The concept of "revenge porn" - the act of someone, usually male, posting naked or sexually explicit images/video of their ex-partner, usually female, online in order to humiliate and distress them, is in the news today. Yesterday it was reported that the UK Justice Secretary is considering new laws in order to tackle this distasteful trend, and empower victims rather than leaving them with bewildered police telling them "there's nothing we can do about it." I've been listening to discussions about revenge porn on Radio 1 and 2 today, with comments ranging from "It happened to me and was horrendous" (mostly from women) to "If you're silly enough to let someone take naked pictures of you, you get what you deserve" (funnily enough, that one was from a man). In between all the hand-wringing about whether today's selfie-crazed generation no longer has any concept of privacy and are therefore all hopelessly naïve to expect that intimate pictures stay private, very few people have raised the question of why exactly "revenge porn" has such a devastating effect on its (usually female) victims.
The only article I've seen that touches on this was today's piece by Dr Brooke Magnanti, who writes "We need to assess why, exactly, revenge porn is considered so humiliating and so embarrassing in the first place. In a nutshell it is because so many people believe that a woman who has ever been naked in front of a camera is and should be dehumanised to the point of being seen as a slut." This, to me, goes to the heart of the issue, and I can't believe Magnanti is the only one pointing it out. Why do we still expect grown women to be so ashamed of the fact that they - gasp - sometimes take off their clothes and have sex? Why do we shame them for wanting to show themselves to their partner in an erotic manner? Why do we deem the hundreds of men who think it's acceptable to send women they've never met pictures of their penises on online dating sites merely a subject for gentle laughter, while we judge and sneer at women who trustingly send explicit pictures or videos to their intimate partner as naïve daft cows who deserve everything they get?
"Revenge porn" is a self-perpetuating concept. Shame and humiliation is the expected result, and it's what the victims duly display. But why? Why is the evidence that an adult has been sexually active seen as more shameful and disgusting than say, evidence that they were a homophobe? An anti-Semite? There are plenty of acts that can be caught on video or picture that are shameful - harming our fellow human beings, especially children, or animals, or being cruel, rude, bigoted and selfish. Posing in our natural state and indulging in consensual erotic acts with another adult should not be viewed on the same level as the many terrible things human beings can and do carry out every day.
Now, that's not to say any of us want our parents, grandparents, children, employers or friends to see us naked or having sex. It's a pretty icky thought (not to mention one that goes both ways - I want to know LESS THAN NOTHING about my parents' sex lives, thanks very much!). But, let's be grown-up about it for a second. We're all adults. We know the majority of us are sexually active. If we happen to stumble across concrete evidence of that, it may put you off your dinner, but what harm has actually been done? We all have parents who have seen us naked, squalling, shitting, pissing and puking. We all have friends who have seen us drunkenly shape-throwing to the The Final Countdown and dribbling Blue WKD down our fronts. We may be lucky to have grown up in a pre-internet era when all of this wasn't captured and distributed online for all to see, but unless we are celebrities, it's unlikely that we care much about how people perceive us beyond our immediate circle anyway.
My point is, the 'shame' we expect women to feel over their naked form being spread over Tumblr or Facebook is in direct proportion to the shame we expect women to feel for being sexual, full stop. And this is nothing but full-blown sexist hypocrisy. Our society demands that women sexualise themselves at every turn - but never for themselves. And despite women's magazines effectively churning out a never-ending parade of advice on how to please a man, should a woman actually send erotic images of herself to her male partner with the objective of doing just that, she must be condemned for it. Confused? Yeah, I would be too - if I let the tidal wave of misogynist hogwash that still colours our media dictate my behaviour.
So let me come out and say something that sadly still constitutes revolutionary words in Britain, 2014. I'm a 30 year-old sexually active woman. I have sex with men. I get naked. I sometimes wear things considered 'sexy', and display my body in ways that might be considered 'erotic' or even 'explicit', sometimes for my pleasure, sometimes for that of my partner, very often for both. If there are any adults in my life who don't know that, they would have to have been sleeping under a very big rock for over a decade. If pictures of me indulging in any the above acts were to appear on the internet, it would be embarrassing, sure. Of course I wouldn't want my family, friends or employers seeing such images, (and not just because it's often that when you think you look your sexiest, you actually look like a sockful of clothespegs - yet another reason I haven't fallen prey to the selfie cult), but I'd like to think I could get over it once all the sniggering stopped. Because what's really to be ashamed of? I have a body. I have a sex life. Big fucking deal. Post a video online of me kicking a cat to death, and I'll rightly be ashamed, go into hiding and be chased with pitchforks. But till then, fuck the very idea of "revenge porn". Because without sexist beliefs that sex, nudity and being sexual is degrading to women, it couldn't exist.
No comments:
Post a Comment