Those who view voyeuristic nightlife videos are the issue | Letters

Letter: Hannah Clark responds to an article on the growing phenomenon of women being covertly filmed while out at night

I was grateful for Emily Retter’s focus on the feelings and experiences of the women affected by voyeuristic nightlife content (‘They were comparing me to Bonnie Blue’: the disturbing rise of nightlife content, 18 March). Being “watched” in public is perhaps a uniquely female experience. Sadly many women can relate to being leered at from car windows or catcalled from scaffolding, with video content being the latest, depressing escalation of this kind of behaviour.

What is new, however, is the scale of the audience for the content documenting such behaviour. I am struck by the lack of repercussions for the (presumably exclusively male) viewers and commenters of these videos.

Criminalising the creation and distribution of such content, while admirable, fails to address the wider cultural issue of the audience appetite for these dehumanising videos. After all, there would be nothing to demonetise if these videos did not generate thousands of views and hundreds of (no doubt disgusting) comments.

It seems to me that the core of the issue is less the opportunistic video-maker (while vile) nor the ambivalent big tech companies that platform the content, but the day-to-day consumers of the videos who live among us.
Hannah Clark
St Albans, Hertfordshire

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