BALTIMORE – “Revenge porn is a vile symptom of modern misogyny” declared the first half of a headline published on The Independent’s website over the weekend. As conclusory, offhand opinions masquerading as fact go, this one might seem safe, but is revenge porn really as simple a phenomenon as the piece’s author, Alice Nutting, would have us believe?
The short answer, of course, is “no.” The long answer is a bit more nuanced and requires considering some additional questions, but it boils down to the same response.
If revenge porn is all about men who hate women seeking to shame, harass and denigrate those women, why are there images of men on revenge porn sites, too? If it’s all about men victimizing women, why are women being indicted for violating revenge porn laws? Looking back at the roots of revenge porn, if misogyny is the sole motivating factor, why were some of the most infamous images on IsAnyoneUp.com (the best-known among the first wave of revenge porn sites) pictures of the genitals of famous men, like the bass player from Passion Pit?
In fairness to Alice Nutting, she’s parroting a line that is being mightily encouraged by activists trying to stamp out revenge porn, and merely repeating their claims.
On EndRevengePorn.org, part of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), an infographic states that “90% of revenge porn victims in CCRI’s sample were women.” That’s not quite the same thing as saying 90 percent of revenge porn victims overall are women, but that’s how most people, including Alice Nutter, have chosen to interpret the statement.
A footnote on the infographic concedes the number was derived from a survey hosted on EndRevengePorn.org and “results depicted are reflective of a female-heavy sample, due to most of our site visitors being women.”
Caveats and footnotes are nice and all, but let’s face it: Most people looking at that infographic aren’t going to read the footnote. They’re just going to remember the claim “90 percent of revenge porn victims are women.” Clearly, that’s what Alice Nutting took from looking at the graphic, because the third sentence of her article is: “90% of victims of revenge porn are women.”
So what, you say? What difference does it make if the figure is 90 percent, 70 percent or even less? The problem with the flawed claim is simple, despite the tortured English I’m going to use in order to relate it: A problem doesn’t get solved by looking at what it isn’t.
For example, if I need to know what “x” represents in the statement “2x + 7 = 35,” I don’t start out by pretending the number to the right of the equal sign is 47, because clearly I’m not going to arrive at the right answer by doing so. I’m also not going to get too far by pretending “x” is modified by something other than 2 on the left side of the equation.
By the same token, if I start with the assumption revenge porn is caused by “modern misogyny,” I’m really going to be left scratching my head when asked to explain how it represents misogyny (modern or otherwise) when a jilted woman posts naked pictures of her ex-boyfriend on the web, then emails a link to said picture to her ex-boyfriend’s new boss.
If we’re going to start by oversimplifying the issue of revenge porn, let’s at least start with a sustainable assertion. I suggest the following: Revenge porn is caused by Assholism.
Assholism is a nice, gender-neutral term, and it very efficiently communicates the crucial point about revenge porn: To humiliate, inconvenience, harass, embarrass or otherwise fuck with an ex-lover (or anyone else, for that matter) by sharing intimate pictures of them without their permission is a shitty thing to do, and relatedly, doing it makes you a shitty person. (Increasingly, it also makes you a criminal, which is probably the only thing about revenge porn which won’t appeal to the average asshole.)
Clearly, you don’t have to be a misogynist to be an asshole, and you don’t have to be a man, either (although, admittedly, it helps). Being an asshole explains why anybody would commit an act of revenge porn against another person, whether or not that person is an ex-lover, a woman, a celebrity or any of the other things commonly associated with being a victim of revenge porn.
Whether or not passing new laws can discourage acts of revenge porn remains to be seen. In the U.S., some state laws prohibiting revenge porn might be vulnerable to First Amendment challenges, while other, more narrowly-tailored statutes probably can survive court scrutiny.
Either way, approaching the revenge porn problem by trying to turn it into something it isn’t won’t accomplish much. Terming revenge porn an offshoot of misogyny might energize some activists and inspire a few donations, but it won’t address the broader problem—and it sure as hell won’t deter women like Crystal Cherry.
