Except the problem is, when something happens like a woman being accosted in her own apartment by someone she invited in to call a cab, or a woman having her private pics posted on the net by an asshole ex, inevitably there are a huge number of [del]men[/del] douchebags, on this board and elsewhere, who will post “Why didn’t she treat the guy like a potential rapist? It’s her fault!” So it’s a lose-lose proposition. If a woman exercises prudence you complain that she’s treating you like “scum.” If she shows trust it’s her fault for anything bad that happens. And then the inevitable whining about “Why I no get laid” begins.
I am curious. Per the above you seem to dwell at length on the notion that the non-picture posting men are somehow evading responsibility for…well… something, and that we should be doing “shit about something” related to this issue, but you don’t elaborate.
Please break it down. We non-assholes try to be dutiful fellows. What “shit about something” should we be doing when private pics get posted? What’s the job at hand?
How about not blaming the victim? That would be a start.
That’s the crux, isn’t it? Obviously, given the ubiquity of the practice, it’s pretty clear that the publicized and disseminated images must represent only a tiny fraction of the images that have been generated. Given that this is, in truth, not a particularly high-risk activity, why should it be viewed as one that is foolish to engage in?
I mean, besides the fact that it means the woman in question must be some kind of idiot and also a slut.
PS. We are, I hope, aware that according to research surveys, the majority of explicit pictures taken for personal use are of men and their own genitalia? Juuuuust checking.
You are 100% correct. It’s a risk assessment.
To be honest I’m getting the impression via some of the responses that some feel it’s something we must do like breathing or eating, it’s woven into the fabric of modern sexual communication. OK let’s take that hypothetical as a given. The flip side is that so is the proliferation of sharing media which is easier than taking a breath these days. At what point does the pic taker have a duty (to themselves if no one else) to stop and assess the risk of sending it out?
Does that duty exist?
Revenge porn is a bad thing and should be discouraged because it will make women less likely to distribute naked pictures of themselves which is a good thing and should be encouraged.
Where is the dividing line between precautionary advice and blame in this context? Where does “You really might not want to do that, it’s dangerous” become victim blaming?
Why are you so sure that there is really such a high risk involved?
Is the person you are advising a child? Mentally handicapped in some way? If not, they are probably already aware of anything you are going to say and you should probably keep your lame condescending advice to yourself.
ETA: I mean seriously, how would you feel if someone came up to you and said “Hey, Astro, remember high crime neighborhoods have high crime.” Wouldn’t you be annoyed? Wouldn’t you say “Yeah, thanks buddy” while rolling your eyes.
astro:
I don’t mean to let the cat out of the bag here or anything, but I don’t actually believe in that asshole / non-asshole dichotomy. I don’t think it’s real. I think that it’s better than 50/50 that with 102 posts in this thread to this point, there’s somebody who has posted to it who has shared a naked picture of somebody else without that person’s consent. That’s the real point. They walk among us. They call themselves reasonable respectful people. So I don’t believe in dutiful fellows. I believe everybody’s just people, and that fucked up behavior should be called fucked up behavior. I don’t think it’s up to us to determine whether we’re worthy of trust or not or whether other people we don’t know anything about, in retrospect, were worthy of trust at a time we don’t know anything about.
But so OK, I can just answer your question, though: read Carmady’s post about the utilitarian effect of focusing on one thing and assuming the more important part is implied. You started a thread about this topic, and now you have this conundrum where you can’t figure out how you could be more responsible about it. But your thread is an address to “Ladies”! You made a choice to talk about this the way you’re talking about it. That’s how we got here. Do you think, if the only conversation anybody ever has about this is the conversation where we hector women about their stupid irresponsible decision to trust their wank shots to men who aren’t us, do you think that has the net effect of empowering the men who aren’t us; do you think that has the net effect of making the environment a little more conducive to them getting away with it? If a friend shows me a sext he got from some girl he met last weekend (which don’t tell me that’s never happened to you, because certainly it has happened to most of us), and my reaction is to note how dumb she is for trusting him, not what a shitty person he is, there’s a job at hand there, and I’m not doing it. “That’s fucked up” is a thing you can say. If your life is like mine at all, and you know broadly speaking the same range of personalities I know, it’s a thing you can say quite a lot, actually. And you can tell me that that is personally what you would do in that situation, and you could tell me that it’s just a coincidence that you’re browbeating these chickenheads, because just as often you have a serious conversation about preserving other people’s privacy in and out of the bedroom, and I will say two things: one, I don’t believe you, which doesn’t matter at all, but two, more importantly, that’s not the conversation we’re having now, because you thought it was important to talk about how it’s inevitable that the fucked up part is going to happen!
I mean, read DigitalC’s post about whether he tells women not to text him naked pictures. You’re involved in this conversation. You could say “hey, that’s fucked up,” couldn’t you? Is he one of the bad guys? If one of the girls whose pictures he inadvertently disseminated has her shit all out on the tubes by now, aren’t you criticizing her right now? Does that make you a bad guy?
Solicitation of actual advice is a good start. If a woman friend says to you, “hey, my new boyfriend wants some sexy pics of me - what do you think of that idea?” then it’s perfectly appropriate for you to offer an opinion and a warning.
Posting an unsolicited piece of paternalistic, condescending “precautionary advice” is on the other side of that line.
Yes, that’s what I meant to say, only you said it better.
OK… so assumedly this person who is firing on all mental cylinders and fully aware of all the risks involved in posting private pics of themselves, and needs no lame advice will have no surprises or disappointments if their private pic somehow make their way into the big wide digital world. It’ll simply be an actuarial risk assessment at that point.
No, because actuaries have data that they work from. The point has been made multiple times in this thread (and ignored just as many times) that you really have no idea how frequently these pictures are distributed.
(cough)
Somehow. You know?
Read** Enginerd’s** post above. He said what I wanted to say and how I would reply to this post. Post #111 that is.
Yah, we got it, we can’t trust men.
Except when MRAs tell us we are scum for assuming all men are out to hurt us. Then, we should trust men. Except we can’t tell which ones we can trust, which ones want us to relax and enjoy sex, and which ones will have sex with us then project their shame onto us and punish us or worse: ruin our professional and private lives and set us up to be raped by strangers. Wait… which is it again? Women should trust men and enjoy sex with them, or women should regard all men as potential villians, criminals, and rapists? So hard to keep up.
There were 6 people - 3 men, 3 women - in my old town who got in really big trouble for e-mailing naked pictures of themselves to each other, on company time using company equipment. The women were fired outright because their faces were clearly visible; identifying two of the men was more difficult (notice I didn’t say “harder” :D) but the third one was easy to identify because he weighed over 300 pounds.
Here’s the kicker. All the women were in their 50s. :eek:
damn, boy, that is stone cold
remind me not to find myself on the wrong side of an ethical divide around you
That’s not answering the question I asked.
If a woman you’re dating left you alone with her purse, would you think she was stupid for trusting you not to rummage through her things and steal from her?
If a woman confided in you a very deep, dark secret from her past, would you think she was stupid for trusting you not to blab this secret to everyone in your social circle?
If a woman and man were in the middle of a break-up argument, would you think she was stupid for not ending the conversation immediately to protect herself from any possibility of being punched, no matter how slim?
For some reason, I suspect you wouldn’t be judging a woman as stupid for taking these kinds of chances. So there must be something about “sexual woman = bad” that makes you view pic dissemination differently. But can you not see that the same thing is involved in all of these interactions? It comes down to trust every time.
Your impression is faulty. Although dirty pics aren’t essential to “modern sexual communication”, trust is. When you judge a woman for trusting her boyfriend not to violate her privacy, you’re essentially saying women shouldn’t trust men at all.