With the #MeToo movement finally having brought few changes in the minds of the more liberal patriarchs, it finally is nice to see some kind of positive reform. However, one issue that mostly remains unaddressed is online sexual violence. This is because most people do not understand what specifics would be termed as explicit, intimate or harassment and where the line remains when you are not face-to-face.
This article will deal with why leaking intimate photos is still a thing, why people often take part in this heinous act openly, how this has become a culture and how it impacts the victim.
Societal pressure and the culture of victim-blaming
Society connects purity, dignity and honor to a girl’s remaining “modest”, “covered” and “unpenetrated”. This specifies a woman’s agency to be modest. It takes away the possibility that even girls could dream to be something amazing because unlike boys, they need to first worry about what people think about them and only after that can they hope of becoming anything. Being a woman is hard.
This is a direct byproduct of the ever-existing patriarchy. This means that regardless of contribution, a girl’s value resides in her state of remaining sexually inactive and unwilling. This is the worst form of objectification. Furthermore, this makes the opinions of any woman by itself less relevant, because in order for the opinions to hold value, the woman first has to adhere to the expectations of the society (being covered and unnoticed). This also enhances the culture of victim-blaming.
Victim-blaming is what the name suggests, blaming the victim instead of the criminal. In other words, accusing the wrong party and vilifying the wrong action. By tying a woman’s dignity to how many people have seen her, we shift the burden of hate from the criminal that leaked her photos to the victim. Furthermore, it destroys a girl’s will to live upon being violated, because now, people would judge her, they will treat her like property, and she would have absolutely no value in her own community. She will be termed as a whore now.
By making comments that indicate that the person should never have clicked the photos in the first place, we blame the victim directly.
This is because we propagate the idea that the assaulter’s leaking the nudes depended on the victim’s clicking the photos. So, in stead of blaming the animals for being animals, we blame the prey; painting the picture that the animals are perhaps not as much animals.
It also gives the assaulter an incentive to keep violating other vulnerable women, because he knows that if he is ever exposed, the girls will be humiliated, not him. So, if a woman does not give him her intimate photos willfully, he will try to get them forcefully; because he does not have the burden of punishment. The world is run by vicious men. Criminals mostly walk free. If a girl is being violated, due to this elaborate system, she will probably never speak up. Because if she does, she confesses to “being a whore”.
In her mind, she sees herself as the destroyer of her own sanctity; an idea entirely fed to her by dint of this societal system.
So, most girls will just accept the abuse.
This also forces women into toxic relationships. If a woman chooses to come out of one, she needs to question her decision again and again because if she asks for a break, the boy will just threaten to send her nudes to her conservative parents. The girl fears her parents’ reaction, and the girl fears what other people think about her. The girl chooses inaction, the state of doing nothing even if the world were to burn.
When American popstar Rihanna’s nudes got leaked, the internet had an outburst. When feminists and moderates spoke up about consent, keyboard warriors pointed to the fact that she has done voluntary nude photoshoots before and therefore everyone has a right to see her body now. Close to nobody respected the fact that she consented to her fans seeing her naked in the magazine she signed into, but she never consented to anyone viewing her the same way when she clicked photos of herself in the warmth of her own bedsheets.
This kind of victim blaming will continue, because we as a population have normalized this culture. Immediate actions will help temporarily, a permanent solution will take both guts and dedication.