of the way off.)  

The root of my bias, to explain to those of you still here, comes from my associations with, and my work within, the Toronto fandom community (I'm referring here to the type involving capes and elves and whatnot, not the type involving sweaty men running up and down a field).  By this time everybody knows that fandom (or the so-called "nerd community") is currently playing out a self-perpetuating gender war declared by a bunch of insecure neck-beards who can't fathom the idea that girls might want access to their club house.  So I see this kind of shit all the time (ask literally any cosplayer whether they've ever been grabbed, harassed, or otherwise fucked with by some self-diagnosed "Aspi" kid with a Hello Kitty backpack and a bloated sense of entitlement and I guarantee you you'll get a long-suffering sigh to indicate the affirmative), and it makes me understand why some of these weasels ended up stuffed in lockers.  

So that's the running block I'm launching from when I talk about CreepShots.  I'd never heard of this ludicrous distortion of so-called "free expression" before a correspondent of mine posted about it today, but I read this article and then I had to go do breathing exercises in the break room for thirty-five or forty minutes to keep from punching my work computer in its offensive little monitor.  I'm not going to recap the whole thing here; go read the article and come back.  I'll wait; I've still got three or four stress balls to deflate before I'm going to feel better about this anyway. 

Done?  Okay.  I feel a little better too, so I'm going to approach this as gently as I can.

If you are a man, reading this right now, and you think the premise of CreepShots is anything other than egregiously offensive and borderline criminal, I want you to do something for me.  I want you to go talk to your mom, or your sister, or your girlfriend, or your daughter if you've got one of those.  I want you to ruminate on what these women mean to you.  I mean really, now - think about it.  

Okay, maybe you hate your mom, or your sister was nasty to you the last time you saw her.  Maybe your wife or girlfriend just cheated on you and you're really pissed off (and you'd have a right to be).  But if you boil it down to its constituent elements, can you really say you think it's okay for any of those women to have their privacy, their bodies, their identities violated for somebody else's viewing pleasure?  Do you find yourself thinking things like "well, if they didn't want the attention they'd dress differently"?  Do you think they're "asking for it"?  

If you do, congratulations: you're really fucked up. 

It might not be your fault - lord knows the culture we live in does plenty from the time you're a little boy to make you think this is reasonable logic.  But the fact remains - you're really fucked up.  And you need a very serious readjustment if you're going to be a cool, contributing member of society.  

Here's the short version.  My girlfriend likes to say that your right to swing your fist ends at her face, which is to say your "freedom" is only valid if it's not infringing on the rights of others.  When you start taking pictures of women without their knowledge, you're taking some of those rights away - mostly, the right they have to own their own likeness, to have control and agency over their identity.  And that's not okay.  That's not healthy, either.  It says something about who you are if you can look at a person and see an object designed for your gratification, and it doesn't say something nice. 

If you do think this way, you really need to take a close look at the mirror and figure out what kind of man you want to be.  Do you want to be the kind who's reduced to ninja-snapping photos of attractive women because you can't get your head around speaking to them?  Do you want to be the kind who gets mad when someone is offended by your shitty rape joke, or the kind who tells women they don't matter because of what's written in their DNA?  Do you want to be the kind who makes other men hug their daughters just a little closer for fear of letting men like you anywhere near them?  

Because from where I'm sitting, that kind of man is no man at all.  Get some help, guys, so you can join the rest of us in the hip and groovy.  

Me, I'm going to go get some Valerian root or something, because the stress balls and the breathing exercises just aren't taking.  Can't imagine why.