the feminist librarian reads

Revenge Porn and The Women-Humiliation Industry | Thomas @ Yes Means Yes

I think this speaks to the question I was asked recently about the ethics of RPF … 

The whole culture of celebrity stalker sexualization is to do away with that consent: to make avialable the sexualized image of the famous woman to the viewer when she doesn’t agree to it, doesn’t want it, doesn’t like it.  What was it Anne Hathaway said?  “I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants.”  Sexualizing the unwilling, conceptually, is sexual assault.  Always.  We can bullshit and nitpick about that, but it’s just bullshit and nitpicking.  We have a society with a tremendous tolerance for coercion and people can sit around thinking up all the times when it might be okay for someone to be sexualized against their will … I’m not going to dignify that exercise, whatever the law might be and whatever the policy arguments, we’re better off starting from the proposition that sexualizing the unwilling is always a sexual assault before we entertain questions of intent and mistake and exception.