‘Disappointing’ response to public sex act video: Women’s Studies expert
Posted Jul 10, 2015 3:23 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
While police decide if charges will follow after a now viral video was posted to Instagram of a public sex act outside a Stampede themed party tent, a women’s studies expert is taking aim at the public response.
Rebecca Sullivan, a professor in the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Calgary, said no one doubts the inappropriateness of engaging in a sex act in public, but the disproportionate response online towards each gender involved is very ‘disappointing’.
“Men are being congratulated and the woman is being criticized. Someone is saying ‘Way to go dudes’, then shaming the woman, in the same sentence,” Sullivan said. “That says what we need to know about the kind of culture we’re living in; about what rape culture is.”
Sullivan said the person who took and posted the video online for public scrutiny, has committed a far more egregious offence than the woman and two men in the public act.
As for a YouTube blog that has now popped up by the woman, who says she is in the Stampede video, Sullivan said “all the power to her” for trying to counter the punishing abuse and shame with something she can make for herself.
