Girls Gone Wild

This post covers incidences of rape and sexual assault. Please be aware that this may be triggering for some readers.

Dan Ariely, while Professor of Behaviour Economics at MIT Sloane School of Management, performed a very interesting experiment.  In this, he was assisted by George Loewenstein, Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.  The objective was to see if, while in a 'cold' state (essentially, calm, not-aroused, sober, etc), we could predict our behaviour while in a 'hot' state (ie, drunk/aroused/furious, etc).

This experiment was performed by asking thirty-five male MIT Student volunteers to answer a series of question, in calm states, as the control, and while aroused.  You can read a rather better, and more formal, description of the experiment here.

You can also read their full findings there, but, the short version is, they found that people made different decisions while aroused than they did while calm.  The test subjects showed that they knew the risks of sex without a condom...but, while aroused, they simply cared less about the danger, and showed a decreased interest in using protection, especially if it was thought that their partner might change her mind.

You can read a full description of the experiment and the results here, but for now, I'll just quote a small part of the results below.

As you can see, most of the answers changed dramatically.  The young men in question were more likely to find 'just kissing' frustrating, and to indulge in generally 'kinkier' behaviours.

Below, is an image of the results of the coercion behaviours questions, from the same link.

I've talked about this experiment to make the point that people make riskier decisions, that they wouldn't have expected of themselves, while in a 'hot' state, as opposed to a 'cold' one.  Ariely believes that these kinds of changes in rational behaviour extends to anger and drunkenness, as well as to lust.  I'm sure many of us have anecdotal evidence of doing things we wouldn't have expected of ourselves while in any of those states.  Anecdata, of course, is not evidence, and the sample size for this experiment was very small, but still, I feel it is worthy of consideration in light of the event I want to discuss.

And that event is?   Girls Gone Wild coming to the UK.

Girls Gone Wild is a series of films/an event staged by Mantra Films Inc, which is lead by Joe Francis, a man who has served prison time, after pleading no contest to charges of child abuse and prostitution.  Essentially, the camera crew enter bars and clubs, on evenings agreed upon by the management, and coerce young women into performing sexual acts and stripping for the camera.  These young women - traditionally, university aged, so under twenty-five - will normally be drunk, and will be encouraged to drink more.

Of course, women can make their own decisions.  They can choose to strip for a camera, if they want to.  They can choose to be filmed performing sex acts, if they want to.  But, my feeling is, that they should not make these decisions while drunk, while being coerced into drinking more than they'd intended, or under a strict time limit, like in a Girls Gone Wild evening.  Both of these things will make someone more likely to make a decision she'll regret.

You can read a full article from Clare Hoffman for the LA Times here.  In it, she accompanies Joe Francis, who truly believes that the 1st Amendment covers his right to produce pornography, under-age or otherwise.

On a side note; the 1st Amendment does not cover Joe Francis in this regard.  It covers the right for people to worship how they like, as long as this does not infringe on the rights of others, and covers the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press regarding government.  Unlike the people on message boards and forums, Francis is, technically the press (message boards and forums, on the other hand, are private property, and they can censor people however they like, legally speaking.  It's their forum, they don't have to let you say anything at all).  As the Press, Francis can say what he likes about the US Government.  He can film whatever he likes about the US Government (as long as, for instance, it's not hate speech).  On the other hand, the 1st Amendment does not, in any way, cover his right to produce pornography, or to coerce young women into appearing in it.

That said, it has been hard for young women to convince judges and juries that they were unwilling to be filmed.  As some of the images were filmed in public, Francis has argued his right to use the images in his films, and has sometimes won these cases.  In a case in St Louis, it was ruled that the lady in question gave 'implied consent' simply by being in the area, despite the fact that her breasts were exposed against her will, and she gave no verbal or written consent whatsoever.  Her protests are clearly audible on the video.


Clare Hoffman's article includes the following;

Above the dance floor, the stage is full of girls who rotate, twist and shimmy their way up and down three strip poles. One of them is Jannel Szyszka, a petite 18-year-old who prances around the stage like a star. At her feet, a crowd of hundreds is gyrating to the pounding house music. Dozens of polo-shirted boys shout up to her, making requests like "shake your titties" and "get crunk" (meaning crazy-drunk).

Szyszka tells me later that as she was spinning around the strip pole that night, Francis appeared, grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him. "You are so going on the bus later," she recalls Francis saying. "I was like, 'Um, OK.' I was shocked. I was like, 'Whoa—Joe's, like, trying to talk to me, like out of all the girls in here.'" Francis invited her back to the VIP area to do shots with him, she says, and she said yes.

Szyszka says the more shots she drank, the cloudier her judgment became. She says she agreed to join Francis and his crew on the "Girls Gone Wild" bus. "I thought 'Girls Gone Wild' was like flashing, and I thought I would flash them and be done. And so when I'm walking to the bus, that's all I'm thinking is going to happen."

At first she felt comfortable, she says. Inebriated and excited, she says she was led to the back of the bus, to a small bedroom. The double bed, with its neatly folded iridescent purple sheets, takes up most of the room. A flat-screen TV faces the bed, and cabinets are filled with remote controls, lubricants, condoms, sex toys in plastic bags, baby oil, a DVD called "How to be a Player" and a clipboard full of waivers for girls to sign. A small bathroom is off to the side, with a half-sized shower with faux marble tiling, and on the floor of the shower is a crate holding cheap and fruity-flavored rum, whiskey, tequila and Kool-Aid.

Footage from that night shows a close-up of Szyszka's driver's license, proving she's not a minor. The camera then captures Szyszka lying on the bed. Her nails are chipped, her eyes coated with makeup. Following a camerman's instructions, she shows her breasts and says, "Girls Gone Wild." She seems shy but willing. She smiles. The unseen cameraman asks her to take off her shirt, her skirt, then her underwear. She sprawls on the bed, her legs open. At his suggestion, she masturbates with a dildo, saying repeatedly that it hurts but also feels good. Francis enters the room at certain points and you hear his voice, low and flirtatious, telling her, "You are so adorable." When she says she's a virgin, he responds: "Great. You won't be after my cameraman gets done with you."

When I talk to Szyszka seven days later, she says she "didn't quite realize" she was being filmed. "But I didn't care because I was drunk and who cares?" Then she adds: "It didn't feel good to me at all, but I was totally faking it because I was on 'Girls Gone Wild.'"

Eventually, Szyszka says, Francis told the cameraman to leave and pushed her back on the bed, undid his jeans and climbed on top of her. "I told him it hurt, and he kept doing it. And I keep telling him it hurts. I said, 'No' twice in the beginning, and during I started saying, 'Oh, my god, it hurts.' I kept telling him it hurt, but he kept going, and he said he was sorry but kissed me so I wouldn't keep talking."

Afterward, she says, Francis cleaned them both off with a paper towel and told her to get dressed. Then, she says, he opened the door and told the cameraman to come back, saying, "She's not a virgin anymore."

Szyszka says Francis told her that what happened had to stay between them. She says she agreed, and they walked to the front of the bus. Szyszka remembers that one of the crew returned her driver's license. Another asked if she wanted to hang out on the bus. She declined, she says, but asked for three pairs of "booty short" underwear that Francis had promised her for appearing on camera. "They gave me a weird look like that was too much," Szyszka recalls. "They were, like, 'Three of them?' and I was, like, 'Yeah, three.'"

Within days, Szyszka says, she told her father, who was angry about what she said had happened but kept quiet at her request. A month after the incident, she says, she told her sister and mother.

She's confused, she admits, about what happened. She feels guilty, she says, for getting herself into the situation in the first place. She says she never would have undressed for the cameras if she hadn't been completely drunk. And she is adamant that she said "no" to Francis. She says she's haunted by that night.

"I feel like it was planned," she says. "Sometimes I'm driving along, and I think about it and all of a sudden feel weird."

Six weeks after that night outside Chicago, when I call Francis on his cellphone and ask him about the incident, he says he doesn't remember Szyszka and that he didn't have sex with anyone that night. He seems to lose control, repeatedly referring to me by a crude word for female genitalia. "If you print that, I will [expletive] sue the [expletive] out of you. If you print that, baby, you just put the nail in your own coffin," he tells me. "You are a [expletive expletive]. You decided to blast me . . . You are a [expletive] bitch . . . I will get my last laugh on you. I will get you." He then refers me to Burke, his lawyer.

The article goes on to describe Francis' accusations towards Hoffman; that she had a crush on him, that she was drunk, and that she does not stand up for freedom of speech.  His lawyer states that, although Francis did have sexual relations with Szyszka, these were consensual, and that the discomfort was due to Francis' endowment.

To return to the topic at hand; I'm not saying that women shouldn't do pornography, or strip, or do whatever they choose to do, if it is legal, hurts no one, and, if they truly feel empowered by it.  But, I think women should make these decisions in their own time, with no coercion from anyone, and certainly not under the circumstances described above.

In our culture today, drinking is seen simply as 'what young people do'.  I'm twenty-two.  I've had people tell me that I 'should' be out drinking every night, or at least every weekend.  I'm met with confusion when I explain that, while, yes, drinking and dancing can be fun, it's just not what I want to do every night.  Why on earth, they seem to think, would a twenty-two-year-old girl choose not to drink every evening?  (I use the word 'girl' purposefully here, as all of the things I've described make me feel far too young for this shit).

Popular music encourages us to drink, to get 'crunk ' (crazy drunk).  Have a listen to Tik Tok, a song which broke the record for the biggest single-week sum of all time for a female artist, which talks about how much fun it is to wake up and start drinking immediately.  Turn on the radio and listen to any modern song.  Four times out of five, I bet it will talk about drinking and partying, as the ultimate 'fun' experience.  For many young people, it is the only 'fun' they know of - there's this idea that only losers are home on Friday or Saturday nights, among certain groups.

We're also encouraged to be famous.  There are shows like X-Factor, which encourage fame as the ultimate dream.  Hoffman's article talks about women who believe their exposure on Girls Gone Wild will catapult them into the kind of fame and fortune enjoyed by Paris Hilton, or, for a more British example, Jordan, AKA, Katie Price.  There are young women who grow up, dreaming of being Page 3 girls.  And, my point is, if you must do those things, do them because you've made a sober, well-researched decision, because you know the risks - not because you're drunk, sold false dreams of fortune and fame, or because you've been told that this is the ultimate wild partying experience, and that's what you should be aiming for.

This is the kind of situation where self-defence, and even Krav Maga, will not save you.  It's a lot easier to learn how to physically defend yourself, than how to mentally defend yourself.  If Szyszka had known how to kick Joe Francis off her, would she have?  Knowing that everyone around her would have acted as if she'd commited some terrible faux pas, and overreacted?  Knowing that even other women she knew might have wondered what on earth she was thinking, to attack Joe Francis - the Joe Francis - like that?

These events resonate deeply with me.  I've been raped and sexually assaulted in the past, and I know that, even if I'd been able to fight then, the mental part of it would have been at least half the battle.  Deciding when it's okay to fight, it's okay to go against the will of those around you, and be the 'bitch' who 'overreacted' - that's harder than it sounds.  Learning Krav Maga does help me feel able to defend myself, to have more confidence in saying that I want something to stop, before it reaches that point, and to know that I can back it up.  For those who are interested, you can find information on Krav Maga Birmingham here.  For ladies in London, there is a female-only introductory workshop taking place on the 8th of May.  Sarah Brendlor often does female-only events, and women-only six week courses, so its worth checking back if you can't make that one.

Girls Gone Wild has, so far, been a purely American phenomenon.  However, the company is planning a UK wide tour in May.  So far, the areas targeted are not known, though planned locations do include all of Britain's major cities and some smaller towns.

A spokesman for the company claimed the following; "Girls Gone Wild is an American phenomenon and a real household name in the States where the tours are always really well received.

"We are really excited about bringing the brand and its road show to the UK and we expect British young men and women to have a fantastic time at the events which are a really fun celebration of freedom and youthful expression."

It's untrue that the tours are always well-received.   Ashurst Wood Parish Council have already ruled that Girls Gone Wild is not an appropriate activity for the Parish to be involved with, and some smaller bars in the US have made similar rulings.  A state senator in Tennessee is working on banning their advertisements, but, sadly, all discussion on the subject seems to be along the lines of "why is he wasting his time on that?  Don't senators have better things to worry about?"

Many feminist groups - including the one I attend, the Birmingham Femms - are campaigning against this tour.  Object.org has a form letter you can download and send to your local MP or city council.  In Birmingham, that's Gisela Stuart (bagshawl@parliament.uk), and Birmingham City Council (contact@birmingham.gov.uk), respectively.  For other areas, you can find your local MP here, and your local Council here.  Make the decision, while you're sober and calm, that you don't want to meet this camera crew while drunk and hyped up.

Thanks for listening.

Please feel free to comment if you disagree, have more information to add, or wish to discuss the issue.  I reserve the right to delete all insulting or inflammatory comments - keep it clean and polite, please!