Calvin Klein ad featuring Klara Kristen
Photo by Harley Weir (2016)
As long as there are young women wearing short skirts and pretty underwear then the phenomenon of upskirting is not going to go away - even if you criminalise the activity, as is now proposed. All (heterosexual) men want to catch a glimpse upskirt or peek downblouse, be they 18th century French painters, like Fragonard, or 21st century voyeurs surreptitiously using a smart phone.
Without wishing to subscribe to the moral hysteria that surrounds this subject - and even though I'm not female - I can understand the objection to some prick taking an unauthorised photograph and then posting the image online or circulating it via social media. Everyone is surely entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy within a public space and not to be sexually harassed or humiliated.
Without wishing to subscribe to the moral hysteria that surrounds this subject - and even though I'm not female - I can understand the objection to some prick taking an unauthorised photograph and then posting the image online or circulating it via social media. Everyone is surely entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy within a public space and not to be sexually harassed or humiliated.
Ultimately, however, I see this more as an ethical issue rather than a legal one. Or perhaps simply as a question of etiquette; one simply doesn't do this kind of thing in polite society. It's so rude! as a member of the Brodie Set would say.
The problem, of course, is that we don't live within polite society. We live, rather, within a pornified (or sexually liberated) culture where the recording, distribution, and consumption of images via sophisticated technology - including images that are intended to be obscene or provocative in nature - has become absolutely normalised.
Because I'm a bit old-fashioned, it seems to me to be bad manners to upskirt a stranger without their knowledge or consent. But ads such as the one shown above, featuring a picture by the young and highly acclaimed (female) photographer Harley Weir for Calvin Klein, clearly help construct a kinky code of conduct that encourages and endorses what at one time would have been branded as overtly deviant behaviour.
After the orgy, there's clearly a need for a new sexual ethos. But who could we possibly task to draw up such? I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable handing the job over to feminist academics such as Clare McGlynn and Erica Rackley, for example, who argue that upskirting belongs next to revenge porn on a continuum of image-based sexual abuse, reinforcing as it does a rape culture that fundamentally violates a woman's human rights.
As indicated earlier, I'm really not convinced that we need a more comprehensive politico-legal response to upskirting. I would really rather there were fewer laws, not more.
Nor - at the risk of minimising the nature and impact of upskirting - do I think it's helpful to encourage women who have had some creep take an illicit photo regard themselves as victim-survivors. To feel that your dignity has been stolen and self-worth destroyed simply because someone caught sight of your knickers (or even your genitalia) is, I would suggest, an overreaction.
And, finally, anyone who imagines for one moment that life and love can be made to unfold entirely within a framework (and safe space) of human rights is laughably mistaken: for life is tragic and love is deadly and we are all of us - whatever our gender - violated and humiliated on a daily basis by the evil genius of the world.
Notes
As far as I'm aware, there is still no specific law against upskirting in the UK, although, in 2010, Scotland broadened the definition of voyeurism to explicitly cover the non-consensual taking of images beneath clothing - presumably this included kilts - either for the perpetrator's sexual gratification, or in order to cause the victim harm or distress. It should be noted, however, that there have been successful prosecutions for upskirting in England and Wales under the common law offense of outraging public decency. One might have thought that this suggests there's no real need for further legislation, though if women like the Conservative MP Maria Miller (Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee) and Sarah Green (of the End Violence Against Women Coalition) are successful in their campaigning, then the horrific crime of upskirting will soon be on the statute books.
See: Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, and Ruth Houghton, 'Beyond Revenge Porn: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse', in Feminist Legal Studies, Vol. 25, Issue 1 (April 2017), pp. 25-46: click here to read online.
As far as I'm aware, there is still no specific law against upskirting in the UK, although, in 2010, Scotland broadened the definition of voyeurism to explicitly cover the non-consensual taking of images beneath clothing - presumably this included kilts - either for the perpetrator's sexual gratification, or in order to cause the victim harm or distress. It should be noted, however, that there have been successful prosecutions for upskirting in England and Wales under the common law offense of outraging public decency. One might have thought that this suggests there's no real need for further legislation, though if women like the Conservative MP Maria Miller (Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee) and Sarah Green (of the End Violence Against Women Coalition) are successful in their campaigning, then the horrific crime of upskirting will soon be on the statute books.
See: Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, and Ruth Houghton, 'Beyond Revenge Porn: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse', in Feminist Legal Studies, Vol. 25, Issue 1 (April 2017), pp. 25-46: click here to read online.
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