I assume people think this is a problem because they are afraid someone will film them "down there". But you have to actually look down there to do that with Glass, and last I checked that was already frowned upon, and it's something people know they shouldn't do. So why would Glass make this situation much worse?
Yes, if someone winked at my exposed genitals while I was in the bathroom, they would get a fist to the face whether they were wearing Glass or not. The rules of society have not become extinct just because someone is wearing a head-mounted camera.
The rules of the society I live in certainly don't include sudden violence at anyone who's checking out my junk. I might be upset or angry, and I'd probably let them know it, but I'm not getting into a bathroom brawl over it.
Really? If someone was indiscreetly peering over your shoulder to check out your package, you would let them know that it made you upset? Excuse me good sir, I do believe you are offending me?
Where I come from, that's more than an indiscretion. We're not talking about a locker room.
Well felony assault consists of intentionally causing severe bodily harm to someone or attacking an elderly person or child. A single blow to the face would generally not be felony assault.
However, I would consider cornering me in a bathroom and sexually harassing me to be just cause for self defense.
Without having to google, I can tell you that at what point something gets defined as a "felony" varies from one state to another.
(I used to pay accident claims. Some policies specifically did not cover injuries that were incurred in the commission of a felony. I had to write a denial based on that clause. We first had to research if the event in qhestion was a felony in the state in question.)
Society lays out the rules by law. And society judges when those rules have been breached. I think people forget that they have to live in a world where people other than themselves might have a different idea of what constitutes an acceptable response to distinctly discouraged behavior.
Is a woman who is being filmed naked against her will unjustified if she smacks the guy doing the filming when she learns of the violation?
You know what's vile and barbaric? Sexual harassment. Just because it's easier to see your broken nose than it is to see how traumatized a victim of sexual harassment is doesn't mean violence is immediately wrong. What you're arguing is for blaming the victim.
Listen to yourself, man! If someone peeked their head under a stall, would it be disproportionate violence to push him back out with your foot?
Seriously, sexual harassment is not a light crime. It does serious damage to the victim's mental state. There's no way of knowing if the perpetrator is going to take things further. If you want to state here right now that you feel that violence as a way to stop an ongoing act of close-quarters sexual harassment is a disproportionate response, then that's fine. But don't be surprised if other people in your society don't agree.
And yes, violating someone's privacy to see them naked when they obviously don't want to be seen is sexual harassment. Filming that takes it to the next level.
You wouldn't reel back if I punched you in the face? You're man enough to shrug it off without so much as flinching? The idea is to get you to take a step back and pause so I can walk away.
Someone who is violent without reason is not just a victim, they are also a perpetrator.
There is no reason to ever be violent if it isn’t absolute necessary to defend oneself.
Ok, maybe pushing someone away can be ok in that moment, however the glee with which people here talk about violence is absolutely vile. Violence is not ok. It is to never ever be used, only in the most dire emergencies.
A person that has already eschewed the moral code of society to such an extent would not be phased by their targets' words of disapproval.
A voyeur would consider the risk of being yelled at, reported to a local authority (such as a bar owner), being thrown out of an establishment, etc. They would consider these risks and weigh the consequences and determine that they are worth it in the end. They would still get what they wanted, and would be free to carry on their activities in the future, perhaps at another establishment or after enough time had passed.
But the risk of physical violence, that's not so easily dismissed.
Well legally they'd be perfectly within their rights to tape you telling them off. And if you got violent they'd have all the evidence they'd need to press charges, conveniently backed up into the cloud.
There are NUMEROUS statutes that prohibit the surreptitious filming of people where a reasonable expectation of privacy exists. I think a bathroom qualifies.
And I think you'd have a hard time getting a jury to convict someone of punching another guy in the nose for filming them in the bathroom.
Honestly, do you think the VERY FACT that he has a camera running at the time he gets punched by the guy he was filming wouldn't be prima facie evidence that he was in-fact filming in a private place? Cloud or not?
I'm willing the guy who is looking at a sex-offender charge and life-long pervert registration is willing to avoid pressing charges just to make the whole thing go away.
> "And I think you'd have a hard time getting a jury to convict someone of punching another guy in the nose for filming them in the bathroom."
No, that conviction will be a slam dunk, because there's video evidence of it.
You'll also score a simultaneous conviction for running afoul of peeping tom laws, because filming in a bathroom is as you mentioned illegal in many jurisdictions.
The only winner here is the prosecutor. The fact that party A was violating the law before party B assaulted him does not nullify party B's crime. The law doesn't really work that way. The bar for justifiable use of violence is legally high.
If someone is standing 20 feet from me recording, that's a different story. If someone is standing less than a foot from me and I discover him violating me, he's close enough to do physical harm. Perfectly justified in doing everything in my power to put some range between him and I. It's called self defense. The mere threat of physical violence coupled with the ongoing act of sexual harassment is enough justification for self defense.
A beatdown? No. A fist to the face or an elbow to the chest to get him away? You'd better believe it. There's not much room to run to safety when you're cornered at a urinal.
Naked? In the bathroom? With an expectation of privacy? Yes. Yes I do.
Crimes don't exist in a vacuum, there are factors that make the actions cross lines. A man glancing at a women's chest or a woman glancing at a man's rear end is not becoming of a professional, but it's not a crime. Repeated offense and an escalating situation? Then it becomes a crime. Likewise, nudity and expectation of privacy are factors that go into determining the appropriate response.
If I walked up behind a woman and started breathing heavily on her neck while she was cornered in a room with only one exit, she would be completely within her rights to use violence as a means to get away from me even though I never touched her.
No, to clarify, I mean just in public on the train or at a concert or a bar or whatever. The sorts of places where "mild" sexual assault of women by unfamiliar men is rather routine-- I'd posit much more common than assault of men by unfamiliar men in public restrooms, though I'm open to correction on that.
My underlying question being, at what point does looking put one in enough fear of touching that preemptive escalation to violence is warranted? Because from what I'm told by female friends, that fear is fairly commonplace in their lives, while violence is rather more rare.
I think I've adequately described the situation I'm referring to and the reason I feel violence is justified in that situation. Somehow you're ignoring all that. If you're in a bathroom, you're inherently close quarters, there's generally only one exit, there is an implied expectation of privacy, and witnesses are not plentiful. It's pretty obvious when looking has potential to turn to touching. That line exists right around the distance that touching is possible. If I can land a solid punch on someone's nose without taking a step, they're too close.
I'm trying to figure out what your agenda is; if you're trying to lead me into a trap. Are you trying to catch me saying that I don't hold the same standard to women? Because your "at a concert or on a train or in a bar" example misses the whole "nude" and "expectations of privacy" part of this story, not to mention the "trapped in a room with one exit and no witnesses".
Would I cross the room to punch someone? No. Would I use force to get them away from me? Well, isn't there a whole industry built up around women's self defense courses? I'm not answering your question because I don't feel comfortable with your intentions. I think you know the answer, I just don't know what you're trying to get me to say.
I feel like I was pretty honest in my last paragraph: My sense is that the sort of fear of sexual assault that you're describing is something women I know experience fairly often in public, fully clothed, with witnesses. (And their fear is reasonable, since sexual assault occurs in those same circumstances.) Their reactions vary, but never is preemptive violence on the table, for obvious reasons.
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with extending your standard of self-defense to women who feel uncomfortable with the way men are behaving in public, but I also feel it would be hugely challenging to our social structure and I'm curious where you fall on the issue.
What I'm not comfortable with is saying "no, women shouldn't feel as frightened as I would" because the two situations are completely different. I'm not talking about how common these situations are, or how commonly violence is the outcome. I'm talking about how I would react in the very specific situation that is being outlined in this specific story.
I would urge everyone to reserve violence until it is absolutely necessary in your mind to prevent injury to yourself. But if it is necessary, I wouldn't blame anyone for it. Naked, vulnerable, cornered, and threatened has potential to bring out violence in anyone. It's basic fight or flight, except the flight option is taken out. I wouldn't punch someone on the train for staring at my clothed body and merely making me feel uncomfortable. I would punch someone on the train for staring at me and breathing heavily while keeping me from walking away.
Feeling uncomfortable isn't the line I'm trying to draw, feeling trapped and threatened is.
If I understand the scenario, and feel free to restate if I've got this wrong, you're talking about being at a public urinal and noticing another man staring lustfully at your junk. This places you in fear of imminent physical violence to which you feel justified responding in kind.
So, there's a general response from men here that this sounds like an absurd overreaction, but I'm not in that camp. If anything I'm trying to defend your point of view. It's just it sounds to me like you're describing a feeling of trapped, threatened vulnerability that is extreme and rare for men, but a daily occurrence for women, that goes something like this:
"Gosh, that man seems visibly interested in me as a sexual object despite the totally inappropriate context, and the fact that I haven't made any advances or invitations whatsoever. Well, I'm sure that's the hard limit of his disregard for social convention.
"Okay, he just told me to smile. Well, I'm sure that's the hard limit."
Now I'll distance myself from the herd here by saying I think men who act like that (a strict superset of men who might stare at your junk in the john) ought to experience some fear of physical violence themselves. My original question to you is whether you intend that to be an implication of your asserting your right to self-defense in this situation, where the consensus seems to be that it is unwarranted. Though perhaps I'm belaboring the point because it seems your answer is no, or at least no contest.
I can understand using force to prevent someone from touching you inappropriately. But that has the huge caveat that you must have reasonable evidence they are going to touch you inappropriately. Them standing and staring is not good enough.
Punching someone on the train for standing in your way is not reasonable either.
The problem with this discussion is trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all response to every possible situation. Life doesn't work that way.
It's all well and good for us to think about what we might do in a situation like that. In almost every case, that's not what happens when faced with that situation. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
So let me be clear: it's extraordinarily hard to compare "what you would do" in a scenario when you have the luxury of thinking about it, considering the alternatives, and thinking about possible consequences. In the heat of the moment, when you've got seconds to react, you're likely to make a decision is widely different than the one you THINK you'd make.
Those of us who have faced violence in the past know this intimately. If you've never been held at the point of a gun (I have), then it's hard to comprehend the variety of emotions, positive and negative, that come to the surface when you're suddenly faced with that reality.
Even people who have trained their whole lives for violent encounters deal with this. I wouldn't get too worked up about not having all the answers at your fingertips.
That said, if I catch you taking a picture of my junk in the bathroom, it's not going to go well for you.
Consider this: if I bump you (even unintentionally), by the strictest reading of the law, I committed assault and battery. That's obviously ridiculous, so we use our common sense to keep society functioning. We consider intent, and the likelihood that someone would feel genuinely threatened by someone else's actions.
SO, to paraphrase your example: an average woman, who might lack the physical means to feel safe in the presence of someone who might be larger and looking at them in a sexual way, would be justified in feeling threatened.
You seem to have a quaint notion of how the justice system works. Video evidence? Probably wont be surpressed by defense. Probably wont be contested because it's obtained as the result of an illegal act. The jury will probably not agree with the defense that the video represented the first stage of an attack by people who film attacks to gain notariety in the Internet. Probably.
If you agree to post your bar number from any US state and the range of cases you've defended, I'd be willing to hear your counterargument.
Would you like my penis length while we're at this? I was interested in a discussion, not credentialing, posturing, and condescension. Why are you after all of the above?
Hey, you're the one offering a legal opinion. I'm willing to bet my experience with the justice system beats yours.
For one thing, I've lived in the USA for my entire life.
For another, I've lived in several states.
For yet another, I've been involved in an altercation that came to the notice of the police. Several in fact. I'm still walking around a free man with nary a scratch on my record.
So my experience would seem to be directly on point and in direct contradiction to your opinion of how these things go in my country and state.
But hey, if you think your penis is so wonderful, feel free to provide a picture link. I promise not to share it.
Paul, I'm happy to. But when someone directly contradicts me, I think it's only fair that I indicate where I'm coming from. Otherwise, it's just an echo-chamber.
Yes, any kind of initial filming would be illegal. But once there's an argument going, everyone decent, I wouldn't see it as a privacy violation to overtly film the proceedings. I suppose it depends on the exact wording of the law.
It doesn't take a genius to see how cameras in a bathroom could be abused. I wouldn't expect every person who potentially faces Internet-scale humiliation that might come from the prospect of their private parts ending up on someone's FB page to simply shrug it off.
I'm counting the days till some Glass-wearing hipster gets his head shoved in a toilet for crap like this. When it happens, I expect THAT will be filmed as well.
I agree with you on this point: there will be misunderstandings, and there will be violence. Almost certainly someone is going to end up in an emergency room, where a doctor will be picking bits of Google Glass out of their head with tweezers.
I was just pointing out that this is not a good thing, and freehunter should not be proudly exclaiming how he's going to punch someone in the face.
When did I say I was proud of it? Of course I wouldn't be proud to hit someone. But I'd be even less proud to let someone get away with sexual harassment. I can't believe we're even getting into a discussion about how you shouldn't be allowed to defend yourself against sexual harassment.
The majority of teenagers don't upload their sexts or videos. Sometimes it's done to humiliate others, but it usually goes on Facebook. This doesn't change anything.
given the nature of your response, I am going to make the wild assumption that if your Rules of Society were enforced you'd have had your ass kicked by a lot of women.
I don't make a habit of going into women's restrooms and staring at their nudity while they relieve themselves. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.
The problem is I generally don't check if other people are looking at me when I'm using a urinal (and by "generally" I mean "never"), so that I would have a very hard time figuring out if the person closest isn't in fact just photographing my "down there" just from a blink of an eye.
