WORDS Meadhbh McGrath
What would you do if you found out that someone had posted naked photos or videos of you online, without your consent? It’s called “revenge porn”, and in the age of smartphones, Snapchat and sexting, more and more people are becoming victims. In January, Israel became the first country to classify revenge porn as a sex crime, and although several states in the US are making moves to criminalise revenge porn, in Ireland and the UK it is extremely difficult to prosecute.
In 2010, Hunter Moore, dubbed “the most hated man on the internet”, started the (now defunct) revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp.com. The notorious site featured user-submitted content, and encouraged aggressively misogynistic attitudes towards female victims. Men and women face vastly different social, emotional and professional consequences if their photos or videos are leaked — at least two women have killed themselves over revenge porn, and the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative studies show that 47% of female victims contemplate suicide.
Being naked on the Internet, as a woman, means that you will always be used in ways that you may not intend and definitely cannot control. Moore’s site maintained that the women were sluts who deserved to be abused and humiliated, describing them as “gnargoyles”. In the site’s FAQ, Moore defined a “gnargoyle” as “a disgusting female who’s had the misfortune of getting her n00dz posted… for the internet world to see and criticize. Typically gnargoyles are overweight and are, but not limited to, hairy, ugly, and tattooed, with sloppy vaginas. These beasts have the grave misconception that someone would actually want to see them naked”. Revenge porn is not about titillation; it’s about ridiculing and sabotaging others.
The unanimous response to revenge porn has been “If you don’t take nudes, you won’t have a problem”. Such a response suggests that men can’t be held responsible for their own sexual behaviour, and so the responsibility is entirely on women to protect themselves from exploitative use of their images — if you take your clothes off for a picture, or allow yourself to be filmed having sex, you’re “asking for it”, and you have nobody but yourself to blame.
As technology has offered us new ways to share our bodies and our sexualities with each other, nudes and sex tapes have been described as the love letters of the 21st century. And although we’ve all heard stories about revenge porn, it’s unlikely they’re going to discourage people from taking naked photos and videos. Of course, making a sex tape is a subtle art. Most couples attempt to imitate what they have seen in porn, but obviously, sex tapes are not as well lit, well mic’d, well-focused or well-angled as porn, and are obviously lacking in the artful editing and scene transitioning (not to mention the meticulous grooming adult film stars undergo) that makes porn effective. Magazine tips on “making the perfect sex tape” suggest the rather dubious advice to “turn on the night-vision feature — it obscures imperfections and creates a funky, sci-fi look”. However, some couples find watching their own sex tapes is much more intimate than watching porn with their partners. Others consider the process of making a sex tape as more important than the end result, and often erase all incriminating evidence afterwards.
Ultimately, telling people to stop taking pictures and videos is an incredibly unenlightened response to what is essentially a sex crime and one that is becoming more and more prevalent. Revenge porn sites operate by condemning people, overwhelmingly women, for expressing their sexuality, and the solution is not to shame women into keeping their blouses firmly buttoned, but to hold the Hunter Moores of the world accountable for their actions.
