I wrestled with whether it was ethical to show this video or just link to it on another website instead. I have, as you might have surmised by now, an ethical objection to the practice of taking videos, photographs or recordings of people without their knowledge or permission and publicizing them, and that objection is intensified when it is done for the purpose of embarrassing them or shaming them, unless the conduct is illegal or so unquestionably vile that society is obligated to issue an objection in the strongest terms possible. I think that the borderline episodes of this are important to discuss and yet it is difficult to do that without aiding and abetting what may be unethical conduct, as I help publicize what perhaps should have been left private.
I haven’t resolved this dilemma. When a video has gone viral, as this one has (as well as another I show here), I think that the impact of my embedding the clip in order to discuss it is minimal, and that the value of presenting the actual video for readers to see outbalances the harm to the victim/victims, if that’s what they are, of posting it on one more site on the web among many. I invite opinions to the contrary. (In the instant case, I should note, the episode was inadvertently captured by a TV cameraman—he shot what he thought was a sleeping fan, and then the copping and feeling began—and broadcast live. Someone else then put the touching moment online.)
With that introduction, here is the video, YouTubed and picked up by Gawker (naturally) as well as many other sites. It shows a male fan at a Yankee game with a sleeping or otherwise unconscious young woman resting her head on his chest. While she sleeps, he appears to fondle her breast, thus spawning endless leering references, since it was at a ballgame, of “stealing second.” We do not know whether the young woman was a stranger who collapsed his way (this actually happened to me once, and at a ballgame, so it’s not that far-fetched), a friend, his wife, his girlfriend, or, as some disturbed individual on one site suggested, his sister.
For the sake of this quiz, we will assume they are a couple. YouTube pulled the video I had embedded, so to see the action, go here.
All set?
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz today is…
Assuming this was the fan’s wife or girlfriend, was it unethical for him to cop a feel, in public, while she was unconscious?
I’ve never tried a poll here, and this seems like as good a topic as any, so here goes. (Don’t let this dissuade you from writing a trenchant comment as well):
My answer: absolutely not, unless the couple had an express agreement that if either was ever unconscious in a public place where one is likely to be caught on camera, unilateral sexual activity is permitted. The fact that the grope ended up on YouTube proves the point: she was caught in an undignified position on camera, which unless she’s a happy exhibitionist like this rude group, caught in the act at a 1995 game in Fenway Park by ESPN …
…is not likely to have been her fondest wish. In general, doing this to any woman without solid express or implied advance consent is sexual assault. Doing it in a locale as public as a ballpark, even with consent, is obnoxious.
(By the way, what the hell is going on in the upper right hand corner, behind the couple?)
______________________________
Pointer: Daily Caller
Ethics Alarms 
The poll’s a bit confusing. I think the “Never” and “Sure” answers should be “Yes” and “No”, respectively, to answer the question.
My take: clearly unethical.
Yup, I can fix that.
(It only took me three tries.)
Thanks. I added your vote. We lost 10.
I hate it when I have to agree with Tiggy. Clearly unethical. You just don’t engage in intimate activity with anyone in public. Common decency alone should determine that question.
I might include another caveat about no advance consent. There might be a slim chance that she has a previous permission and likes being woken by a public grope, but I doubt it. If some guy had done that I’d be tempted to break a finger, and that’d be on camera too.
That didn’t look like any kind of affection to me. It looked like a jerk trying to get away with something he knows he shouldn’t be doing. Unethical. And absolute loser and unmanly behavior.
Thats not creepy at all, what is wrong with people. Unethical
I am trying to come up with some kind of devils advocate POV and can’t think of a thing……
To answer your parenthetical question at the end of your post, to the best I can discern from what is observable: It looks like a guy who has raised up both arms with his hands over his head. The “bobbing flesh” which is visible through the gap between seats, and which I am fairly sure you are most intrigued about, I believe (and REFUSE to believe otherwise!), is simply the same guy’s lower left leg. He has propped the outside of his left foot on his right knee (or propped his ankle or lower leg across his right knee), rendering his left leg bent in an L shape. He is flexing his left leg in a way that moves his left knee up and down, with the rest of his lower left leg following suit.
The Yankee Stadium video is ambiguous to me, at first. I agree that it looks most obviously like the guy is “copping a feel.” But I am willing to believe (I said, willing to believe) the guy is beginning an innocent attempt to lift and push the lady back upright – and, that it just so happens that her right breast has come to rest on him in such a way that the only way he can think of, in that moment, to begin to straighten her up, is to grab where her breast is contacting him – and the motion of his thumb has nothing to do with copping a feel, but all to do with a tentative, “what do I do NOW, to move her off of me?” attempt to get a firm grip on her. I think (or would like to think, anyway), if it had been me in that guy’s place and especially if the lady was a stranger, I would have kept my right hand still, and used my left hand on her left shoulder, to try to pull her toward my left and back upright – and I would have spoken something LOUDLY to her, to make sure everyone around me could hear me.
So, the more I think about that first video, the more suspicious I get of the guy, and think of him, “You creep.”
That Fenway video…just absolutely icked me out.
I voted the wrong way, I thought the question said ‘was it unethical’. D’oh! My fault completely, though for not putting my glasses on…but my answer is ‘unethical’.
Oh, OK….the print question above the poll says “was it ethical for him to cop a feel” but the poll header said “Is the grope unethical?” so I didn’t misread it or imagine it ;D When I reread the passage above the poll, I assumed I’d answered incorrectly. “Never mind”.
Just to really make you think you’re going crazy, I just changed the quiz question to match the poll question. “Unethical” still works.
😀
With out any idea of their relationship it is impossible to conclude whether or not its unethical.
I voted on the poll (“unethical”),
The Fenway film is just gross… the girl being (I assume) masturbated by her companions in the stands did not seem “out of it,” drunk, and was clearly not asleep. Fenway tickets are not cheap; they really could have spent the money to “get a room,” for God’s sake.
We talk about civility????? How about simpler things like keeping your damn orgasms to yourself?
Geez. Every time I was at Fenway, we just sat in the bleachers, drank beer, and batted a beach ball back and forth. I had to laugh at the cameraman, though. He should have been taping the game and instead kept going back to the grope fest in the stands – like rubber-necking bad car accident.
He’s part of that scum on the bottom of the pond.
Unethical.
With “an express agreement that if either was ever unconscious in a public place where one is likely to be caught on camera, unilateral sexual activity is permitted”, that seems to border on the instances of “invited unethical behavior is still unethical”.
Ethically in the social culture this person lives in it is considered wrong to sexually touch, grope, handle or sexually fondle another person without that person’s consent. It follows that if someone is not in a conscious state to give consent, then sexual touching of any kind is deemed unethical.
The argument that it might not be unethical because he might know the woman intimately, is incorrect and uses the consistency obsession as a rationalization. Some may argue that if it is fine, good and ethical for a man to grope his wife or girlfriend at home when she is not in a state so as to have a choice to agree or not (if the wife agrees to this kind of treatment in private), than it follows that it is also ethical or okay for him to do it in public. Incorrect.
This is pressing the point of consistency and ignores the importance of context. The context changes the parameters of whether an action is ethical or unethical. In this case it is a matter of a public act, which violates the social contract standards of the country and therefore makes it indecent at the very least.
Another defense that may be used to say this is not an unethical act is the the comparative virtue excuse. This rationalization is also incorrect. The fact the act was a feel-up of a breast, and garners sophomoric snickering comparisons and minimization puts it into the category of “Aw shucks. Well, it’s really not that bad. I lot of yobs are doing it.”, does not excuse the act from being unethical by the standards of society, with regards to consent.