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The Regrettable Rise of Sext-Shaming

Here's how to act when someone's nudes get leaked.
Image: Kitron Neuschatz

Once we attached high-resolution cameras to personal communication devices, it became inevitable: People would take and send nudes.

I know plenty of people my age who regularly take, send, and receive naked photographs. I also know plenty of people my age who find the idea shocking and obviously dangerous. What happens if your nudes leak? What happens if you get hacked? What happens if you lose your phone?

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But in most cases, I find the divide generational, and the difference in sensibility gets starker with age. Men and women ten or 20 years older than me—I'm 27 years old—really just can't believe that their children send one another naked pictures. But for teenagers and adults just a few years younger than me, nudes are a fact of life, and sexting has become the norm.

However, with sexting, sext-shaming has unfortunately come. This kind of bullying sometimes goes by the salacious name "revenge porn," and it's often not quite as simple as a terrible dude posting his ex-girlfriend's naked photos on the web.

Be kind to other people's nudes

All over the country, federal and state prosecutors have successfully convicted defendants for hacking thousands of personal photos from email accounts or Apple's iCloud. Jennifer Lawrence's photos leaked because she fell victim to a phishing attack (the culprit has since been arrested). In late 2015, the "king of revenge porn," Hunter Moore, and his accomplice, Charles Evens, were convicted for hacking into Gmail accounts in search of private photos. We could all be a little better about our cybersecurity (hell, I report on cybercrime as my day job, and I could do better with my own devices), but it's hard to blame someone for getting hacked.

"You should have known better" isn't an appropriate answer when someone's nudes are leaked. It's absurd to say that sending nudes is so dangerous that one must never do it; nudes never got anyone pregnant, and they don't carry HIV or syphilis or gonorrhea. Sexting is often safer than sex itself—so let people sext, and if you're worried about them, help them to sext safer.

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Instead of futilely shouting at teenagers, let's scream at hardware manufacturers, online platforms, and cloud services. Then maybe one day our technology will be so secure and user-friendly that nudes will hardly ever leak.

Until then, there is only one thing we can do: Be kind to other people's nudes.

Maybe you never take nudes of yourself, but chances are you know someone who does. Imagine someone who's being shamed. We live in a hypersexual and hyperpuritanical society that penalizes people (especially women) when they're both unsexy and too sexy. People post nudes as revenge because of how bystanders react.

In March, ESPN reporter Erin Andrews received $55 million in her lawsuit against a hotel that negligently allowed a stalker to occupy a room next to hers, from which he taped her changing clothes. And a jury in Florida awarded Hulk Hogan $115 million because Gawker published his sex tape. These stories are complicated, especially when you compare the relative size of the damages. But those considerations aside: It was a cruel thing to expose Erin Andrews, Hulk Hogan, and Hulk Hogan's partner. It was cruel to feed into it by looking at these tapes, by discussing them, and by letting other people's bodies turn into playgrounds for gossip.

Don't comment on nudes that have clearly been posted without the subject's permission. Don't judge anyone's nudes. Don't look at them. Be kind to other people's nudes, and you won't regret it.

Oh, and this should really go without saying, but for fuck's sake, do not post your ex's nudes on the internet.

This article appears in the June issue of VICE Magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.