Subtle objectifying in the upskirting debacle

Very good point OP. reminds me of the old cover on the penguin edition of Lolita. 'Sexy' little girl wearing heart shaped sunglasses and sucking a lollipop (ffs)

Now replaced by a picture of a little girls shoes with the shadow of a man looming over them

Took a while but at least someone spotted the issue

What's sad is that I didn't notice this. You are right OP

Me too. I did comment to DH that I've never seen so many short skirts and legs on the news, but it didn't register with me that there should have been footage of the perps not the victims.

Another example of the media blaming women by willfully ignoring the perpetrators and their tools, networks and deviancy

Otoh I see Vicky

What's sad is that I didn't notice this. You are right OP

I think the 'upskirt sexylegs' photo is a bit like the 'headless fatties' who are used to illustrate every media article on obesity eg charlottecooper.net/fat/fat-writing/headless-fatties-01-07/

its more dehumanising of women, more reducing them to body parts with no agency, and its a casual shorthand by the media that then becomes a recognisable meme. Like the obligatory ' children playing in poor street/desolate playground/unkempt urban environment' photo that illustrates every Guardian article on austerity or poverty. Or the way every misery-lit book has a faded black and white or sepia photo of a lone child looking traumatised on it.
The cliche gets created, perpetuates itself and then becomes inextricably linked to the story

Ella Whelan is a moron.
She doesn't believe women need petty laws to protect us from ourselves. Not an exact quote but the words 'to protect us from ourselves' were definitely used on question time last night. We know we don't need laws to protect us from ourselves, it's not ourselves we need protection from its men.!!
Also that #metoo infantalises women and means men can't approach women even in an innocent way. We've heard it all before and it's still bull.
Ella should watch the mash report.

@Vicky1990 I'm afraid your 'what about the men' is redundant. Scotland, where the majority of kilt wearers are, has already made upskirting illegal. You see, when men suffer something, it is taken seriously.

Photo could have been a really angry woman snacthing a phone out of a defensive lookng man's hand, and the police approaching...

Or a man in prison.

Or anything really other than "COR! Look at these pins! And you can see up her skirt nearly to her knickers!!!" which is sadly what all the media people (consciously or subconsciously) went for.

@ErrolTheDragon Hum... there would probably be some who'd see that as a 'how to' lesson. I sometimes used to think the same after watching Crimewatch. For instance it would report in detail how cashpoint fraudsters used zoom lenses to watch people putting in their PIN, and then improvised a card using cardboard with a strip of videotape stuck on the back.

It's an old problem; how do you report on inappropriate behaviour without the side-effect of putting ideas in perps' heads? I also wonder how "upskirters" are caught; is it because they often put them on the internet, like the "happy slappers"? I do agree it's wrong to always have the backdrop picture on the news as a woman's legs; a bit like when Savile's gratuitously grinning face was shown every time he was mentioned on the news.

I remember in the 90's there was a TV documentary about men who collected "arty" but inappropriate photos of naked children; it showed samples of albums of them, and this programme also mentioned when perfectly innocent ones (e.g. children in paddling pools) were pounced on at the chemist's, and one dad was dragged through the mud over a proudly displayed framed photo of his teenage daughter which was just a little too sexy (with her shirt open, but nothing visible). The irony is that this programme itself must have been recorded by perverts all over the country; loads of the pictures were shown on TV, and not so many people had the internet then. (This programme didn't show any of the really nasty kind though, or even mention them as far as I remember.)

OP in response to your original post: I thought exactly the same thing.

Errol, the kind of man who wants to photograph women's knickers is already researching how to do it, and using Tor/VPNs to hide their search traffic from their ISP. The information is already out there in the "wrong hands" so we might as well educate ourselves. Security through obscurity is no security at all.

Teachers and issues with mob phones www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/cheltenham-news/schoolchildren-humiliate-teachers-post-upskirt-1410538

the case with the teacher

If Ella Whelan were here I would be interested to know why she thinks this should not be a criminal matter.

Interestingly when I googled, it seems that shcoolchildren are taking upskirt shots of their female teachers and posting them on line. I think it would be good if this were illegal for this case as well. Unlike some people

Plus

Even if you are bolshy enough to try and "deal with it youself" then you often end up with an extremely aggressive man shouting in your face and trying to have a physical fight with you.

Why should it be up to women and girls to handle aggressive men and men who commit sex assualts themselves?

It was someone called Ella Whelan

twitter.com/Ella_M_Whelan?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

I don't use twitter but that was the first link that came up.

For ther others on the thread

I watched question time last nigth and this came up, a female panelist said that she didnt' want a law against this as laws like this infatilise women, she and her friends can look after themselves, and it was becoming illegal to touch a woman on the arm (rough summary).

Where do they get women like this?

There was a teacher taking photos up the skirts of the girls in his class, police said they couldn't prosecute as it fell between the cracks in the existing laws (which is why a change is wanted). Why does this woman think this is OK? What does she expect the girls to do, I doubt they even knew to start with. What do women like this get out of saying yeah sex offences against women and girls should be dealt with by them, it's not a police matter. Are there any crimes that are more common to be male on male that she wants off the books?

"Upskirting" is illegal in Scotland and the law is neutral on sex of victims.

So the majority of kilt wearers are covered.

I can't imagine a law in the UK would be sex specific either.

But you don't really care about that do you, a little googling would have told you all this.

Sorry - youngest victim police had had a report about was a girl aged 10.

But, what about the men, am I right?

Our friendly poster is back to what about the men all over the thread.

This happens to schoolgirls, when the police were asked, of the forces that kept records (not all of them), the youngest victim was 8.

I know that you are only really interested in derailing threads about things that happen to women with WATM, BUT,

Do you care when it's children who are the victims rather than adult women? Does that tip things for you a bit? Even if you struggle to see why so many of the violations that happen to adult women are any kind of issue at all.

And no I'm not going to link or quote you have been all over the boards for ages and it's fucking tedious. "These women have been raped isn't it awful?" "Well sure but we need to talk about the impact on men".

Whatever.

Crow. What is that link, it doesn't seem to be working.
It has just occurred to me, and I have seen nothing about it in the media that that up skirting has not been discussed as having male victims.
For example men's kilts, I have seen many times on the TV women lifting up a mans kilt and pictures been taken.
Also in the press the other day a boy wearing a skirt to school as it was to hot to wear trousers.
Shouldnt they also be protected by any future laws, I think any law should include victims of eithr sex or gender, and perpetrators of either sex ot gender should be punished.

They could have done something useful and showed the different types of cameras voyeurs use, to educate readers.

Hum... there would probably be some who'd see that as a 'how to' lesson.

Vicky1990

lmgtfy.com/

The media report most crime against women this way, thus undercutting any good the actual words might do.