Revenge porn is one of the darker sides of
our high-tech age. It’s the act of humiliating and extorting women, often
former lovers (hence the “revenge” part) by stealing and posting their nude
and/or sexually explicit photos and videos online. And it’s all over the news lately.
In the last week alone:
A judge ruled that New York Jets linebacker
Jermaine Cunningham, charged with invasion of privacy for distributing naked photos of a woman, cannot
enter a program that would allow for a conviction to be wiped from his record.
An Oklahoma man pleaded no contest to charges of extortion, attempted extortion and conspiracy
that could net him six years in prison. He operated a website that
encouraged visitors to post nude photos of “your ex-girlfriend, your current
girlfriend, or any other girl that you might know.” He then charged the
women to have the photos removed.
A New Hampshire man was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison for posting sexually explicit photos of his
ex-girlfriend.
Charlie Evens is facing criminal charges for hacking into women’s email
accounts and stealing nude photos for Hunter Moore, the king of revenge porn
and “the most hated man on the Internet.” Moore raked in upwards of $30,000 a
month by posting the photos and information about the women in them on his
website. Evens, who did it for the money, said “It was really sh*tty and really sick, and I felt horrible… It’s just
scary how quickly I would drop my morals for so little.”
Lawmakers in Nevada, Vermont, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina are the latest of dozens of states that
either have criminalized revenge porn, or are in the process of doing so.
The phrase “revenge porn” itself even earned
a spot as one of the latest additions to Dictionary.com’s lexicon.
This disturbed and hateful act has ruined the
lives of many of its victims, who have lost jobs and families, money and
reputations. The social and psychological cost is devastating. One woman now
named Holly Jacobs, after having her world turned upside down for
3 ½ years, decided to fight back by creating a support and activism site called
endrevengeporn.org.
What to do about revenge porn? While the
growing criminalization of it sounds like a good start, legal remedies are problematic for a number of reasons; Wired.com even calls them “a bad idea.” And legal recourse is useful only after the damage
has been done.
For those who have already been victimized by
it, Holly Jacobs encourages them to reclaim their dignity and power by speaking
out about their experiences. But for those who haven’t yet been targeted, the
best possible advice for women to avoid ending up in flagrante delicto all over the internet permanently is: don’t film yourself having sex.
But wait, you say – isn’t that essentially
blaming the victim? Isn’t that like telling women to avoid rape by not dressing
provocatively? Why should the burden be on the woman to protect herself?
Shouldn’t we instead be teaching men not to abuse their former lovers’ privacy
by posting intimate videos and pictures of them online, just as we should be
teaching men not to rape? Why shouldn’t a woman have the right to film herself
having sex free from any fear that it will someday be used against her?
Well, women do have that right, but in the
real world, there is no guarantee that they can exercise that right
consequence-free. There is no need to teach men that revenge porn is wrong (and
increasingly illegal) – they already know it is, but some men will do it
anyway, just as men know rape is wrong and illegal, but some men do it regardless.
People should always do the right thing, but they don’t – particularly when consumed
by anger, jealousy and the pain of rejection.
The cold, hard fact is that recording
yourself naked and/or having sex leaves you vulnerable to being exposed to the
public, no matter what lengths you go to to protect your images. Just as no
form of birth control can absolutely guarantee that you won’t become pregnant,
nothing can guarantee that you won’t be hacked or robbed or fall prey to a
jilted lover who decides to get even by humiliating you and even ruining your
life – nothing except not giving anyone the ammunition to use against you in
the first place.
In the western world, sexuality and
technology feed on each other and give rise to new extremes of narcissism and
voyeurism that couldn’t have been imagined a generation ago, maybe even ten
years ago. Porn has essentially gone mainstream thanks in large part to the
internet. We share the intimate details of our lives on Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram, and so on. We sext our lovers, record our sex on smartphones, store
our intimate photos on laptops – all of which are vulnerable to being plucked
from the virtual ether and distributed among strangers worldwide.
If you don’t want to be victimized in a very
public way, protect your privacy by partially unplugging from this brave new
world. Don’t surrender to the current of a culture that is becoming increasingly
sexualized and decreasingly private. Technology and intimacy don’t mix. It’s
time to reset the boundaries between our sex lives and the technology that has
crept into bed with us.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 5/13/15)
