Stop revenge pornography
The act—defined as uploading or sharing intimate pictures or videos without the subject’s consent—has grown rapidly along with social media and the immediacy of phone applications.
It seems quite exciting and in order to share nude pictures or videos of people that you are no so close to. Actually, there is a sense of gratification when you hit the post or send button to share the nudes.
It’s all good to do so until it happens to you. That is when you will realise how bad this practice is. Being cheated on is not enough reason for revenge porn. It is bad and a crime.
I have seen how people’s faces lit up and the wide smiles they have when they share such pictures. They make sure that everyone who hasn’t seen them, sees them.
There has been an escalation of sexually explicit images and videos circulating on social media networks. Often these originate from jilted wives and boyfriends whose aim is to name and shame either their husbands or girlfriends. They tell whoever cares to listen to them how sad they are that their loved ones have been cheating on them. The proof of their loved ones’ unfaithfulness is the circulating of the nudes.
The images or videos may be made by a partner of an intimate relationship with the knowledge and consent of the subject, or it may be made without their knowledge. The possession of the material may be used by the perpetrators to punish them for ending the relationship, or for cheating on them.
Some justify it that if the girl was caught cheating with their man, she deserves to be named and shamed in public so that she stops what they call ‘husband snatching tendencies’.
Nobody ‘snatches’ an unwilling husband. He has to be willing to be ‘snatched’. This simply means the woman you are shaming didn’t just fall for your man on her own, rather there was a mutual feeling between the two. So, stop making it look as though it is the woman’s fault only.
It is quite disheartening that sometimes it is women who are in the forefront of shaming a fellow woman and sharing her nude pictures. This has to stop. If your man is cheating on you, go deal with him.
Revenge porn has catastrophic effects on the victims. Most of the times those who post such images are accompanied by identification information such as their full name, where they live and work, or go to school. This means when a victim’s name is Googled, say before a job interview, sales call, or even date, the search results can do irreparable harm to everything from their career to their love life.
Our phones are ‘weapons of destruction’ for people’s lives. You do not want to be that person who had a hand in someone’s death. People have committed suicide because of revenge porn. You can help stop this by not being part of the gang that shares and publishes such images or videos.
