Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/10/21/vigilante_feminist_blogger_shames_perverts_online/
Snap-happy blogger babe posts catcalling blokes' mugshots online
Hey baby, I want to spread you all over... the INTERNET
Posted in Bootnotes, 21st October 2013 04:59 GMT
A photo-blogger has plastered the mugs of creepy cat-calling men all over the interwebs.
Hannah Price, from Philadelphia, decided to post shots of men she claims shouted lewd comments at her in the street.
The photographer's website has now received so many hits it has crumbled under the pressure.
In an interview with web magazine The Morning News, the artist claimed that the the men willingly posed for the photographs, but many of the shots make it look like they have been caught in the act.
She said: "I'm in the photograph, but I'm not. Just turning the photograph on them kind of gives them a feel of what it's like to be in a vulnerable position — it's just a different dynamic. But it's just another way of dealing with the experience, of trying to understand it."
Although the men's pictures have now been smeared all over the internet, it's not known if Price asked them to sign a release, or if they're aware of the context in which their images appear*.
Price has made a video of the picture series, in conjunction with Stockton College Art Gallery:
Several women have used the web to batter men who they claim have abused, groped or otherwise harassed them on the basis of their gender. Projects like Everyday Sexism, which allow women to share stories about nasty men, do keep the blokes' names out of the picture. Other sites, like Cheaterville, allow women – and men – to share names and images of partners they accuse of chronic infidelity.
However, before men's rights campaigners get busy in the comments, the treatment meted out to women online is often much more harsh. Revenge porn, the act of uploading sexually graphic pictures of an ex-squeeze, is much more common among men than women. There have been suicides among young women who have faced bullying and ridicule after rude pictures of them were distributed online.
A writer who calls herself Captain Morgan and who blogs about "sexism, racism and other not cool stuff in the world", said the photographer's project was "genius".
Lexi Nisita, a columnist on the online magazine Refinery 29, claimed that Price wasn't actually "painting them in a negative or accusatory light", despite the fact all the men's faces have been plastered across the internet along with claims they are "harassers".
"Exposing the subjects to the vulnerability of a photo is a kind of revenge in and of itself," she wrote.
Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin said that cat-calling was "sexual harassment", although she reflected that "each of us who experience such behavior are entitled to our own interpretation".
And their own vigilante justice, it would seem. ®
Bootnote
* Vulture Central's backroom gremlins note that implying that someone has committed a crime (say, sexual harassment) is fraught with danger under English defamation law. It can also lead to a civil defamation claim in the US – although the works of art that express an person’s opinions and ideas about other people will not be approached in the same way by a court as say, an assertion in a news article.