I agree. It’s the overblown social media response that I was reacting too.
There’s no indication this was anything more than drunken and immature behavior. The image depicted wasn’t a factor. Imho
A statue of Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck would have suffered similar mistreatments. Any small statue that can be climbed or mounted probably will be. Either by kids or immature adults.
But the publicized point of this statue was about feminism and bringing up the next generation of girls to stand up to male dominated society.
Doing what he did to this particular statue at this moment in time, is what made this act noteworthy. Don’t you get it?
I didn’t see it as a planned thing. It’s more of a impulsive act.
If it was meant as a political statement against the statue’s meaning than that is troubling.
People are interacting with the art in positive ways. It is a nicely composed piece.
https://goo.gl/images/BevrKz
It didn’t need to be planned to be a statement.
This angle shows the girl facing down the bull. I like how the artist incorporated the Fearless girl into the existing artwork.
I doubt it was a planned thing. But it HIGHLIGHTS the problems the statue was trying to speak to.
The problem is that impulses come from somewhere. Fucking something–penetrating it–has always been a symbolic way to show contempt. And contempt is satisfying: It’s like the military websites where naked pictures of female solders are shared so that thousands of people can imagine themselves penetrating them. It’s not like these guys have a shortage of naked lady pictures and they needed these–the sense of fucking something that needs to be put in it’s place adds a thrill.
Fucking this statue of a little girl is the same thing. He could have humped the bull. But he humped the girl, instead. It was a literal “fuck you” to women who think they have a right to be in what has always been a male-dominated space. And that’s why women are upset to see it: not because everyone is looking for 15-seconds of recreational outrage, but because it’s a reminder that whenever we move in the world, there’s a significant number of men who hold us in contempt, and who glory in showing that contempt. We know that expressions of that contempt are not shared by all men, but that most will overlook it, dismissing it as boorish behavior, but not as the sort of thing they should stop, or disassociate themselves from. Before cellphone cameras and twitter and youtube comments, so much of that was hidden: women really didn’t know, I think. I didn’t. But now we do, and it’s appalling. So you dismissing it as the sort of thing that happens all the time doesn’t help. It needs to stop happening.
If they put a protective barrier of some kind around her to prevent people mocking the statue that will be a larger statement than anything the statues are conveying.
And that’s where you went wrong.
You acknowledge that it was “inappropriate”. So why are you surprised that some people are offended? And why are you more upset by the offense than by the act which caused that offense?
Nobody is suggesting the guy should be lynched. Nobody is suggested the guy should be arrested. Nobody is even suggesting we need a Constitutional Amendment to ban statue molesting. These responses would be overreacting.
But the guy acted like an asshole and he deserves to be treating like he’s an asshole.
There is a weary sense of “what did you expect” around all this. There is the artistic decision to assemble a scenario where the poor bull who was previously just a symbol of a robust financial market is now loaded down with the cultural baggage of being challenged, opposed or defied by an avatar of the female spirit. So now poor financial Ferdinand is cast as the embodiment of big balled oppressive patriarchy.
People have been disrespecting statutes forever and people have been clutching pearls about it forever. On and on.
If the guy doing the humping truly works on Wall Street, hang him from a lamppost as an object lesson.
Not to derail the thread, but it’s kind of odd for a feminist message to be a statue standing up to/against a bull that represents economic growth.
By suggesting that the statue be protected by a display case.
Why? The people who put up the statue say that women are not treated equally in the financial industry. So the Financial District seems like an appropriate place to make a protest.
They do? 
Let me guess–it was one of the Trump sons. (Not poor little Barron–one of the two douches.)
There’s a reason statues used to be put up on pedestals.
Go home! This wins the thread!
Some day her plinth will come.