Revenging

Revenge porn has been in the public consciousness lately, and there's always been this nagging concern I've had about discussions to wipe it out. It's a little confusing, because I certainly don't support revenge porn. But I am concerned with anything the forces of chastity could use as a gambit in the war on porn. Anything at all porn or sex-related that even perverts can agree is unconscionable is a perfect place for the prudes to wage their war. Crack down on all the bad sex, and it tightens up our freedoms, while not really giving the opposition any room to counter, without making themselves look extremely bad.

Case in point, who could possibly be in defense of revenge porn, except those mean people who indulge in it, or else immoral perverts who don't care who gets hurt as long as somebody gets off? Right? But let's look at the so-called solution to revenge porn: criminalize the posting of any nude or sexually explicit images that you don't have the consent of the depicted individuals to post. Does it solve the problem? Sure. But the law is a blunt object. Can you see how this might put a chokehold on the sharing of sexy pics, when determining if someone has permission to post them is such a tricky thing to determine?

The foundation of this approach rests on an unchallenged assumption - that nudity and sexual activity are intrinsically private acts, and that the exposure of these acts (sometimes even *with* consent) can be uniquely damaging to the person involved. A lot of the time, this is even true, but do you know why? Because we insist that it be so. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are ashamed of our own bodies and sexualities, and we shame other people for theirs. It's a vicious cycle. And this so-called "solution" to revenge porn just feeds into those attitudes, which, ironically, supports the acid environment which allows revenge porn to exist - if we weren't so ashamed of our bodies and sexualities, then exposing somebody's body or sexual activity would have no ill effect on that person.

So here's the real solution: end slut-shaming. Am I against people being publicly humiliated through the nonconsensual exposure of their intimate moments? Absolutely! But the solution is not to reinforce body and sex shame, and restrict people's freedom to express themselves, and make the enthusiastic sharing of sexual thoughts and images with others seem all the more creepy. The solution is to stop humiliating people who are exposed in this way (voluntarily or not). Call me a radical (because I am), but I think sharing people's sexually intimate moments should only be discouraged, much less criminalized, if the people doing it are motivated by the desire to harm, rather than the (evil, according to the puritans) desire to increase the amount of sexual pleasure being experienced by the world's population. (It occurs to me that the latter approach, which I espouse, is one of the Marquis de Sade's better legacies).

(This, also, is an excellent situation for determining the difference between true sex positives, who are concerned with sex's potential to bring people pleasure, versus the confused sex negative feminists who call themselves sex positive, but are overly concerned with political correctness, and don't want anybody experiencing any kind of sexual pleasure that might hurt the delicate sensibilities of those who dislike sex).