It takes an amazing person to get loud and stand up against something that is not only wrong, but personally upsetting to them.There’s a lot of douchebaggery in the world and most of us just roll our eyes and look the other way. We’re often quick to dismiss people as stupid or uninformed and think that there’s nothing we can do about it. That sort of ambivalence adds to the status quo.
Today, our very own Maggiesox got very loud and very adamant when a Philadelphia sports blog posted a screen grab of a woman’s underwear that she accidentally showed while crossing her legs during a panning shot of the Phillies game Tuesday night.
She rightfully pointed out that this was akin to taking a picture up a woman’s skirt without her knowledge. But Kyle Scott of Crossing Broad (don’t go there, the pic is down and they don’t deserve the page views) took it one step further by posting said picture on the internet.
Scott then defended the posting of the picture with a multitude of lame excuses, including that it was ok because it had been on TV and that it was ok because you couldn’t see the woman’s face.
Maggiesox, and many of her wonderful Twitter followers, spoke up loudly on Twitter today, pointing out this is invasive and creepy and rapey and had Scott taken the picture himself and not as a screencap, could have been punishable by jail time. She went to local radio and television stations and asked them to stop talking about the story and to stop sponsoring and endorsing CB. She also emailed MLB, pointing out that CB was breaking MLB’s copyright laws.
The story even reached to Jezebel, who covered the gist of the background, linked to Maggiesox’s twitter and bought the story to a much larger audience.
And when folks started backlashing at her and trying to justify the whole thing, she stood her ground and took the incredibly brave step of sharing her own story of a man taking an upskirt photo of her and how it has affected her life. That man received three months of jail time.
Both Scott and many of his readers/Twitter followers defended the posting of the picture, including pointing out that other sites, including Deadspin, have similar pictures posted online. As though the fact that other people are doing despicable things somehow justifies Scott doing so.
They also made plentiful personal attacks at Maggiesox, going as far as accusing her of being jealous that it was this unidentified woman and not Maggie’s ladybits being splashed about the internet.
Even if we give Scott the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t think far enough to realize that posting the picture was wrong and invasive, as soon as multiple people pointed out to him what was wrong with it, he should have taken it down. Instead, he continued to defend the act.
Just writing about this tonight has made me ragey and stabby like I was this afternoon, and there’s probably not much more to say.
Instead of focusing on the problem, let’s focus on the woman that worked towards being the solution: A big, mighty YOU GO, GIRL! to Maggiesox for not being afraid to stand up and yell about how wrong this whole thing was.
Ladies... 