I reject the idea that this was a harmless prank, and hope you do to

Facebook's infinite scroll led me last night to a video of a woman being unclothed in public by her boyfriend. But it was all very funny and just a harmless prank … wasn't it? The scene is a beach and the boyfriend provides helpful commentary as he films his girlfriend on his phone. He has swapped her new bikini for one that dissolves on contact with water. She doesn't know it, but after he encourages her to go for a swim she soon finds out … as do the other people swimming around her, and the 25 million or more people who have watched the video.

Now I can imagine that in a respectful romantic relationship, dissolving swimwear could be quite fun. In private, even if one party were tricked into wearing that swimming costume, it may be playfully intimate and nourishing for both players. Could become a cherished shared memory in that relationship.

But what is depicted in this video is something quite different.

Not only has the boyfriend tricked the woman into wearing the swim suit and cajoled her into the water, he has done so in public with the explicit aim of embarrassing her. There may be some women who love such attention. It is even possible that she was an accomplice rather than the victim of his prank. The whole thing could have been staged. But that is not how the video is presented.

If we take the video at face value, then she gave no consent. No consent to being unclothed in public. No consent for the scene being recorded. One wonders whether she gave any consent for the video being broadcast publicly.

I can imagine the boyfriend defending himself "But she was OK with it. She smiled at the end. She knows I am a bit of a prankster. Just a bit of fun." I'd like to know whether they have the sort of relationship in which she could honestly say "I did not like that" without risking his anger or dismissive rejection. Where is her voice in this video? Deliberately muted. What she thinks is unimportant. Just as long as she is gorgeous and smiles for the camera.

Does the boyfriend have any idea of the abusiveness of this "prank"? Does he realise that every time the video is watched the woman's embarrassment is repeated? Does he realise that this video will now be stored in thousands of voyeurs' private collections for them to show their friends and wank over for ever? If the couple break up, will he re-issue a revenge porn edition with more abusive voiceover? How many other people will edit new versions of the video with more lewd narratives? How many other "boyfriends" will be inspired to repeat the abuse against their own partners, under the delusion that this is just normal? How many times will that woman be approached on the street by people who have seen the video and ask if she'll strip off for them too?

Like millions of others, I too watched it … or most of it anyway. I am a male who has been taught to desire that particular body type and I hoped, with the naivety that comes from sexual desire, that it would be rewarding to watch. But I am also a researcher in the field of human trafficking. In that sad social space, men often coerce and abuse women for their own enjoyment and financial gain.

The boyfriend filming this bikini prank would most likely to be horrified to be compared to sex traffickers, but the underlying assumption is the same -- that women are objects for his pleasure and personal gain. I'm not sure if he earns any money from this video, but he certainly gains status among others who make that same assumption. On "blokey" websites he is lauded as a clever dude, able to trick gorgeous girls to get naked at will.

This video exemplifies one of the deep problems with today's masculinity: the assumption that women exist for our amusement.

The issue is not, however, simply gender-based. I would not be surprised if the person who produced this video would just as easily distribute recordings of embarrassing pranks with male victims. Coercing others for amusement may well be a common mode of operating for him, reflecting a posture of disrespect. I don't know him, and can't make any informed judgement about this particular case. But I can see a common pattern of unkindness in our world, one that takes advantage of current communication technologies to spread unkindness to larger audiences than were ever possible before. At its core this is a refusal to view each person we meet with dignity, and a rejection of the Golden Rule about treating others as we would have them treat us.

The wild man at the heart of Roger Waters' "The Wall"

During last week a friend and I watched The Wall at the wonderful Avoca Beach Picture Theatre, not quite knowing what we were going to see. Was it going to be a remake of the original movie or a documentary reflecting on the album that was first released 37 years ago? It turns out to be an edited version of Roger Waters' 2010-2013 concert tour, with concert footage interspersed with Waters' pilgrimage to war memorials where his father and grandfather died.

37 years! Makes me feel old, because I remember buying that album at the time. Now, when I listen to a lot of the music I loved back then, it sounds pretentious and musically lame, but The Wall is one of a handful of albums that continue to be inspiring: the music is still catchy and complex, the lyrics profound, and the artistic vision monumental.

Pink Floyd was always known for the extravagance of their light shows, and Waters raises that in this concert to amazing heights. I mean "raises" literally -- the stage crew gradually build a brick wall at the front of the stage during the concert, so that by half-way through the musicians are completely obscured by a 10m wall and continue to perform behind it.

The wall has always been the central metaphor of the whole project, and Waters has worked that metaphor to the limit through multiple re-interpretations over three decades. We build personal walls to protect ourselves, but they end up isolating and imprisoning us. As he emphasised in the Berlin concert in 1990, the wall can also isolate and imprison nations.

I've always been a great fan of Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave, and even pretty impressed with Michael Jackson's posthumous This Is It. But from a creative point of view, The Wall has a scope and attention to detail that surpasses them all. The staggering visual effects complement the storyline of the music and amplify the audacious vision that is both a commentary on war and fear, and a semi-biographical reflection on modern masculinity.

It is that last point that stood out to me as I watched the movie. The lasting value of the whole project is likely to be not the creativity, or the music, or the visual effects but the insightful portrayal of the modern western male psyche. Waters has captured the angst I feel, and I think many of my male peers feel. The ambiguity of whether walls protect or imprison. The shame of expressing emotions. The demoralising outcome of modern education. The distrust of government. The misguided aspiration for rock-star status. The disappointment that life has not delivered what we hoped for. The depressing thought they we are no more than a single brick in a huge impersonal wall.

In another review of this movie, Leslie Felperin accuses Waters of misogyny. I think Felperin is wrong about that, mistaking an honest portrayal of the male experience for a denial of the female experience. The movie is almost devoid of females. All the musicians are male. Waters' travelling companions are male apart from a brief scene with someone I presume is his daughter.

The story in the lyrics reveals a youth who had difficulty separating from a perhaps over-protective mother. The original movie (from memory) had more to say about how that psychological rut was transferred to his wife. That's coupled with an absent father. The commentary in this movie explicitly notes that war caused not only Roger Waters to grow up without a father, but that the same thing was true of his father.

Waters is a man castrated, but consciously on the journey to discover what it means to be a true man.

Along that journey he notes -- and discards -- false ideals of the masculine. Waters' repeated use of faux-Nazi characters and symbols satirically presents the emptiness of the supposedly masculine will to power. Woven throughout the piece is a criticism of the tendency to judge those who are different and the way that is ultimately expressed in the stupidity of waging war against the Other. When it comes to male attitudes to women, he notes the pathetic expression of lust for a "dirty woman", and couples that with a fear of being eaten by a vagina.

One of the best outcomes of feminism is that it has forced men to think about the meaning of masculinity. Waters hasn't resolved that here, but he clearly rejects some possibilities, and I think points towards two more helpful possibilities. In "Nobody Home" he sings "I've got wild staring eyes \ and I've got a strong urge to fly \ but I got nowhere to fly to." What I think Waters is attempting here, or at least pointing towards, is to reclaim the wild man archetype. The problem is, how does one get there from here? We feel trapped behind the wall we have conspired with society to build around our male identity. But let's at least affirm the will to break free.

The second direction Waters points to is the demolition of the wall. Sometimes it can be a conscious deconstruction; other times it is forced upon us as a shameful punishment "to be exposed before your peers." But in the end, as is clear from "Outside the Wall", we need each other.