Going in the Wrong Direction: A Mildly NSFW Rant for WNBR/STL Day
Way the heck back in, oh, it must have been around 1992 or so, I was at a very sexy adults-only event. One evening, there were so many of us crammed into the clothing-optional hot tub that, when we all got out later, the water level dropped to less than a foot depth. A very fun and very sexy time was had by all … except …
At one point I got briefly distracted from my fun, and looked up into an an entire wall of fat guys (no fatter than I was, or am, but still, all of them men, and all of them quite fat), standing shoulder by sweaty shoulder, filming our fun with camcorders. And I had a sudden insight: “I am having way more fun, having fun, than these guys are having.” And that was true even if you count whatever time they spent at home jerking off to a movie of our fun, between times spent crying alone in the dark about how lonely they were.
Don’t Be That Guy
That is why, no matter how many crazy events I’ve been to ever since, I virtually never take any kind of camera out of my pocket unless someone specifically asks me to, say, photograph an outfit they’re wearing so they can see later how it looked. I learned 20+ years ago that if you’re photographing the fun, or filming the fun, you’re not the one having the fun. I’d rather make memories than take pictures any day.
It boggles my mind that we haven’t found a way to shame people out of draining the energy out of every public event by taking up space while lifelessly watching it through a viewfinder. Not only have we not done so, I swear we’re moving the wrong direction. This morning, the Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD panel at this year’s San Diego Comic Con hit the web, and I was amazed to see that not only were the audience sitting in their chairs recording the panel rather than paying attention to it, the stars were up on the panel recording the audience with their camera phones as much as they could get away with. Giving up on interacting with the world, so you can record it for whatever dim pleasure you get watching lifeless people recording each other, has gone that mainstream. It’s disgusting.
I bring all this up because we’re about two hours away from the beginning of the seventh annual St. Louis version of the World Naked Bike Ride. And my roommate just mentioned to me that, to my delight, at least one local feminist group will be at the event, leafletting against exactly this micro-aggression: the relatively small number of actually naked or topless women, or women in pasties, being unrelentingly cat-called by the legions of fat suburban male tourists who are relentlessly determined to get them to turn to face the video-recording smart-phones and compact cam-corders that these men want so urgently want to shove as close as possible to the women’s tits.
Seriously, Don’t Be That Guy
And, seriously, how have we failed to make this socially unacceptable behavior? Why is it so rare to see them shamed for it to their faces? I certainly hear plenty of complaints about it behind their backs. They have to be getting so little fun out of their lousy home-made shaky-cam low-rez porn that it seems to me that it wouldn’t even take much social pressure to make it more trouble, more shame, than its worth.
For the seventh straight year, I may miss all of this year’s World Naked Bike Ride; not for even vaguely the first year, it’ll be health reasons if I do. But if I do, I’m going to try hard, as I’ve tried at every clothing-optional event I’ve been at, to shame the tourists and the casually thoughtless into putting down their video recorders. Won’t you join me?