A Victim Of Revenge Porn Released Her Own Nude Photos To “Take Back Consent”
“They relished my suffering,” she said. BuzzFeed News spoke to the woman taking a stand against those who have no respect for consent.
Buzzfeed.com
1.9.15 | Rossalyn Warren | BuzzFeed News Reporter
From “creepshots” to “revenge porn”, the betrayal of women’s privacy and denial of consent is commonplace online.
It’s an experience Danish activist Emma Holten knows all too well. At the age of 17, Holten found that private nude photographs of herself had been shared online. As she wrote later:
On a regular October morning in 2011 I couldn’t access my email or Facebook. I didn’t think anything of it – I forget passwords all the time – and just tried again. Waiting for me upon entry were hundreds of messages and emails.
Messages and emails with pictures of me in them.
One: me, naked, in my ex-boyfriend’s darkened room. Seventeen, a little awkward, slightly hunched forward: a harmless attempt at sexiness.
Another: two years later, in my room in Uppsala, Sweden. Older, a little more confident, but not a whole lot.
What had happened was apparent: the pictures were now online.
Holten didn’t know who had shared her private photos. She then discovered the photos had been uploaded on numerous websites, and began receiving messages from strangers:
DO YOUR PARENTS KNOW THAT UR A SLUT?
DID U GET FIRED?
WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND THIS?
WHO DID THIS TO YOU?
SEND ME MORE NUDES OR ILL SEND THE ONES I HAVE TO YOUR BOSS.
The messages were from men all over the world – “teen boys, university students, nuclear-family dads” – who, she wrote, knew the photos were shared against her will.
They knew it was against my will and that I didn’t want to be on those sites. The realisation that my humiliation turned them on felt like a noose around my neck. The absence of consent was erotic, they relished my suffering.
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