So ass pinching isn't OK?

(Trigger Warning: Sexual harassment)

So a YouTuber recently has made a "prank" video where he pinches random girls asses. Now this is never ok to do either to a man or a women without permission but especially to people that you don't know.

Thankfully the YouTube community have been on the ball with many YouTubers voicing their concerns & outrage to this video, which included composing a Open Letter  which many have signed. Also viewers & the general public on the whole have been quite understandably upset about this video & appalled by it especially as this doesn't seem to be an isolated video from this particular YouTuber.

But then there will always be some (there always is) that have views from the past that should have stayed there & you will always have trolls coming out from under their bridges baiting them on.

So here is the tone of some of the negative comments so far.

People saying "Don't be such a crybaby hes only pinching girls asses, its harmless"

Well, no its not.

You have no clue what it happening in those girls' lives. Any of them could be being bullied, have had experienced sexual abuse trauma or be in a violent relationship.

"The girl was laughing she saw the funny side!"

Erm, no that laugh is an uncomfortable one, it's a laugh of  "Did this really just happen? Is this guy serious?" It's a laugh when something so socially unacceptable is thrown at you & your brain needs a second to work out what the hell has just happened.

Then reading further down the comments we go into more uncomfortable territory such as to include comments like "She shouldn't dress like that". I shouldn't have to repeat that the way a women dresses means nothing more than she like likes that outfit & is not a pretext to anything else.

And this is what I would like to address, what he did was wrong, that's plain to see but what it causes can be far reaching. It causes a ripple affect & this can be even seen throughout the comments. The trolls undoubtedly come out but there are people pushed on by the trolls. As soon as sexual harassment like this is normalized as "OK", it's a slippery slope downwards.

As for the YouTuber in question, the best advice I could give him is own your mistakes. Everybody should have the chance to & stop burying your head in the sand. Personally if I were you I would pull the video & donate the money to a charity on sexual harassment & abuse, let something good come out of it.

And for anyone that watches his YouTube video & wants to comment back on any of these negative comments, try not to (I know it's hard). Report them instead because the more people that comment on those negative comments will push the negative comments up & all the outrage will be washed out of view by the sexist & troll comments at the top. YouTube needs to fix this but that is perhaps a topic for another time.

Update

Since the YouTuber's first video was posted it has now been removed for violating YouTube's terms & conditions & their channel was briefly suspended. Since the first video was uploaded two successive videos have now been uploaded. The second where it was with a woman pinching mens' asses & the third video where the YouTuber explains that the videos were a "social experiment".

eGremlin