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| Jennifer Lawrence (Courtesy of WikimediaCommons) |
Comments like these perpetuate the blaming of victims of sexual assault and sexual crimes. In this case, it is very important to realize that Lawrence's photos were not, in fact, leaked; they were stolen from her personal iCloud account. Someone hacked into her account, stole the photo files, and posted them on a 4chan.org, a site with many online messaging boards. From there, the photos were posted to many other sites. Although Lawrence took these photos in private, her intimate photos are now on the internet for anyone to see. She is currently working with the FBI, Apple, and Twitter to remedy the crime.
While the concept of victim blaming is not new, a strong response against it is. Emma Watson tweeted "Even worse than seeing women's privacy violated on social media is reading the accompanying comments that show such a lack of empathy." Anne Hathaway told Matt Lauer "I'm sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants" after a tabloid photographer took and released a photo of her exiting a car without wearing underwear.
Although the illegal release of Lawrence's and many other celebrities' photos is disgusting and tragic, the conversation and outrage that followed shows that many people are fed up with society and the media's treatment of women. To constantly abuse and blame women for acts that are committed against them, against their will, is ridiculous. Hopefully with more outspoken celebrities and more backlash against acts and "leaks" like this, there won't be any more destruction of privacy.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
I agree with you that the media abuses and objectifies women in today's culture, and it is disgusting to see.
ReplyDeleteI feel sorry for Jennifer Lawrence, and the other female celebrities, that have been the victim of these privacy scandals. Nobody deserves to have their private photographs stolen from them for the entire world to see.
However, my concern is that she took those photos to begin with, and whenever a photograph is taken, people should understand that there is the slightest possibility that it could one day be known worldwide. If people are worried about personal photos being leaked, either don't have them done, or ensure they're on devices that don't have opportunity for internet access (a personal camera, for example). With it being on the iCloud, typically most phones in today's society are linked with the internet, and has the potential to go viral, whether it be at the hand of a hacker or an accident of the beholder.
While I agree with your first point, I don't think that we should place blame on a victim of an act like this. She took these very personal photos with the assumption that they would not be hacked or stolen. She should not be held responsible for taking photos of herself; we should instead be holding people to a better standard where they do not steal and share someone's personal photos without their consent.
DeleteFirst, I'm happy to see blogs creating interplay between writer/reader like this. Second, Elizabeth does a great job of mining social media for comments, while still keeping her viewpoints the focus of the story. Good work!
ReplyDeleteIf I may, I'd like respectfully butt-in on the conversation between Elizabeth and Jessica; I agree with Elizabeth, and would like to offer a political-economic perspective on the issue at hand:
ReplyDeleteFirst, these photos should be considered private property. Thus, they were not "leaked," but stolen. In my experience, we don't persecute the victim of other material thefts (e.g., a car, phone, etc.) for owning material things. Which is to say, we don't hold the victims of monetary theft to account for having money--so why start with private pictures?