Woman walking the streets of NYC w/hidden video. Constant sexual harassment?

That Daily Show piece is great.

 

Thing is this is the second time Rob Bliss has really screwed the pooch on race issues. For a marketing company that's gotten plenty of feedback on this subject already it just doesn't make sense that they would be in the same family of screwup twice in such short order. Maybe they are just really biased and keep making this same mistake, maybe they're just that careless, or maybe they figure as long as they're making outrage-porn it stirring up shit over race is just even more "viralness".

"Stranger Danger" is one of the most insidious myths poisoning society's understanding of crime and personally I've been theorizing for a while that it may well motivate a lot of the thought process behind victim-blaming. Think about it, how much boils down to the expectation that women should have known about a particular threat or danger ahead of time, or didn't adequately prevent it? Those responses are all based in the belief that said danger is reasonably foreseeable and comes from some recognizeably dangerous source instead of from people that are already known and trusted acquaintances.

The "women under siege/stranger danger" stuff isn't just harmful for the fear and disempowerment it inflicts, it's also pointing people in entirely the wrong direction and causing real harm because of that. When it comes down to it crime has still dropped by a truly silly amount in our lifetimes and of the violent crimes which aren't primarily committed by already known and trusted individuals women make up a minority (about ~1/3rd) of the victims.

And I think that is in and of itself a very important part of the conversation. In every practical sense it just doesn't matter what the actual stats are because the fear is still real, and the harm that fear causes to their lives is still real. Which begs the question*of whether or not those that help to create and worsen that fear through wrong information and clickbait should be considered part of the problem as well. It's like Kazerad's point about disempowerment. A positive message would be to point out how in the last 10 years alone violent crime's dropped by 40%, how women are today safer than they've ever been before, and a release video showing that in almost half an hour you're not even going to need both hands to count the few people who cross the line out of many thousands.

But that probably wouldn't make nearly as much money.


*"Begging the Question" was a mistranslation, Petitio Principii actually translates as "assuming the initial point".

 

I can't see a profit motive here, and i can't really see how trends in crime statistics should affect whether or not a person ought to feel comfortable having their personal space violated repeatedly by random strangers.

 

Well to start with I was responding to Street Pattern's friend's comments on stranger danger and fear of street attacks, which is why I quoted that. Also if you read the second sentence of the third paragraph you'll see I addressed that exact point both specifically and more broadly explained its significance in the overall context of street harassment (and fear of street crime, which Street Pattern's friend brought up).

As for profit motive it's a viral marketing firm that's put together a racially inflammatory video for the second time, the phrase "there's no such thing as bad publicity" comes to mind. Still their bungling of that actually did (accidentally) tangentially bring up how generational poverty and the decimation of social structures through institutional discrimination can have far reaching consequences like leading to a culture where problems like this are significantly more concentrated.

 

Ugh. That should really go without saying. Just...oy. I really thought that every guy would know that the absolute, bare-minimum, lowest-possible-bar of non-dickish behavior is "look but don't touch."

Jeez. Sorry, @snowy. That just sucks.

 

First that satire was amusing but I don't think the article got it.

Second I wasn't the only one to notice it was the minorities doing the harassing.

This whole thing speaks more of a culture problem, but no one wants to talk about that.

 

It seems that only you and the few people who continue to bring it up are the ones who have a problem discussing it. Personally, I'm not so convinced, especially considering the numerous accounts I've read from many women of differing cultural backgrounds about the problem. Here's one:

What's more,

And really, it's 2014, you're (very obviously) sorely mistaken if you think you can speak fairly on the supposed "cultural issues" of minority groups without consideration of the socioeconomic realities in which they live and the history of how they've been treated in this country. Sadly, because of the manner in which the video was edited and presented, it too redoubles that same dangerous and willfully stupid false equivalence.

 

I get it, its always whitey's fault.

 

That's such a thoughtless response.

 

You'd think that everyone full stop would get that but like any bouncer will tell you people seem to think parties are an excuse to toss decorum even before booze gets involved

Your own logic would have us throwing out anything said or studied by anyone that doesn't meet whatever someone's arbitrary standards of identity are, although I'd be willing to bet you only apply that in one direction. Judge things on their merit, not because whoever's saying it doesn't meet some neo-segregationist ideal that was incubated in tumblr's oppression olympics culture. Dog whistle racism against blacks in america doesn't gain merit when said by a black woman, and work on the effects of generational poverty and the War On Black Men Using Some Drugs doesn't lose validity when it comes from a rich white man.

At the same time you're right the video is damaging for a number of ways. It does go out of its way to reinforce the image of unemployed minority men as a dangerous Other in the classic vein of "hide the women" moral panics. It also reinforces the stranger danger myth (from which a lot of victim blaming comes) and is edited to produce blanket outrage instead of showing that by their own numbers this is a problem coming a from a very small subset of men. A literal single hand's worth of people in almost half an hour out of tens of thousands says to me that there's a causal factor here we're missing, we need to find out what it is that's different about these problem men and how we can fix that.

 

I won't argue with your perception of your experiences. What I will say is that if the woman from the video's route was mostly confined to minority neighborhoods, then minorities will make up most of the harassers (and non-harassers).

I think that in terms of culture, white culture has a pretty solid advantage (or at the very least, no clear disadvantage) when it comes to the harassment of women, especially women of color.

 

I said nothing of the sort and what's rich is that video, the basis of this discussion advances the sort of identity based "tumblr, oppression olympics" political style you deride. My pretty simple, rather unassailable point is that context matters. There's no possibility of a fair conversation regarding the supposed ills of the black community if that conversation isn't grounded in the realization that forms of power and oppression have not only led up to this moment but are still in play today. Where exactly do you disagree?

Love it or leave it, this is America.

 

Without seeing the entire ten hours of film it's difficult to breakdown the types & degree of harasment by race.

My unscientific observations regarding mens responses to women, based on working in the downtown business disctrict for several years, and living in a neighborhood where whites are the minority:
Blacks and latinos tend to be more verbal (in the aggressive sense).
Latinos stare for much longer (apparantly it's culturally acceptable in some Latino countries such as Mexico, Central America, & South America).
Whites are more subtle (if they say anything it's more of a general greeting rather than a comeon).
Asians sneak looks but don't stare & rarely say anything.