Ex-lovers can now torment women online by posting naked photos of them and other personal information. (photo: Robin Beckham/Alamy)
30 January 13
n the centuries-old tradition of human beings looking at images of other human beings naked, the internet is perhaps the biggest game-changer since the film camera.
Porn sites are some of the most-visited places on the
web, and just about anything you could imagine (and lots of things you
probably couldn't have come up with on your own) is a mere Google search
away. While that's great news for folks who have, say, an unrequited
zombie fetish or a deep desire to see old men swaddled in mohair
diapers, the almost entirely unregulated buffet of internet pornography also has a whole host of downsides - one of the most odious being the popular genre of "revenge porn".
On revenge porn sites, users upload x-rated photos of
women (often ex girlfriends or lovers) without the women's permission.
Send a naughty photo to your boyfriend and when it turns out he's a pig,
your image is all over the internet, often with your name, location and
links to your social media accounts. The purpose of revenge porn isn't
to allow regular guys the opportunity to see some naked girls-next-door;
it's explicitly purposed to shame, humiliate and destroy the lives and
reputations of young women.
Luckily, some of those women are refusing to be shamed into silence. More than two dozen of them have filed a lawsuit against one of the websites,
Texxxan.com, as well as its host, GoDaddy.com. Some of the women have
lost their jobs; all of them have been exposed and exploited, first by
men they trusted and then by entities simply looking to make a buck off
of misogyny.
Gender cyber harassment is nothing new (pdf),
and revenge porn sites are part of a widespread, deeply sexist online
culture everywhere from blog comment sections to YouTube videos to
message boards. Anonymous sexualized harassment of women online has been
around since AOL chatrooms, and it seems to be getting more
mainstreamed, more organized and more efficient. The internet is not a
nice place to be a woman - something I found out first-hand, and not just through the ongoing threats, harassment and stalking I've received as a feminist blogger.
When I was a law student at NYU, I found myself the
subject of hundreds of threads and comments on a website called
AutoAdmit. Reading post after anonymous post about how your classmates
and future professional peers want to rape you is not a particularly
pleasant experience; seeing those posts right next to details of what
outfit you wore to school yesterday, how tall you are or what kinds of
comments you made in class feels awfully threatening.
It's hard to explain the psychological impact these
kind of anonymous posts have, when these people know your name, face and
exactly where you are during the day. You can't walk down the hall at
school without wondering if that guy who just made eye contact with you
is going to go home and write something disgusting about you on the
internet, or if anything you say in class is going to be quoted on a
message board as evidence that you are a stupid cow, or if any one of
these anonymous commenters is going to take their sexually violent urges
offline and onto your body.
My reaction was to shut down. I felt like I was in a
fishbowl, so I just refused to look outside of the glass. I'm a very
social person, but in three years of law school I made only two friends.
I skipped a lot of my classes; when I did go, I kept my head down.
I tried to ignore the online postings, hoping they
would go away. When they didn't, and I finally screwed up the courage to
write about them, I received a barrage of harassing and threatening
emails. One man, a graduate of Georgetown Law Center, claims to have
gone to NYU and met with one of my professors to discuss what a "dumb
cunt" (his words) I am. Even after I was out of law school and
practicing, that same man sent more than a dozen emails to every single
partner and attorney at my law firm in an effort to get me fired.
I graduated law school in 2008. Five years later, the
process of writing about this still makes me tense up, triggering the
same old anxiety, anger and fear. I still avoid going to large
professional gatherings, and when I do go, my heart starts to beat a
little faster if I catch someone looking at my name tag for what seems
like a few seconds too long.
I'm a feminist writer who even before law school was used to receiving my share of online abuse. I get called all sorts of names on a daily basis and usually just roll through it. Yet I was still devastated by those postings.
And I was lucky. I wasn't naked. My job opportunities
were surely limited, but I didn't get fired. But there are serious
long-term consequences to internet harassment, both professional and
personal. It's undoubtedly much worse when the harassment involves naked
pictures, your face on a porn site and the permanent stigma of being a
"slut".
It's easy to say, "Well if you don't want naked
pictures on the internet, don't send men naked pictures" - or in my
case, I suppose, just don't be female on the internet. But that
simplistic view overlooks the way intimate relationships operate today,
and, in fact, how they've always operated.
Within romantic relationships, people have always
exchanged tangible things that would be highly embarrassing if publicly
revealed, whether that's a sexy note, a suggestive article of clothing
or raunchy photo. You're already engaging in an act that involves
nudity, exchange of body fluids, the potential for reproduction, two
human bodies intertwined skin-to-skin and, one hopes, some level of
mutual trust. Once you've been face-to-genitals with someone, sending
them a nude picture doesn't seem like it should be such a big deal.
Society sees it differently - at least when the nude
photo is of a woman. There aren't popular revenge porn sites with
pictures of naked men, because as a society we don't think it's
inherently degrading or humiliating for men to have sex. Despite the
fact that large numbers of women watch porn, there are apparently not
large numbers of women who find sexual gratification in publicly shaming
and demeaning men they've slept with.
And that is, fundamentally, what these revenge porn
sites are about. They aren't about naked girls; there are plenty of
those who are on the internet consensually. It's about hating women,
taking enjoyment in seeing them violated, and harming them.
The owners of Texxxan.com practically said as much
when, in defending their website, they posted a message saying, "Maybe
[sic] the site provided an outlet for anger that prevented physical
violence (this statement will be very controversial but is at least
worth thinking about)." In other words, these are men who hate women to
the degree that they'd be hitting them if they didn't have revenge porn
as an outlet for their rage. They're angry because women have the nerve
to exist in the universe as sexual beings.
Unfortunately, the law hasn't quite caught up with the internet. I hope these women win their lawsuit. But as Emily Bazelon details at Slate,
they're fighting an uphill battle. Our current laws were written with
an old media system in mind, and they need to be updated to protect free
speech while also defending against defamation and gross invasions of
personal privacy.
In the meantime, we can all do small things to
marginalize the appeal of revenge porn. Not looking at the sites is an
obvious first step; finding a host other than GoDaddy for your own site
is another. Refusing to participate in the sexual shaming of women is
also key - these sites would never survive without the pervasive view
that sexually active women are dirty. Support the women who have the
nerve to stand up to these privacy violations. Read, promote and raise
up women's voices generally, online and off. And push legislators to
modernize our laws.
Right now, the law and our culture are both on the
side of those who shame and humiliate women for sport, instead of those
of us who just want to go about our normal lives, whether that's going
to law school or having sex with our boyfriends, without putting our
careers, our reputations, our psychological well-being and our basic
ability to trust the people we're closest with on the line. Here's
hoping we win the long game.
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