Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Your Bodies, Your Selves...Naked Celebrity Pics

I've read a lot of articles about the latest naked celebrity photo leak: Facebook, Gawker, Jezebel, Slate...well, hell, everyone has something to say about it. Welp, here's my two cents.

First, I'd like to address the way people are calling the theft of these photos a "sex crime". Lena Dunham was one of the first people I saw use that term to refer to this incident. I tried to find a standard definition of a sex crime, and in the majority of cases the definition always involved a physical component. From http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/sex-crimes.html

A number of different offenses fall into the sex crimes category, but they generally involve illegal or coerced sexual conduct against another individual. Every state has laws against prohibiting the various types of sex crimes, such as rape and sexual assault, and each state has its own time limit (or “statute of limitations”) in which victims of sex crimes may file a lawsuit against the alleged offender. 
 The website http://sex-crimes.laws.com/ lists a number of offenses including child pornography, molestation, statutory rape. It does not list distributing personal photographs without consent. I found a rather broad definition of "sex offense" from fbi.gov:

Sex offenses (except forcible rape, prostitution, and commercialized vice)—Offenses against chastity, common decency, morals, and the like.  Incest, indecent exposure, and statutory rape are included.  Attempts are included.
I don't know what an "offense against chastity" would even look like, but none of these say to me that this was a sex crime.

Now, I'm not saying that this was not a crime. It certainly falls under the criminalization of hacking in general, a breach of personal data that should be handled with the same levity as any data breach. The person(s) responsible, if found, should be prosecuted, along the same lines as Christopher Chaney. I can't imagine how violated and embarrassed the victims must feel. If it were me I'm not sure how I could show my face in public. It sucks.

But. But. It is not a sex crime, and frankly the unwillingness of some circles to acknowledge the other side of this —the responsibility on the part of the actresses in question—is perplexing and just plain stupid. People do foolish things, they make foolish mistakes. It makes you feel bad for them, but it does not negate their part in what happens to them. And this is the second thing I want to address, and it's an opinion that will get you flooded with accusations that you are victim-blaming, supporting rape culture, etc. GTFO.

Listen, you have every right to take selfies, naked or otherwise. Do you. Congratulations on feeling so secure in your body and yourself that you want to express it in that way. Don't be naive though. Know that just as hackers can grab credit card data from Target and Home Depot, your online data is vulnerable as well, and if you put that shit online you are assuming risk. It kills me when people do risky shit and then act all surprised when it goes pear-shaped, especially since this isn't the first time this has happened. Did no one pay attention when this happened to Scarlett Johansson? Christina Aguilera? Jessica Alba? Vanessa Hudgens? I mean, damn man. You'd have to be living under a rock to not have some reticence about uploading your naked pics to the cloud.

Okay, so maybe they didn't do it on purpose. Maybe they had some sort of automatic upload enabled through the iCloud service. Is ignorance an excuse? In many other circumstances we'd be quick to say no, it's not an excuse, but here we're willing to give them a complete pass and dissolve them of all personal responsibility. Again I say: GTFO.

I hope they prosecute the guy who did this. I applaud sites like Reddit that have been working vigilantly to remove links to the photos and shut down discussions about it. I hope the victims are able to recover from this and don't suffer too much emotionally or professionally. I hope they delete all of their nude selfies and refrain from uploading them without taking proper precautions (like stronger passwords, two-factor authentication, encryption, etc.). I hope others, celebrities and mere mortals alike, learn from this and do the same.