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Quickhit: Stolen Naked Celebrity Photos Are Not A Scandal, This Is A Crime

tigtog

Clementine Ford:

In what’s being called the biggest celebrity hacking incident in internet history, more than 100 female celebrities have had their private nude images stolen and published online.
[…]
There are a few different issues that a criminal act like this brings up, but before I get into them it’s necessary to make one thing clear: If you deliberately seek out any of these images, you are directly participating in the violation not just of numerous women’s privacy but also of their bodies. These images – which I have not seen and which I will not look for – are intimate, private moments belonging only to the people who appear in them and who they have invited to see them. To have those moments stolen and broadcast to the world is an egregious act of psychic violence which constitutes a form of assault.

The people sharing these images are perpetuating an ongoing assault. The people gleefully looking at them are witnessing and enjoying an ongoing assault. When you have been asked by victims of a crime like this not to exacerbate the pain of that crime and you continue to do so anyway, you are consciously deciding that your enjoyment, your rights and perhaps even just your curiosity are more important than the safety and dignity of the people you’re exploiting.

That out of the way, let’s get a few other things straight.

1. This is not a ‘scandal’

It’s a crime, and we should be discussing it as such.

Read the rest at Daily Life.

48 thoughts on Quickhit: Stolen Naked Celebrity Photos Are Not A Scandal, This Is A Crime

  1. It’s a repulsive, criminal violation of privacy, and I hope somebody gets prosecuted for it. And while it may not be “assault” in a technical sense, I think it’s exactly that figuratively.

  2. I have not commented on Feministe in quite a while, not because there is anything wrong. I’ve just been too busy changing jobs and relocating all over the place. I just didn’t have the energy of willpower to engage in any debates. Besides, a close friend advised me to stop doing, watching or reading anything that made me any angrier than I already felt, so I did. However, when I saw this story on the internet today, this is the first place I came rushing to. I needed to hear that sanctimonious outrage and indignation at this senseless act of mental rape. I needed to hear someone scream at the top of her voice that this is wrong. Some people would probably prefer it if we discussed this issue in quiet ”lady like” voices. But they can go stuff themselves. Feministe go ahead and announce loudly that we deplore these sort of things. Scream blue murder, even if it gets you fired…………

    1. I have not commented on Feministe in quite a while, not because there is anything wrong. I’ve just been too busy changing jobs and relocating all over the place. I just didn’t have the energy of willpower to engage in any debates. Besides, a close friend advised me to stop doing, watching or reading anything that made me any angrier than I already felt, so I did. However, when I saw this story on the internet today, this is the first place I came rushing to. I needed to hear that sanctimonious outrage and indignation at this senseless act of mental rape. I needed to hear someone scream at the top of her voice that this is wrong. Some people would probably prefer it if we discussed this issue in quiet ”lady like” voices. But they can go stuff themselves. Feministe go ahead and announce loudly that we deplore these sort of things. Scream blue murder, even if it gets you fired…………

      I’m not a fan of the term ‘mental rape,’ but I think part of the reason you’re not hearing much outrage is people somehow see celebrities as somehow not human. They think, ‘I wouldn’t mind the entire internet seeing me naked if had all of her money and fame,’ but really, if it was them or someone they cared about, they would mind, because being rich and famous does not solve all your problems.

      1. This is a violation of privacy. Perhaps, not mental rape definitely sexual assault. Distributing pictures of anyone without consent is wrong let alone in a sexual act.

        1. Distributing pictures of anyone without consent is wrong let alone in a sexual act.

          I don’t know that…A sexual act is far far far worse, not even comparable. I am a nobody to anyone but a small percentage of the 300,000 people in our station’s audience, but when people come to visit the station and they take pics with us on their phones, the pics usually end up on Facebook or Twitter and we only fid out when we’re tagged. Sometimes I think, ‘God, I look like shit, I really wish they hadn’t tweeted that, and they didn’t ask for my consent’ but feeling the embarrassment of having a flabby neck, or a nose that reflects my Semitic ethnicity, is nothing compared to the embarrassment of being sexually exposed. When we first got our iPhones Mrs. Fat and I were thrilled to see we could send ‘private photos to each other.’ I would be so mortified if any of those were released. I mean, in a way I’d like to think that I’m strong enough to handle any sort of embarrassment, but that’s just about the worst one I could Imagine.

        2. Double posted somehow. If someone (yes, I know tigtog will be tasked with this, so it’s stupid to say ‘someone,’) could remove the redundant post it would be much appreciated.

          [Sorted! ~ tt]

  3. I have to say, the mental gymnastics I have seen from people (although I’d suspect a large number of them are men) in the last 24 hours to justify this (or at least mitigate the responsibility of the viewers of the pictures) has really been at an epic level. The most popular seems to be that “since these women are celebrities, they should anticipate that hackers (who are totally wrong, btw, let’s just put that in there) will be gunning for their private info and thus, they should have exercised more caution.” That’s basically it. They argue that putting your stuff in the cloud (which is, from what I’ve come to understand, slightly more vulnerable then some other platforms) is basically asking for it too.

    What is basically boils down to is that a good chunk of the people looking at these images know its wrong intellectually, but hey, JLaw is hot, so I will justify looking at them. Like I said, if mental gymnastics were a sport, we’d be looking at the Olympics right now.

    1. The most popular seems to be that “since these women are celebrities, they should anticipate that hackers (who are totally wrong, btw, let’s just put that in there) will be gunning for their private info and thus, they should have exercised more caution.”

      AAARGH. That’s the same kind of victim-blaming as “well, if you weren’t so drunk!” or “you should have known that XXXX.” It’s victim-blaming, it diverts the attention from, you know, the actual jackholes who stole somebody else’s pictures and spread them far and wide, and…..it’s not actually helping anything.

      It’s the way a five-year-old thinks. Oh, bad things only happen to bad people, and that was a bad thing, so therefore you are a bad person and you deserve it. Screw that.

      I also want to beat my head against the wall about folks who say, well, it’s already out there, so Ima gonna go look. No. No, no, no. Somebody stole my car, and it’s already out there, so you’re going to go take it for a test ride? No, you’re still taking and using something that doesn’t belong to you. Why should photos be any different? And it does not matter if some of those photos are of people you would really love to see naked, because you’re still taking something that is not yours.

      1. It boils down to ” they should know better than to have things people want to steal”. And when you say it like that, you can see how ridiculous it is.

        1. It’s both that, and slut-shaming. What, you want to take sexy pictures? Well, you should have known better! Don’t take sexy pictures, don’t you know that people will rape you steal them and post them publicly? If you’d never taken sexy pictures, nobody would have stolen them so this is all your fault.

          Fuck that noise.

          Obviously, in hindsight, having those pictures on an account in the cloud was not as secure as it could have been. Still theft. Still wrong.

        2. They’re not even bothering to say it in language less ridiculous than that. Just yesterday, Ricky Gervais said on Twitter, “Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on your computer.” The only upside about the sociopathic comments men have been uttering in celebration of the whole affair is that sympathy seems to be more on the side of the women this time, with a general recognition that what women do in their private time with their partners is nobody’s business, and that the hackers are far more in the wrong than these women supposedly are.

          Ironically it seems the sheer scale of the photo leak has also helped. It’s less convenient to single out individual celebrities for shaming, when it’s clear from how many women had intimate photos of themselves that intimate pictures are mainstream.

        3. Echo Zen, on a side note, this does underscore just how carefully people need to think when putting their personal info out of their own control….whether it’s nekkid pictures, kid pictures, credit card or bank info, etc.

          Big fuck-ups lead to big lessons learned. A big lesson learned here is how user-unfriendly Apple’s cloud security and terms of service are….essentially, if you are hacked, the terms of service say that Apple is not responsible at all. Even in case of criminal activity. Even in case of negligence. Even when criminal activity happens on such a scale that the FBI goes looking into the problem.

          Another big lesson learned–I hope–by the big wide world is that yes, this is a method of publicly shaming and controlling women. (I have yet to hear of any man or group of men shamed on such a broad scale.)

      2. Note how this only applies to naked pics. How many people now have banking apps on their phones that could be hacked and their accounts compromised? Plenty. But I haven’t once heard any dudes on Twitter argue that people who use mobile banking are at fault when they get hacked. I’m starting to think that’s because said dudes probably use mobile banking….

        1. A little bit, maybe?

          I haven’t heard “well you shouldn’t put your bank account online” but I HAVE heard “you should have had a better password,” or variants thereof.

  4. This issue is way bigger than just celebrity photos. Every photo anyone ever takes on a smartphone is permanently stored in a central database, regardless of whether you deleted it from your phone or not. Technology is transforming the meaning of privacy– erasing it.

  5. I give precisely two shits about celebrities, any mental anguish they might be suffering, not to mention whether they live or die. With everything that is going on right now, this story feels kind of disrespectful, but also pretty par for the current Feministe course.

      1. Because it’s not like non-celebrities have ever had their private photos posted online without their permission.

    2. This sits poorly with me–those celebrities are people, they are women, their privacy has been violated and of a sexual nature.

      That’s part of what’s “going on right now”, that’s part and parcel of rape culture.

    3. You’re not a real ‘big picture’ kind of guy are you?

      The point isn’t about celebrities.. it’s about a culture where an assumption of privacy no longer exists. It’s about a culture where thousands of consensual nudes of all levels are readily available at a click of a button, but people still feel entitled to steal, disseminate and view supposedly private photos of people who never consented to having their image shared. It’s about the fact that people feel entitled to women’s bodies. It’s about the fact that someone who has their credit card info stolen receives sympathy, but someone who has personal pictures stolen is mocked and shamed.

      It’s also about information security and how digital information is supposed to be protected.. Tracking down the culprit may help prevent other people’s information from being stolen.

      So while you may give “precisely two shits” about celebrities (who, like it or not are people), there’s a whole lot more going on here.

    4. What the fuck? Did you honestly say you don’t care if a woman is sexually violated if she’s also a celebrity? You are such a shitty person.

      1. Aren’t you the [redacted] with the [redacted] hatred of communism? I shall take your remarks with multiple grains of salt 🙂

        1. Yeah, well, I’m the one raised by Marxists who still considers herself a leftist, and I agree with every. single. thing. Andie and Pretty Amiable said, so why don’t you put that salt shaker away and actually admit you’re wrong? Christ, do you also think racism is OK if the black people suffering for it are famous?

        2. Dude, I’m a communist and I think you’re full of shit. You’re just grasping for straws at this point…

        3. Yeah. Nothing about anything you’ve posted on this site makes me think you have anything worthwhile to contribute. Troll on.

    5. The threat of personal photos being published on the web is held over ordinary women every single day by disgruntled ex-boyfriends and classmates/colleagues who want to display control over them. Almost the only time it hits the news is when it happens to a celebrity though. The bullshit free speech justifications being paraded by the propagators are exactly the same ones that fuel all those revenge-porn sites where the fap brigade prefer to view women naked who never consented to having their photos published when they could be viewing photos of women naked who consented and were possibly even paid for their photos to be published.

      There are men out there arguing like this on Twitter:

      You deserved this because a girl like you would never date me in real life, no matter how nice and courteous I was. Karma!

      Sorry but it’s not fair that only the guys of your choosing get to see the photos while the ugly, less fortunate guys do not.

      This sort of rationalisation is absurd, but sadly common and used to justify much bullying of women, celebrities or not. That’s why it’s worth talking about.

    6. Ok everyone, now that a man has come in and set us to rights, let us now admit the error of our ways and focus on Real Important Stuff!

      /sarcasm

      What a load of crap. Here’s the deal, Timmy, feminist issues are real and important issues. Even if they are brought into focus because the feminist issues happen to famous women. I mean, I get you think they are stupid and irrelevant and serve no useful purpose. Save for possibly being pretty, shiny objects that appeal to your manly male gaze. But you’re being a man doesn’t give you the authority to come in and mansplain all over the place how we are all so wrong and pathetic and short sighted for caring about issues that you don’t happen to think carry any real importance.

    7. Yes, it’s so obvious how very little you give a shit…what with bothering to post about how very little you give a shit.

      There’s probably a very long list of things I give no shits about, but I couldn’t tell you about them because I don’t give enough of a shit to bother recalling them or writing them down. Because I don’t give a shit. See how that works? And until your stupid attempt at bullying tigtog, I didn’t give a shit about you or your opinion. But now, I give a shit. So now, I’m posting to let you know that you’re a grade A piece of shit. And I wouldn’t bother scraping shit like you off the bottom of my shoe, I’d just toss the shoe in the dumpster.

    8. *** delurks ***

      All women, regardless of their privileges, are hurt by the patriarchy. It doesn’t matter whether they’re rich able-bodied neurotypical white cis straight thin celebrities who own a mansion or two. I believe that, as feminists and womanists, it is absolutely necessary that we support even the most privileged women. Just because they’re privileged doesn’t mean that they don’t suffer from sexual violation perpetrated by men.

      And yes, I admit that I don’t readily relate to all of the experiences of female celebrities. I mean, I’m nowhere near as privileged as they are. But I do know what it’s like to be sexually violated by men and to be treated as an object by society. And while I do focus on the issues that face the most marginalized women in particular, that doesn’t give me an excuse to completely dismiss the sexism that privileged women face.

      You, being male (according to what others have said so far), have even less firm ground to stand on in this discussion. Your male entitlement is showing, and you probably shouldn’t even be in this thread anymore.

    9. Well, did it ever occur to you I may not give two shits about whatever social drama has your underwear in a bunch?

      Also I like how you said “everything” but alluded to nothing in particular. Things are happening n stuff, I guess.

  6. Oh tig-tog, you sad lonely little Aussie. Ask yourself if you’ve ever REALLY made a substantive contribution to this crazy world of ours. Think about it.

      2. If that was only mildly embarrassing, Timmy, you need to go away for a while and rethink things. You’re not less of a bully for not being a purposeful public bully.
        Bluntly, you’re being an asshole. I’m not even going to explain where your reasoning’s off, because that’s been done by people who already commented. Stop being an asshole.

    2. @TimmyTwinkles

      Did the sarcasm fly over my head? Is this how you talk to people when you think nobody is listening? This is really not cool.

    3. You’re being a total asshole. What’s your contribution to the world, buddy? Insulting feminists on the internet?

      1. Come on, EG, insulting feminists on the internet is Very Important Stuff!

        As is policing the internet for he believes constitutes Very Important Stuff (!).

    4. Timmy, I assume you identify as a man. And you are being the stereotypical Radical Guy here: something that women have expressed concern about as an issue affecting women (celebrities and otherwise) is Not Important, and is unworthy of discussion while More Important Issues remain unresolved — because, of course, only one issue can be discussed at a time. With you as the self-appointed arbiter of importance, of course. Everything must be subordinated to revolutionary politics!

      And what substantive contributions to the world have you made, exactly? I think you should feel way more than mild embarrassment at your disgusting comment to tigtog. If I ever said anything like that, and it became public — and how stupid could you have been to assume that it would be moderated; do you think every comment is personally reviewed by somebody before it appears? — I don’t think I’d want to see or talk to anybody ever again for about 20 years!

    5. Look all I could see in response to this is the scene in Orlando where Tilda Swinton, as the eponymous character, runs off into a hedge maze after rejecting the Archduke’s proposal.

      “Spinster! Alone!”

      Which is to say: What a tired and underwhelming dogwhistle to choose. It’s like you’re not even trying.

      1. I’ve read better trolling from 10 year olds. Honestly. Sad and lonely little Aussie? – snorts-

        I award you no points Timmy.

      2. Excellent comparison; I couldn’t have put it better myself.

        (And I was afraid Mrs Woolf was on the Naughty List.)

  8. This incident goes to show that, no matter how many privileges a woman has, she will always be treated as an object for men’s gratification. The patriarchy leaves no woman unharmed.

    1. I deliberately chose to highlight quotes in the OP which did not name anyof the celebrity names, because I did not want to focus on any one celebrity in particular – the same arguments count for every single case of photo theft (including non-celebrities), and I didn’t want to be reading a list of the names anyway, because exactly who wasn’t relevant to how I felt about the theft and propagation and shaming. Much of the commercial media has chosen to do otherwise though, and focussed only on the most famous names, and especially the one with the Oscar. From your link, it appears that Scott has been subjected to an extra level of fat-shaming above and beyond the victim-blaming and slut-shaming that everybody else is getting, and that is definitely a shitty situation for her.

      As a sidepoint, I don’t think Jill Scott is on Australia’s celebrity news radar, but then again neither is Mary Elizabeth Winstead whose name I’ve seen a lot in US news (I had to do a search to find out what they both looked like and had been in).

      1. Thank you for this, tig. It needed to be said.

        Her story adds an even crappier level to the whole thing because of the body-image shaming, which we are not hearing as much offrom white hacked celebrities. Not that it doesn’t/won’t happen of course, but I do think her ethnicity is another piece of this.

  10. Pingback: Who gets looked at, Who gets seen: public violence and the optics of bodies (Part 1) « coffee and a blank page

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