HAHA! Thanks, this pretty much makes my day :)

Gotta love me some Friday morning civil disobediance. Go anonymous graffiti artist!

It's a lovely bit of graffiti. The plates give the age away, though: V-at-the-end was August 1979 to July 1980.

I have this same image on a postcard pinned to my corkboard at work.

Some info: photographer Jill Posener took the photo in 1979, in London (no idea who the the graffiti artist is).

So defacing private property is fine as long as you agree with the message? Interesting.

Please. If the defacement of private property is this hilarious, then I'm completely fine with it.

Are billboards even really public property? The advertisment belongs to the company who paid for it. Personally, with all the ads we're constantly bombarded with, and the amount of money that a company must have to buy one-- particularly a car manufacturer- no, I'm not broken up about someone defacing their stupid, sexist ad.

There is nothing 'private' about a billboard. The mental environment, what I view in public, the shared culture of my city and nation, these are part of the commons. Billboard advertisement is coercive, it is the private appropriation by economic force of the common culture. Culture jamming is the backlash.

property rights versus human rights? I'll go human every time.

I *love* this photo! I thought of it recently when I started seeing a rash of graffiti all over New Orleans--simple block letters accented by hearts: "YOU GO GIRL!" That's it, nothing more, on buildings, mailboxes, sidewalks, etc. Love it!

whenever i hear people complain about public graffiti (not someones house or car but just the stuff you usually see) i always think about when i was in colorado watching a really awesome street performer and a guy next to me starting saying "i dont know why these people dont just get jobs like the rest of us" and i thought "you would seriously rather this guy have some boring job instead of entertaining you?" same thing w/ graffiti, you'd really rather look at a blank wall or ad that we already see all over everything?

whenever i hear people complain about public graffiti (not someones house or car but just the stuff you usually see) i always think about when i was in colorado watching a really awesome street performer and a guy next to me starting saying "i dont know why these people dont just get jobs like the rest of us" and i thought "you would seriously rather this guy have some boring job instead of entertaining you?" same thing w/ graffiti, you'd really rather look at a blank wall or ad that we already see all over everything?

I had this postcard on the corkboard on my door of my dorm room all four years of college... 1992 - 1995!

Personally, I'm fond of the intelligent defacement of public property. There's one frequent tag in my city that I wonder about—the Listen Bird. It always makes me smile and think, but I'm never quite sure what it means. I still love it, though. A local woman has a photo blog about it at http://listenbird.blogspot.com/

http://feministing.com/archives/007037.html#comments

Nobody should deface something that is not theirs. It is not about content, it is about property rights.

There is a big difference between personal property and public ads, noname. The first does not belong to you and DOES belong to another individual. The second does not belong to you, but is being unwillingly shoved in your face and is owned by a corporation that wants to manipulate you into buying something you don't need. I think that my right to not be forced to view sexist, degrading advertising while driving down the road superseeds the right of a multimillion dollar corporation to not have their ad defaced.

Whose property is the billboard, noname.

Eh, I've never defaced property but when the advertisement is this sexist, I support and applaud anyone who does.

Whose property is the billboard, noname?

Eh, I've never defaced property but when the advertisement is this sexist, I support and applaud anyone who does.

I would like the graffiti more if it were grammatically correct. ;)

Billboards are the ultimate graffiti. They're intrusive & destroy the public arena. It's disturbing how the line between public space & private space owned by corporations is getting blurred.
Seriously, read No Logo, then come back to us, noname.

Moxie,

If you don't like billboards, complain to your local zoning commission. Ultimately, though, they are paid for by the people who own them. If citizens don't want billboards, or don't want certain billboards (i.e. racist or sexist ones) they can use the legislative process to outlaw them. If the legislative process, however, grants someone the right to use a billboard, then it's a private thing.

What's the difference between a billboard and painting a side of a building?

That. Is. Brilliant.
And that advert... my God... I wouldn't suprise me if this advert was new (I know it's not though) and trying to be all ironic and postmodern!

If citizens don't want billboards, or don't want certain billboards (i.e. racist or sexist ones) they can use the legislative process to outlaw them.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

"Whose property is the billboard, noname?" - SarahMC

I don't know who owns it. Did the person who defaced Erin Davies' car know who owned it? Maybe so, maybe not.

“There is a big difference between personal property and public ads, noname. The first does not belong to you and DOES belong to another individual. The second does not belong to you, but is being unwillingly shoved in your face and is owned by a corporation that wants to manipulate you into buying something you don't need. I think that my right to not be forced to view sexist, degrading advertising while driving down the road superseeds the right of a multimillion dollar corporation to not have their ad defaced.� – Cara

Was the asshole who defaced Erin Davies' car was thinking the same thing about her rainbow sticker? Maybe so, maybe not.

Defacing property which is not yours is wrong, regardless if it is a clever retort (the billboard graffiti) or a disgusting slur (the car graffiti).

a sad haha from me, too, Cara. we have anti-discrimination laws, too, so that solves the problem?

Oh, please. If you can't tell the difference between this type of statement and the defacing of Erin's bug, then you're just not going to get it.

No, Grace, it doesn't.

You march into your local town meeting, up to your local representative, or whatever person is responsible for zoning laws and ask that they be changed.

Hey, if you voluntarily disempower yourself, don't look to anyone but yourself as the source of the problem. "Oh, no, we couldn't possibly do anything to prevent the big bad patriarchy from running all over us! Let's just violate the laws, and it's okay when we do it but not when people do it to us."

Seriously, a group of a dozen pissed off women could get any town regulation changed. Commercial speech is not nearly as protected as political speech, so towns can regulate the nature of it. I'm not asking you to change Congress - it's your freakin TOWN, not the country. Towns, where people win positions on zoning boards by garnering like ten votes.

I think some of you are not understanding the politics of graffiti.

or don't want certain billboards (i.e. racist or sexist ones) they can use the legislative process to outlaw them.

While you're correct that commercial speech is *less* protected by the First Amendment, it's still protected. And you're talking about a law imposing viewpoint discrimination (which is even "worse" in terms of First Amendment jurisprudence than content discrimination). While I'm absolutely in favor of grassroots work to prevent harmful speech from occurring, given the current makeup of our Supreme Court I'm doubtful how likely it is that such a law (which would absolutely be challenged) would ultimately stand.

Also, oenophile, part of the problem is that you're talking oppressed minorities when you talk about things like racism and sexism. And precisely the problem faced by minorities is that they CAN'T muster the votes to fight for themselves (hence the term tyrrany of the majority). Dr. King had to use civil disobedience before anyone bothered listening to him, and now you'll be hard-pressed to find a non-Klansmen who thinks of him as anything less than a civil rights hero.

LawFairy,

Yes, viewpoint discrimination is not permitted, but you're missing a larger point: indecency isn't a viewpoint.

I almost want to laugh at your analysis. How do you think the FCC gets away with regulating prime-time television? We cannot regulate car ads but allow pickup truck ads, because that is viewpoint discrimination. We can, however, regulate the content so that it does not violate norms of decency. "Pinching a bottom" may very well fall into that category, considering that one cannot avert his eyes and avoid the speech - and one cannot avert his child's eyes, which is the big issue.

If women, who make up 51% of the population and even more of the voting-age population, can't muster the votes, it sounds like a personal problem.

The Law Fairy is 100% percent right on this one. While you could petition to change the local zoning ordinance to ban all billboards, a law based on either content or viewpoint discrimination would most likely be challenged successfully on First Amendment grounds.

In addition, billboards in existence prior to the change in zoning ordinance would be allowed to remain in place as non-conforming uses. Otherwise, there would be serious takings issues.

Oenophile, I think that Law Fairy was suggesting that there are other reasons people choose to deface property, and that some of them are valid. When people don't see themselves represented in the numerous intrusive advertisements that mar their community, they sometimes non-violently reclaim those spaces, even though it's illegal.

Think about the lack of funding for the arts in poor communities, too. Or how difficult it is for poor people to get an audience for their art, and to have it taken seriously.

I'm a huge fan of graffiti artists like Banksy and of several local artists, too. When city ordinances outlaw flyering, and gentrification pushes you out of your community, I like to see the people push back.

The only history of grafitti that I know of is Rome's, when, in the 16th c a local baker named Pasquino posted a social protest in the square that now bears his name and holds a statue of him, which daily is covered in fresh, current protests. He began a social graffiti movement in Rome which continues to this day. While a new visitor to the city might think that the whole beautiful place is defaced, the reality is that a living, breathing city makes itself a forum and gives room for the ordinary citizen to speak her mind by writing all over its surface.

I was sitting in Piazza Pasquino the day that the tortures of Abu Ghraib were made public.

I would love to learn more about the politics of graffiti, Jenny Dreadful.

Am I the only one who caught that part of Con Law where obscenity is not protected speech? Whoops! :)

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=413&invol=15

Um, okay oenophile, laugh away.

When you're done, how about you give me a cite where a sexist or racist ad was declared "indecent" SOLELY for the racist or sexist content? Just one?

While you're looking, I'll give everyone else a short recap of a story I once heard told by a man (I won't say gentleman; his comments, which he apparently thought quite clever and entertaining, were far too disturbing for that title) to a large audience of litigators. This man was a Supreme Court clerk during the term in which the well-known obscenity case, Jacobellis v. Ohio, was decided (this case was also the source of Justice Stewart's eternally helpful standard of "I know it when I see it" for obscenity. Yes, that is actually the standard Justice Stewart applied for his concurring opinion. Still think we don't need more women on the Court?). The clerks, all male or course, had the loathsome (/sarcasm) assignment of watching the movie in question to determine whether or not it was obscene. The name they gave to the test by which obscenity would be determined? The erection test.

One hundred percent true.

Yet oenophile seems to think we're going to have POWERFUL RICH WHITE MEN agree with us that racism and sexism are inherently "indecent" enough to enact prior restraint. Riiiiiiight...

Oh, please. If you can't tell the difference between this type of statement and the defacing of Erin's bug, then you're just not going to get it. Jenny Dreaful

Get what? That it is OK to deface other people’s property as long as you don’t like what it says? This is an argument I would only expect to have with a religious fundamentalist, except that more and more I am coming to believe that is exactly what many at this site are.

“Oh, please. If you can't tell the difference between this type of statement and the defacing of Erin's bug, then you're just not going to get it.� - Jenny Dreaful

Get what? That it is OK to deface other people’s property as long as you don’t like what it says? This is an argument I would only expect to have with a religious fundamentalist, except that more and more I am coming to believe that is exactly what many at this site are.

LawFairy,

That's because you, as a liberal, instinctively think of suing and think of working within the system as beneath you.

Try legislation. Weren't you part of the Federalist Society, or was it all show? Do you like playing dress-up as a conservative?

Again, I repeat: these decisions are made by local zoning commissions. I'm sure that millionaires are lining up to spend less time at their 80-hour week jobs and work on the town's zoning board. (Sarcasm there.)

It isn't rich white men who you need to convince: it's the people on your street who all start a petition, present it before the zoning board, and ask to have billboards removed OR to have clearly articulated non-obscenity standards.

Ooohhh... but that involves NOT whining, which is what you're good at.

If it means something to you, you can run for zoning board. No one who is of voting age has ANY reason to be upset by this. It isn't the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, where you have to convince Boxer and Feinstein to do something about it; this involves your town government. Honestly - try it. Get a petition of 100 or so signatures, which you can do in an afternoon of walking around your neighbourhood, and you've got yourself an audience with the zoning commission. Run for zoning commission, get 10 of your neighbours to vote for you, and you've won.

Rich white men, my foot. That's b.s. made up by some woman who refuses to take action and prefers to whine about how disenfranchised she is.

Sorry, LawFairy. Get a grip on reality.

Noname and Oenophile, I've read your posts, I know what you're about, and I'm not going to argue with you or engage you any more.

My God, oenophile. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

I respectfully disagree with a legal point you make, and you start throwing around confusing and sophomoric insults? You'd think I broke your favorite Barbie or something. Grow the fuck up and we'll talk.

You'd think I broke your favorite Barbie or something. Grow the fuck up and we'll talk.

Law Fairy: Your potty mouth leaves a lot to be desired. If you can't see the internal inconsistency in telling someone to "grow the f- up," as adults don't feel the need to use such language, I can't help you.

Address the issues. Don't get bent out of shape when people focus your (lack of?) attention on the relevant ones. This isn't about whether or not you can change the composition of Supreme Court clerks; this is about whether or not you, as a resident of a municipality, can change the zoning regs.

So you lost, and you lost hard. Take it like an adult and a lady.

PS. You have a Lexis account. Look it up yourself - winning or losing, obscene ads would be litigated. :)

I think that LF won. Should we take a poll?

Won what?

Take one if you would like, Cara. If it floats your boat, go ahead.

Fact is, it doesn't matter to me, because anyone who sees sexist or racist billboards in their town now knows how to fight them. LawFairy thinks you have to convince a bunch of Ivy League law graduates on the Supreme Court; I think you go to your local zoning commission.

Take a poll, but the real "winner" is the one who provides the template with how to proceed.

The legal issue is moot, as she wasn't able to provide ANY case in which obscenity regulations weren't permitted with ads. (She wants cases as her standard: I've pointed out that the existence of the FCC means she's wrong. After all, you only see sexually explicit ads at night, because the FCC regulates them during the day. Whoops! Law Fairy's wrong!)

Did someone hack oenophile's account? I've seen her rabid and incoherent before, but never this bad. (Not to mention, her legal analysis isn't even questionable -- it's off in a way I've never seen it off before).

oenophile, if something bad has happened to you, I'm really and truly sorry. You should give yourself a vacation. Life is stressful.