What Do You Do When Your Student Tells You Her Father Threatened Her Life? 2

In my last post, I told you about a former student who came to my office distraught because her father had threatened her life. It’s now more than two weeks since I walked her over to the counseling center on my campus, and I hope the fact that she has not contacted me since then means that she is somewhere safe, where she can start to figure out how to live the rest of her life. What struck me most about this student’s situation, I said, was less her father’s threat, which was of course bad enough, than the network of men he was able to enlist, or simply count on, to help him keep his daughter in line. Those men, I went on, made me think of these lines from Sa’di’s Golestan:

To please the king who eats a sin­gle apple
from a subject’s gar­den, his slaves will pull
the tree up whole to plant in the palace yard;
and if he lets five eggs be taken by force,
his army will put to the spit a thou­sand birds.

“There’s always someone willing to ride the coattails of someone else’s power and authority,” I wrote, but what makes these lines particularly powerful for me is the story that gives them their full context. Here it is:

The hunting party had stopped to eat, but there was no salt to season the meat they were roasting for [King] Nushirvan, and no one wanted to serve him an improperly seasoned meal. So they sent one of the boys who was with them to get some salt from a nearby village. Before the boy left, however, Nushirvan told him, “Make sure you pay for what you take. Otherwise, the village will be ruined.” Surprised and more than a little incredulous, those who were standing nearby asked how such a simple thing as bringing some salt to the king could have such profound consequences. Nushirvan replied, “When the world began, oppression was a small hut that few people entered, but as more and more people chose to go inside, they built it up, and look how high it reaches now.”

To please the king who eats a single apple
from a subject’s garden, his slaves will pull
the tree up whole to plant in the palace yard;
and if he lets five eggs be taken by force,
his army will put to the spit a thousand birds.

As the king, Nushirvan was very aware that he could have ordered the boy to take the salt without paying for it, and he understood well the dire consequences such privilege could have for those he ruled, if he allowed it to be taken to its logical conclusion. By telling the boy to pay, Nushirvan was taking responsibility for that privilege. What interests me is whether the boy would have paid for the salt even if Nushirvan had said nothing. If not, he would have turned the king’s privilege into an admittedly minor but nonetheless naked display of power. More to the point, by refusing in the name of the king to pay for that salt, the boy would have been claiming some of that power for himself, and he would have been doing so by choice. In other words, he would have done so knowing full well he could’ve done otherwise.

The men who spied on my student for her father, whether he asked them to or not, were in the same position as that boy was before Nushirvan told him to make sure he paid. They knew full well that they could have chosen not to inform on her, but they did so anyway. Similarly, in the wake of the recent nude-celebrity-photo hacking scandal, we were all in that position. Every single person who looked at those photos, tweeted about them, linked to them, posted them on Reddit, or otherwise treated them as anything other than the stolen private property they were, could have chosen to do otherwise, but didn’t. On the other hand, those of us who didn’t chose not to enforce an idea about women’s place in society that is, in its essence, no different from the one my student’s father was enforcing when he beat her for being (in his estimation) inappropriately alone with a young male acquaintance.

I have no doubt that few of the people who looked at those pictures would openly declare themselves that father’s ally. Nonetheles, just like he valued his idea of family, and particularly women’s honor more than the flesh-and-blood woman his daughter is, the people who looked at those pictures chose their salacious value, and the power they could feel in viewing them, over the human value of the flesh-and-blood people whose pictures they were. Neither of which is very much different from the dynamic Sa’di describes, in which people who work for the king value the slice of the king’s power that they are licensed to exercise more than the humanity, to use the examples in Sa’di’s verse, of the people whose trees they are uprooting or whose chickens they are stealing.

Pick your cause. Whether it’s in the context of racism or environmentalism, militarism or poverty, sexism (including heterosexism), transphobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, unionism, or antisemitism, we all face this kind of choice every day, in ways both big and small. Do we value the human beings whose lives are materially at stake or do we value the power that creates the imbalance that turns these issues into causes in the first place? No one makes the right choice all the time. I certainly don’t, but understanding that the choice is, first and always, mine to make has made my life a lot more meaningful.

Cross-posted.

This entry posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Iran, Rape, intimate violence, & related issues. Bookmark the permalink. 

76 Responses to What Do You Do When Your Student Tells You Her Father Threatened Her Life? 2

  1. 1
    JJ says:

    their salacious value, and the power they could feel in viewing them, over the human value of the flesh-and-blood people whose pictures they were.

    I think some of this is a stretch. As I am fairly anonymous, I will admit I looked at a few of the photos, as I was curious. I think most people did for the same reasons or for erotic reasons, not for a feeling of power. Some, yes.

    I stopped looking because after thought, if my pornographic pictures were leaked online I would prefer for people not to look at them, and I should give others the same respect.

    One thing that’s struck me about this is the extreme seriousness with which this has been dealt with by the media and a number of websites and the much more welcoming and voyeuristic response to stolen celebrity sex tapes in the past. I’m not including the deliberately leaked or explicitly sold ones here.

    Perhaps it’s the difference between taping oneself having sex, which perhaps people think is out there, and pinup-style nude photos, which I suspect a lot of people have done at this point.

    Perhaps it’s a shift in culture – the amount and volume of people who realize looking at other people’s private photos are wrong have grown, and their viewpoint is getting more play.

  2. 2
    Navin Kumar says:

    I don’t disagree with you about the awfulness of your student’s condition. What strikes me as odd is your use of the phrase “network of men.” As an expat from a country where women are dealt with harshly for entering romantic and sexual relationships, I can assure you that women are equally – if not more – responsible for monitoring women. A college friend of mine was dating a boy. Her friend told her (the friend’s) mother about it, and the mother promptly relayed the information to my friend’s mother. She was forced to stop coming to college for a while. Your reference to a network of men has a weird blame-the-men ring to it.

    More generally, the cultural suppression of female sexuality is typically done by women, in the interests of women: http://www.femininebeauty.info/suppression.pdf

  3. Navin,

    I do not doubt what you say about women’s role in policing women, but the facts of my student’s situation as she told them to me were that in her case there was a network of men that her father relied on.

  4. JJ:

    As I am fairly anonymous, I will admit I looked at a few of the photos, as I was curious. I think most people did for the same reasons or for erotic reasons, not for a feeling of power.

    I am glad that you decided to stop looking at the pictures, but I am curious how you distingsuish between the erotic “thrill” of looking at sexual images that were not intended for your eyes, and that you only have access to because they were stolen—which is, by definition, a violation—and feelings of power; and I would ask the same question about the presumption that satisfying one’s curiosity takes precedence over the privacy of the people whose pictures were stolen and leaked.

  5. 5
    mythago says:

    Navin Kumar @2, Richard’s use is only “odd” if you remove it from all context and pretend Richard was talking about a broad social phenomenon, rather than describing a particular student’s situation in which it was, indeed, a ‘network of men’ policing her.

  6. 6
    desipis says:

    I am curious how you distingsuish between the erotic “thrill” of looking at sexual images … and feelings of power

    Why is it that this particular leak has had reported on and distributed far more than other recent sex pictures leaks? If it was just about feelings of power, wouldn’t the Hulk Hogan sex tape or Anthony Weiner’s dick pictures been just as popular? Also, where was the issue of privacy when the video of Ray Rice and Janay Palmer was receiving wall to wall coverage?

    As far as eroticisim goes, I suspect the forbidden-fruit factor and the familiarity with the people through media increases the titliation factor more so than any sense of having ‘power’.

    I would ask the same question about the presumption that satisfying one’s curiosity takes precedence over the privacy of the people whose pictures were stolen and leaked.

    When I consider the issue, I don’t see any impact on ‘the human value of the flesh-and-blood people’ should I choose to view the pictures. The damage to privacy was done when the pictures were originally stolen and leaked. I could also see an argument for harm being done when someone they know or has the capacity to influence their lives individually looks at the pictures. I can also see how the idea of a random person seeing the images would feel violating and hence publishing the pictures on the internet is harmful. However, the marginal harm from a random person actually looking at the pictures would seem to be nill as that information doesn’t magically flow back to those people in the pictures.

  7. Desipis:

    As far as eroticisim goes, I suspect the forbidden-fruit factor and the familiarity with the people through media increases the titliation factor more so than any sense of having ‘power’.

    I will simply point out that this does not answer my question about how one might distinguish between feelings of eroticism and feelings of power; it merely asserts that there is a difference.

    The damage to privacy was done when the pictures were originally stolen and leaked.

    And you do not see how someone who chooses to look at stolen and leaked pictures perpetuates the original violation? And you do not think this is problematic in and for the person doing the looking whether or not he or she ever encounters the person in the picture?

    I can also see how the idea of a random person seeing the images would feel violating and hence publishing the pictures on the internet is harmful. However, the marginal harm from a random person actually looking at the pictures would seem to be nill as that information doesn’t magically flow back to those people in the pictures.

    Leave aside the fact that these two sentences contradict themselves. The fact that you feel empowered to decide what is and is not harmful to someone in one of those pictures seems to me problematic in itself.

  8. 8
    Navin Kumar says:

    @Richard Jeffery Newman and @mythago

    Fair enough.

  9. 9
    desipis says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman:

    I will simply point out that this does not answer my question about how one might distinguish between feelings of eroticism and feelings of power; it merely asserts that there is a difference.

    Perhaps you missed the point I was trying to make with the rhetoical questions prior to the statement you quoted. To put the answer to your ‘how’ question simply, comparing the different behaviour of people where the opportunity for feelings of power are similar but the feelings of eroticism are very different can reveal that eroticism is a more likely to be a motivation while power is less likely to be a motivation.

    And you do not see how someone who chooses to look at stolen and leaked pictures perpetuates the original violation?

    I can see how it could be a violation in the abstract concept sense, however I tend to prioritise pragamatic consequences when making judgements.

    And you do not think this is problematic in and for the person doing the looking whether or not he or she ever encounters the person in the picture?

    No. In what way do you think it is ‘problematic’ for the person looking?

    The fact that you feel empowered to decide what is and is not harmful to someone in one of those pictures seems to me problematic in itself.

    Determining the consequences (harmful or otherwise) on other people is an essential part of the ethical consideration of an action. While obviously that will involve listening to others, I’m not about to accept other perspectives uncritically. Thus, in forming my own perspective on the issue I will inherenetly have to make a decision about whether something is harmful or not.

  10. Desipis:

    No, I didn’t miss the point of your question. I just don’t think your point actually answers my question.

    To put the answer to your ‘how’ question simply, comparing the different behaviour of people where the opportunity for feelings of power are similar but the feelings of eroticism are very different can reveal that eroticism is a more likely to be a motivation while power is less likely to be a motivation.

    Which suggests to me you see power and eroticism as two distinct things. Is that the case? Perhaps that is where the difference between us lies, since I don’t see eroticism as being possible without questions of power somehow being implicated.

    In what way do you think it is ‘problematic’ for the person looking?

    If that person is willing to perpetuate a violation of someone else for their own enjoyment—however “enjoyment” is defined—that willingness, for me, is at least ethically questionable, since it dehumanizes (continues to dehumanize) the person who has been violated. This dehumanization takes place in the imagination of the looker, even if it does impinge directly on the person being dehumanized. In other words, I am more concerned here with the meaning of the action of the person looking at the pictures than I am with whether that particular act of looking causes some direct harm to the person in the pictures.

  11. 11
    Ampersand says:

    Richard, I think that your argument regarding power and eroticism has wandered a little into the weeds from a good starting point.

    In your first comment on power/eroticism, you wrote:

    I am glad that you decided to stop looking at the pictures, but I am curious how you distinguish between the erotic “thrill” of looking at sexual images that were not intended for your eyes, and that you only have access to because they were stolen—which is, by definition, a violation—and feelings of power; and I would ask the same question about the presumption that satisfying one’s curiosity takes precedence over the privacy of the people whose pictures were stolen and leaked.

    Here, I think you’re on the mark; the erotic thrill of “tasting forbidden fruit” is about feeling power – the power to take something you would normally be forbidden. To say “I didn’t get a thrill out of it because power, I got a thrill because forbidden fruit” is nonsensical, because forbidden fruit is entirely a subset of power.

    But in the comments after that one, you seem to be coming close to arguing that power and eroticism are barely distinct ideas at all. (I’m not sure if that’s what you’re intending to argue, but that is how your argument is coming across).

    If that is your intent, then I think that’s a mistake, because although power and eroticism are entangled, they are not interchangeable. There are forms of eroticism that aren’t based on power, and forms of power that aren’t erotic.

  12. 12
    desipis says:

    Ampersand,

    the erotic thrill of “tasting forbidden fruit” is about feeling power

    I disagree. I think the ‘forbidden fruit’ can be about doing something taboo and the excitement comes from the anxiety about the risk of being caught. I don’t see it as being about having some form of control (“power”) or about causing harm (like some sort of sadistic voyerism). I see it as similar to the excitement some get from having sex in public.

    Richard Jeffrey Newman,

    This dehumanization takes place in the imagination of the looker

    Firstly, I don’t agree that its dehumanising. You seem to be delving into language that suggests you’re anti-porn. If that’s the case I suspect we won’t come to any agreement on this topic.

    Secondly, I’m not sure speculating on what is going through people imaginations or that judging their actions based on what meaning you ascribe to them is really a fair way to judge someone.

    It seems like you’re basing your criticism on little more than you feel doing it is icky. While it’s fine for you to feel that way, I’m not sure that it’s a sound basis for moral judgements.

  13. 13
    Ampersand says:

    I disagree. I think the ‘forbidden fruit’ can be about doing something taboo and the excitement comes from the anxiety about the risk of being caught.

    That can be the case, in some instances. But in the particular example under discussion – looking at leaked celebrity nudes – I don’t see how anxiety about being caught could be a source of the excitement.

    It seems like you’re basing your criticism on little more than you feel doing it is icky.

    You haven’t come even close to establishing this, nor has Richard said anything that can be fairly interpreted that way. This feels like you’re making a personal attack on Richard, frankly.

  14. 14
    Harlequin says:

    the erotic thrill of “tasting forbidden fruit” is about feeling power

    I disagree. I think the ‘forbidden fruit’ can be about doing something taboo and the excitement comes from the anxiety about the risk of being caught. I don’t see it as being about having some form of control (“power”) or about causing harm (like some sort of sadistic voyerism). I see it as similar to the excitement some get from having sex in public.

    Respectfully, I think you are both wrong. Assigning a single motive to any sex act, whatever it is, will fail to encompass everyone who does it–or even a majority of the people who do it. That said, as Amp said above, I think “fear of being caught” is less likely to be a motive here, since there was no additional danger to being caught (above and beyond the existing dangers of viewing similar images published with the consent of the people displayed, anyway).

    [Side note: but if the excitement is coming from it being taboo and the resultant fear of being caught doing a taboo thing…then isn’t the excitement still coming from the fact that the pictures were stolen, just less directly?]

    However, I don’t think it’s morally okay to view the images, even if your reason for viewing had nothing to do with the fact that they were stolen. Is it okay to benefit from something that is a direct result of harm to somebody else, even if your benefit doesn’t rely on the fact that they were harmed, and even if your enjoying or not enjoying the benefit will have no bearing on the harm or its resolution? You’re less morally culpable than the people who perpetrated the harm. But I think you have a moral duty to try to get the benefit (in this case, erotic feelings) from a method that didn’t involve harm to other people, or involved less harm, if those options are available.

    Imagine how different the actresses would be feeling now if, instead of however many people rushed to look at the images, everyone had just said “The person who posted that was horrible, let’s catch them” and moved on. And if that had happened, imagine how much less likely these hacks would be in the future. Saying “I’m just one person so it doesn’t matter what I do” is like saying “One vote doesn’t matter, so I won’t vote”–the power is not in your individual action, but in the collective norm you support by taking it.

  15. 15
    Ampersand says:

    Assigning a single motive to any sex act, whatever it is, will fail to encompass everyone who does it–or even a majority of the people who do it.

    That’s a fair point, and yes, I was making a big generalization. But I think there’s some truth to that generalization, although you’re right to say that people have more than one motive for what they do, and that not everyone will share the same motives.

    Jessica Valenti wrote:

    There’s a reason why the public tends to revel in hacked or stolen nude pictures. It’s because they were taken without consent. Because the women in them (and it’s almost always women who are humiliated this way) did not want those shots to be shared.

    If Jennifer Lawrence was to pose naked on the cover of Playboy, for example, I’m sure it would be a best-selling issue. But it wouldn’t have the same scandalous, viral appeal as private images stolen from her phone. Because if she shared nude images consensually, then people wouldn’t get to revel in her humiliation. And that’s really the point, isn’t it? To take a female celebrity down a notch? (We have a term for when this is done to non-celebrity women: “revenge porn.”)

    Although it is a generalization, I think she’s onto something. (I don’t know if it’s true that it’s almost always female celebs this happens to. But it does seem to be true that female celeb hacked nudes go viral more than male ones do.)

    I agree with you that it’s not morally okay to look at the images. I don’t think looking at the photos is wrong on the level of, say, mugging someone. It’s just a small bit of a larger collective wrong, like needlessly adding to air pollution, or joining the school in shunning the outcast. But it’s still wrong.

  16. 16
    Ampersand says:

    Tracy Clark-Flory points out that these leaked photos going viral fits into a pattern of “sexy” images in which the lack of consent is part of the appeal. Not all sexy imagery online is like that, but a noticeable subset of it is:

    …take the creepshots, the upskirts, the ex-girlfriend photos and sex tapes, the revenge porn. When it comes to women, sex and the Internet, there are so many “gotchas” and so much resentment. The violation of women’s consent is a favorite genre of titillation online and off; the thrill is in seeing what they don’t want you to see — or getting them to do what they don’t want to do. Some of this is overtly staged — particularly in the faux reality porn that is so popular these days […]

    Nudity is so ubiquitous online that it requires something more to spice it up, and often that’s a notable lack of consent. It’s the believable ex-girlfriend snapshot, the leaked sex tape that thrives online.

    When so many people find lack of consent to be sexy, I think that means there’s some eroticized power going on.[*]

    Earlier someone asked why the leaked photos are a bigger scandal than earlier sex tape leaks. I think the difference is that – although it may not be true – there’s a widespread belief that C-level celebrities and reality TV stars deliberately leak sex tapes for the publicity. So (fairly or not), a lot of people believe those videos are being shared consensually. In contrast, with these photos, people seem more willing to believe that they were leaked without consent.

    [*] In some contexts, that can be fine – play-acting, for instance, where the lack of consent is only an act. But in the case of leaked photos, there genuinely is a lack of consent.

  17. Amp and Harlequin have made the points I had and have mind better than I was doing. Thanks!

    A couple of things. (I have edited this for clarity):

    Desipis: I think that much of your argument relies on holding the fact that the pictures were stolen and then leaked as separate and distinct from whatever the random person looking at them might be feeling and telling her or himself about their motivation. This, I think, is what I most fundamentally disagree with in what you are saying, since I do not think you can consider the ethics of looking at those pictures separately from the fact that they were stolen.

    You seem to be delving into language that suggests you’re anti-porn. If that’s the case I suspect we won’t come to any agreement on this topic.

    Well, no. First, I am not anti-porn—notice that I did not say the images were dehumanizing—but even if I were, here again you seem not to be making the distinction between looking at nude photos of people whose private images were stolen and leaked and looking at images that were made to be looked at by a public. That difference does not inhere in the images themselves, but rather in the context within which the person looking is doing the looking. Unless that person did not know the images had been stolen and leaked, that context absolutely determines the meaning of the act of looking.

    Also regarding your argument about forbidden fruit: Tasting forbidden fruit always involves transgressing a boundary one is not supposed to transgress. How is the decision to do that ever not about power?

    Amp:

    But in the comments after that one, you seem to be coming close to arguing that power and eroticism are barely distinct ideas at all. (I’m not sure if that’s what you’re intending to argue, but that is how your argument is coming across).

    Not that they are barely distinct—though I agree my comment was not as carefully thought through as it could have been—but rather that questions of power are always implicated in eroticism. This is a whole other discussion for which I don’t think this post or these comments provide a good frame, but what I meant by power in that sentence was something much broader than “power over” someone else. That kind of discussion about power is not really on topic here, and that’s why I think my argument got muddy up there.

  18. 18
    Harlequin says:

    But I think there’s some truth to that generalization…

    I agree that it’s definitely a big part of the enjoyment for many of the people who looked–sorry if that wasn’t clear.

  19. 19
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    I don’t think the claim that these are appealing because they are nonconsensual is really accurate.

    There’s a big trend towards “amateur” porn, which–broadly put–is porn that looks like it was (and sometimes actually is) simply a record of sex between consenting adults. The popularity of that genre is more linked IMO towards realism than towards lack of consent.

    In that context the appeal of a nude selfie (or equivalent video) is that it was consensual–in fact, that the person taking it thought that they were sexy, and was probably happy, and was showing off their looks, or whatever, in a way that they think is most attractive. It shows private information, and in that way it’s pretty much the opposite of traditional porn-for-money.

    That very trait makes it extremely violating when the pictures are stolen, of course. But it also explains why these types of pictures are so popular–which is because they have private traits, not because they were stolen.

    To use a direct comparison, imagine that Jennifer Lawrence decided say to voluntarily release the exact same pictures, on her own website, also free (by the magic of hypotheticals I will deem it possible for everyone to tell which is which) By Jessica Valenti’s argument, people would prefer the illegal ones, which is to say that they would skip right over the official free pictures in an effort to view the “nonconsensual” ones. In my view people would much rather look at the legal ones.

  20. 20
    Ampersand says:

    G&W, it’s not an either/or – obviously the appeal for some people is as you claim. But I think the sense of being able to violate someone’s consent is also part of what some people find appealing, hence stuff like creepshots, upskirts, and faux “reality” porn in which actresses pretend to be deceived or abused without consent.

    Also, there’s a ton of “amateur” porn that’s consensual and voluntarily released. If someone’s into that but isn’t interested in violating consent, then there’s no reason for them to download something like leaked pictures of Jennifer Laurence. At the very least, it indicates indifference to the idea of consent.

  21. 21
    Harlequin says:

    By Jessica Valenti’s argument, people would prefer the illegal ones, which is to say that they would skip right over the official free pictures in an effort to view the “nonconsensual” ones. In my view people would much rather look at the legal ones.

    Those things can be true simultaneously, because the group of people who are interested in the illegal photos doesn’t necessarily overlap much with the group of people who would be interested in the legal ones. I think particularly in this case, where the reaction was swift and unanimous in denouncing the theft, a lot of people who would have been interested for non-power-dynamic reasons didn’t look at all.

  22. 22
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    If someone’s into that but isn’t interested in violating consent, then there’s no reason for them to download something like leaked pictures of Jennifer Laurence. At the very least, it indicates indifference to the idea of consent.

    No reason other than the fact that she is a wildly popular celebrity who is treated like one of the most beautiful women around and who sells her sex appeal as part of her brand. Not my thing personally, but I can easily see how someone else would want to look.

    The issue here is whether lack of consent is a turnon or whether it’s simply a factor which is, often, ignored. Feminists–in particular, feminist women–seem to say that it’s a turnon. I think they’re saying that to try to increase the social stigma rather than to try and relate the truth. I think they’re wrong, at least on average.

  23. 23
    Copyleft says:

    Prying into the private lives of celebrities is nothing new, and it’s certainly not gender-specific and devoted to “taking a woman down a notch” as Valenti would have us believe. Every supermarket checkout line in the country disproves her thesis. Paparazzi make their living out of this prurient, sometimes obsessive, curiosity.

  24. 24
    Myca says:

    Prying into the private lives of celebrities is nothing new, and it’s certainly not gender-specific and devoted to “taking a woman down a notch” as Valenti would have us believe.

    The use of women’s sexuality to ‘take them down a notch’ is nothing new either.

    Emma Watson was threatened with a leak of nude photos by 4chan users in response to her recent speech on womens’ equality.

    When game developer Zoe Quinn’s ex boyfriend got pissed at her, one of the first things he did was share her naked pictures with the internet.

    Yes, celebrities have to deal with invasion of their privacy nonstop. And yes, that’s fucked up.

    And yes, it’s worse and more sexualized for women, because it always is.

    —Myca

  25. 25
    Ampersand says:

    So, G&W, you’re saying that:

    1) To speculate that people who download leaked photos might have bad motives is wrong.

    2) But to speculate that feminists have bad motives and are lying, is totally cool.

  26. 26
    desipis says:

    …the fact that [Jennifer Laurence] is a wildly popular celebrity who is treated like one of the most beautiful women around and who sells her sex appeal as part of her brand.

    This seems to be the main driver if you look at some of the numbers. From a quick look at the popularity of “The Fappening” torrents against other pornography torrents I observed:

    (1) The Fappening torrents were the most popular torrents.
    (2) The most popular professional pornography was an order of magnitude less popular.
    (3) The most popular ‘stolen’/’ex-gf’/etc pornography that wasn’t celebrity related was 1-2 orders of magnitude less popular than the most popular professional pornography.

    Given observation (3), I can’t really accept that ‘violating consent’ or the associated ‘power’ is a signficant erotic factor for the majority. The celebrity/sex-symbol factor would seem to be the significant factor in the popularity of these particular images.

    The fact that the leaks have received widespread media coverage could also cause interest out of simple curiosity or a desire to not feel left out when others are discussing the leaked pictures.

  27. 27
    desipis says:

    Emma Watson was threatened with a leak of nude photos by 4chan users in response to her recent speech on womens’ equality.

    If you go to the site it’s now claiming it’s actually a viral marketing campaign designed to try to get 4chan shut down.

  28. 28
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Ampersand says:
    September 23, 2014 at 4:38 pm
    So, G&W, you’re saying that:

    1) To speculate that people who download leaked photos might have bad motives is wrong.

    No–I think you’re wrong factually, for example, but I don’t think you’re wrong to speculate about the possibility that you might be correct. That would be ridiculous. Of course, you’re a fairly unusual sort of feminist writer in that you’re less of a zealot; you distinguish between facts, speculation, and opinion; you’re quite open to competing data; and you change your mind with some regularity based on new information.

    2) But to speculate that feminists have bad motives and are lying, is totally cool.

    Well, like I said, speculation is OK. But as it happens, in my periods of reading feminist blogs (and I do so a lot) I have come to conclude that a lot of them are zealot-y enough that they often fail to distinguish between facts and opinion. And are not open to competing data. Basically a lot of the authors seem to function as political activists who appear willing to say (or do) almost anything to achieve their ultimate political goal, in a “ends justify means” kind of way.

    My personal belief that a lot of those folks have bad motives and a tendency to lie is based on reading thousands of pages of their stuff and comparing it to reality. (Not that I think they’re worse than a lot of other sources. they just happen to address things I’m interested in.)

    Discussing what prominent feminist bloggers write says nothing about “feminists” in general, since those are a tiny percentage of such folks.

  29. 29
    Ampersand says:

    I’ve moved an exchange that, while entertaining, wasn’t relevant to Richard’s post even if you squint your eyes, to an open post.

  30. I realize I probably started this almost casuistic—I almost never get to use that word!—discussion of people’s motivation for looking and what part of that motivation might or not might be erotically driven when I resisted desipis’ suggestion that the erotic thrill people got from looking had little or nothing to do with power, but I have to say that I think that whole discussion is really beside the point.

    Those pictures were stolen and leaked, and given the nature of the pictures, I cannot see how anyone can claim the purpose of that act was not to embarrass and sexually humiliate the people whose pictures they were. If you looked at those pictures knowing they were stolen, you perpetuated both the initial violation and the sexual humiliation whether you intended to or not, whether the person in the picture knew that you personally looked at them or not, because the fact is that the people in the pictures knew that however many tens or hundreds of thousands of complete strangers were looking at them; and whether you like it or not, you were part of that group.

    Also, as to the question of whether lack of consent is, as G&W put it, a “turn on” or simply “a factor”—a distinction I only kind of get on an intellectual level, but I will grant it anyway for the sake of argument—if you looked because you were indifferent to the lack of consent involved in the posting of the pictures, that is in itself a very problematic stance to take. More to the point, though, for me anyway, if the lack of consent was not a turn off, if it didn’t make you not want to look at the pictures—because people’s privacy, etc. is far more important than the momentary thrill of seeing whichever celebrity’s naked body—then you have already shown yourself to be someone who is willing to pursue sexual enjoyment (however vicarious and attenuated) whether consent is present or not. For me, that makes the question of whether or not the lack of consent is a specific turn on for you irrelevant.

    It might be important to you personally—and I mean this quite seriously— in understanding yourself and figuring out your own sexuality; and it might be of interest sociologically speaking, assuming there is a way reliably to measure this across large populations of people; but in terms of where I started the post, the erotic content of your motivation is irrelevant to the fact that you have, in Nushirvan’s words, gone inside “the hut of oppression.”

  31. 31
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    I didn’t give anything to a homeless shelter today. However, I did buy myself a coffee.

    Someone could reasonably note “it would perhaps have been more noble and ideal to skip coffee and give the three bucks to charity.”

    It would be utterly ridiculous for someone to say “you have demonstrated yourself to be someone who values personal satisfaction and the rise of corporate culture above the plight of the homeless; not to mention showing a lack of concern for global warming by using a paper cup.”

    But that level of rhetoric is what you seem to be doing here. You’re conflating wildly different acts (stealing the pictures versus looking at them) and you’re reaching incredibly broad conclusions (“you have already shown yourself to be someone who is willing to pursue sexual enjoyment (however vicarious and attenuated) whether consent is present or not.”)

    Maybe it’s just rhetoric. I hope so. Because otherwise it seems like either a very black and white view of things (which would be unlike you) or one of those arguments which, in an attempt to make a point, spreads so widely that is becomes microscopically thin (just like arguments that “we are all racist” manage to avoid the “no I’m not” defense but also lead to the “if it’s universal, so what if I am normal?” problem.)

    For me, that makes the question of whether or not the lack of consent is a specific turn on for you irrelevant…. In terms of where I started the post, the erotic content of your motivation is irrelevant to the fact that you have, in Nushirvan’s words, gone inside “the hut of oppression.”

    And in that respect I think that conclusion is simply wrong–or more accurately too limited to be useful. Considerations of intent are what allows planning and forethought; intentional acts are a crucial part of what makes us human. It seems truly bizarre (to me, anyway) to adopt a philosophy that fails to consider intentions; whether we are trying to stop it or whether we are trying to understand it, “why?” is a crucial question. But I am certainly aware that there are different philosophical approaches and I don’t begrudge you yours!

  32. I don’t have time to respond now and might not have time for a couple of days, so I just want to ask why the fact that these pictures were stolen, even, G&W, in the parallel example you gave, seems always to disappear as the discussion progresses, as does the question of someone’s responsibility and accountability for knowingly looking at stolen pictures that were never intended for public viewing.

  33. 33
    desipis says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman,

    I suspect it comes down to whether one takes a dogmatic/absolute-rights approach to morality or whether one takes a utilitarian/pragmatic approach. If you see privacy as something that is inherently important in itself and hence ought to be protected under all circumstances, then naturally the stolen nature of the pictures will remain relevant. If you see privacy as a mechanism for protecting against more tangiable harms (emotional pain, social embarassment, safety, freedom from judgement, etc) then once the practical benefits are lost, privacy looses its importance possibly to the point of practical insigificance. From the later perspective, the fact the pictures were stolen becomes much less significant once they have reached that stage of being widely publically distributed, as there is no longer any harm to prevent.

  34. 34
    Ampersand says:

    G&W, Richard simply didn’t conflate those two things. I reread his comment that you were responding to, and it’s clear that he sees the two acts (stealing the photos vs looking at the stolen photos) as distinct but interrelated acts.

    Desipis, it’s the tragedy of the commons, isn’t it? The harm done by any single participant is trivially small; but the harm done by the aggregate of all those individual acts is a great deal larger.

    But I think you’re mistaken to measure the harm of looking at a stolen photo solely in terms of the tangible harm done to the celebrities. Arguments like yours are wrong not because they directly harm Jennifer Laurence, but because they encourage future harms by encouraging people to not take responsibility for their acts. If I as an individual decide not to download the next stolen photo that’s going around, that is trivial. But if we can change the way that society thinks about issues of sexual consent, then maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of people will choose not to download. That kind of change in attitude could have widespread practical benefits, not just for celebrities like Jennifer Laurence, but for ordinary people who are hurt by “revenge porn” and the like.

    A large number of ordinary people would be better off if more people responded to photos being passed around without consent by being repulsed. Each individual act of saying “no, I’m not gonna look at that, and you shouldn’t be passing it around” will have a trivial effect, but in the aggregate we could wind up with a better society.

  35. 35
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman says:
    September 26, 2014 at 2:38 pm
    I just want to ask why the fact that these pictures were stolen, even, G&W, in the parallel example you gave, seems always to disappear as the discussion progresses,

    It doesn’t disappear at all. But the more attenuated that the issue becomes, the more that it approaches “generic bad thing to do,” and the boundaries between stolen, unauthorized, unwanted, released in error, etc. begin to blur.

    For the person who first shares the pictures, the details of the sharing (and the pictures themselves) are hugely relevant, because they control both the extent and the type of violation. For the ten millionth person who finds them along with authorized pictures when searching for “____ topless” the viewing doesn’t effect the type of violation (it having happened already) and doesn’t have much effect on the extent either.

    To use a similar harm analogy: littering is always bad. But dumping a trash bag full of plastic on a pristine beach is worse than spitting out your gum on a dirty street in NYC.

    Does that mean folks should look at the pictures? No. But to the extent that they do, it’s more of a generic bad act with tiny marginal consequences, and I don’t think it makes sense to treat it as equivalent to–or indicative of–a larger moral failing on the part of the viewers.

    as does the question of someone’s responsibility and accountability for knowingly looking at stolen pictures that were never intended for public viewing.

    I agree that people can–and should–be responsible and accountable. But “responsibility” relates to causation, and “accountability” relates to harm. If you want to talk about how viewing them encourages future viewing and future bad acts, or about ongoing harm, or other similar things, I’m game. Like i said, I don’t think folks should view them.

    But given that you apparently think we shouldn’t consider those things, I am curious what you base the “responsibility and accountability” ON.

    Perhaps we can illustrate by addressing some hypotheticals.

    Albert was one of the first people to hear about the leak. He found all the pictures, hosted them on his site to avoid them being taken down, and immediately shared them with all his friends.

    Bryan heard about the leak and googled “the f@ppening” to try to see nudes of his favorite actresses.

    Charlie is a Kirsten Dunst fan and routinely googles her images to masturbate. (Due to the magic of Photoshop, it turns out that you can find nude images of almost anyone, whether or not they have ever released a public nude photo or been nude in a movie.) Conveniently for this hypothetical, Charlie didn’t hear about the leaks. But when new images pop up in his search, he clicks on them.

    David lives in the year 2016. Like Charlie, he’s a Kirsten Dunst fan and googles images of her. David is aware that some of the images may be from the leaked batch (just like he’s aware that some of them are Photoshopped) and he’s marginally aware that Kirsten Dunst wouldn’t like them (just as she probably doesn’t enjoy having her head photoshopped onto porn actresses) but he doesn’t really care, figuring that it’s been going on for ages and that his viewing won’t make a bit of difference.

    I see those as ordered in declining responsibility and accountability. Do you?

  36. 36
    desipis says:

    Ampersand,

    Arguments like yours are wrong not because they directly harm Jennifer Laurence, but because they encourage future harms by encouraging people to not take responsibility for their acts.

    Bollocks. The standard of behaviour I’m putting forward is “don’t do harm to others”. Just because I don’t state that particular behaviour (looking at stolen photos) as inherently harmful doesn’t mean my standard doesn’t apply to circumstances where that behaviour would cause harm. I’m encouraging people to take responsibility for causing harm to others, rather than encouraging them to adhear to an arbitrary set of rules. Wouldn’t making people think about the potential harm they are causing be more likely to result in them taking responsibility for their actions than making them think about breaking some abstract rule?

    If I as an individual decide not to download the next stolen photo that’s going around, that is trivial. But if we can change the way that society thinks about issues of sexual consent, then maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of people will choose not to download.

    This works for both standards. If people don’t first take the actions that cause the harm (stealing, publishing the photos), then there won’t be the opportunity for the subsequent non-harmful actions anyway (looking at the photos).

    Each individual act of saying “no, I’m not gonna look at that, and you shouldn’t be passing it around” will have a trivial effect, but in the aggregate we could wind up with a better society.

    How is does that wind up being a ‘better society’? What is the tangible difference between the aggregate of 1 million people looking at the photos and the aggregate of 2 million?

  37. 37
    Myca says:

    This works for both standards. If people don’t first take the actions that cause the harm (stealing, publishing the photos), then there won’t be the opportunity for the subsequent non-harmful actions anyway (looking at the photos).

    If I follow, according to your argument, owning/viewing child pornography ought to be legal, though its creation would remain illegal?

    —Myca

  38. 38
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Child porn is illegal because (a) we treat the act of making it as so bad that we vastly reduce our tolerance of ANY incentives for production, without much thought of proportionality; and (b) we treat the act of viewing it as an indicator of future conduct, so we are justified in punishing the viewing; and (c) there is also an incredibly strong moral aspect as well.

    It’s the same analysis as here, but with very different weights so therefore different results. And we use that analysis in (a) all the time–for example, we have laws that prohibit the sale of old ivory, in an attempt to kill the market for new ivory.

  39. 39
    Myca says:

    Actually, GNW, I was asking Desipis about his “production bad/consumption not” principle, rather than asking about why the consumption of child pornography is illegal. I’m well aware of why it’s illegal, but according to the principles Desipis has laid out, it ought not be.

    I agree with the law that the harm done by consumption need not be direct in order to outlaw a thing. A consumer of child pornography may never have abused a child physically. A purchaser of ivory need not have shot an elephant. A purchaser of a stolen car need not have stolen it himself.

    Nonetheless, these are all illegal (and immoral, and bad) because they encourage and create a market for directly harmful acts.

    Just as the consumption of stolen celebrity pictures helps to create a market for directly harmful acts.

    And just as it’s irrelevant to the legality (and morality) of it whether the child pornography was viewed by ten people or ten thousand, it’s irrelevant whether a bunch of other people are looking at stolen celebrity nudie pics or not. It’s still immoral, and a scumbag thing to do.

    —Myca

  40. 40
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Myca says:
    September 28, 2014 at 9:43 am
    [child porn, selling ivory, and buying stolen cars] are all illegal (and immoral, and bad) because they encourage and create a market for directly harmful acts.

    Sure.

    Just as the consumption of stolen celebrity pictures helps to create a market for directly harmful acts.

    I don’t know that I agree. They aren’t being sold, and nobody has profited off of them AFAIK, so there certainly isn’t a “market” in the usual sense. If you buy ivory or a stolen car or child porn, that money can filter back to the perps. If you download a picture off a free file site it isn’t clear it would ever have any benefit to the people who stole the photos.

    Let me ask you this: What is your position on music and other digital files? What is your position on people who own one (or more) songs, videos, fonts, programs, or images which they have not paid for? Do you condemn those, and those people, as well?

    And just as it’s irrelevant to the legality (and morality) of it whether the child pornography was viewed by ten people or ten thousand,

    You and RJN are both calling a lot of important things irrelevant. Of course the size of the problem controls how we react to it. And the distance from original also affects the morality. The person creating child porn is the worst; the person knowingly purchasing it from him is the next; and so on. A man who steals them for free off the Internet is bad, but he isn’t nearly as bad as those guys because he isn’t actually putting money into the industry.

    it’s irrelevant whether a bunch of other people are looking at stolen celebrity nudie pics or not.

    No, it’s not. That is what folks are trying to explain!

    It’s still immoral, and a scumbag thing to do.

    Immoral, sure. But so is a lot of stuff, ranging from line-cutting on up the scale. It’s not as if anyone is arguing “steal more pictures!” in this thread.

    The question is HOW immoral it is, which is a distinction that, for some reason, both you and RJN seem sort of unwilling to make.

  41. 41
    Myca says:

    I don’t know that I agree. They aren’t being sold, and nobody has profited off of them AFAIK, so there certainly isn’t a “market” in the usual sense. If you buy ivory or a stolen car or child porn, that money can filter back to the perps. If you download a picture off a free file site it isn’t clear it would ever have any benefit to the people who stole the photos.

    …which is exactly what happened with both the celebrity naked pics and an awful lot of child porn. The creators/thieves sometimes try to sell it, but often make it available for free online. The people/person who stole the celebrity pics originally tried to ransom their release, but failed. Child porn is amazingly easy to find for free online. Check 4chan sometime and you’ll see it posted whether you want to or not.

    Shockingly, (or, actually, not) the celebrity pics were originally released on 4chan too.

    Furthermore, it’s not that the “purchase” of child pornography is illegal – the possession of child pornography is illegal, however you acquired it.

    So when we’re talking about celebrity pics vs child porn, what we have is 1) pictures either produced or acquired illegally that 2) may be sold, but are often released free of charge, 3) often on the very same websites.

    So why we should make the free/pay distinction in one case but not the other seems unclear.

    You and RJN are both calling a lot of important things irrelevant.

    Is it your claim that child pornography becomes less illegal as more people view it? I’d like to see you provide some evidence for that claim.

    My understanding is that it is (yes) irrelevant to the legality of it whether it’s viewed by ten or ten thousand people.

    —Myca

  42. I confess I am confused. G&W asks:

    The question is HOW immoral [knowingly looking at the pictures] is, which is a distinction that, for some reason, both you and RJN seem sort of unwilling to make.

    I guess I’d like to understand why this is the question. Of course there is a difference between and among Albert, Charlie, Bryan and David—the men in the hypothetical example G&W concocted above—and of course that difference would matter if we were ranking the severity, in terms of proximity to Kirsten Dunst (in G&W’s example), of what the men did. I’m even willing to grant, for the moment, that that difference is significant somewhere on some scale that matters other than what might go on in the consciences of those men as they tried to come to terms with what they’d done. (And I would point out that I granted this way up in comment 30, though G&W elided that part of my comment in his response.)

    I was struck in reading G&W’s hypothetical, though, by two things:

    First, in describing his reaction to the four men in the hypothetical, he says, “I see those as ordered in declining responsibility and accountability.” In other words, it’s not that responsibility and accountability disappear, but that they are reduced, and so I’m not really sure what we’re arguing about, since we all seem to agree that those men are responsible and accountable.

    Second, in his description of why David looks at the pictures of Kirsten Dunst anyway, G&W writes this:

    David is aware that some of the images may be from the leaked batch (just like he’s aware that some of them are Photoshopped) and he’s marginally aware that Kirsten Dunst wouldn’t like them (just as she probably doesn’t enjoy having her head photoshopped onto porn actresses) but he doesn’t really care, figuring that it’s been going on for ages and that his viewing won’t make a bit of difference.

    In other words, David is perfectly willing to get sexual pleasure from a set of pictures that he knows were distributed without the consent of the person in the pictures. To put it another way, he is indifferent to that person’s right not to be—or not to have been—violated. Is that indifference the same as the maliciousness of the person who stole and posted the photo? No. I never said it was. But I don’t think that indifference speaks especially well for David, and I do think his indifference is both process and product of the culture that produced the original theft. (And I realize that’s a statement that needs a lot unpacking; I just don’t have time to do it right now.)

    Something just occurred to me: There is a reason why provenance matters in the art world—because the taint of theft makes owning a stolen painting part of the original theft. I don’t know that this analogy holds completely in this case, but I think it is worth thinking about.

  43. 43
    desipis says:

    Myca:

    If I follow, according to your argument, owning/viewing child pornography ought to be legal, though its creation would remain illegal?

    If you ‘follow’ a basic argument for free speech you’ll arrive at the same conclusion. The fact that there are limits to a principle doesn’t invalidate it. I tend to see morality in the balance of factors, not in the absolute application of principles. I also think it’s important to separate issues of law and issues of morality.

    First, lets look at morality. There are a few factors where I would see child pornography differing from these photos:

    1) Extent of distribution: The stolen photos are/were a significantly popular things on the internet. Child pornography is one of the least popular thing on the internet; it’s the one taboo that continues to exist in many darker places on the internet. This means that the marginal increase in the chance of harm and the individual portion of responsibility that comes from an individual possessing an image is much higher.

    2) Substance of the content: The stolen nature of the photos is an attribute that is circumstantial. The link between children and sexual abuse is inherent to child pornography. Consider the following scenarios:

    a) A pedophile getting off to a children’s clothing catalogue, or simply a random child’s photo.

    b) Instead of a leaked selfie, image if there was a video of one of the celebrities being raped.

    I think the morality of viewing that video would be different to that of viewing the selfie, or the viewing of a non-sexual photo of a child. This relates back to our discussion about the motivating factors behind the viewing.

    I can see an argument that permitting people to be titillated by criminal sexual abuse could raise the possibility for them to cause further abuse.
    That said, I would prefer that arguments based on an increase risk of future harm be based on evidence rather than supposition. I don’t see that factor as significantly evident in the viewing of the stolen celebrity pictures.

    3) Extent of the harm: The harm done to a child from being sexually abused is surely far more significant that the harm done to a celebrity for having a nude photo leaked. Thus, any chance of causing future harm is much more significant.

    Looking at the combination of these three factors, the marginal increase in risk of harm from an individual case is much more significant in the case of child pornography when compared to the leaked celebrity photos. Given these factors it’s not unreasonable to argue that the “production bad/consumption not” principle is morally significant in the case of the leaked celebrity photos, while not being morally significant in the case of child pornography.

    Secondly, when considering the law it is important to take into consideration not just an assessment of what is right and wrong, but how that assessment can be practically enforced. This may entail ‘sacrificing’ people who have not done anything morally wrong in order to provide a practical method of minimising overall wrong.

    It is going to be difficult to evidentially establish the difference between someone who possesses the images and implicitly encourages their distribution and production, and someone who simply views the images without doing so. That practical difficulty does not affect the moral distinction between the two.

    It is reasonably argue that doing something is not morally wrong, and also argue that it should remain illegal because of the practical benefits of the law outweight the costs. The converse is also true. It is also reasonable to argue that things that are morally wrong should remain illegal, as the costs of legal enforcement would outweigh the benefits.

    So no, I don’t accept that supporting my argument about viewing the stolen celebrity photos necessitates the support of legalising the possession of child pornography.

  44. 44
    Myca says:

    So … interestingly, now that I think of it, the release of stolen naked celebrity pictures actually had some pictures of underage celebrities in it … McKayla Maroney was underage in the pictures that were stolen and released.

    So when we discuss the stolen celebrity pictures and child pornography, we need to understand that in at least one instance they’re the same thing.

    —Myca

  45. 45
    Ampersand says:

    I don’t know if this is relevant to anyone’s arguments, but according to a post I read on Crooked Timber, the stolen celebrity photographs have become significantly harder to view, because the celebrity’s representatives have successfully pursued copyright claims to get the photos removed from many websites and search engine results (google included). I’m sure that it’s not impossible to find the photographs, but at this point it would probably require purposeful dedication to find them.

    (Because the photographs were all either selfies or taken by friends of the celebs, the copyrights are all owned by either the celebs themselves or their friends, making it possible to pursue the case from a copyright standpoint. One of the few cases in which I approve of the use of copyright law).

    Interestingly, in Europe, it’s much more possible to get photos like these taken down based on a right to privacy. In the US, the right to privacy is pretty toothless, but copyright – which is to say, property rights – have a lot more power than they do in Europe. (Again, according to that Crooked Timber post, which iirc was by Corey Robin.)

  46. 46
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Ampersand says:
    September 28, 2014 at 10:02 pm
    I don’t know if this is relevant to anyone’s arguments, but according to a post I read on Crooked Timber, the stolen celebrity photographs have become significantly harder to view, because the celebrity’s representatives have successfully pursued copyright claims to get the photos removed from many websites and search engine results (google included). I’m sure that it’s not impossible to find the photographs, but at this point it would probably require purposeful dedication to find them.

    I don’t know about that. I doubt it. If that were true then there would be a lot fewer nude pictures out there.

    Not to mention that it’s an unchallengable claim: the only way to dispute it is to Google the images and see what pops up, at which point I would then have committed what some folks think of as a severe moral wrong.** It’s an unintentional Catch-22!

    Personally, I would make an exception for that sort of thing. But I don’t see how RJN et al. would differentiate that exception from a situation in which someone clicks “just to see what the fuss is about,” or something like that. Nor do I see how anyone on that side could agree to grant me an exception at all, since even a semi-objective viewing would presumably cause further violation to the subjects.

    And that is sort of the issue behind the argument, right? Because I think we all know inside that the net effect on the subjects if you and I agreed to look at the search results would be zero, or too small to measure. And the net effect on our morality would also probably be zero. Perhaps we would be harmed by having viewed them, or perhaps we would be repulsed and become even more moral–but in all probability it wouldn’t change us at all.

    I am having a lot of trouble aligning the low-to-nonexistent harm with reality here.

  47. 47
    Myca says:

    And that is sort of the issue behind the argument, right? Because I think we all know inside that the net effect on the subjects if you and I agreed to look at the search results would be zero, or too small to measure. And the net effect on our morality would also probably be zero. Perhaps we would be harmed by having viewed them, or perhaps we would be repulsed and become even more moral–but in all probability it wouldn’t change us at all.

    This is my point in bringing up child pornography.

    If your standard is as above, the same seems to be true of child porn. Your viewing it does not do any direct harm to the subject – presumably, they’ll never even know you, specifically, saw it. And, as you are not sexually attracted to children, your viewing it is much more likely to fall on the “repulsed and become even more moral” side of the equation, if any.

    And yet we all agree that there is something wrong with the viewing of child pornography, even child porn that you did not pay the creator for, even child pornography that was acquired for free through google, even child porn that the subject will never know you viewed, even child porn that does not harm you or your morality.

    Since we all presumably agree with all that, the principles you lay out cannot be a complete moral analysis.

    My contention is that the inherent invasion of privacy by viewing nonconsensual naked pictures is morally wrong, even absent all those other criteria. And I think that’s true whether you’re looking at nonconsensual naked pictures of underage teenagers, nonconsensual naked pictures of celebrities, or, as is true of these stolen pictures, nonconsensual naked pictures of underage teenage celebrities.

    Mackayla Maroney isn’t the only one, either. There are other celebrities in the release who would have been underage at the time the pictures were taken who are claiming that the pictures are faked. Since there have been adult celebrities who have falsely claimed that their pictures were faked, and since an underage celebrity (especially one connected to Disney or Nickelodeon, as many of them are) has a special incentive to make that claim, I think we have to take it with a grain of salt.

    —Myca

  48. 48
    Myca says:

    My contention is that the inherent invasion of privacy by viewing nonconsensual naked pictures is morally wrong, even absent all those other criteria. And I think that’s true whether you’re looking at nonconsensual naked pictures of underage teenagers, nonconsensual naked pictures of celebrities, or, as is true of these stolen pictures, nonconsensual naked pictures of underage teenage celebrities.

    And that (duh) the lack of consent makes it inherently wrong, even absent all those other criteria.

    —Myca

  49. G&W:

    An exception to what? I’m not trying to be dense here, but I really don’t get it. I already said that I see differences where you see them. Maybe the issue is that I see a difference in degree and that you are really arguing for a difference in kind. If I were writing a book on this subject, say, and my research required me to look at these pictures, it would seem to me the ethical thing to do to ask the person in the pictures for permission to do so, and if I couldn’t ask and decided to look anyway because my research required it, it would seem to me necessary to acknowledge the fact that I am looking at stolen pictures, etc.

    I understand the role human curiosity plays in situations like this; I have myself clicked “just to see what the fuss was about”–though not in this case and I don’t any more. Do I think that makes me a horrible person? No. But I would be lying if I pretended that I hadn’t crossed what is to me an ethical line, and I’d be being disingenuous at best if I tried to pretend I had not looked at pictures that were taken or stolen or whatever without the consent of the people in the pictures.

  50. 50
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Myca says:
    And yet we all agree that there is something wrong with the viewing of child pornography, even child porn that you did not pay the creator for, even child pornography that was acquired for free through google, even child porn that the subject will never know you viewed, even child porn that does not harm you or your morality.

    I don’t actually agree with that. I think it should all be illegal, sure. But that’s mostly a concession to the fact that I don’t care about over-enforcement in this particular context.

    You can think of a hypothetical to illustrate. If someone was dropped on a desert island and, in the month before they starved to death, got off on a pre-existing child porn picture which will die with him, I wouldn’t condemn it. Why would I? There’s no harm to the victim; no buy-in to a bad system; no market to affect the victim; no opportunity for the pedophile’s bad morals to affect anyone else. It’s just as if he was screaming racial epithets at the empty sky: who would care? Similarly, if some 18 year old high school senior has a girlfriend who turns 18 in a week, and they’re already sleeping together, I don’t consider it “child porn ” for her to send him a nude selfie (though the law would disagree.)

    In real life, I would condemn it anyway, but that’s a practical “not worth it to care about the details since it is irrelevant in 99.99% of cases” stance and not a moral claim.

    My contention is that the inherent invasion of privacy by viewing nonconsensual naked pictures is morally wrong, even absent all those other criteria.

    Confused: is your argument resting on invasion of privacy? I thought you were making some essentialist-icky type of argument; invasion of privacy is more utilitarian…?

  51. 51
    Myca says:

    I wouldn’t condemn it. Why would I?

    Yes. This is the crux of our disagreement. I think I value consent more than you do, and not just in a utilitarian way.

    Confused: is your argument resting on invasion of privacy? I thought you were making some essentialist-icky type of argument; invasion of privacy is more utilitarian…?

    Actually my argument is resting on violation of consent, of which invasion of privacy is one type. Children can’t consent, which is (part of, IMO) why child porn is bad. The celebrities in question (including underage celebrities) did not consent to the dissemination of these pictures. I think that a violation of consent is bad whether the victim is aware of it or not.

    I think it’s immoral for you to take spy pictures of your neighbor changing even if she never finds out and nobody else ever sees them. And I think that it’s immoral because of the consent violation.

    —Myca

  52. 52
    Myca says:

    And GNW, if you don’t agree with this:

    And yet we all agree that there is something wrong with the viewing of child pornography, even child porn that you did not pay the creator for, even child pornography that was acquired for free through google, even child porn that the subject will never know you viewed, even child porn that does not harm you or your morality.

    Then I don’t think that you agree that most child porn is bad. My guess (and it’s just that, a guess) is that that’s the vast majority of child pornography on the internet.

    —Myca

  53. 53
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    No, Myca, that’s not true. I am absolutely opposed to child porn–yuck–as you should have been able to tell by the the fact that I relied on a “dying man on an isolated desert island” hypothetical, which I only brought up in the context of a relatively esoteric moral argument. Not to mention my 99.99% comment.

    I don’t think you are intending to make this personal, but child porn is gross enough that I would really appreciate it if you would avoid rhetoric which would suggest otherwise, i.e. if you would not say stuff like “I don’t think that you agree that most child porn is bad.” (which, again, I do.)

    If you want to know what I think I will certainly tell you–but on this subject I’m more than a bit touchy about leading questions and non-hypothetical examples, for hopefully-obvious reasons. I’d appreciate if you could ask rather than telling.

  54. 54
    Myca says:

    To be clear: I do think that you believe child pornography to be bad.

    I just don’t think you have a very clear idea of what it is, or why you’re opposed to it.

    I believe that:
    Viewing child pornography that you did not pay for is still bad and immoral.
    Viewing child pornography that you acquired for free through an internet search is still bad and immoral.
    Viewing child pornography that the subject will never know you viewed is still bad and immoral.

    And I believe that the above is, as I said, the vast majority of child pornography on the internet.

    I still think it’s bad and immoral because it’s a violation of consent.

    If you believe that child pornography which meets the above criteria (most child pornography online) is bad and immoral … why?

    —Myca

  55. 55
    Jake Squid says:

    g&w has a point, Myca, in that I think the difference between the two of you is not that one thinks child prn is worse than the other does. It seems to me that the difference between the two of you is the reason each of you believe that child prn is bad. That difference in cause of badness leads to the disagreement about stolen naked celebrity pics.

    Or so I think.

  56. 56
    Myca says:

    That difference in cause of badness leads to the disagreement about stolen naked celebrity pics.

    Sure, I think you’re right. When I said, “I don’t think that you agree that most child porn is bad,” it wasn’t an accusation . . . I was saying that I don’t think most child porn meets his standard for badness.

    Now, of course, I agree that he does actually think it’s bad, but 1) if those are his standards for badness, and 2) most child porn does not meet his standards for badness, I think it’s unclear why he thinks it’s bad.

    When I talk about child porn that does not meet his standards for badness, BTW, I’ll point out that the three sites where the stolen celebrity naked pictures were leaked, 4chan, Reddit, and anonib have also been posting free-of-charge naked pictures of underage people for years. I link “child porn” and “stolen celebrity pics” conceptually because it’s actually the same mindset and the same people doing it. People who disregard consent in one way are more likely to do it in another.

    —Myca

  57. 57
    desipis says:

    Myca,

    And that (duh) the lack of consent makes it inherently wrong, even absent all those other criteria.

    You seem to be implying that consent (or lack thereof) is some fundamental value that doesn’t need to be weighted against other values. I’m curious why you believe consent is so important, particularly when the circumstances lack the already discussed factors.

    We’ve established you have a problem with looking at a (partially) nake photo of someone without their consent. Which of the following scenarios also requires consent of the target?

    a) Looking at a non-naked private photo of someone.
    b) Looking at a photo of someone taken in public.
    c) Looking at a publically available photo that has modified to be sexual.
    d) Looking at a drawing of someone.
    e) Looking at a sexualised drawing of someone.
    f) Forming a mental image of someone.
    g) Forming a sexualised mental image of someone.
    h) Writing a story about someone.
    i) Writing an erotic story about someone.
    j) Retelling a factual report about someone.

    If any of those don’t require the consent of the ‘someone’ to do, what factors override the importance of consent?

  58. 58
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Myca says:
    Now, of course, I agree that he does actually think it’s bad, but 1) if those are his standards for badness, and 2) most child porn does not meet his standards for badness, I think it’s unclear why he thinks it’s bad.
    —Myca

    Thanks for clarifying!

    Child porn is bad across multiple axes. Consent is only one of them. Which is to say that even if there was some child porn which is OK on a single axis, it’s unlikely to be OK on other axes–the chances of finding one are so remote that it is both reasonable and sensible to universally condemn it.

    That’s why when I discuss consent here I am not talking about law. Law is practical in a way that morality is not. It is reasonable to have a “no child porn” law and a “no child porn” attitude, even if the law captures some behavior which isn’t actually a problem, just like it is reasonable to have a “no stealing” law even if some theft doesn’t have any meaningful harm to the owner.

    Anyway.

    From your past posts, I think you would agree that as a general rule, things which are more harmful require a greater level of consent from the people who are at risk of harm. In other words, at the higher end of the scale, I suspect you would rightfully demand greater consent. (So would I, just FYI.)

    I carry that thinking through to the lower end of the utilitarian consent scale as well: Things which are less harmful require a lesser level of consent from the people who are at risk of harm. I don’t have a lot of exceptions to that rule, either. So if I could actually conclude that there was zero harm to someone from doing something, then from that axis consent would be unnecessary. (Like I said above, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other axes to consider.)

    I have a suspicion that you would agree with the consent=harm rule as a general matter–especially when you consider “worse actions require more consent.” Am I right? Do you agree that this seems to be a contradiction?

  59. 59
    Copyleft says:

    I wonder what the posters here think of drawings of celebrities or children in nude or erotic situations? You can’t claim that anyone’s property was stolen, or even that their privacy was violated.

  60. 60
    Myca says:

    From your past posts, I think you would agree that as a general rule, things which are more harmful require a greater level of consent from the people who are at risk of harm. In other words, at the higher end of the scale, I suspect you would rightfully demand greater consent. (So would I, just FYI.)

    I’m not sure what you mean by ‘greater level of consent’ here. Can you explain to me, in practice, what that would look like?

    I’m not sure about ‘degrees of consent’ in general – I guess I view it as more binary.

    I carry that thinking through to the lower end of the utilitarian consent scale as well: Things which are less harmful require a lesser level of consent from the people who are at risk of harm. I don’t have a lot of exceptions to that rule, either. So if I could actually conclude that there was zero harm to someone from doing something, then from that axis consent would be unnecessary. (Like I said above, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other axes to consider.)

    Ah. No, I don’t agree with this, for a few reasons, all of which seem to be subsets of “consent violation.”

    First – not my call to make. If, for example, I believe that there’s no harm done by a consent violation, but the person effected disagrees, I don’t think there needs to be an argument or discussion to parse out the degrees of harm – I think I’m just wrong.

    Example: Whether you or desipis or whoever think Jennifer Lawrence was harmed by the theft and release of these naked pictures, and whether you or desipis or whoever think Jennifer Lawrence was harmed by your choice to view these pictures is irrelevant – if she says “Look, it’s harmful to me that they were stolen, harmful to me thatthey were released, and harmful to me that you’re viewing them,” then I think we have to recognize that your analysis is wrong, and you’ve done an immoral thing.

    Second, I view a violation of consent as harm in and of itself – it’s a rights violation, and I don’t think we need demonstrated harm in order to call a rights violation immoral.

    Example, from above – I think it’s immoral to take secret pictures of your neighbor changing her clothes, even if she doesn’t know about it, and even if nobody but you ever sees them, and even if she suffers no ‘harm’ from it. Having her privacy violated and having her consent ignored is a harm in and of itself.

    Third, though I’m much more utilitarian than I am deonotological, one of the things that utilitarianism is particularly shitty at is describing and working with human rights issues, so I think approaching this in a utilitarian way is wrong.

    Example: If we want to go full-bore, once we’ve embraced the utilitarian calculus, then we end up in creepy situations like “trying to figure out whether the child porn brought more happiness to the people viewing it than it caused sadness to the child involved.” If it did, then yay! Utilitarianism is okay with it! I find that fucked up.

    In terms of discussing child porn and stolen celebrity pics:

    Child porn is bad across multiple axes. Consent is only one of them. Which is to say that even if there was some child porn which is OK on a single axis, it’s unlikely to be OK on other axes–the chances of finding one are so remote that it is both reasonable and sensible to universally condemn it.

    What is the axis, specifically, that defines the viewing of child pornography as morally objectionable but the viewing of stolen celebrity pics as morally unproblematic? I’m assuming in both cases that the viewing itself is not directly harmful to the subject.

    I can define really clearly why I find them both problematic, and though you’re very clear on finding child porn problematic, you have been unable to offer a clear distinction.

    —Myca

  61. 61
    Myca says:

    Copyleft and desipis – I don’t want to get into the hypotheticals of how and when and where it might be okay to have naked images of children or celebrities. I’d agree that there are edge cases, and I’d probably tend to err on the side of more permissive rather than less … but wherever you draw the line, stolen private photos are well on the non-con-fucking-sensual side of it.

    Additionally, there’s something unpleasant about trying to find the edgiest of edge cases that might possibly be okay – it’s like watching white people try to figure out when it might be acceptable for them to use the N-word. Like – whether there are circumstances where it might be okay or not, it’s still creepy as fuck to want it so badly.

    —Myca

  62. Thank you, Myca. I was just going to write something similar. This discussion has wandered very far afield from where my original post started.

  63. 63
    Harlequin says:

    I carry that thinking through to the lower end of the utilitarian consent scale as well: Things which are less harmful require a lesser level of consent from the people who are at risk of harm. I don’t have a lot of exceptions to that rule, either. So if I could actually conclude that there was zero harm to someone from doing something, then from that axis consent would be unnecessary. (Like I said above, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other axes to consider.)

    Leaving aside the issue of what lesser or greater consent actually means, I don’t think your conclusion follows by necessity from your premises. A pizza costs more the more toppings you put on it, but it would be wrong to infer that a cheese pizza is therefore free. Likewise, you can believe that the moral wrongness of something increases with greater harm without believing that the moral wrongness is zero when there is zero harm.

    Edit: To come back around to the original post, perhaps, the point (as I read it) is not just the harm that would come to the person whose salt was taken, but the difference it would make to the person who took the power and the salt without payment. If we discuss only the person who was injured, we ignore the impact on the person who makes the choice.

  64. 64
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Myca says:
    September 30, 2014 at 12:47 pm

    From your past posts, I think you would agree that as a general rule, things which are more harmful require a greater level of consent from the people who are at risk of harm. In other words, at the higher end of the scale, I suspect you would rightfully demand greater consent. (So would I, just FYI.)

    I’m not sure what you mean by ‘greater level of consent’ here. Can you explain to me, in practice, what that would look like?

    “Can I borrow your baseball glove? yes? Ok, thanks. (takes glove.)”
    versus
    “Can I have a kidney? Yes? Ok, but are you sure? You are? I mean, REEEEAAAALLLY sure? Positive? Absolutely? I’m not sure you’re sure enough… ”

    I think there’s an important difference between a grudging “yes, I guess so” and an enthusiastic “HELL, YES!!”, even though they are both “consent.” I’d accept the first one to borrow a baseball glove; I’d demand the second one to take a kidney. Same way for non-consent.

    Example, from above – I think it’s immoral to take secret pictures of your neighbor changing her clothes, even if she doesn’t know about it, and even if nobody but you ever sees them, and even if she suffers no ‘harm’ from it. Having her privacy violated and having her consent ignored is a harm in and of itself.

    See, I think so too! Just like I think that child pornographers are nasty enough to make me wish that hell existed.But I can’t seem to easily explain why I think so without ending up at “because I say so,” and as a rule I hate doing that. Which is why this conversation is interesting, at least for me. (And which is also probably why I was never good at philosophy!)

    Third, though I’m much more utilitarian than I am deonotological, one of the things that utilitarianism is particularly shitty at is describing and working with human rights issues, so I think approaching this in a utilitarian way is wrong.

    You know, this is actually one of the more convincing (to me) points that you have made. Because it’s true: if I accept that utilitarianism simply isn’t the right analysis tool for that situation, then I would more easily agree with you. I’m a bit skittish of viewing this as a “human rights issue,” though, because IMO the “human right” term tends to be used as a positive right these days, and I don’t often agree with the resulting claims. (I tend to think of them as negative, not positive, rights.)

  65. 65
    closetpuritan says:

    From a utilitarian POV, although the original hacker did not, AFAIK, make money off the pics, Reddit made a ton of money. This could be considered proof-of-concept if someone want to either make money off hosting similar pics on a dedicated site, or wanted to use similar pics to try boost a new Reddit-like site–therefore, it’s possible that this incident and the buzz it generated could encourage similar thefts. Each additional pageview, although relatively small individually, adds to the amount of money made off of advertising, although apparently most of the money came from an increase in premium subscriptions to Reddit.

  66. 66
    desipis says:

    Myca,

    I’d agree that there are edge cases, and I’d probably tend to err on the side of more permissive rather than less … but wherever you draw the line, stolen private photos are well on the non-con-fucking-sensual side of it.

    I find it disappointing that you want to examine other people’s principles all the way to child pornography and back, but when it comes to your looking at your own principles you just deflect any questions.

    Additionally, there’s something unpleasant about trying to find the edgiest of edge cases that might possibly be okay – it’s like watching white people try to figure out when it might be acceptable for them to use the N-word. Like – whether there are circumstances where it might be okay or not, it’s still creepy as fuck to want it so badly.

    I tend to think creepy as fuck when people want to go around morally judging others for doing things that don’t harm anyone, particularly when they do so on the basis of dogmatic rules they feel uncomfortable even examining.

  67. 67
    Jake Squid says:

    I tend to think creepy as fuck when people want to go around morally judging others for doing things that don’t harm anyone, particularly when they do so on the basis of dogmatic rules they feel uncomfortable even examining.

    Of course Myca doesn’t agree that the things being discussed don’t harm anyone. I mean, that’s the basis for your entire interaction with him here. It makes the bit I quoted seem really filthy.

  68. 68
    Copyleft says:

    Despis @66: Really, I posted my query as an experiment of sorts. Deprived of the legalistic excuse for condemning celebrity porn, would the outcriers become uncomfortable and try to change the subject? And would such efforts include a reflexive “this whole thing is creepy so stop talking about it”?

    Answer: Yep.

  69. Copyleft:

    Deprived of the legalistic excuse for condemning celebrity porn, would the outcriers become uncomfortable and try to change the subject?

    Except that you were the one who changed the subject. More to the point, while I do think your question about where one would draw the line in terms of artistic renderings of nude children or celebrities is one worth talking about—because it gets into what, for me, is the very interesting question of an artist’s responsibility and accountability for what he or she creates and what it means for viewers of the art to be implicated in that—in the context of a discussion about the original post, which was about a very specific situation, I agree with Myca: changing the subject in the way you tried to do and looking for the “edges” is kind of creepy.

  70. 70
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    That’s ridiculous.

    If you can’t stand to discuss how your rules work near the margins, and where the borders are, then you shouldn’t be entering into discussions about rules.

    Because the margins are where all of the relevant stuff is. Nobody cares if Pete Pedophile gets put in jail for his collection of homemade child rape videos because everyone agrees. The much more relevant question is whether Pete should be punished (and how) for his Ariel-porn cartoons, or his “barely legal and dressed like children” porn collection, or (since Pete just turned 19) the nude selfies of his 17-1/2 year old girlfriend that she sent to him; or the sketches he made of those pictures; or whatever.

    Saying you’re not comfortable talking about the margins is at best a weak-willed and poorly defensible way of having an argument about the rules. But this is worse. Calling someone creepy for insisting is relying on an ad hominem to duck the question, while pretending that the problem isn’t you. That’s BS.**

    (Not incidentally, I don’t see Myca’s refusal to answer questions as anything other than “annoying” or “bad argumentation.” I don’t think it’s creepy in the slightest.)

    **Common though it may be. Apparently a lot of folks believe that trying to discuss where child porn starts makes one a child porn advocate. That wouldn’t entirely surprise me, since I’ve seen a TON of feminists assert that (a) trying to discuss what is / isn’t punishable as rape makes one a rape apologist; (b) trying to discuss what is/isn’t punishable as harassment makes one a sexist; (c) trying to discuss precisely what cultural appropriation is or isn’t makes one a racist; and so on.

  71. 71
    Copyleft says:

    Exactly, Gin. The bad-faith argument struck me as noteworthy, but the point is made. I’m fine with moving on.

  72. G&W and Copyleft:

    I think you’re both being a little disingenuous here. If you want to talk about edges—and I sort of regret adopting Myca’s word without really thinking it through because I think it muddied my point a bit, but I will use it here because it’s the word we’ve been using…. If you really want to talk about how things work at the edges, then we have to agree on which edges of which realm. The original post was about people knowingly viewing images that were stolen; most of the other examples—if I remember correctly; I have not gone back and read through the entire thread—people have given are about images that were created by people for a viewing public. (With the possible exception of G&W’s hypotheticals in comment 35: three of them maintain the stolen nature of the images; one does not.)

    For me, the question of the image file’s provenance matters greatly. A stolen image file—like a stolen photograph of painting—is very different from an image someone creates out of her or his imagination, just like a stolen painting is very different from a forgery of that same painting (that may not be a perfect analogy, but it gets close to what I mean), and, in this case, for me, knowingly looking at a stolen nude photograph of Kirsten Dunst—or being willing to set aside any concern that the image you are looking at might have been one of the stolen images—is very different from looking at a nude drawing of Kirsten Dunst that someone else has made from their own imagination, is very different from looking at a photoshopped image of Kirsten Dunst’s head on someone else’s nude body—assuming the image of Kirsten Dunst’s head was not stolen from her.

    Someone upthread, I think, asked about stolen non-sexual images, and my reaction is the same. If someone hacked into my computer, stole images of my family vacation, none of which were at all compromising, and posted them for all the world to see, the issue to me would be exactly the same. There is an obvious difference in degree, since sexual images raise the stakes in all kinds of ways, but the underlying issue is, for me, the same.

    Neither of you has adequately demonstrated why/how the examples you gave (that do not involve stolen images) are “at the edge” of this scenario—which is not to say those examples are not worth discussing. I think they are; I think they are very important things to discuss; and it might be that, properly framed, the discussion would illuminate some connections between those scenarios and the one I discussed in the original post. I don’t see that frame here. What I see is an unwillingness, for the most part, to think through the difference that provenance makes—or to make a systematic argument for why it doesn’t matter at all. Desipis did make that argument in terms of receding levels of harm to the people in the pictures as the viewer gets farther and farther away from the original theft. But he’s the only one, and he and I just disagree, I guess, at a very fundamental level.

    In any event, I think Copyleft may be right that this conversation has run its course. I just felt the need to point this out.

  73. 73
    desipis says:

    Richard Jeffrey Newman:

    For me, the question of the image file’s provenance matters greatly.

    So to clarify, you see the stolen photos in the same way that copyright law does? You see it as a matter of the original author having a right to control their work. If you’re taking a propertarian based argument, rather than consent based one, then naturally the edge cases would be different.

    I imagine you would see the issue as different than if the images were collected from a hidden camera, or if the images were from paparazzi shots such as the topless photos of Kate Middleton.

  74. 74
    Falstaff says:

    I’m probably going to misstate something here, but given how utterly the two sides seem to be talking past each other, I figure coming in to give my own opinion as the discussion is closing is forgivable. (I hadn’t to date because I’ve essentially agreed with everything Richard and Myca have had to say. Honestly, I’m not sure what me chiming in now really accomplishes — I still feel incredibly inarticulate compared to everyone who comments here — and maybe what I’m about to say is badly oversimplifying one of the viewpoints involved, but… you know, I’m gonna say it anyway. I doubt anyone will take much notice of this anyway.)

    desipis, I think that what Richard has been saying (and Myca too) is actually a lot simpler than agreeing with copyright. It’s at its core a moral argument. They see — well, hell, I do too — those pictures as private, not just in terms of them being private property but in terms of their content, private in the sense that they aren’t meant to be viewed by anyone but the people pictured in them and the select few who they choose to share them with.

    If I’m right, they agree with me that the collection of the photos without the participation of the women involved is in itself a violation of privacy, a really, really profound one, not only because of the content (viz., semi-nudity, nudity, the aftermath of sex in some cases) but because they think (and I’m more or less with them on this as well) that any time someone accesses another person’s private images without that person explicitly wanting them to do so, that’s a violation.

    And every time someone looks at those pictures, whether they have anything at all to do with the people who accessed them against the subject’s wishes or not, that is, in and of itself (and every time) a violation, not just of privacy but of the most basic consent. And violating someone’s consent is pretty much always wrong.

    So… yes. I mean, if you, desipis, and you, g&w, don’t feel that that violation amounts to much — which is certainly the impression I’ve gathered from reading this discussion, although I can be terribly thick about this sort of thing, Aspie that I am — then that’s just how it is, but I’m pretty sure that’s where Richard and Myca were coming from here.

  75. 75
    Jake Squid says:

    Now that Jennifer Lawrence has spoken publicly about this, has anyone’s opinion on the harms changed?

    “Anybody who looked at those pictures, you’re perpetuating a sexual offense. You should cower with shame. Even people who I know and love say, ‘Oh, yeah, I looked at the pictures.’ I don’t want to get mad, but at the same time I’m thinking, I didn’t tell you that you could look at my naked body.”

  76. 76
    Myca says:

    Desipis:

    I find it disappointing that you want to examine other people’s principles all the way to child pornography and back, but when it comes to your looking at your own principles you just deflect any questions.

    Copyleft:

    Really, I posted my query as an experiment of sorts. Deprived of the legalistic excuse for condemning celebrity porn, would the outcriers become uncomfortable and try to change the subject?

    G&W

    Saying you’re not comfortable talking about the margins is at best a weak-willed and poorly defensible way of having an argument about the rules. But this is worse. Calling someone creepy for insisting is relying on an ad hominem to duck the question, while pretending that the problem isn’t you. That’s BS.

    Oh, for fuck’s sake.

    Refusing to be drawn into an irrelevant bullshit derail perpetrated by people who openly argue for ignoring consent isn’t bad argumentation, and it isn’t ducking the question … because what’s at issue isn’t remotely near an edge case. It’s an open, clear, violation of the consent of the celebrities (and, let’s remember, underage celebrities – nice job defending that) in question.

    By way of analogy, I’m saying “car theft is bad and immoral” and the response is, “well, then smart guy, just exactly how many days does someone have to have borrowed a car for before it’s considered theft? What if I loan my car to someone for a week, and they keep it for a week and a half? How come you can’t answer that, huh? HUH!?”

    But, since it’s so upsetting that I would say that consent violations are immoral without mapping out whether imagining someone naked counts (What the fuck? Really!?), I’ll do a quick lightning round:

    Looking at a non-naked private photo of someone.
    Without their permission, that’s a violation of consent.
    Looking at a photo of someone taken in public.
    In public, there’s no expectation of privacy, though I’d say that upskirt photos are violations of consent, and something technically public but overly sexual (close-ups on women’s asses in yoga pants, photos of teenage girls in bathing suits) may not be technically illegal, but I’d consider it immoral and a violation of consent.
    Looking at a publically available photo that has modified to be sexual.
    I think this is an edge case. If the modification is clearly fake, I don’t think it’s a consent violation.
    Looking at a drawing of someone.
    No, that’s not a consent violation.
    Looking at a sexualised drawing of someone.
    No, that’s not a consent violation.
    Forming a mental image of someone.
    No, that’s not a consent violation.
    Forming a sexualised mental image of someone.
    No, that’s not a consent violation.
    Writing a story about someone.
    No, that’s not a consent violation, though it may be creepy as hell.
    Writing an erotic story about someone.
    No, that’s not a consent violation, though it may be creepy as hell.
    Retelling a factual report about someone.
    That depends on the report, how it was acquired, etc.
    Drawings of celebrities or children in nude or erotic situations?
    No, that’s not a consent violation, though it may be creepy as hell.

    My argument is that a violation of consent is itself a harm, even absent any other demonstrable external harm.

    The reason I brought up child pornography and ‘peeping tom’ shots is because I’d assumed (apparently, and terrifyingly, falsely) that we’d all agree that they’re immoral. My claim is that they’re immoral for the same reason that these stolen celebrity pictures are immoral.

    That is – if you apply the utilitarian calculus to simply the viewing of child pornography or to taking secret pictures of your neighbor (without taking the consent violation into account) the utilitarian calculus is likely to say that they’re both acceptable. But they’re not. That’s because of consent.

    Jake’s comment at #75 pointing out that this is how Jennifer Lawrence herself understands the situation ought to give the defenders of this vile practice pause. It takes a fuck of a lot of gall to say “this consent violation isn’t important” in the face of the affected person telling you exactly how important it is.

    I agree with Ms Lawrence: You should cower with shame

    —Myca