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One of the first people I met when I began college was a guy named Peter. Approximately half of the Civil Liberties class that I enrolled in received instructions to go to the wrong classroom. As we sat waiting for a professor to show up, Peter and I chatted. He was a junior and a liberal, with a goal of defending poor people against the death penalty. It turned out that he was also part of an extracurricular non-partisan discussion group that I already intended to join. Most exciting, he proudly told me that he was a feminist. In my 18 years of life, I'd met very few young men who defined themselves as feminists, so this was pretty cool.
Long story short, sometimes I found that Peter's behavior didn't quite match up to his lofty beliefs. Whenever he was interested in a woman, he often crossed subtle lines between wooing and annoying. We had numerous discussions about what I considered hypocritical actions that he insisted were romantic, not creepy. After college, I only saw him once or twice a year at large gatherings. Inevitably, one of my female guests would leave the event feeling creeped out by his overtures. I advised him to watch himself; he reminded me that he was a feminist and thus could not possibly do anything to hurt women.
About a year ago, however, Peter was asked to resign from his job as a New York City public defender. He told me that several female coworkers had accused him of taping them as they changed in their offices from casual clothing to suits for court appearances. I was shocked. His actions in the past had been questionable when pursuing women romantically, but surely his overall respect for women's rights would never allow him to do such a thing. Right?
Charges were officially brought against him in July, and the media and blog world weighed in on the case. When I came across posts like this one written by The Cat Lady at Reverse Paranoia:
Blatant workplace misogyny and masturbatory invasion of privacy are never sweeter than when committed under the guise of Justice itself.
Pervert and avid amateur pornographer-cum-”equal justice” lawyer Peter Barta of Queens secretly "videotaped five colleagues in the public defense agency [Legal Aid Society’s] Manhattan offices… according to a complaint filed in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court."At his arraignment, the defendant pleaded not guilty on counts of unlawful surveillance and attempted unlawful surveillance, even though a video of a nude female coworker was discovered in his home. Mr. Barta’s lawyer, unconvincingly named Henry Putzel, believes the matter will be “resolved” without a trial, rescuing the hapless lawyer from jail time and disbarment.
While I appreciate that “unlawful surveillance” is a felony in New York State — not necessarily so elsewhere — I wonder whether there are other provisions of law more minor that might not be applied so that folks like Barta don’t just sally away from arraignments certain that their clever use of mini cameras won’t put them in the clinker.
I’m not going to speculate. I’m no lawyer myself. But whenever conversation is afoot about misogyny’s perpetrators — the outcasts, the little-educated, the blaringly religious, the psychically stunted — I like to point out that the notion that women exist for men’s pleasure first and foremost infiltrates even the brightest corners.
I cringed. It struck a little too close to home in the sense that under normal circumstances, this is exactly the type of thing I write. In fact, after I wrote a post about the horrifying spectacle of the Duke rape case, Dr. Melissa Clouthier took exception to how feminists reacted to the whole debacle:
I read some feminist blogs about this case and found them depressing… and outrageous. The basic premise was: ignore the facts of the case, believe the woman until proven otherwise. Which translates to: assume guilt on the part of the alleged rapists until proven innocent.
Suddenly, I found myself in this weird and uncomfortable position. It's not that I didn't believe that these Legal Aid attorneys were secretly taped as they changed their clothes – who wouldn't accept such evidence? – but since I knew the accused, I was less likely to jump on the condemnation bandwagon. Did this make me a feminist hypocrite? Should I give more benefit of the doubt to every man accused of a crime
