Katie Hill and the Many Victims of “Revenge Porn”
▻https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/katie-hill-and-many-victims-revenge-porn/601198
As I wrote in Lawfare before Hill’s resignation, this is the first instance of which I am aware when a politically aligned publication has published an explicit photo of an opposition politician for apparent political gain. It’s both a sign of how ugly the political landscape could become and a reminder of how ugly, for the many ordinary people who have suffered this kind of abuse, the world already is.
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Yet all of this must be separated from the question of whether or not the photos of Hill should have been made public. That, at least, has a clear answer: no. The photographs fit into the category of what is colloquially called “revenge porn” and what experts call “nonconsensual pornography”: explicit images of a person that may or may not have been taken consensually, but that are released to the public without the victim’s approval.
Hill stated in her speech that the photos of her “were taken without my knowledge, let alone my consent.” She has blamed her husband, whom she is divorcing, for the photos’ release. If her allegations prove true, she will be far from alone: As the law professors Mary Anne Franks and Danielle Citron (a colleague of mine) write, the release of sensitive images or video against the will of the person depicted “is often a form of domestic violence.” The vast majority of victims of this practice are female (though not all: Former Texas Representative Joe Barton appears to have been a victim of the practice in 2017).
And though research is scant at this point, sexual minorities may be particularly vulnerable. Ari Ezra Waldman, the founder and director of the Institute for CyberSafety, says that nonconsensual pornography of gay women may most commonly be released “when women come out as lesbians after breaking up with men”; the specific circumstances of Hill’s case obviously differ from this scenario, but there is a common thread in that Hill’s male former partner may have retaliated against her by releasing photos of her relationship with a woman.