I’d like to talk today about boners. Boners and society, boners and sex, and the odd, odd fascination with Reddit’s sudden defense and martyrdom of a self-admitted pedophile.
/r/Creepshots was a Reddit community centered around taking photos of women in public without their permission and posting them online to share in a sexual context, for masturbatory purposes. Violentacrez was a moderator of this, /r/jailbait, and other communities. He’s an out and out pedophile, and an awful human being.
However, what Creepshots and Violentacrez represented was the concept of women, regardless of age or sexual preference or consent or anything beyond their physical appearance and the crime of being out in public, existing solely for sexual gratification. For masturbation material. For the idea of sex as consumption, of sexual release as something more important than anything else in the world.
I don’t know how this happened, how this awful idea came into the world, that sex wasn’t a mutual, consentual act between two (or more!) people - but it needs to stop, and it needs to end now, not later. The harm it’s caused, the damage it’s done, and the righteous indignation of boners above all is a pathetic excuse to take a stand against victims of sexual assault.
I would ask you, men of the Internet, to do better. To self-actualize and criticize your ideals of how and what sex is, and how your need for dopamine and endorphin release somehow trump any and all decency, right to privacy, or human rights. I mean, look at nerd culture, look at the blatant consumerism, the need to have things now, how we’re tapped in to our smartphones, our laptops, our wi-fi everywhere - we have this need for everything, now, and without barriers.
I strongly feel this has come to infiltrate our ideals of sex, as well. With creepshots, with the photobucket hacking of a woman who’s only crime was posting a photo with Gabe Newell, with the community cheering said behavior on, it’s become a newfound fascination with undressing women, either mentally or digitally, without their consent. Consuming their bodies for sexual gratification.
Is this the level of pathetic we’ve fallen to? Why has sexual gratification become such a one-sided, boner trumps all ideal? Greed, selfishness, orgasm at any cost? This is awful, and it’s unacceptable, and I wonder, do they, they being Reddit, know this? Violating bodily autonomy in such a way? The shared experience of sexual violation?
Of course, these are all rhetorical questions, because there’s no legitimate or acceptable answer that would make these behaviors redeemable or acceptable. They’re more the ramblings of a sad man, ashamed of his gender for their actions, trying to get to the root of an issue and end these behaviors. Possibly a pointless endeavor in the dark hole of the internet, but still an important one to embark upon.
All I can really say is that our society needs to take a critical look at how it fails to prioritize consent when it comes to sexuality, and that the physical act of flesh upon flesh, or shared sexual gratification, is something that should be treated in an entirely different manner than pirating the latest hit film or videogame release, that a woman, regardless of how she’s dressed, is not for one’s own masturbatory material without proper consent.
Reddit’s defense of /r/Creepshots and Violentacrez is a display not of their solidarity with “free speech,” but instead a sign that boners, and what enables them, regardless of the cost, are what are most important to nerds these days, and it’s shameful and pathetic.
