"Would you want to have sex with me?"

After Roxanne's lecture about YouTube and Social Experiments today, I immediately recalled a series of videos I had seen a while back about people asking strangers for sex. There were two versions—one was a female asking men for sex, while the other was a male asking women for sex.

Here's the female version:



And the male version:



I found two main groups of insights from this video.

The first is the gendered reactions to a sexual encounter.

For the guys that agreed to the sex proposition, many had an attitude of not believing their luck. A lot of them also had a "why not?" kind of attitude, potentially because it's really uncommon that an attractive woman would go up to strangers asking for sex. On the flip side, no girls agreed to the sex proposition presented by the guy, which is pretty unsurprising. After all, guys are usually the ones coming after girls for sex, and can be extremely forward with their advances in everyday life. There are a lot of dimensions as to why a girl wouldn't want to have sex with a stranger that asks her for it—he could have diseases, he could be mentally unstable, he could be sexually violent, and it's really socially stigmatized for girls to sleep around with strangers.

We spoke earlier this semester about how important/unimportant someone's "number" is. For men, it's much more socially acceptable to have multiple partners, but women are expected to be more choosey about their partners (as sexual gatekeepers). Interestingly when looking from the perspective of the askers though, these perceptions are flipped; the guys agreeing to sex clearly don't care how many sexual partners the girl has had, some of them agreeing to sleep with her almost immediately after asking. For the guy propositioning sex, the girls may have rejected him on the basis of not knowing how many other women he's asked/had sex with.

Against my better judgement, I also read the comments on the first video. There were multiple comments slut-shaming the girl, despite the fact that the entire thing was a prank. Several commenters also called out this double standard (please excuse the language):

Roxanne spoke about the gendered representations of women in user generated content, but it's interesting that it's the attitude of people watching the videos that are gendered. These videos in and of themselves are pretty neutral; both are attractive people, both proposition sex using similar language, and both appear to approach strangers of all ages and races, and even those walking with significant others. It really comes down to the viewers' perceptions of what they're doing that become gendered and problematic.

Moving on, my second insight about this video is related the role of YouTube, as Roxanne spoke about in her lecture.

Does this video go too far, and is it the right place for this kind of social experiment? The "findings" were pretty predictable and in many ways it could be construed as sexual harassment, so calling it a social experiment to begin with seems pretty weak. I would consider this to be 100% a prank video; it has absolutely no research implications. In fact in subsequent videos, the actors explain that they're filming a prank video for YouTube. This statement is met with relief, and many of the prank victims start laughing, suddenly amused by the entire thing after finding out it wasn't a real proposition for sex. It's almost as if something's a prank, it's harmless. But does the fact that it's a set-up made for the Internet really excuse the inappropriate behavior?

I find it difficult to come up with a clear answer as to what kinds of video are appropriate and which ones aren't. It may seem like splitting hairs, but I think if these are called "prank videos", they're more acceptable than if called "social experiments". At the same time, any type of video that could be grounds for sexual harassment are definitely pushing it, regardless of how harmless they may seem.

So now, what are the potential effects of a young adolescent watching videos like this on YouTube? In the Brown, Keller, & Stern article, they bring up concerns that "user-generated sexual content may also increase the pressure virginal teens feel to become sexually active". It could also present the idea that it's socially acceptable to proposition sex from strangers, leading to potentially risky sexual behavior. Even if it's a prank, just viewing the reactions within each video could potentially influence viewers' understandings of the gendered attitudes towards sex.


Reading:

Brown, J.D., Keller, S., & Stern, S. (2009). Sex, sexuality, sexting, and sexed: Adolescents and the media. The Prevention Researcher, 16(4), 12-16.