Complicity in Revenge Porn?

I was reading a piece in HuffPo on the question of complicity in revenge porn: if you share lascivious photos of yourself with someone and that person ends up posting them as revenge porn, are you partially complicit in that for having shared the photos in the first place? (Just to remove any unnecessary suspense, my answer to the question is a resounding no.)

I really mean “media,” not just photos. It could be photos or videos or text messages or whatever. For the sake of simplicity I’m just going to say “photos” in this post as a shorthand.

As the article said:

In the same breath where harsher criminal penalties and creative legal strategies to combat revenge porn were applauded, a law enforcement official proclaimed disbelief at the fact that someone would have shared a naked photo of themselves with someone else, since this was something unimaginable to them. It begged the question that continually comes up in conversations around revenge porn: Why would a person share a naked photo with someone else?

The writer of the article says that this illustrates a larger issue, which I would summarize by saying that definitions of privacy are changing but that the definition is changing at different rates for different people; the “law enforcement official” mentioned above is maybe clinging to an older definition of privacy than the new generation. (I’m not sure what generation I belong to, the new one or the old one. Just in case, I plan to keep having sex with 20-something girls in a desperate effort to pretend I’m not old.)

I think the privacy thing is definitely part of it, but only part. I think the issue is bigger than that: one of the people responsible for defending the law is a little bit old fashioned, and can’t understand how people are changing, including our views on privacy but also including the ways we have and view sex in general. Some (or many) lawmakers have the same problem. So laws (and the enforcement of laws) will always lag a bit behind society. “What’s this here ‘cyber sex’ people keep talking about? I prefer my sex the old fashioned way: naked and sweaty – and in person!” Well the younger generation likes that kind of sex too, but we also like cyber, and whether you personally enjoy it or not isn’t really the issue, is it?

So I see the question of legal complicity in revenge porn being a complicated one for lawmakers for another half decade or so, as they’re forced to come to grips with new definitions of not just privacy but also of sex in general. Most of the population, unfortunately, will get there before lawmakers do, and long before law enforcement does.

But there’s another form of complicity that some people might find difficult to get their heads around (though I personally don’t): What about celebrities? Are they complicit in revenge porn simply by virtue of being celebrities? Are they open game when it comes to posting their most intimate moments for the world to see? I see lots of people positing that celebrities have less right to privacy, simply by virtue of being celebrities, so does that extend to revenge porn as well? I saw a post on Boinkology that mentioned some revenge porn being posted against Hulk Hogan. Is he a less sympathetic victim of revenge porn than a poor defenseless white girl?

Well, in a sense, yes, I have less sympathy for him than I do for many female victims of revenge porn, but when I say less I don’t mean I have none, or even that I have “little sympathy.” I have a lot of sympathy for him (for this), even if I do have slightly more sympathy for the average victim. Just because Mr. Hogan is a celebrity it doesn’t mean anyone has any right to post his private moments without his consent. The factor of a person being a celebrity doesn’t change the equation at all when it comes to revenge porn: it’s wrong, and it’s no more or less wrong when the victim is a celebrity.