THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS!

[neadods]

Pulling a Maria Lima link from Facebook: Kate Harding on Good Kids and Total Fucking Assholes.

If you’re still confused, asking yourself some simple questions might help to clarify things.

Q. If Tyler Clementi were still alive, would Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei still be fucking assholes?

A. Yes! Because they filmed people having sex without their consent and then invited their friends to watch.

Q. If Tyler Clementi were straight, would Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei still be fucking assholes?

A. Yes! Because they filmed people having sex without their consent and then invited their friends to watch.

They were not "nice" kids. At 18 they weren't even kids. They were not "just having fun." They deliberately and repeatedly stripped any privacy from two of their peers just for laughs and invited all their friends to join the dogpile. The only reason we're not hearing about the other boy is that he's still alive.

Did Ravi and Wei mean to kill Clementi? No. Did they commit a crime? Yes. Are they total fucking assholes? HELL YES.

Comments

[beledibabe.livejournal.com]

A-fucking-men!

[nonelvis]

It appalls me that people think that there's anything to debate here. OF COURSE THEY WERE ASSHOLES. ONLY ASSHOLES DO THINGS LIKE THIS.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Apparently there are people saying that they are nice, bright, kind kids.

REALLY? Because I'm not seeing any niceness, intelligence, or kindness here.

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

They were total assholes. No two ways about it.

BUT... I do believe the friend they interviewed (in lieu of evidence to the contrary) that this was not done as a deliberate 'gay bashing' stunt. I think they would have been assholes and taped him if he'd be having sex with a girl.

The difference is, if he'd been having sex with a girl Tyler probably would have been pissed because, yeah, invasion of privacy, but then would have gone around campus going, "I'm a teenager having sex, who's shocked?"

I think it was the outing of someone who wasn't ready to be out that was the real crime here, but it's not necessarily one the two idiots behind the camera meant to commit.

That said, I am NOT condoning what they did in any way. I am not excusing it or saying 'it wasn't such an awful thing' - it was. I'm just *not* sure it was *intended* as a gay vs. straight thing. Do we know who the other boy they taped was sleeping with?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I partially agree with you, in that I'm positive they would have done the same thing if Tyler was with a girl.

BUT! Was it being outed or discovering that he would never have any privacy that made him jump? And what about the hypothetical girl - what are the chances that she would escape slut-shaming? Mighty slim, I'm thinking, considering how no matter who took the sex tape, it's always the woman who gets blamed for being in it.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Forgive me for jumping in here, but I disagree with your opinion that it would have been no different if Clementi was with a girl. They may have taped him anyway, true, but there was undeniably additional prurient interest in the fact that he was with a guy. The fact that he was not "out" just added to that, IMO.

That doesn't mean that it was meant as gay-bashing, though, I'll agree with you there.

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

Oops, I think we have a bit of a mis-read... I should have been clearer.

I completely *agree* that a lot of the prurient interest comes from the fact that it was a gay relationship. It's probably why it has so much more media attention than loads of other things that are just as stupid, but heterosexual.

What I meant was that the asshats were going to be asshats and if Tyler had said to his roommate, "Hey I need the room, my *girl*friend is coming over," the asshats *still* would have taped and broadcast them on the web.

I kind of wonder if the roommate even *knew* who would be showing up before they started taping. It's not unreasonable that Tyler could have couched his language so that the idiots with the camera didn't know what they'd be seeing until it started happening. (Has this information been made public? I've been following it on the news, but I'm not doing a thesis on the subject or anything, so I'm sure I haven't read everything available.)

Again, not at *all* justifying what they did. When you do something 'a little stupid', you can't possibly know what big impact you could have, so you know, best not to do that 'little' thing, stupid!


(And feel free to jump in with me any time. I'm a huge fan of civil discourse.)

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification. I think we pretty much agree with each other, then.

Thanks for not minding my jumping in, and carry on. : )

[honorh.livejournal.com]

That's a great rant. No, "good kids" don't "make mistakes" like that. That stunt took planning and skill and deliberate cruelty. 18 is more than old enough to know better. Hell, as soon as you can understand, "It would make me sad if someone did this to me, so I shouldn't do it to someone else," you're old enough to know better.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Hell, as soon as you can understand, "It would make me sad if someone did this to me, so I shouldn't do it to someone else," you're old enough to know better.

Seriously!

[fyrdrakken]

And I just remembered a movie trailer I saw in the last few weeks, in which the plot seemed to involve a teenage boy's "friends" concealing a webcam in his bedroom to record and upload his planned impending loss of his virginity with his girlfriend. I haven't been reading any of the stuff about this incident, aside from in Dan Savage's columns -- was that mentioned at all? Was that where these dipshits got the idea, that this would be funny and worth doing?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it mentioned in conjunction with this, but it's certainly part and parcel of the whole idea that stripping privacy is "cute" instead of a shitbastard thing to do.