Pinching butts
Sometimes the best humor comes not from stand-up comics or sitcoms but from interactions with real people. That’s likely the reason television shows such as Funny or Die’s Billy on the Street and Inside Amy Schumer, in which hosts engage in funny interviews with passersby on the street, have proven so popular. But few can be both entertaining and appropriate.
On Saturday, YouTube prankster Sam Pepper uploaded a new video, “Fake Hand A– Pinch Prank,” to his channel. Pepper stopped random women on the street, making small talk or asking for directions, and would, as the video’s title indicates, attempt to pinch their butts, then blame it on innocent bystanders.
The victims of his so-called prank were visibly uncomfortable and seemed suspicious of Pepper. When he eventually came clean, many of them made a half-hearted effort to laugh it off before quickly departing. One woman was resistant to his attempt to hug her afterward, telling him she didn’t like it.
While comedy can often blur the lines between poking fun and offending, there is no gray area here. Pepper’s actions aren’t a joke; they border on sexual assault.
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network defines sexual assault as “unwanted sexual contact that stops short of rape or attempted rape,” including sexual touching and fondling. About 238,000 people older than 12 are victims of rape and sexual assault every year, according to RAINN. Someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes.
Unbelievably, this isn’t the first time Pepper has made a prank video in which situations surpass the uncomfortable and verge on inappropriate. In his video “How to Pick Up Girls with a Lasso,” uploaded in June, Pepper and a friend used a lasso to physically restrain women walking down the street, sometimes saying they wouldn’t release the women until they gave them their phone numbers or even made out with them. Just one week ago, Pepper uploaded “Easiest Way To Get A Number,” in which he and his friends lied to strangers about having met before in a ploy to get their phone numbers.
In some situations, women attempted to escape, and a few men even attacked Pepper.
In another video, “How to Make Out with Strangers,” Pepper again pressured people he met on the street to kiss him. He almost always targets women. Often, the situations are unnecessarily sexual.
What’s more is that Pepper isn’t the first of YouTube’s so-called celebrities to engage in this sexist and misogynistic behavior. Nash Grier, a 16-year-old Internet sensation who made his start on Vine, made a video describing the kind of women men find attractive. In the nearly 10-minute video, he shames women who wear a lot of makeup, have had plastic surgery or do not shave any and all their body hair, among other perceived faults. Grier received significant negative attention as a result, and the video eventually was removed.
YouTube star Tom Milsom came under fire, too, when a former fan alleged the musician and vlogger had engaged in an abusive relationship with her when she was underage. Milsom was dropped from his label, DFTBA Records, and hasn’t made a video in more than a year.
Regardless of Pepper and his fellow Internet chauvinists’ intentions, these videos help sustain a rape culture, in which both men and women think these behaviors are OK. Because of their large spheres of influence — Pepper alone has about 2.4 million subscribers — such videos directly reinforce these ideas among their many viewers, finding humor in inherently nonhumorous circumstances.
It is at least comforting to know that many people recognize that Pepper’s “joke” violated women’s bodies in his latest video, which has already created uproar online. Several members of the YouTube community, including John Green, Wil Wheaton and Tyler Oakley, have signed an open letter to Pepper, an effort spearheaded by YouTube sex education activist Laci Green. YouTube has since removed Pepper’s video for violating the website’s policy on sexual content. A follow-up video Pepper posted Tuesday, which featured a woman pinching men on the street, drew another round of outrage and was also removed.
Ironically, the first prank video surfaced the same weekend the United Nations launched its HeForShe campaign for gender equality. By signing the pledge, which has garnered more than 85,000 signatures, people can make a small but significant difference.
By choosing to unsubscribe from Sam Pepper’s YouTube videos, people are choosing to unsubscribe from sustaining rape culture.
