Because the actress in question was found randomly when she answered a Craigslist posting for "Wanted: an actress who will walk around in circles for ten hours in a black T-shirt all over New York while remaining silent. Pays $200."ArmorPierce wrote:Then why don't they show a video of a Hispanic woman or a black woman instead?
Roll the dice on a random actress in New York willing to spend all day walking around in circles for $200, and sometimes the dice come up 'white woman.' Who knew?
What, do you think white women are unqualified to act as poster girls for sexual harassment
That says more about you than it does about her, because she isn't saying anything. If there's an expression of distaste on her face, maybe it's from having people (invariably male people) randomly say hello to her boobs every six minutes for several hours, plus the occasional attentions of Creepo the Stalker and Angry Dickhead.Why I see is a privileged white woman angry that the lesser are approaching her.
Er, are you arguing that this gives Dominican men the right to sexually harass, say, Syrian women? Or women from Argentina? Or Nigeria? Or, for that matter, oh, Ireland or Poland? Or women from any time or place, that didn't consent to be "Bless you, mami"-ed in a voice dripping with lust every five minutes as they walk down the street to get from Point A to Point B?"People from different cultures have different standards and customs. Did you know that Dominican women actually rate that they are far more satisfied with their men than American women are? Did you know that the Dominican Republic has a very machisto culture?
You used the word "privilege," not me.Why is every man in this video a minority? When we discuss power structures, color of skin tone in America does matter. Harassment is one thing, power structure is another.The fact that this particular woman is white doesn't somehow mean that the video is 'about' pale women being sullied by dark men. This is an issue that affects all women, regardless of skin tone.
Poor black men and Hispanic men can harass a white man walking down the street, does that mean that they are oppressing the white men? Does it mean that the black and Hispanic men have privilege over the white men?
This video is, bluntly, about the fact that a woman cannot walk silently down the street in neutral clothes, with a neutral expression, while saying nothing, for ten minutes without getting leered at. And about the fact that every couple of hours or so, said woman can expect to be very blatantly harassed, berated, or stalked if she doesn't respond favorably to a come-on.
Which seems rather unfair.
That is the main point of the video, and it does not become untrue because "RACIST!" or because "You're oppressing our culture by walking past us in a black T-shirt and jeans with a neutral expression, bitch!"
Now, I DO think that the editing which shows overwhelmingly black and Hispanic individuals is... weird and worrying. I would have liked to see selected highlights of her treatment from white men; in interviews she has explicitly come out and said that she got similar comments from white men. So yes, after we recognize that there's an issue here, we can wonder about that. It would be a very interesting exercise to try this again and deliberately not put a racial bias into the editing of our highlights reel.
Because they were staring blatantly at her ass the whole time and comparing her to a sum of money is degrading in that it makes her sound like a hooker?There is nothing wrong with a man being interested in a woman and saying hi and approaching her. Following is another issue completely, I honestly don't see why anyone would have a problem saying they just saw a thousand dollars.Two, even if we drop all the people who were 'just' saying "Hi there!" in tones that made it fairly obvious they only ever notice when a pair of large breasts walks by... the woman doing the walking still encountered Creepo Who Follows, Asshole Who Berates, and Other Creepo Who Follows, plus a couple of overtly sexualized comments ("I just saw a thousand dollars!" and the "American Eagle" remark)...
I bet that a large fraction of all women would be uncomfortable having their butt compared to "a thousand dollars" by random leering men on the street. In which case that by itself makes it wrong to do so, unless you have some prior reason to think the comment will be well received (e.g. a for-sale sticker, and I say that with my eyes rolling).
And "there is nothing wrong with a man being interested in a woman and saying hi and approaching her." So if ten or twenty men do this in the course of an average day, with nakedly lustful tones of voice, you don't see a problem? Because gee, I see a problem with that. Among other things, because if every reasonably attractive woman is being hit on twenty or thirty or forty times a day, by men who don't know her and know nothing about her except that she has big breasts... What are the odds that a woman who experiences this will ever want to respond favorably to a random come-on?
It's like saying "spam advertising fake penis enlargement products is okay because there's nothing wrong with sending an email." And then saying "you should be okay with receiving fifty pieces of spam a day even though you have never done anything to indicate your interest in getting spammed that much."
The actress here got hit on a lot more than ten or twenty times.
So... it's okay for women to be sexually harassed multiple times an hour when walking through poor neighborhoods? Because it's not like black women and Latinas aren't getting followed by Creepo. Or berated for not responding to random men telling them their boobs look good.Lets be honest, she walked through poorer neighborhoods for a reason here.That's averaging one incident of pretty blatant sexual harassment every two hours on the streets. So if you're a woman in New York... walk ten minutes each way in New York each and you've racked up ten hours in a month. So you can expect to get sexually harassed like that five times a month.
Hey when I was in hs and walked around a poor neighborhood I had guys approaching me nearly on a daily basis at times to try to mug me. Oh no! I'm oppressed by blacks!
Why are we making this conversation about "black men are menacing white women" when every indication is that if we repeat the experiment with a black woman the same thing will happen, because exactly the same thing happens to black women every damn day?
She's not "prancing," she's walking along public sidewalks, which people have a right to do. She's performing a normal activity, and she's getting harassed for it, and the same thing happens to black and Latina women who do the same thing.This is outside of the scope of my comments that I made. I am speaking specifically of this video of video taping a privileged white woman prancing around poorer disadvantaged community with the implication that she is the oppressed one.If her experience is typical (and we have no reason to assume it wasn't) then you can look forward to two creeps who for all you know might be rapists following you, and at least three guys making very blatant "I'm staring at your butt" comments or yelling at you for not deigning to respond to them when they come on to you.
Five times a month. Two of whom are people who follow you for extended distances, won't take silence as an answer, and who become agitated when you try to turn them down.
How is this not excessive?
Plus, this is the direct and simple logical consequence of the video. This is what happens to a woman who spends ten hours on the streets of New York. It follows that if the same woman walks around for 20 minutes every day for a month, she will get harassed roughly this number of times, including several incidents that are blatantly creepy (like "follow for five minutes" guy), sleazy, or spectacularly unwelcome.
If your comments don't cover this issue, then your comments don't address the video.
