March 27, 2017 • 42 mins
Sometimes termed "cyber rape," revenge porn refers to sexually explicit images and videos nonconsensually shared on the internet. Cristen and Caroline chart the horrifying rise of revenge porn, why it happens, how it affects the victims and how the digital laws are evolving to criminalize it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and we just want to offer a
little bit of a trigger warning at the top of
this podcast because we are going to be talking about
revenge porn and this could be triggering to people that
(00:24):
this might have happened to. We're also going to be
talking about things that you might not want younger listeners
to hear about at the moment, so just a heads
up on that. But we are talking about this because
it's such an important conversation to be having right now,
because it's looking at the intersection of things like sexual harassment,
(00:47):
agency over you know, women's bodies, Internet privacy, all of
these different things co mingling at this time right now.
So to kick things off, let's talk about revenge porn,
also known as cyber rape. Is yeah. This is basically
sexually explicit images and videos that are accessed through computer
(01:10):
or phone hacking, theft by computer repair people, false personal ads,
or more commonly posted or forwarded by jilted x is um.
It's used for the purpose of sexual humiliation, possibly shaming,
things like that, blackmail, even and involuntary porn is generally
posted online with the subject's real name and contact information. Yeah,
(01:35):
there will often be links to these people's social media profiles,
and this kind of uh ideing of people is referred
to on the Internet as doxing. So if you hear
about doxing, uh that's that's what this isn't Doxing doesn't
always happen in terms of revenge porn, but is increasingly
one aspect of it, which makes it even more horrifying
(01:57):
because not only are your photos exposed or your videos exposed,
but harassment can then follow when people know who you
are and try to slander you in those ways. But
the precise statistics of how pervasive revenge porn is our
little tricky to come by, but we do know that
(02:17):
when it comes to people sending each other sexy, racy
nude picks and videos. According to data from the Pew
Research Center, nine percent of Americans with cell phones have
sent naked photos or videos, which is up actually from
six percent in two thousand twelve, and which is a
(02:38):
big jump. There have received a naked picture or video,
but of those, six percent have forwarded naked pictures or
videos to a third party. I am shaking my head
because how disgusting. It is disgusting. And I'll be completely
honest and say that I have witnessed this among guy
(02:59):
friends I've had. Well, there was one friend in particular
who was dating a girl for a while and they
broke up and we were hanging out one night and
he asked if I wanted to see a topless photo
of his ex, to which I said no, and why
would you even be offering me this? Yeah, this is horrifying. Um,
(03:20):
But there are also speaking of that exact situation of
breaking up with someone and then being in possession of
what some might think are compromising photos. In two thousand thirteen,
McAfee conducted a survey finding that approximately ten of ex
partners have threatened to post sexually explicit photos online, and
(03:41):
of those, six of those threats were followed through on Yeah. I, UM,
I don't know about you. I I feel like almost
every relationship that I've been in the guy at some
point asks for photos like this. And because of an
experien as I had when I was younger, which I
(04:01):
won't get into, I will never ever ever do that.
I have never agreed to to anything like this. Because
you don't know. You don't know. You could be dating
someone for ten years, you could be in love, you
could have freaking children and puppies and a house and everything.
You just don't know. If something will go wrong, that
(04:21):
person will snap, and you don't know who will end
up with those pictures. Even if your ex isn't vengeful
or crazy and doesn't do it, what if somebody gets
ahold of his phone? Yeah, because even more disconcerting is
the fact that there is clearly an appetite for revenge
porn on the internet. For instance, so called revenge porn
King a k a. The most hated man on the Internet,
(04:43):
a guy named Hunter Moore, who was in the news
recently because he was arrested his revenge porn site is
anyone Up, which is no longer in existence. Uh. He
reported that it was making thirteen thousand dollars a month.
I also saw twenty thousand dollars a month and another
off advertisements and had a mass around thirty million page views.
(05:05):
There was another revenge porn site involved in a clash
action suit, for instance, that had at least two fifty
different women's photos and attracted more than two thousand visitors
a day, right, and women are the main targets of
these kinds of sites. Men are absolutely on there too,
but women are the majority. University of Maryland law professor
(05:27):
Danielle Citron has studied the issue for her book on
Online Harassment Hate three point oh a civil rights agenda
to combat online harassment. She estimates that sixty of the
victims of online harassment, including revenge porn, are women, and
the abuse is often very sexualized. There are threats of rape,
(05:48):
their false prostitution ads, things like calling women sluts even
when the victim is a man. And when the victim
is a man, that language changes because what is the
purpose of of this malicious stuff if it's shaming, right,
shaming and embarrassing and humiliating the person. And so when
men are the targets and their pictures are posted, that
(06:09):
language does tend to revolve around homophobia, calling them gay
and and similarly there are also you know that the
sexually violent language is used against them, but usually in
terms of them wanting to have sex with other men
or be sex offenders. Just just horrific hate speech being
(06:30):
lobbed at these people. And not surprisingly, there are psychological repercussions.
This is one reason why revenge porn is sometimes referred
to as cyber rape, because for its victims, revenge porn
can trigger things like anxiety, disorder, post traum and extress
disorder and paranoia, not to mention the very real world havoc.
(06:51):
It can wreak on job prospects relationships because if you're
applying for a job or if you're in academia climbing
your way up through that, people google you. And if
your image and name and social media profile, all this
stuff is being used on revenge porn sites, that's what
(07:12):
pops up, right, And I mean it almost seems like
these kind of things, these sites are like the hydra.
I mean, yeah, you shut one down, but three more
are going to pop up in like Eastern Europe somewhere,
you know. Like it. It almost seems like the abuse
never stops because once someone post your picture and abuses
you that way, it's just going to spread. Yeah. And
(07:34):
to to get even more perspective on the impact of
revenge porn on those people whose images are being spread
around non consensually, in two thousand and eight, a Cyber
Civil Rights Initiative study found that over eight of revenge
porn victims experienced severe emotional distress and anxiety. And so
(07:57):
when did all of this start? I know that, uh,
I wanted to do an episode on revenge porn because
it's been in the news and on covered on lady
blogs more commonly, I feel like in the past two years.
But when did it start? When did how did this happen? Um? Well,
(08:19):
New York Mag's Alexa Sulis Ray in July traced it
back to the nineteen eighties because there was a Hustler
feature that asked for nude photos of women, UM with
info including their hobbies, their fantasies, and sometimes their real names. Yeah,
and there was one instance. Uh there were actually many
(08:40):
women who complained to Hustler about this when they realized
that their photos were in there. And there was one
instance kind of like old school hacking, where the photos
that had been published had actually been stolen from a couple.
And Um, while it's terrible that Hustler did that, the
fact that it was a print magazine meant that there
(09:01):
were a finite number of those magazines with those photos.
Unlike the hydra effect of revenge porn, where even if
you can stop one site or get one site to
take your photos down. That doesn't mean it's gone right absolutely,
And so on the Internet you see in two thousand
Italian researcher Sergio Messina identifying an emergent genre he calls
(09:26):
real core pornography, and this was referring to photos and
videos of ex girlfriends in particular, initially shared on Usenet groups,
so kind of popping up more on message boards and
kind of Reddit esque I'm not saying it's on Reddit
Reddit esque sites. Yeah. And later in the two thousands
(09:50):
and two thousand eight you start to get websites and
blogs dedicated to the genre appearing and often mixing real
users submitted revenge worn with staged versions. Yeah. In two
thousand porn video aggraggator x tube was claiming that the
site was getting two to three complaints a week about
(10:11):
this kind of revenge porn popping up of people going
on and seeing oh wow, hi, that is that is
me on X two. Wasn't supposed to happen. But then
two thousand ten is really where I feel like it
starts to get a lot of national and global attention
because two things happen over in New Zealand, you have
a twenty year old house painter who is the first
(10:32):
person to go to prison for posting revenge porn on Facebook.
And Facebook, now, by the way, has extremely you know,
anti revenge porn policy obviously, and they've even they'll take
down any kinds of groups associated with it at all.
And then that same year you have Hunter More, the
most hated man on the Internet, launching is anyone up
(10:54):
dot com, which is I mean, that's really the source
of the main streaming, if you can call it main
streaming of revenge born. Yeah. Um, And that again was
featuring these women's pictures along with their names and identifying details,
and according to the Daily Dot within days the site
was getting twenty to thirty submissions per day. And so
(11:17):
I'm just like imagining these floodgates opening and all of
these angry people who hate women just just being like, oh, yeah, hooray,
I finally have a way to get my rage out there. Well,
and Hunter More is and I don't think I've probably
ever described someone like this on the podcast before. We
usually try to give people the benefit of the doubt,
(11:38):
but he's a vile human being because he explicitly says
that he is out to sexually shame especially women. I
mean that that's the whole point, and he thinks it's
hilarious and to the point where he wants to docks people.
He wants you know, their entire identities exposed non consensually,
(11:59):
and he wants to harass people. And the way that
is anyone up really became more well known was when
it actually was not revenge porn of a woman but
actually a guy I forget. He was in some like
old alternative band, but they got some crotch shots I
think of him, and it went viral on the Internet.
(12:20):
And that incident turned Hunter more into this gross anti
hero because he definitely has fans and women who are
fans of his, which I really don't understand, but he
in a large way is to blame for a lot
of revenge porn going on. Yeah, but around this time
(12:41):
you also have you know, thank you Internet, uh, the
rise of the creep shot, which is basically taking pictures
of women's crotches and breast without their consent and public
places like you know, doing those upskirt shots and posting
those all over the internet. Yeah, and there are just
discussed tips that have been passed around on Reddit. That
(13:02):
was the first place that I read about creepshots. Um,
and it's technically not porn, but it's still a blatant
violation of women's privacy. Yeah. Well, and I think this
just goes back to the fact that there are a
lot of I was gonna say people, but they're I mean,
I think there are a lot of men out there
(13:22):
who just don't think that women deserve their own not
only sphere of safety, but you know, just to be
a freaking person. Well, there's a lot of gross power
dynamics in revenge porn because it is very rapey, it
is harassing, and it is essentially deriving pleasure out of
(13:45):
other people's humiliation, right, And it's it's saying, you know, women, uh,
women who have had sex with me, obviously your slats
for having sex, even though I'm glad you had sex
with me, and I'm going to shame you for it, exactly.
Kire Cachet, though, writing over at The Guardian, had an
interesting theory about the rise of revenge porn and creepshots,
(14:05):
linking it to paparazzi culture, because if you think about
how rapid those photographers have become, particularly in pursuit of
photos of young actresses and compromising positions. I mean the
heyday of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears
going out and partying in those you know, infamous photos
(14:27):
of Britney's Spears getting out of a limousine not wearing
any underwear, being able to see it for skirt. I mean,
and and and they thrive. Those photos thrive. Yeah, well,
I mean. And the more recent example, obviously would be
Kate Middleton, who was photographed sunbathing topless on vacation. But
(14:48):
when you look at how far away her villa was
from the freaking road where the picture was taken, I mean,
she was sought after, and people were victim blaming her.
People we're saying like, oh, well, you know, you slut,
you shouldn't have been sunbathing with your shirt off, but
she was in a completely private home and who cares. Yeah, well, yes,
(15:11):
of course, and who cares? But this person, the photographer actually,
you know, went after her. Well. One name that comes
up a lot in articles on this topic is Marianne
Frank's and she's an associate professor of law at the
University of Miami and a cyber harassment expert, and she
spoke to the Guardian about this, and she said, what
unites creep shots, the Kate Middleton photographs, the revenge porn
(15:35):
websites is that they all feature the same fetishization of
non consensual sexual activity with women who either you don't
have access to or have been denied future access to.
And it's really this product of rage and entitlement. And
when I read that, I actually kind of sat back
in my chair for a minute because I don't know
(15:56):
if there's any better way to sum up the ickiness
around this, the feelings, the the general undercurrent of these images.
It's that rage and entitlement. Absolutely, and unfortunately a lot
of times when people hear about anecdotes, whether it's you know,
Kate Middleton having you know, those topless photos taken, or
(16:20):
women who have been the victims of revenge porn. Also
men who have been the victims of revenge porn. I
don't want to leave them entirely out of this conversation,
but a lot of times the response to it is, well,
you should have known better. It gets very victim blame me,
And I'm going to acknowledge publicly on this podcast that
I have been guilty of that before, as well of
(16:41):
thinking well, why did you Why would you possibly ever
send someone a topless photo or naked photo or any
kind of pornographic image of yourself in this day and age,
shouldn't you know better? But I was just so I
hate that I did that because us reading about it,
(17:01):
I realize now how completely victim blame me. That is
because if you are in a loving and committed relationship
with someone, and you know what, even if you're not,
even if you're just having sex with somebody, there is
that implicit understanding you would think that what happens between
when you have sex with someone, you probably aren't having
sex in front of a crowd of people. So similarly,
(17:25):
when you if you were to send a sex of
some sort, there is that implicit understanding that you're not
sending it to a crowd of people, right, You're sending
it to one person, and you want as a human being,
you want to trust other human beings. And I think
the fact is, and I totally meant to having these
thoughts too, why would she ever send that? Why would
(17:45):
she even take the picture and have it on her
own personal phone? I mean, but there is that that um,
that unfortunate truth, which is that the Internet is not yours.
You don't have your own personal Internet, it's not faithe
and sometimes you can't trust people. And so I mean,
the question should not be should women be taking these photos?
(18:08):
Shouldn't we be talking more about why are other people
men strangers? Why are they breaking this trust and sending
the photos out? And it's not just men to who
will forward on these kinds of messages. There is plenty
of similar slut shaming that women fuel to other women
as well. And I mean a lot of this conversation
(18:29):
about the legalities around revenge born or the illegalities around it.
And also this victim blaming response revolves too around the
fact that a lot of the photos and question are selfies,
their women taking them of theirselves or guys taking them
of themselves. And uh, it's the same kind of thing
(18:50):
of telling a sexual assault victim, well, why would you
dress like that? And that selfie issue of it being
a woman willingly being in a state of undress and
capturing that image is used again and again and again
to undercut the validity of you know, the the psychological
(19:11):
and real world repercussions, negative repercussions of revenge porn and
just saying well, you know what, you shouldn't shouldn't have
done that. You shouldn't have done that to the women,
not to hunter more. Yeah, well we know he definitely
shouldn't have done that. But the good news, and yes,
there is good news to this conversation, is that as
(19:32):
this is becoming more of a higher profile issue, there
has been a lot of legal conversation around it, and
a lot to a growing number of revenge porn targets
victims however you want to call it, who are taking
back the power to create some kind of workable solution
(19:52):
to this growing issue. And we're going to talk about
that when we come right back from a quick break.
So when we left off, we were talking about the
whole victim blaming aspect of revenge porn and how so
many people say, well, the woman or or the man
never should have taken these photos, when really we should
(20:13):
be asking the question why are people posting these photos
on the internet for strangers to see? Um? And I mean,
you know a lot of these incidents will drive the
victims to hide, change their names, moved to a different
city because it essentially ruins their lives. Yeah, because you've
got to remember that that dock sing often happens alongside it.
(20:35):
So people find out where you live, where you work,
what you you know, do on the weekends via your
Facebook profile. Um. But as we said, there is good
ish news um in this conversation, which is that there
are people who are making it their mission to figure
(20:56):
out a way to, if not stop it, to gonnaize
it because it is, I mean a lot of it
is criminal activity when when you think about the harm
that is often wrought. And one woman who has really
come to the forefront of this was a victim of
revenge porn. Her name is Holly Jacobs. She actually changed
her name to Holly Jacob's due to the fact that
(21:19):
her Google identity is completely smeared by revenge porn and
she really wouldn't be able to live have a professional
identity outside of naked photos of herself. And it's all
started when she had been dating a guy for a
while and they were a long distance for two and
a half years, and over the course of that time,
she amassed and he amassed a collection of you know,
(21:43):
sexually explicit photos and videos that they would send to
each other's away to kind of bridge that long distance gap.
And after they broke up, she thought that everything was fine,
that it was amicable, and then all of a sudden,
one day, her friend frantically calls her, sing, you need
to check your Facebook account because someone changed your profile
(22:04):
picture to a nude photo of you. And this is
happening in two thousand and eight, And all of a sudden,
you know, even though she was able to change the
Facebook picture, more than a dozen photos of her had
landed on various porn sites and this, you know, And
so she works to get all of them taken down.
She thinks everything's totally kosher. But then in two thousand,
(22:27):
eleven years later, she receives an anonymous email that linked
to a U r L she had never seen before,
and there again it had started with more photos of
her linking to her Facebook profile, email address, phone number,
and even information about where she worked. Yeah, and so
she's also getting harassed during this time, obviously, I mean,
(22:50):
you know, the person posted all of her personal information.
So she's getting harassed by strangers. And by the time
that site was shut down, her her pictures have spread
to more than two hundred other websites, but when she
saw legal recourse, people didn't know what to do. I
mean the She called the Miami police and they were like, uh,
(23:11):
nothing is amiss inside of your home. What we can't
do anything to help you probably shouldn't have taken those picks.
And even lawyers, a lot of lawyers turned down her
case because they, you know, they're like, well, what do
you want us to do? Prosecute the internet? Sorry? Uh right, yeah.
Basically they said, you know, look, you were a legal adult.
(23:34):
You chose to send these pictures to someone, and then
that person turned around and possibly did something with them. Sorry,
we can't help you. But in April of she missed.
Jacobs actually became the first person in the state of
Florida to sue an X for the alleged distribution of
revenge porn. Now we should also say that, you know,
(23:55):
the outcome of that case is that all the charges
were dropped against her ex boyfriend, Ryan Say, after prosecutors
that they couldn't find sufficient proof linking him to all
of those other you know, the distribution basically exactly. Um.
But now Jacobs hasn't stopped. She's going public with her experience. Um,
her story has been told to me. We read a
(24:16):
story about her in Cosmopolitan magazine, actually surprisingly good and
comprehensive article about revenge porn in Cosmo. Folks times sort
of change in apparently, but you might hear her her
name a lot because it's now her mission to help
bring down revenge porn. And she's even started an organization
to you know, empower victims with legal resources, and is
(24:40):
also starting a petition or has started a petition for
a federal law against revenge porn. And that's the tricky
issue is that the laws around what goes on the
internet are very challenging for people who's naked picks have
(25:00):
been non consensually posted because it's not necessarily criminal. Hunter More,
for instance, was recently arrested by the FBI in late
January of two thousand fourteen, but he wasn't arrested for
all of the revenge born that he posted. He was
arrested for hacking. Yeah. Um. His charges include conspiracy, unauthorized
(25:22):
access to a protected computer to obtain information, and seven
counts of aggregated identity theft. Because we're we're you know,
we're living in an era where all of our laws
rules regulations about the Internet can't keep up. They just
can't keep up with the way that things are developing online.
And we just haven't gotten there yet to protect people
(25:44):
as well as we should on the internet. Well, and
they're all these fears about free speech and a slippery
slope where if you start regulating the kind of things
that can and cannot go on the internet. First of all,
good luck trying that. But um, but there are legitimate
concerns about carefully wording laws that get passed to make
(26:08):
sure that it doesn't have a chilling effect on other
kinds of speech. And so, for instance, in the case
of hunter More, he always spoke very openly to news
outlets about what he did and his intentions with his
revenge porn website. He was, you know, he could care
less because of a little thing called the Communications Decency
(26:29):
Act which was passed in and in that there is
section two thirty which grants website operators immunity from lawsuits
over their users speech, which was a measure intended to
preserve online free speech. So, in addition to giving hunter
More some legal shelter to be able to post user
(26:51):
generated content, which is what all that revenge porn is
he's not you know, he's not taking those photos. This
is also though the section thirty. This also allows for say,
The New York Times to include comments sections with their
you know, under their articles. And when you're a commenter,
you can say all sorts of hateful things, and the
(27:12):
New York Times isn't gonna get blasted for that, right,
And and lawyers have pointed out that the whole obscenity
argument is an exception to section two thirty. You know, pornography, obscenity.
Obscenity is not protected speech. And you mentioned user generated content.
Another lawyer was saying, it's not like these things are
(27:32):
truly literally user generated, Yeah, because the the person who
generated that content was not complicit in it being posted. Yeah.
And so when you look at the lack of anti
revenge porn laws and you look at copyright law, um,
(27:54):
copyright law is probably your best avenue for forgetting pictures
taken down. Yeah. There is a whole rundown about this
in the American Bar Association Journal talking about how with
copyright law, if the photo is a selfie, a sexy selfie,
then the victim owns that copyright automatically without registering it,
He or she is free to send takedown notices to
(28:15):
the website's operator under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, And
if you were to do that, that should also compel
that website to d index whatever pages had your photos
as well, so that would help scrub your Google identity clean. Yeah, well,
a lot of good that's going to do you, though,
(28:36):
if it's based in a different country, that's right, because
a lot of times foreign web hosts don't really care
too much about US copyright violations. And also the Electronic
Frontier Foundation and organizations like the a c L. You
are hesitant again about revenge peorn laws because of those
First Amendment concerns, because they say, well, if you start
(28:57):
opening this up, you could have public figures doing wkipedia
for unsavory information about their personal lives being posted, or
their professional lives, or business owners suing yelp if there
are negative reviews. But there are laws that have been
enacted that are still protective of free speech and of
the First Amendment. Because we're all about the First Amendment.
(29:18):
We're a podcast for crying out Loud. We love the
First Amendment. But there are anti revenge porn laws that
have been crafted and legal groups that are looking into
how the best way to institute these laws which are
happening right now in the United States on more of
a state by state basis. Yeah, back in two thousand three,
(29:40):
New Jersey actually became the first state to make it
a felony to distribute sexual photos of another person without
permissions in New Jerseys on the cutting edge of that.
Fast forward ten years in October of California, Governor Jerry
Brown signed an anti revenge porn law. But it has
a ginormous loophole. It doesn't protect victims who took the
(30:03):
photos themselves, and these photos make up about eight percent
of revenge porn pictures. Yeah, and on top of that,
even though California made a big to do about this law,
the crime is only considered a misdemeanor punishable by up
to six months in jail or one thousand dollar fine.
And so that's another thing that legal scholars are talking
about in terms of you not only need to include
(30:26):
that selfie provision in there because of revenge porn or selfies,
and also you've got to make sure that the possible
criminal impact of this is basically scary enough to people
like Hunter More and Holly Jacobs, who we sided earlier,
(30:47):
and other people are working very hard to get similar
laws on the books in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin. So I mean people are actively trying to
make a dent in this. I mean, you know, we're
we're fighting against technology. It's kind of a moving target
at all times. But I you know, they are fighting
to say that we have rights. We have rights even
(31:10):
on the internet. Yeah, and this isn't a US centric
issue either. I mean, in late Australia past legislation making
it illegal to distribute explicit images without a person's consent,
and more recently in January Israel band revenge porn and
it's now punishable by up to five years in prison. Um.
(31:31):
But again, yeah, it's a it's an issue of how
do you craft these laws in an effective enough way
to where you know, you discourage perpetrators from doing it
in the first place, and also protect free speech so
that it doesn't have a chilling effect, and you also
protect potential victims. Because this is all too tied up
with our concept of you know, what is sexual harassment,
(31:55):
what is cyber harassment? You know, women's agency over their body.
I mean, so it's an intersection of so many different
things that we don't really do a good job of
talking about to begin with, right, And that's why one
of those law journals that we were looking at stressed
the importance of educating our lawmakers basically on all of
(32:17):
these issues, not only what is revenge porn, you know,
where are these photos coming from, the the issue of
manipulation and abuse, but also what these people are going through,
that these victims are likely going to experience, you know,
job loss, you know, loss of income, but also emotional
(32:38):
and mental distress. And it is interesting to Holly Jacobs
has said that she doesn't want to be called a victim.
She wants to, you know, be empowered through this um
and you know, to to make life better not only
for herself but for other people who have been affected
by this. And one thing that some people might be
thinking is, well, hey, there was a much easier solution
(33:00):
to this, which is stop taking photos of your vagina
and sending it out. And while I absolutely think that
young women and men, but especially young women, because we
make up a bulk of revenge porn targets, the young
women need to be educated about what can happen and
(33:21):
how this unfortunately is a part of the digital landscape.
But the answer is not ladies, put your tops on
and put your phones away, but rather digging deep and
figuring out how, you know, to hold people accountable because
like it or not, sexting is a part also of
our modern sex lives as well. Yeah, and well, and
(33:45):
unfortunately what goes along with that is, you know, maybe
the younger generations of boys looking at sex sis that's
plural as almost currency, Like look, how cool I am
that I have all these topless photo us of all
these girls in my class right right, And not to
be totally cliche about it, but it is the thing
(34:06):
of like, we have more power than ever before to
consume porn, and to consume is sexual communication with people.
I mean, sexting has made I'm sure for a lot
of couples long distance relationships a lot easier to deal
with in that regard. But with that great power now
comes the great responsibility. And what you know the legal
system has done to this point, I mean, as if
(34:29):
they could have anticipated it. But we're we're lacking on
the responsibility part absolutely well. But there are avenues uh,
that you can take to control this yourself. UM. One
uh this and this advice goes back to that Cosmo
article that that Kristen sided earlier. Number one is to
(34:49):
copyright your pictures, um because this allows you to send
those takedown notices to websites using them and to search engines.
And you can do that at be right dot gov.
But remember you don't even have to go and register
your photos at copyright dot gov. If you took a
photo of yourself, you automatically legally own the copyright to
(35:10):
that photo. So if you are sending sexy selfies, you
might want to keep a log of them, keep a
file of all of whatever photos you're sending out. Not
to be paranoid, but if you want to make sure
to c y A, then see your copyright. And if
you do see your photos, you can contact the web
(35:32):
host directly. I mean, because a lot of times US
based companies don't want to get sued. One of there
was a recent civil suit that go Daddy, which is
a prominent web hosting company, was pulled into because it
was kind of revolutionary because it wasn't just going after
the revenge porn site, but also Go Daddy for even
(35:53):
hosting it. And I can't remember what the exact um
results of that were, but they didn't want anything to
do with it. Yeah, but that is one way too
that if you know that, if you see your pictures,
contact the web host. Yeah, and uh, the voices of
authority in this area, which it's a very small number
(36:15):
of people who are really really have expertise in this. Uh,
they encourage women to get back out there. Basically, you know,
it's it's natural to want to shut down your entire
Internet presence because you're being harassed, but people urge you
to actually get back out there even more. Join those
online groups, make profiles, blog all of the stuff they say,
(36:38):
because the more material you're posting that's newly generated, the
further down your photos will go. You also want to
do things like maybe set a Google alert for your
name and if one of those pictures comes up, you'll
already be ready to tackle it. And there are a
growing number of organizations that you can reach out to
UM to figure out any kind of legal course you
(37:00):
could take, or just help with getting photos taken down, etcetera.
UM or just connecting with other people who are going
through similar situations. So organizations like Without My Consent, Army
of She and Revenge Porn dot org. Those are just
a few of these UM advocate groups that are now
(37:21):
starting to pop up more. And if you if you
don't have a pencil and paper right now, don't worry.
We'll have information like all of our episodes sources over
its stuff Mom Never told You dot com if you
click on the podcast link on the homepage will include
all of the links to everything that we've been talking about,
so um you can if you want more information, you
(37:42):
can find it there as well. Well. I think it's
I think it's so incredibly important that these women are
speaking out. Um, you know, I think, yeah, your natural
inclination would be to just hide and and try to
ignore it and make it go away, move to a
different country, a different state. Um. That the fact that
these women are speaking up and saying no, I'm taking
(38:03):
control of this situation. I want other people women, men, everyone,
especially younger people who you know, that's a whole other
issue of the generational divide in this technology stuff. But
you know, making people more aware of the damage that
can be done. Yeah, and I mean, speaking of kind
of wanting to hide, this is too one of those
(38:23):
topics where I would much prefer to bury my head
in the sand and pretend that it's not happening, because
it is horrifying. It's off. Yeah, it's disgusting. But that's
one reason too that we decided to talk about it.
I mean we I don't think we've really ever talked
about porn on the podcast, um, but this is one
where we gotta we gotta address it, especially for our audience. Yeah,
(38:45):
for sure. So what we've been talking about resonates with you,
and you want to talk to us about it. We
want to hear from you. Moms Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send us emails. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and also messages
on Facebook. And we've got a couple of letters to
share with you right now. So for a little bit
(39:06):
of a lighter diversion, we've had a couple of letters
here from our episode on gender and Coffee, and this
one comes from a gentleman who who didn't include his name.
He's a Turkish gentleman though, so he writes, as I
have just finished listening to your specialty Coffee and Gender podcast.
I was very interested in your historical approach to the
(39:26):
modern day situation being a Turk and enjoying coffee, very
strong coffee. As a matter of fact, I wanted to
let you know that the best coffee is made by
women in my country. In fact, it's almost an art.
A good woman, to Mary should be able to make
Turkish coffee with plenty of foam on top. The more foam,
the better you are. Also, as a pastime, we drink
Turkish coffee and when done, flip our little cups over
(39:48):
the saucers, wait for it to cool, and then read
our fortunes. Just about anybody knows a thing or two
about coffee cup reading, even guys. Sometimes drinking coffee and
reading fortunes can take hours combined, and that's a great versation.
So my point with all of this is that with
such a small cup of coffee, you can really enjoy
the process much longer, and that women can be great
(40:08):
coffee makers. I think my coffee cup fortune, though, would
just always say I'm tired. I'm tired. I need you
need a nap in your future and possibly a trip
to the bathroom after. Yes, um, I have a letter
here from Michael uh. He says I'm a male barista
at Starbucks, and the moment I saw this episode pop up,
I knew it was must hear material. There is absolutely
(40:31):
a gender dividing coffee. I currently work in a store
where the female employees greatly outnumber the male employees, but
most of the time, questions about coffee get fielded to
me because I'm a guy. Customers seem to think that
I know more about it than the women around me,
even though many of them have been with the company
for the same amount of time or longer. I even
once had a customer snap in the face of a
(40:52):
female manager to get her attention. Understandably, this was not
taken well and she was not happy about it. I
also wanted to point out a out gendered beverages. Several
of my co workers and I have considered charting demographics
of drink orders because they definitely seem to follow a pattern.
If a group of teenage girls walk up, my instinct
is to get the blender ready, because, without fail, there
(41:14):
will be a majority of them ordering for appuccinos. That said,
there are just as many female customers I have who
want just straight espresso or black coffee, and I wouldn't
necessarily consider a cappuccino to be a feminine drink, because
if made right, it's going to have a stronger coffee
flavor than a latte of the same size. Since cappuccino
is one third espresso, one third steamed milk, and one
(41:34):
third milk foam, and a latte is just espresso and
steamed milk, well, I think it's ridiculous to assign genders
to beverages. If I had to chart it, I would
place a cappuccino on the more masculine end of the spectrum. Personally,
I prefer a simple iced coffee or ice latte. So
thank you for that window into coffee making, Michael, and
thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff at
(41:56):
Discovery dot com is our email address and for all
of our podcast, blogs, videos, and links to all of
our social media presences, there's one place to go, and
it's Stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, does it How
(42:16):
stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Supports
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and we just want to offer a
little bit of a trigger warning at the top of
this podcast because we are going to be talking about
revenge porn and this could be triggering to people that
(00:24):
this might have happened to. We're also going to be
talking about things that you might not want younger listeners
to hear about at the moment, so just a heads
up on that. But we are talking about this because
it's such an important conversation to be having right now,
because it's looking at the intersection of things like sexual harassment,
(00:47):
agency over you know, women's bodies, Internet privacy, all of
these different things co mingling at this time right now.
So to kick things off, let's talk about revenge porn,
also known as cyber rape. Is yeah. This is basically
sexually explicit images and videos that are accessed through computer
(01:10):
or phone hacking, theft by computer repair people, false personal ads,
or more commonly posted or forwarded by jilted x is um.
It's used for the purpose of sexual humiliation, possibly shaming,
things like that, blackmail, even and involuntary porn is generally
posted online with the subject's real name and contact information. Yeah,
(01:35):
there will often be links to these people's social media profiles,
and this kind of uh ideing of people is referred
to on the Internet as doxing. So if you hear
about doxing, uh that's that's what this isn't Doxing doesn't
always happen in terms of revenge porn, but is increasingly
one aspect of it, which makes it even more horrifying
(01:57):
because not only are your photos exposed or your videos exposed,
but harassment can then follow when people know who you
are and try to slander you in those ways. But
the precise statistics of how pervasive revenge porn is our
little tricky to come by, but we do know that
(02:17):
when it comes to people sending each other sexy, racy
nude picks and videos. According to data from the Pew
Research Center, nine percent of Americans with cell phones have
sent naked photos or videos, which is up actually from
six percent in two thousand twelve, and which is a
(02:38):
big jump. There have received a naked picture or video,
but of those, six percent have forwarded naked pictures or
videos to a third party. I am shaking my head
because how disgusting. It is disgusting. And I'll be completely
honest and say that I have witnessed this among guy
(02:59):
friends I've had. Well, there was one friend in particular
who was dating a girl for a while and they
broke up and we were hanging out one night and
he asked if I wanted to see a topless photo
of his ex, to which I said no, and why
would you even be offering me this? Yeah, this is horrifying. Um,
(03:20):
But there are also speaking of that exact situation of
breaking up with someone and then being in possession of
what some might think are compromising photos. In two thousand thirteen,
McAfee conducted a survey finding that approximately ten of ex
partners have threatened to post sexually explicit photos online, and
(03:41):
of those, six of those threats were followed through on Yeah. I, UM,
I don't know about you. I I feel like almost
every relationship that I've been in the guy at some
point asks for photos like this. And because of an
experien as I had when I was younger, which I
(04:01):
won't get into, I will never ever ever do that.
I have never agreed to to anything like this. Because
you don't know. You don't know. You could be dating
someone for ten years, you could be in love, you
could have freaking children and puppies and a house and everything.
You just don't know. If something will go wrong, that
(04:21):
person will snap, and you don't know who will end
up with those pictures. Even if your ex isn't vengeful
or crazy and doesn't do it, what if somebody gets
ahold of his phone? Yeah, because even more disconcerting is
the fact that there is clearly an appetite for revenge
porn on the internet. For instance, so called revenge porn
King a k a. The most hated man on the Internet,
(04:43):
a guy named Hunter Moore, who was in the news
recently because he was arrested his revenge porn site is
anyone Up, which is no longer in existence. Uh. He
reported that it was making thirteen thousand dollars a month.
I also saw twenty thousand dollars a month and another
off advertisements and had a mass around thirty million page views.
(05:05):
There was another revenge porn site involved in a clash
action suit, for instance, that had at least two fifty
different women's photos and attracted more than two thousand visitors
a day, right, and women are the main targets of
these kinds of sites. Men are absolutely on there too,
but women are the majority. University of Maryland law professor
(05:27):
Danielle Citron has studied the issue for her book on
Online Harassment Hate three point oh a civil rights agenda
to combat online harassment. She estimates that sixty of the
victims of online harassment, including revenge porn, are women, and
the abuse is often very sexualized. There are threats of rape,
(05:48):
their false prostitution ads, things like calling women sluts even
when the victim is a man. And when the victim
is a man, that language changes because what is the
purpose of of this malicious stuff if it's shaming, right,
shaming and embarrassing and humiliating the person. And so when
men are the targets and their pictures are posted, that
(06:09):
language does tend to revolve around homophobia, calling them gay
and and similarly there are also you know that the
sexually violent language is used against them, but usually in
terms of them wanting to have sex with other men
or be sex offenders. Just just horrific hate speech being
(06:30):
lobbed at these people. And not surprisingly, there are psychological repercussions.
This is one reason why revenge porn is sometimes referred
to as cyber rape, because for its victims, revenge porn
can trigger things like anxiety, disorder, post traum and extress
disorder and paranoia, not to mention the very real world havoc.
(06:51):
It can wreak on job prospects relationships because if you're
applying for a job or if you're in academia climbing
your way up through that, people google you. And if
your image and name and social media profile, all this
stuff is being used on revenge porn sites, that's what
(07:12):
pops up, right, And I mean it almost seems like
these kind of things, these sites are like the hydra.
I mean, yeah, you shut one down, but three more
are going to pop up in like Eastern Europe somewhere,
you know. Like it. It almost seems like the abuse
never stops because once someone post your picture and abuses
you that way, it's just going to spread. Yeah. And
(07:34):
to to get even more perspective on the impact of
revenge porn on those people whose images are being spread
around non consensually, in two thousand and eight, a Cyber
Civil Rights Initiative study found that over eight of revenge
porn victims experienced severe emotional distress and anxiety. And so
(07:57):
when did all of this start? I know that, uh,
I wanted to do an episode on revenge porn because
it's been in the news and on covered on lady
blogs more commonly, I feel like in the past two years.
But when did it start? When did how did this happen? Um? Well,
(08:19):
New York Mag's Alexa Sulis Ray in July traced it
back to the nineteen eighties because there was a Hustler
feature that asked for nude photos of women, UM with
info including their hobbies, their fantasies, and sometimes their real names. Yeah,
and there was one instance. Uh there were actually many
(08:40):
women who complained to Hustler about this when they realized
that their photos were in there. And there was one
instance kind of like old school hacking, where the photos
that had been published had actually been stolen from a couple.
And Um, while it's terrible that Hustler did that, the
fact that it was a print magazine meant that there
(09:01):
were a finite number of those magazines with those photos.
Unlike the hydra effect of revenge porn, where even if
you can stop one site or get one site to
take your photos down. That doesn't mean it's gone right absolutely,
And so on the Internet you see in two thousand
Italian researcher Sergio Messina identifying an emergent genre he calls
(09:26):
real core pornography, and this was referring to photos and
videos of ex girlfriends in particular, initially shared on Usenet groups,
so kind of popping up more on message boards and
kind of Reddit esque I'm not saying it's on Reddit
Reddit esque sites. Yeah. And later in the two thousands
(09:50):
and two thousand eight you start to get websites and
blogs dedicated to the genre appearing and often mixing real
users submitted revenge worn with staged versions. Yeah. In two
thousand porn video aggraggator x tube was claiming that the
site was getting two to three complaints a week about
(10:11):
this kind of revenge porn popping up of people going
on and seeing oh wow, hi, that is that is
me on X two. Wasn't supposed to happen. But then
two thousand ten is really where I feel like it
starts to get a lot of national and global attention
because two things happen over in New Zealand, you have
a twenty year old house painter who is the first
(10:32):
person to go to prison for posting revenge porn on Facebook.
And Facebook, now, by the way, has extremely you know,
anti revenge porn policy obviously, and they've even they'll take
down any kinds of groups associated with it at all.
And then that same year you have Hunter More, the
most hated man on the Internet, launching is anyone up
(10:54):
dot com, which is I mean, that's really the source
of the main streaming, if you can call it main
streaming of revenge born. Yeah. Um, And that again was
featuring these women's pictures along with their names and identifying details,
and according to the Daily Dot within days the site
was getting twenty to thirty submissions per day. And so
(11:17):
I'm just like imagining these floodgates opening and all of
these angry people who hate women just just being like, oh, yeah, hooray,
I finally have a way to get my rage out there. Well,
and Hunter More is and I don't think I've probably
ever described someone like this on the podcast before. We
usually try to give people the benefit of the doubt,
(11:38):
but he's a vile human being because he explicitly says
that he is out to sexually shame especially women. I
mean that that's the whole point, and he thinks it's
hilarious and to the point where he wants to docks people.
He wants you know, their entire identities exposed non consensually,
(11:59):
and he wants to harass people. And the way that
is anyone up really became more well known was when
it actually was not revenge porn of a woman but
actually a guy I forget. He was in some like
old alternative band, but they got some crotch shots I
think of him, and it went viral on the Internet.
(12:20):
And that incident turned Hunter more into this gross anti
hero because he definitely has fans and women who are
fans of his, which I really don't understand, but he
in a large way is to blame for a lot
of revenge porn going on. Yeah, but around this time
(12:41):
you also have you know, thank you Internet, uh, the
rise of the creep shot, which is basically taking pictures
of women's crotches and breast without their consent and public
places like you know, doing those upskirt shots and posting
those all over the internet. Yeah, and there are just
discussed tips that have been passed around on Reddit. That
(13:02):
was the first place that I read about creepshots. Um,
and it's technically not porn, but it's still a blatant
violation of women's privacy. Yeah. Well, and I think this
just goes back to the fact that there are a
lot of I was gonna say people, but they're I mean,
I think there are a lot of men out there
(13:22):
who just don't think that women deserve their own not
only sphere of safety, but you know, just to be
a freaking person. Well, there's a lot of gross power
dynamics in revenge porn because it is very rapey, it
is harassing, and it is essentially deriving pleasure out of
(13:45):
other people's humiliation, right, And it's it's saying, you know, women, uh,
women who have had sex with me, obviously your slats
for having sex, even though I'm glad you had sex
with me, and I'm going to shame you for it, exactly.
Kire Cachet, though, writing over at The Guardian, had an
interesting theory about the rise of revenge porn and creepshots,
(14:05):
linking it to paparazzi culture, because if you think about
how rapid those photographers have become, particularly in pursuit of
photos of young actresses and compromising positions. I mean the
heyday of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears
going out and partying in those you know, infamous photos
(14:27):
of Britney's Spears getting out of a limousine not wearing
any underwear, being able to see it for skirt. I mean,
and and and they thrive. Those photos thrive. Yeah, well,
I mean. And the more recent example, obviously would be
Kate Middleton, who was photographed sunbathing topless on vacation. But
(14:48):
when you look at how far away her villa was
from the freaking road where the picture was taken, I mean,
she was sought after, and people were victim blaming her.
People we're saying like, oh, well, you know, you slut,
you shouldn't have been sunbathing with your shirt off, but
she was in a completely private home and who cares. Yeah, well, yes,
(15:11):
of course, and who cares? But this person, the photographer actually,
you know, went after her. Well. One name that comes
up a lot in articles on this topic is Marianne
Frank's and she's an associate professor of law at the
University of Miami and a cyber harassment expert, and she
spoke to the Guardian about this, and she said, what
unites creep shots, the Kate Middleton photographs, the revenge porn
(15:35):
websites is that they all feature the same fetishization of
non consensual sexual activity with women who either you don't
have access to or have been denied future access to.
And it's really this product of rage and entitlement. And
when I read that, I actually kind of sat back
in my chair for a minute because I don't know
(15:56):
if there's any better way to sum up the ickiness
around this, the feelings, the the general undercurrent of these images.
It's that rage and entitlement. Absolutely, and unfortunately a lot
of times when people hear about anecdotes, whether it's you know,
Kate Middleton having you know, those topless photos taken, or
(16:20):
women who have been the victims of revenge porn. Also
men who have been the victims of revenge porn. I
don't want to leave them entirely out of this conversation,
but a lot of times the response to it is, well,
you should have known better. It gets very victim blame me,
And I'm going to acknowledge publicly on this podcast that
I have been guilty of that before, as well of
(16:41):
thinking well, why did you Why would you possibly ever
send someone a topless photo or naked photo or any
kind of pornographic image of yourself in this day and age,
shouldn't you know better? But I was just so I
hate that I did that because us reading about it,
(17:01):
I realize now how completely victim blame me. That is
because if you are in a loving and committed relationship
with someone, and you know what, even if you're not,
even if you're just having sex with somebody, there is
that implicit understanding you would think that what happens between
when you have sex with someone, you probably aren't having
sex in front of a crowd of people. So similarly,
(17:25):
when you if you were to send a sex of
some sort, there is that implicit understanding that you're not
sending it to a crowd of people, right, You're sending
it to one person, and you want as a human being,
you want to trust other human beings. And I think
the fact is, and I totally meant to having these
thoughts too, why would she ever send that? Why would
(17:45):
she even take the picture and have it on her
own personal phone? I mean, but there is that that um,
that unfortunate truth, which is that the Internet is not yours.
You don't have your own personal Internet, it's not faithe
and sometimes you can't trust people. And so I mean,
the question should not be should women be taking these photos?
(18:08):
Shouldn't we be talking more about why are other people
men strangers? Why are they breaking this trust and sending
the photos out? And it's not just men to who
will forward on these kinds of messages. There is plenty
of similar slut shaming that women fuel to other women
as well. And I mean a lot of this conversation
(18:29):
about the legalities around revenge born or the illegalities around it.
And also this victim blaming response revolves too around the
fact that a lot of the photos and question are selfies,
their women taking them of theirselves or guys taking them
of themselves. And uh, it's the same kind of thing
(18:50):
of telling a sexual assault victim, well, why would you
dress like that? And that selfie issue of it being
a woman willingly being in a state of undress and
capturing that image is used again and again and again
to undercut the validity of you know, the the psychological
(19:11):
and real world repercussions, negative repercussions of revenge porn and
just saying well, you know what, you shouldn't shouldn't have
done that. You shouldn't have done that to the women,
not to hunter more. Yeah, well we know he definitely
shouldn't have done that. But the good news, and yes,
there is good news to this conversation, is that as
(19:32):
this is becoming more of a higher profile issue, there
has been a lot of legal conversation around it, and
a lot to a growing number of revenge porn targets
victims however you want to call it, who are taking
back the power to create some kind of workable solution
(19:52):
to this growing issue. And we're going to talk about
that when we come right back from a quick break.
So when we left off, we were talking about the
whole victim blaming aspect of revenge porn and how so
many people say, well, the woman or or the man
never should have taken these photos, when really we should
(20:13):
be asking the question why are people posting these photos
on the internet for strangers to see? Um? And I mean,
you know a lot of these incidents will drive the
victims to hide, change their names, moved to a different
city because it essentially ruins their lives. Yeah, because you've
got to remember that that dock sing often happens alongside it.
(20:35):
So people find out where you live, where you work,
what you you know, do on the weekends via your
Facebook profile. Um. But as we said, there is good
ish news um in this conversation, which is that there
are people who are making it their mission to figure
(20:56):
out a way to, if not stop it, to gonnaize
it because it is, I mean a lot of it
is criminal activity when when you think about the harm
that is often wrought. And one woman who has really
come to the forefront of this was a victim of
revenge porn. Her name is Holly Jacobs. She actually changed
her name to Holly Jacob's due to the fact that
(21:19):
her Google identity is completely smeared by revenge porn and
she really wouldn't be able to live have a professional
identity outside of naked photos of herself. And it's all
started when she had been dating a guy for a
while and they were a long distance for two and
a half years, and over the course of that time,
she amassed and he amassed a collection of you know,
(21:43):
sexually explicit photos and videos that they would send to
each other's away to kind of bridge that long distance gap.
And after they broke up, she thought that everything was fine,
that it was amicable, and then all of a sudden,
one day, her friend frantically calls her, sing, you need
to check your Facebook account because someone changed your profile
(22:04):
picture to a nude photo of you. And this is
happening in two thousand and eight, And all of a sudden,
you know, even though she was able to change the
Facebook picture, more than a dozen photos of her had
landed on various porn sites and this, you know, And
so she works to get all of them taken down.
She thinks everything's totally kosher. But then in two thousand,
(22:27):
eleven years later, she receives an anonymous email that linked
to a U r L she had never seen before,
and there again it had started with more photos of
her linking to her Facebook profile, email address, phone number,
and even information about where she worked. Yeah, and so
she's also getting harassed during this time, obviously, I mean,
(22:50):
you know, the person posted all of her personal information.
So she's getting harassed by strangers. And by the time
that site was shut down, her her pictures have spread
to more than two hundred other websites, but when she
saw legal recourse, people didn't know what to do. I
mean the She called the Miami police and they were like, uh,
(23:11):
nothing is amiss inside of your home. What we can't
do anything to help you probably shouldn't have taken those picks.
And even lawyers, a lot of lawyers turned down her
case because they, you know, they're like, well, what do
you want us to do? Prosecute the internet? Sorry? Uh right, yeah.
Basically they said, you know, look, you were a legal adult.
(23:34):
You chose to send these pictures to someone, and then
that person turned around and possibly did something with them. Sorry,
we can't help you. But in April of she missed.
Jacobs actually became the first person in the state of
Florida to sue an X for the alleged distribution of
revenge porn. Now we should also say that, you know,
(23:55):
the outcome of that case is that all the charges
were dropped against her ex boyfriend, Ryan Say, after prosecutors
that they couldn't find sufficient proof linking him to all
of those other you know, the distribution basically exactly. Um.
But now Jacobs hasn't stopped. She's going public with her experience. Um,
her story has been told to me. We read a
(24:16):
story about her in Cosmopolitan magazine, actually surprisingly good and
comprehensive article about revenge porn in Cosmo. Folks times sort
of change in apparently, but you might hear her her
name a lot because it's now her mission to help
bring down revenge porn. And she's even started an organization
to you know, empower victims with legal resources, and is
(24:40):
also starting a petition or has started a petition for
a federal law against revenge porn. And that's the tricky
issue is that the laws around what goes on the
internet are very challenging for people who's naked picks have
(25:00):
been non consensually posted because it's not necessarily criminal. Hunter More,
for instance, was recently arrested by the FBI in late
January of two thousand fourteen, but he wasn't arrested for
all of the revenge born that he posted. He was
arrested for hacking. Yeah. Um. His charges include conspiracy, unauthorized
(25:22):
access to a protected computer to obtain information, and seven
counts of aggregated identity theft. Because we're we're you know,
we're living in an era where all of our laws
rules regulations about the Internet can't keep up. They just
can't keep up with the way that things are developing online.
And we just haven't gotten there yet to protect people
(25:44):
as well as we should on the internet. Well, and
they're all these fears about free speech and a slippery
slope where if you start regulating the kind of things
that can and cannot go on the internet. First of all,
good luck trying that. But um, but there are legitimate
concerns about carefully wording laws that get passed to make
(26:08):
sure that it doesn't have a chilling effect on other
kinds of speech. And so, for instance, in the case
of hunter More, he always spoke very openly to news
outlets about what he did and his intentions with his
revenge porn website. He was, you know, he could care
less because of a little thing called the Communications Decency
(26:29):
Act which was passed in and in that there is
section two thirty which grants website operators immunity from lawsuits
over their users speech, which was a measure intended to
preserve online free speech. So, in addition to giving hunter
More some legal shelter to be able to post user
(26:51):
generated content, which is what all that revenge porn is
he's not you know, he's not taking those photos. This
is also though the section thirty. This also allows for say,
The New York Times to include comments sections with their
you know, under their articles. And when you're a commenter,
you can say all sorts of hateful things, and the
(27:12):
New York Times isn't gonna get blasted for that, right,
And and lawyers have pointed out that the whole obscenity
argument is an exception to section two thirty. You know, pornography, obscenity.
Obscenity is not protected speech. And you mentioned user generated content.
Another lawyer was saying, it's not like these things are
(27:32):
truly literally user generated, Yeah, because the the person who
generated that content was not complicit in it being posted. Yeah.
And so when you look at the lack of anti
revenge porn laws and you look at copyright law, um,
(27:54):
copyright law is probably your best avenue for forgetting pictures
taken down. Yeah. There is a whole rundown about this
in the American Bar Association Journal talking about how with
copyright law, if the photo is a selfie, a sexy selfie,
then the victim owns that copyright automatically without registering it,
He or she is free to send takedown notices to
(28:15):
the website's operator under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, And
if you were to do that, that should also compel
that website to d index whatever pages had your photos
as well, so that would help scrub your Google identity clean. Yeah, well,
a lot of good that's going to do you, though,
(28:36):
if it's based in a different country, that's right, because
a lot of times foreign web hosts don't really care
too much about US copyright violations. And also the Electronic
Frontier Foundation and organizations like the a c L. You
are hesitant again about revenge peorn laws because of those
First Amendment concerns, because they say, well, if you start
(28:57):
opening this up, you could have public figures doing wkipedia
for unsavory information about their personal lives being posted, or
their professional lives, or business owners suing yelp if there
are negative reviews. But there are laws that have been
enacted that are still protective of free speech and of
the First Amendment. Because we're all about the First Amendment.
(29:18):
We're a podcast for crying out Loud. We love the
First Amendment. But there are anti revenge porn laws that
have been crafted and legal groups that are looking into
how the best way to institute these laws which are
happening right now in the United States on more of
a state by state basis. Yeah, back in two thousand three,
(29:40):
New Jersey actually became the first state to make it
a felony to distribute sexual photos of another person without
permissions in New Jerseys on the cutting edge of that.
Fast forward ten years in October of California, Governor Jerry
Brown signed an anti revenge porn law. But it has
a ginormous loophole. It doesn't protect victims who took the
(30:03):
photos themselves, and these photos make up about eight percent
of revenge porn pictures. Yeah, and on top of that,
even though California made a big to do about this law,
the crime is only considered a misdemeanor punishable by up
to six months in jail or one thousand dollar fine.
And so that's another thing that legal scholars are talking
about in terms of you not only need to include
(30:26):
that selfie provision in there because of revenge porn or selfies,
and also you've got to make sure that the possible
criminal impact of this is basically scary enough to people
like Hunter More and Holly Jacobs, who we sided earlier,
(30:47):
and other people are working very hard to get similar
laws on the books in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin. So I mean people are actively trying to
make a dent in this. I mean, you know, we're
we're fighting against technology. It's kind of a moving target
at all times. But I you know, they are fighting
to say that we have rights. We have rights even
(31:10):
on the internet. Yeah, and this isn't a US centric
issue either. I mean, in late Australia past legislation making
it illegal to distribute explicit images without a person's consent,
and more recently in January Israel band revenge porn and
it's now punishable by up to five years in prison. Um.
(31:31):
But again, yeah, it's a it's an issue of how
do you craft these laws in an effective enough way
to where you know, you discourage perpetrators from doing it
in the first place, and also protect free speech so
that it doesn't have a chilling effect, and you also
protect potential victims. Because this is all too tied up
with our concept of you know, what is sexual harassment,
(31:55):
what is cyber harassment? You know, women's agency over their body.
I mean, so it's an intersection of so many different
things that we don't really do a good job of
talking about to begin with, right, And that's why one
of those law journals that we were looking at stressed
the importance of educating our lawmakers basically on all of
(32:17):
these issues, not only what is revenge porn, you know,
where are these photos coming from, the the issue of
manipulation and abuse, but also what these people are going through,
that these victims are likely going to experience, you know,
job loss, you know, loss of income, but also emotional
(32:38):
and mental distress. And it is interesting to Holly Jacobs
has said that she doesn't want to be called a victim.
She wants to, you know, be empowered through this um
and you know, to to make life better not only
for herself but for other people who have been affected
by this. And one thing that some people might be
thinking is, well, hey, there was a much easier solution
(33:00):
to this, which is stop taking photos of your vagina
and sending it out. And while I absolutely think that
young women and men, but especially young women, because we
make up a bulk of revenge porn targets, the young
women need to be educated about what can happen and
(33:21):
how this unfortunately is a part of the digital landscape.
But the answer is not ladies, put your tops on
and put your phones away, but rather digging deep and
figuring out how, you know, to hold people accountable because
like it or not, sexting is a part also of
our modern sex lives as well. Yeah, and well, and
(33:45):
unfortunately what goes along with that is, you know, maybe
the younger generations of boys looking at sex sis that's
plural as almost currency, Like look, how cool I am
that I have all these topless photo us of all
these girls in my class right right, And not to
be totally cliche about it, but it is the thing
(34:06):
of like, we have more power than ever before to
consume porn, and to consume is sexual communication with people.
I mean, sexting has made I'm sure for a lot
of couples long distance relationships a lot easier to deal
with in that regard. But with that great power now
comes the great responsibility. And what you know the legal
system has done to this point, I mean, as if
(34:29):
they could have anticipated it. But we're we're lacking on
the responsibility part absolutely well. But there are avenues uh,
that you can take to control this yourself. UM. One
uh this and this advice goes back to that Cosmo
article that that Kristen sided earlier. Number one is to
(34:49):
copyright your pictures, um because this allows you to send
those takedown notices to websites using them and to search engines.
And you can do that at be right dot gov.
But remember you don't even have to go and register
your photos at copyright dot gov. If you took a
photo of yourself, you automatically legally own the copyright to
(35:10):
that photo. So if you are sending sexy selfies, you
might want to keep a log of them, keep a
file of all of whatever photos you're sending out. Not
to be paranoid, but if you want to make sure
to c y A, then see your copyright. And if
you do see your photos, you can contact the web
(35:32):
host directly. I mean, because a lot of times US
based companies don't want to get sued. One of there
was a recent civil suit that go Daddy, which is
a prominent web hosting company, was pulled into because it
was kind of revolutionary because it wasn't just going after
the revenge porn site, but also Go Daddy for even
(35:53):
hosting it. And I can't remember what the exact um
results of that were, but they didn't want anything to
do with it. Yeah, but that is one way too
that if you know that, if you see your pictures,
contact the web host. Yeah, and uh, the voices of
authority in this area, which it's a very small number
(36:15):
of people who are really really have expertise in this. Uh,
they encourage women to get back out there. Basically, you know,
it's it's natural to want to shut down your entire
Internet presence because you're being harassed, but people urge you
to actually get back out there even more. Join those
online groups, make profiles, blog all of the stuff they say,
(36:38):
because the more material you're posting that's newly generated, the
further down your photos will go. You also want to
do things like maybe set a Google alert for your
name and if one of those pictures comes up, you'll
already be ready to tackle it. And there are a
growing number of organizations that you can reach out to
UM to figure out any kind of legal course you
(37:00):
could take, or just help with getting photos taken down, etcetera.
UM or just connecting with other people who are going
through similar situations. So organizations like Without My Consent, Army
of She and Revenge Porn dot org. Those are just
a few of these UM advocate groups that are now
(37:21):
starting to pop up more. And if you if you
don't have a pencil and paper right now, don't worry.
We'll have information like all of our episodes sources over
its stuff Mom Never told You dot com if you
click on the podcast link on the homepage will include
all of the links to everything that we've been talking about,
so um you can if you want more information, you
(37:42):
can find it there as well. Well. I think it's
I think it's so incredibly important that these women are
speaking out. Um, you know, I think, yeah, your natural
inclination would be to just hide and and try to
ignore it and make it go away, move to a
different country, a different state. Um. That the fact that
these women are speaking up and saying no, I'm taking
(38:03):
control of this situation. I want other people women, men, everyone,
especially younger people who you know, that's a whole other
issue of the generational divide in this technology stuff. But
you know, making people more aware of the damage that
can be done. Yeah, and I mean, speaking of kind
of wanting to hide, this is too one of those
(38:23):
topics where I would much prefer to bury my head
in the sand and pretend that it's not happening, because
it is horrifying. It's off. Yeah, it's disgusting. But that's
one reason too that we decided to talk about it.
I mean we I don't think we've really ever talked
about porn on the podcast, um, but this is one
where we gotta we gotta address it, especially for our audience. Yeah,
(38:45):
for sure. So what we've been talking about resonates with you,
and you want to talk to us about it. We
want to hear from you. Moms Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send us emails. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and also messages
on Facebook. And we've got a couple of letters to
share with you right now. So for a little bit
(39:06):
of a lighter diversion, we've had a couple of letters
here from our episode on gender and Coffee, and this
one comes from a gentleman who who didn't include his name.
He's a Turkish gentleman though, so he writes, as I
have just finished listening to your specialty Coffee and Gender podcast.
I was very interested in your historical approach to the
(39:26):
modern day situation being a Turk and enjoying coffee, very
strong coffee. As a matter of fact, I wanted to
let you know that the best coffee is made by
women in my country. In fact, it's almost an art.
A good woman, to Mary should be able to make
Turkish coffee with plenty of foam on top. The more foam,
the better you are. Also, as a pastime, we drink
Turkish coffee and when done, flip our little cups over
(39:48):
the saucers, wait for it to cool, and then read
our fortunes. Just about anybody knows a thing or two
about coffee cup reading, even guys. Sometimes drinking coffee and
reading fortunes can take hours combined, and that's a great versation.
So my point with all of this is that with
such a small cup of coffee, you can really enjoy
the process much longer, and that women can be great
(40:08):
coffee makers. I think my coffee cup fortune, though, would
just always say I'm tired. I'm tired. I need you
need a nap in your future and possibly a trip
to the bathroom after. Yes, um, I have a letter
here from Michael uh. He says I'm a male barista
at Starbucks, and the moment I saw this episode pop up,
I knew it was must hear material. There is absolutely
(40:31):
a gender dividing coffee. I currently work in a store
where the female employees greatly outnumber the male employees, but
most of the time, questions about coffee get fielded to
me because I'm a guy. Customers seem to think that
I know more about it than the women around me,
even though many of them have been with the company
for the same amount of time or longer. I even
once had a customer snap in the face of a
(40:52):
female manager to get her attention. Understandably, this was not
taken well and she was not happy about it. I
also wanted to point out a out gendered beverages. Several
of my co workers and I have considered charting demographics
of drink orders because they definitely seem to follow a pattern.
If a group of teenage girls walk up, my instinct
is to get the blender ready, because, without fail, there
(41:14):
will be a majority of them ordering for appuccinos. That said,
there are just as many female customers I have who
want just straight espresso or black coffee, and I wouldn't
necessarily consider a cappuccino to be a feminine drink, because
if made right, it's going to have a stronger coffee
flavor than a latte of the same size. Since cappuccino
is one third espresso, one third steamed milk, and one
(41:34):
third milk foam, and a latte is just espresso and
steamed milk, well, I think it's ridiculous to assign genders
to beverages. If I had to chart it, I would
place a cappuccino on the more masculine end of the spectrum. Personally,
I prefer a simple iced coffee or ice latte. So
thank you for that window into coffee making, Michael, and
thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff at
(41:56):
Discovery dot com is our email address and for all
of our podcast, blogs, videos, and links to all of
our social media presences, there's one place to go, and
it's Stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, does it How
(42:16):
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