Commons:Categories for discussion/2021/06/Category:Upskirt in sports

Category:Upskirt in sports

Gratuitous overcategorisation. (The category contains ordinary pictures of sportswomen wearing athletic apparel such as skorts, leotards, bike shorts etc; not privacy violations as the category title would suggest.) I am also nominating these subcategories:

• Category:Upskirt in cheerleading‎
• Category:Upskirt in tennis‎
• Category:Upskirt in figure skating

Genericusername57 (talk) 19:36, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

It's not about privacy violation, it's just a fact : we see upskirt on those pictures. --TwoWings * to talk or not to talk... 21:20, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

In particular the 3 sports (=strenuous movement), "Upskirt" may be inevitable (Compared to Golf, Bowling, Tabletennis etc). --Benzoyl (talk)

•  Delete for being damn right creepy. Just because an accidental upskirt is seen doesn't mean it needs to be categorised. Very strange behaviour here. –Davey2010^Talk 10:21, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
•  Keep - I agree personally that this is intrinsically very creepy but I vote keep because Wikimedia shouldn't be censored, and this is one of just many data points and once we start deciding what we personally find creepy it becomes very subjective. Nesnad (talk) 18:11, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Nesnad, I'm certainly not here to bludgeon the discussion and you're absolutely entitled to your opinion but I wanted to say this - Wikipedia isn't censored and we should indeed show everything atleast within reason however I can't help but think by this category existing people will only try and take these sorts of images intentionally as the category for it exists .... and if it hasn't already people could branch this category out into "upskirts in public" ... which poses more issues. I do agree with your last point though where does the line stop at being creepy ?. Still I believe that line's crossed here. –Davey2010^Talk 23:43, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough, but saying categories make some go out and make it is a bit like saying we shouldn't have categories like Category:Dead animals or Category:Bukkake (NSFW of course) or something. I personally think if someone makes a category such as blue eyes, or green socks, or whatever, those are data points used for sorting data, regardless of how "unsavory" we personally feel about the data point. I don't want to start down the slippery slope where we decide what is "ok" and "not ok" based on subjective feelings. I understand not wanting creepy things, but we have to maintain an objective view of tags as just data points or else some people might start saying that certain things make them "uncomfortable" which could be used to promote censorship. Nesnad (talk) 12:25, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

 Comment Two users have said that this is "creepy". Does including young children make it more so? Brianjd (talk) 13:55, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

• I weep for human kind I truly do. I cannot comprehend the fact someone thought adding that category to a child-oriented file was a great idea ..., Category removed. –Davey2010^Talk 14:04, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

So, for nonconsenting adults, we drag our feet on this discussion. But for children, we quickly act to remove the category, condemn the addition of the category and ask that it not happen again. What's the difference? Brianjd (talk) 14:51, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I can understand where you're coming from but there's a massive difference between adults and children Brian. IMHO I don't believe there's a real urgency to act as although nonconsenting they're still adults at the end of the day. –Davey2010^Talk 15:03, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

 Question What about not-so-young children? I have confirmed that several subjects were aged 15 or 16 at the time. Sometimes there are obvious clues, like the word "junior", but not always. And, of course, I have only looked at a small subset of the files, I suspect there are many more. Worst of all, some subjects appear to be either young children or teenagers, but I cannot identify them to confirm. Brianjd (talk) 02:27, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I have started systematically analysing the files in Category:Upskirt in figure skating, as that seems to be where the underage subjects are. So far I have identified eight files containing only adult subjects and 16 files containing underage subjects, covering 14 unique subjects with ages ranging from 13 to 17. Brianjd (talk) 12:44, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

•  Delete seems inherent POV from voyeuristic perspective. Better to categorize based on neutral descriptive language regarding types of garments. -- Infrogmation of New Orleans (talk) 16:51, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
•  Comment - I don't understand the age argument if it's legal and not porn. We have other "creepy" categories like Category:Korephilia in art which has adult women in sexual situations with non-adults, which is even further than some data point like upskirt. I do agree with Infrogmation of New Orleans who said this category seems POV and personally I don't see much use in categorizing some vague idea of upskirts in sports. So I suppose a more literal category like "visible undergarments in sports" or something would be less POV. That said, I still don't see a good argument for starting to censor things that are legal though. It starts to be very subjective when you do that. Yes, this one might "make sense" as wrong but if we want to remain objective we have to just see things as data points I guess. Nesnad (talk) 01:34, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Convenience link: Korephilia in art Brianjd (talk) 05:28, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
•  Comment Following from Nesnad's argument, I would also suggest the category Open-crotch pants. It is similar to this category, in that both categories are about outer clothing being worn in such a way that something underneath is visible. Also, every subject in the category "Open-crotch pants" is a young child. It seems that, in at least some cases, no consent was obtained.

And let's not start with categories like Children's buttocks.

My first paragraph raised an important point: this is actually about the outer clothing. What is underneath the skirt could be anything from another piece of outerwear (shorts or leotard, the latter being common in the categories under discussion here) to bare buttocks or genitals. What is underneath the open-crotch pants could be a diaper or bare buttocks. If we rename the category to something like "visible undergarments", we are actually redefining it. Brianjd (talk) 05:28, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

• Another thing: Undergarments can be visible without a skirt. I don't have a free culture example right now, but I have seen it in sports coverage on TV. Brianjd (talk) 05:30, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

• Pinging @Daniel Case as uploader of open-crotch pants images, user who added a similar category to a file on at least one occasion, and previous commentator on privacy issues. Brianjd (talk) 14:47, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

•  Delete First off, just because you can sexualize absolutely every photo of a human being with this or that fetish or according to anatomical focus (a whole other issue) doesn't mean it's censorship for people to say "let's not do that." Second, "upskirt" is not just "when you can see up someone's skirt" but a voyeuristic kind of photo that is inherently nonconsensual as per w:Upskirt. Thus files we host that are actually upskirt photos should be the exception rather than the rule as per COM:NOCREEPSHOTS. But this isn't about files; it's about the categories. Here we have a few shots which might have been timed as "upskirts" perhaps, but mostly just Commons users ascribing a particular fetish to photos that aren't really "upskirt" photos. "Tee hee, we can sort of see up the tennis player's skirt" is you deciding that it's "an upskirt" and not something inherent to the photo. You have decided to highlight it as a salient aspect of the photo, categorizing it but not any of the other random elements of the photo, again sexualizing photos that aren't by nature sexual. In short, if they're actual "upskirts" we probably shouldn't be hosting them; if they're just Commons users' fetishization of innocuous photos, then they shouldn't be categorized that way. Either way, delete the categories. (My use of "you" is general, not specific, by the way). — Rhododendrites ^talk |  15:22, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
•  Delete Certainly not the images, but the categories ... by using "upskirt" in the name we're basically sending a signal to the sort of people who look for this sort of thing, and then by extension the sort of people who go out of their way to get it for them and post it on the Internet. There are plenty of places on the Internet dedicated to accumulating and collecting these images; Commons doesn't need to be one of them.

  I would distinguish the open-crotch pants image I took in China that shows part of the boy's bare butt through the open seam in the back of his pants as a) taken not only in a public park but with the full awareness of the boy's parents ... I was ten feet (3 m) away sitting on a park bench, and they're in the uncropped original of that image which I have never uploaded and don't plan to (they were clearly aware of me taking the picture and did not object) b) preserving the subject's privacy since we cannot see his face (granted, it's hard to take that sort of image from the front anyway) c) taken with the intent of documenting that this is a real thing that exists, as without the picture people the concept sounds so unbelievable that people think it's made up.

  I would also note that it does not seem like we are accumulating a gratuitous amount of these images ... there are all of six in Category:Open-crotch pants, and one only shows a pair of such pants, or rather pajama bottoms, on sale. One would think that if there was some community of people who showed a suspicious interest in images of this sort, we'd have over three hundred (Also, looking through those images, someone has a rather generous definition of upskirt).

  I admit that I might be more in mind of keeping these categories if we also had, say, Category:Phallic bulges in clothing or something like that ... it seems that unlike upskirt photo collections, they are a fair subject for respectable media. Daniel Case (talk) 21:11, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

•  Comment I don't understand the "categories make people make it so it's bad" argument. What about the "children's buttocks" or "dead animals" etc categories? I do think it does sound a little sexualized so renaming it isn't bad if a non-POV name can be made (as one user pointed out it is just a fact of what it is though, so maybe the POV is being put on it by us) but data points are data points. I would have no problem with Phallic bulges or whatever as a category. My point is, inappropriate sexualizing of something is of course inappropriate but just adding categories to define something that can be seen (socks under shoes, hair on ears, men in bikinis or whatever) is useful for categorization and we should be careful of bringing our own sexual hangups to the discussion. I just don't think we should start being the thought police and using sexuality as a way to decide what is and isn't OK if it is legal. I just don't want us to fall down the hole of censorship under a disguises of prudish self "protection from evilness" morality arguments. It's a slippery sloppy slope. Nesnad (talk) 03:19, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
  • it is just a fact of what it is though - no. Talking about a photo of a tennis player being an "upskirt" isn't "a fact of what it is". "Upskirt" isn't some objective description of clothing but a genre of voyeuristic fetish. It's only a "slippery slope" insofar as we're categorizing slippery slopes as "naughty wet curves". — Rhododendrites ^talk |  04:04, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
•  Delete per Rhododendrites. Not much I can add but the consent issues are justification enough. Add in the dubious basis upon which the these images are categorised and the dubious worth to the projects. Seddon (talk) 04:12, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Wait I'm confused are we arguing to delete the main upskirt category too? If so, I would be more for deleting this one too. I just don't like deleting data points selectively. If we agree as community that this is a data point we don't need, then I'm all for having it not be used. But if we can use it in some categories, but we can not in sports? It just seems like moral panic instead of just objectiveness. And if we are deleting all those categories are we also going after any other category that has potential consent issues or potential "naughty" thoughts? I don't get the arguments here, but seems I'm just being a dinosaur. Nesnad (talk) 04:51, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

At the moment I wouldn't argue to delete the main category, as long as it's limited to images where either the subject is doing it on purpose or had no problem with being photographed. Maybe we could/should rename it, to, say, "women lifting skirts" as "upskirt" is just to me too connected with that genre of voyeur porn, whereas my proposed rename clearly implies intent. Women wearing short skirts as part of their sporting uniforms at contests played in public, while they couldn't possibly expect that the skirts wouldn't expose what was beneath them at least at some point (hence the choice of underwear that either are shorts or functionally the equivalent thereof), are not going out on the field with the primary intent of having their skirts flip up momentarily so they can be photographed at those times. This does not mean to me that we shouldn't have any such images (indeed, given that some cheerleading routines performed at games and competitions require that the cheerleader's skirt completely drop, completely exposing her panties (and that's why they're special cheer panties, worn over the woman's real underwear and coordinating with the rest of the outfit), but that we shouldn't categorize them on that basis.

Also, a great deal of the photos in these categories don't have an upward view into the skirt from ground level that gives the genre its name, the view that is almost always taken without the subject's knowledge or consent. Indeed, many of these sports shots show women from the side. So to me, as I implied in my comments above, the category name isn't even correct for them. Daniel Case (talk) 17:50, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Twirling dancers with skirts flying up, revealing their underwear. Is this image sexual?

•  Comment Many users seem to be taking a narrow view of the term "upskirt". This is justified by wiktionary:upskirt and the lead of w:Upskirt, but w:Upskirt#Social attitudes indicates that the concept is much more general:

  In less polite society, looking [at a lady] lifting up the skirt or otherwise exposing her underwear was regarded as bawdy, as in the case of cabaret dances such as the can-can or in the case of entertainment involving the raising of a dancer's dress by her spinning rapidly.

  For the first time, many women ... were even relaxed when in some situations their underwear would be visible.

Many users also seem to be suggesting that "upskirt" is somehow a sexual concept. Maybe that is justified by the quote above, but then the images themselves would also be sexual, so this does not seem to be a valid argument. And after removing the category Females without brassieres from the category Eroticism, I am naturally suspicious of such claims. [edit: Perhaps the difference between this and the categories under discussion here is whether it was on purpose? But this is not clear from the comments above.]

To answer (or to be fair, to offer my answer, as it may not be the answer) the question posed in the image cutline: It is impossible to say that there is not going to be anything sexual about any image to everyone ... I think after a quarter-century of public use of the Internet, there should no longer be any doubt as to that (There is a particular subreddit I'm not going to link to, for which we have no equivalent Commons category, an omission we need not be in any haste to remedy in my opinion, that rather graphically demonstrates the point (Suffice it to say that if, based on what I wrote here, you nevertheless find your curiosity getting the better of you and decide to go searching for it, once you find its very exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin name, open a private browser window to actually look at it for however long you can stand to as you will probably agree you don't want that in your browsing history, much less to get ads based on you having viewed it. And don't come at me if you do ... you have been warned)). Daniel Case (talk) 18:07, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Nesnad has an excellent point about deleting the main category Upskirt, which is obviously out of the question, given that the subject as a Wikipedia article. Brianjd (talk) 13:06, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

There is also a category Upskirt (on purpose), implying that the main category Upskirt contains many images where it was not on purpose. If it being not on purpose is a problem, we need to look at the main category too. Brianjd (talk) 13:12, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Upskirt in tennis contains Female buttocks in tennis. This needs to change. The latter category contains images like 2015 Aegon International MG 8511 (18846945979).jpg and 2015 Aegon International MG 8504 (18846942529).jpg, which don’t even show skirts. There is also Elena Vesnina (19452045396).jpg, which does not show a skirt either, even if Elena Vesnina (19033184615).jpg (from the same event) does. Eugenie Bouchard (US) (23819859883).jpg does show a skirt, but not an upskirt in any sense. Brianjd (talk) 12:33, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

•  Keep This is a widely discussed sociological phenomenon, and Wikimedia isn't censored. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 15:18, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
  • Citations to sociology journals which talk about "upskirt in tennis" please. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:36, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
•  Keep The subject might be a bad taste for some but that alone does not justify deletion --Trade (talk) 20:10, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
  • That alone is not the reason for deletion, but we also need a reason to keep. — Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:36, 22 December 2022 (UTC)