Jennifer Lawrence nude.
Last night someone dumped numerous hacked nude, intimate photos of female celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst on the internet.
This morning I said the following about it on my Facebook wall:
“I think today’s learning lesson is that under no circumstance should you ever taken nude photos of yourself with your phone. Or, probably, ever. For any reason.”
It was then brought to my attention very quickly that this response constituted victim blaming.
On more thoughtful analysis I’ve got to concede that it’s true… it was victim blaming. That wasn’t my intention, though. I just wasn’t looking at this as a human issue, a violation, I was looking at it as a data issue.
As in…
a) If you own a smart phone, computer or tablet, and …
b) You create, then store and/or transfer sensitive images and material…
c) By definition of the various terms of service everyone has agreed to for various apps, devices, softwares, etc…
d) As well as proven tinfoil hat truths exhibited by Snowden and the existence of algorithms that can detect boobs. Then…
e) It’s reasonable to conclude that no binary digital data a person creates can at present be considered safe, “private” and/or secure. Therefore…
f) The only way to prevent nude photos of yourself ever leaking on the internet is to never take them.
Looking at the photo hacking issue strictly through this lens, I now realize, is inadequate.
This, because, although “no nude pics ever” may provide a technically perfect solution to not having one’s intimate vagina photos circle the internet, it doesn’t actually do anything to punish the hackers/invaders/digital pervs. And, more importantly, it doesn’t address the fact that these people have violated the autonomy of another human being. These creepers essentially committed targeted digital attacks on a series of women. This, all right-thinking people can agree, is wrong.
So, if my solution was inadequate, what can us fellas do to man-up about this?
Well…
1) Don’t do things like hack women’s phones, emails, etc. And don’t participate in that spreading-photos-of-your-ex culture (that’s actually mentally insane, bro). This stuff seems obvious, but it probably needs to be stated as baseline. If in doubt, don’t contribute to evil.
2) Don’t enable it. Look, it’s not a crime to wonder if McKayla Maroney’s thigh muscles are bigger than yours. But by actively clicking/hunting/seeking these hack photos, you’re part of the problem. If you want to look at McKayla Maroney pics, her Instagram account is probably the exact amount she wants strangers to see of her. And no more than that.
3) Dick pics. “Yeah, well. Male athletes and boy bands get hacked, too,” I said, trying to argue a certain equality. And yes, when male celebs do get hacked it’s just as much a violation to them as it is when it happens to women. The flipside — and it’s a vital tangental connection to all this — is that when celebrity dick pics surface a percentage of these pop ups happen because dudes have sent unwanted, unsolicited nudes to women.
We can all establish this is gross, right? Apparently this a problem women have to deal with all the time (I had no idea, honestly). I don’t understand it and I’ve got no data to back this up, but this has got to be an even less effective courting technique then yelling, “Nice tittttsss, baby!” at a woman walking down the sidewalk. So let’s keep it simple fellas: any unsolicited dick pics you’ve ever sent to a woman are allowed be distributed to, and roundly mocked in a public manner by her and all her friends. And if you suffer an Anthony Weiner-like fall from grace because of it, well, you deserve it.
4) Freedom. If, like me, you continue to have an imperfect-though-wanting-to-be-sympathetic grasp on the gender-safety-equality issues surrounding this, you should still be able to understand it from a liberty-and-ramifications perspective.
Basically, when the spectre of internet creepoids peeking in the digital drawers looms over all women then that means they can’t do and act as they want. When women can’t act and do what they want, that means their liberty and freedom is being taken away. This, fundamentally, is not right.
