Obviously girls who take nudes aren’t to blame when they’re leaked online are you kidding me

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Obviously girls who take nudes aren’t to blame when they’re leaked online are you kidding me

No ‘the real tragedy’ is not why women send nudes to their partners – the real tragedy is the actual crime

Recent advances in the fight against revenge porn have been encouraging. Since it was made an official crime last year over 200 people have been convicted. Yesterday we published a story on the potential for victims of the crime to receive the same protection and anonymity as is the case for other sexual offences.

But with every step forward there’s a slide back: today’s comes in the form of a Daily Mail column from Clare Foges, who argues that the real tragedy of revenge porn isn’t the devastating effect it can have on victims. Nah, the real tragedy, she writes “is why on earth so many young women send intimate photos to their partners at all”.

hahaha idk because they want to???? haha lmk

OK, gather closer. Here’s the big secret that we’re all missing out on. By sending nudes, you see, we’re “playing with fire”. We’re putting ourselves in a shit position in the first place. We should expect that they will inevitably appear on the internet. At once I feel enlightened. Guys, delete your Facebook. Never participate in a screenshottable WhatsApp conversation again in your life. Stop talking to all people because one day, one of them may just betray you.

Treading the familiar territory of the ‘you were asking for it’ argument, the writer includes a helpful three point plan to avoid ever becoming a victim:

“In the case of revenge porn there is a simple three-point plan to avoid ever becoming a victim:

1. Never pose for nude pictures or videos.

2. Never pose for nude pictures or videos.

3. Never pose for nude pictures or videos.”

Personally, I didn’t ever realise it was this simple. She likens it to using bike locks, installing house-alarms. Suddenly it all becomes clear. It’s fool proof.

Also: To avoid being robbed own no possessions. To avoid being murdered die right now.

Foges makes the point that 89 per cent of millennial have taken naked pictures of themselves, concluding from this that “sexting culture is endemic”.  Like 89 per cent of girls my age, I’ve sent nudes to people. Sometimes because they’ve asked for them, sometimes because I wanted to. Most of them I’ve kept because I like the way they look. And if anyone distributed those photos they would be completely and solely at fault. 

The Daily Mail believes that in taking nudes women are signing away the rights to the image of their own body, that in doing so they should first think to themselves “Do I want my friends and family to see this? My neighbours? Random strangers around the world”. But girls are not signing away their agency by sending or taking nudes – nor should their friends and family and neighbours and strangers be contributing factors when they do so.

It’s an inherently private act, and claiming you should think of your public reputation when you do them is just as ridiculous and archaic as expecting women to stop short of having sex with someone to think “what would my mum think of me for doing this? Would my next door neighbour be embarrassed if he saw this”. It seems simplistic to say it’s really just none of their business but honestly: it’s really nobody else’s fucking business.

What’s more, with the growing awareness surrounding revenge porn, I would hope that if one of my pics surfaced and was seen by my mum, best friend, next door neighbour, their first thought wouldn’t be “what an idiot” but “I should feel bad about this because they have been the victim of a crime”. By Foges’ logic we should tsk at injuries when people have been victims of assault, to roll our eyes at ransacked houses when people have been burgled because, well they kind of put themselves at risk really.

As though predicting a backlash to her opinion, the column pre-emptively dodges cries of victim blaming, claiming: “This isn’t about apportioning blame, it’s about protecting women and girls”. In participating in the culture of shaming – there’s no dodging it really – women for sending nudes, the writer believes she is “deterring women from setting themselves up from a fall”.

It’s a simple as this: the blame for revenge porn falls on the people who distribute those images without the consent of the sender. Millennial women are not children, they don’t “need telling” what to do with their phones, relationships or bodies, and they should feel free to report crimes against their private life without feeling somehow at blame.

The law is clear on it, and as more people feel free to talk about it and report revenge porn, the only thing that can drag the issue back is writing like this, and the moral panic from older women telling girls in their twenties that it’s our fault for sexting in the first place.

@rosielanners