The following post is a part of a 4 Post series I am doing for one of my
classes in university. The title of the class is “Sociology of Sexuality” and
naturally the content of the blogs must discuss topics under the umbrella of
that title. Therefore, the content will be slightly different to anything I’ve
ever blogged about (Not that I really ever blog, so it’s hard to pinpoint
whether or not I have a style or common topic). Regardless, if you’re wondering
why I’m writing about this, that is why and, of course, I do believe they’re
important discussions to bring up.
Hello there,
The funny thing about sexual assault is... Nope. I have nothing. There's nothing funny about it. Yet apparently not everyone shares my stance. Recently, several videos were brought to my attention that I
found rather interesting/disturbing/important/controversial/all of the above.
The videos featured YouTube star Sam Pepper who has made a career of posting videos
on YouTube of him performing pranks (If you didn’t know YouTube could be a
career, you’re not alone, but apparently it is). Upon further investigation, it appears that the majority of his pranks involve some type of sexual act ranging
from “Picking Up Girls Using Instagram” to “Making Out With Strangers” and
there are over 109 such videos to be found on his YouTube channel, which is
watched by over 2.3 million subscribers. I managed to watch the first 30
seconds of one of these videos before turning it off due to the offensive
nature of the “pranks”.
Now the particular videos that I had planned to discuss have
since been removed from the Internet, which is unfortunate for the sake of this
post, but encouraging for the sake of humanity. I will briefly outline the
content of these videos in order to continue with this post. Although
the content was disturbing to say the least, the videos raise some important
questions and concerns about our society.
Video 1: 1/3
In the first video, Sam Pepper “pranks” unsuspecting (female)
strangers on the streets by pinching their bottoms while asking for directions.
I could go into more detail relaying how he managed to deceptively perform such
a “prank”, but really all you need to know is; boy, strangers, pinching.
Video 2: 2/3
Sam Pepper has female friend “prank” unsuspecting (male)
strangers on the streets by pinching their bottoms while asking for directions.
Video 3:
Dotti Martin (Another professional YouTube personality, yes
this is a real thing) uploads a video admitting that Sam Pepper forced her to
make out with him when she was 16 (he was 23 at the time).
Video 4: 3/3
Sam Pepper releases a video explaining that his previous 2
“prank” videos were part of a social experiment that sought to address the
double standard around sexual assault against men and sexual assault against
women. In the video, he informs viewers that all the people involved in the video
had given consent (such claims appear to have since been falsified and there is
no proof anyone gave consent to participate in any “pranks” involving Sam
Pepper).
Now the purpose of this blog post is not to get into a
battle of he said-she said or to investigate the legal and social battle that
has naturally ensued, or to uncover the multitude of lies created by Sam Pepper to
apparently “save face”. The reason I wanted to bring up these videos is because
they bring up certain issues within our society that I think are important to
discuss.
(Now it’s important to
understand that Video 3/3 was produced not to highlight a social experiment, but
as an attempt to save his image and career. So we won't be addressing the issues he discusses in the video, but I wanted to share the entire story properly.)
What does is take for a joke or prank to become sexual
assault? The answer is nothing. It takes nothing. Assault is assault regardless
of how it’s perceived or framed. Regardless of whether the act is convicted months
after occurring; it was assault then, just as much as it is now.
But is that really the case?
No.
Unfortunately, in this particular situation the assault was
viewed as a joke until someone had the courage to speak up and say “this is a
form of sexual assault” and it was several days before YouTube decided to take
the videos off YouTube. See, when Sam Pepper committed the act, it was seen as a
humorous prank where some popular young British guy goes around pinching
strangers bums. It was viewed as assault when someone defined it as such.
Either way however, it was assault when he did it and it still would be
regardless if anyone said it. From an observational stance, it is interesting
and also terribly concerning to try and comprehend that something as horrible
as sexual assault isn’t obviously conceptualized and indentified by those who
have experienced it and witnessed it.
Sexual assault may seem like a well understood concept, but
this situation led me to think that maybe we don’t all completely know
what is considered sexual assault. So, for my own knowledge and to inform
anyone possibly in the dark, I decided to look up exactly what sexual assault
is defined as. From an extremely basic view, the Oxford English Dictionary
defines sexual assault as “the action or an act of forcing an unconsenting
person to engage in sexual activity; a rape; (Law) a crime involving forced
sexual contact, variously defined as inclusive or exclusive of rape”. Now this
is a good definition, not great, but good. Firstly, it acknowledges what I think
may be one of the many issues when conceptualizing sexual assault; “inclusive or
exclusive of rape”. Rape is not the only form of sexual assault and I think
that maybe this is often not realized. Secondly, it is a crime. So don’t let
anyone tell you it’s not.
The Edmonton Police Service goes into more detail with their
definition as provided by the Supreme Court of Canada:
Sexual Assault is defined as an assault of a sexual
nature that violates the sexual integrity of the victim. The Supreme Court of
Canada held that the act of sexual assault does not depend solely on contact
with any specific part of the human anatomy, but rather the act of a sexual
nature that violates the sexual integrity of the victim. When investigating a
sexual assault, there are certain relevant factors to consider:
The part of the body touched
The nature of the contact
The situation in which the contact occurred
The words and gestures accompanying the act
All other circumstances surrounding the act
Any threats that may or may not be accompanied by
force
The victim of the sexual assault can be man or woman
and the attacker can be of the same sex as the victim. A spouse may be charged
with sexual assault upon the other spouse.
Punishment:
Everyone who commits a sexual assault is guilty of
An indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment
for a term not exceeding ten years or
An offence punishable on summary conviction and
liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding eighteen months.
I like this definition more than the OED definition but it’s
the language in the very first sentence that makes me slightly uncomfortable.
When it says, “violates the sexual integrity of the victim”, I start to question
the message this sends. Yes, sexual assault is a violation, but to suggest that
the victim’s integrity is affected is the type of talk that leads victims to
believe they’re partially to blame. If you, or anyone you know, has ever been
assaulted, let me assure you, your integrity is in no way, shape or form,
compromised. You have been violated, but your integrity still stands.
Let me summarize this in my own words. Sexual assault
is any situation where you are touched without your consent or a situation that makes you
uncomfortable and you wish it to stop. Whether you’re in a bar and someone
smacks your bottom or you’re with a guy who forces you to do stuff you don’t
want to do. It appears as though Sam Pepper's actions were, to a degree, excused because none of the victims were seriously harmed. But don't let the reaction of the victim fool anyone. It's still assault.
Now that we’ve outlined sexual assault and understand just
how broad the various acts that fall beneath it are, let’s discuss what Mr. Sam
Pepper means to all this.
The main thing that stood out to me when I looked into this
is the power that celebrity plays in this particular scenario. As mentioned, Pepper has a massive global following and upon further investigation, it appears
as though the majority of his followers are teenage girls (something to do with
his bad boy attitude and British accent). And whilst reading comments on various
articles and the videos themselves (before they were removed) I was amazed at
the amount of people sticking up for him… One comment even read “Sam Pepper is
a bae tho… Love him to the moon and back no matter what he does… If he touched
my a**, I wouldn’t care… He is amazing”. Romantic...
According to knowyourmeme.com (sure, not the most reliable
sounding source but there’s not a lot of scholarly resources on YouTube
sensations) Pepper’s twitter account has gain over 1.6 million followers and
his Facebook gained 690,000 likes. (However upon further investigation, it
appears his Facebook no longer exists, since the allegations of sexual assault came forth.) This is a lot of attention, publicity and attraction for a
guy who makes his living on "Likes" and "Follows" and is being accused of sexual assault on a number of different levels.
What does this say about our society and culture? Well for
starters, it seems as though there’s a lot of girls that don’t care what a guy
does, as long as he’s hot and famous, and we, as a society, are addicted to controversial
gossip. I, for one, would be more inclined to hit the block button than the
follow button on twitter when it came to a sexual offender. Of course the
majority of the online population aware of this situation were disgusted and
outraged, but nonetheless I find it concerning that there were people not
offended by his actions. Unfortunately our society sees celebrities as
different than ourselves and they’re held to a different standard. If they’re
loved, then their bad decisions are excused, and if they’re hated, then their good works are
ignored.
Whether a person is rich and famous, or poor and nameless, everyone needs to be held accountable to their actions on an even scale. It’s
important that we, as a society, generate a strong discourse around such
difficult subjects as sexual assault and create awareness for those that don’t
understand it. It’s necessary to stand up to those who commit these crimes
regardless of their status and treat it for what it is, a crime.
Upon researching the subject, I found is somewhat distressing that there was very little academic material on the cultural reaction to sexual assault and the majority of literature focused solely on situations involving rape. However, one study addresses our reaction to the victim and they identify some important concepts that everyone in society needs to be aware of. Ullman and Peter-Hagene (2014) conducted a study out of the University
of Illinois at Chicago and found that “Social reactions to sexual assault
disclosure can have a significant effect on victims’ recovery after the
assault, and can either help or hinder the recovery process” (p. 495):
“Social reactions of control, blame, treating the victim
differently, and other negative reactions to assault disclosure, are related to
avoidant forms of coping, perhaps because they increase victims’ feelings of
self blame and helplessness and decrease their trust in others” (p. 504) and “positive social reactions to assault disclosure were
related to greater use of both adaptive individual and especially adaptive
social forms of coping” (p. 505).
Education and awareness are key factors in understanding the victim, the offender and what we as a society can do to prevent sexual assault from happening and knowing how to deal with it when it does happen.
Instead of ending this blog with a conclusion or summary, I
am going to leave the discussion open. These issues are accompanied by an
abundance of questions, few of which can be perfectly answered, all of which
need to be asked. I am not able to answer all these questions but I hope that I
have provided enough material to provoke some thought. We, as a society, must
learn to address these issues in an appropriate matter. Most importantly we
need to learn to see them as issues and not excuse them at any cost.
Why don’t we recognize certain offences when we see them?
What does it take for something to become an offence?
Who decides what’s acceptable and what’s not?
Why don’t we see all forms of sexual assault as a crime?
Should all forms of sexual assault be seen as criminal?
Who is allowed to commit sexual offences? Who isn’t?
Why do we excuse certain behaviours in some contexts and not
in others?
And remember these 3 things;
1.) even if a guy "jokingly" pinches your bottom without your consent, it's sexual assault.
2.) it's never your fault if you're assaulted. Never. You shouldn't be ashamed of it if you've be assaulted, your offender should.
3.) celebrities are people. Don't treat them like they're not.
Just a few things to think about…
-m.o
Now it may seem that I am passing over this incredibly important issue but for the sake of this blog post and its length I can only merely graze the surface of these points. I understand these issues deserve an extensive amount of consideration and discussion and one cannot even attempt to conquer them in a single blog post. But, as with many subjects such as this, it can be equally important just to pose the ideas and issues in an attempt to create awareness and ask important questions. Also, my intentions were not to ignore the focus of Video 3/3, which discussed the gender division amongst sexual assault victims, which is an extremely important issue that needs to be made more aware, but as mentioned for the length of this blog I did leave some topics out. I encourage anyone reading this to look into the issues surrounding sexual assault against men and recognize it as an issue of sexual offence, just as serious as assault against women.
Works Cited
Ullman, S. E., & Peter-Hagene, L. (2014). SOCIAL
REACTIONS TO SEXUAL ASSAULT DISCLOSURE, COPING, PERCEIVED CONTROL, AND PTSD
SYMPTOMS IN SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIMS. Journal Of Community Psychology, 42(4),
495-508. doi:10.1002/jcop.21624