A Brief History
On January 20, 2014, one year ago today, a headline in Israel screamed out the news that “revenge porn” had been outlawed there. Israel is now joined by Germany and at least 12 of the 50 United States of America in making revenge porn illegal. France and other countries have broader privacy laws that could be interpreted as to include revenge porn.
Digging Deeper
So what is revenge porn? It is the posting on the internet or any other publicly viewed forum of sexually explicit video or photos of a person or persons without their consent for the purpose of embarrassing or otherwise damaging them, presumably in retaliations for some perceived wrong done by the victim(s).
Examples of this gutter vindictiveness include: airing video recordings of the victim and perpetrator (usually an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend) having sex; or secretly-made photographs via hidden camera of the victim(s) while nude or having sex. In some cases, the threat of releasing such video or photos is used as extortion against the victim(s) for money or some other action demanded of them.
In a sad twist, the propensity of teenagers to use their cell phones and the internet to show off sexual adventures or to take revenge on ex-lovers has led to many cases of teens being charged with child pornography as the age of the perpetrator is not a defense against taking or sharing sexually explicit video of minors.
The lesson? You cannot help what people might do without your knowledge, but you can certainly take precautions to protect yourself. Do not pull a “Pam and Tommy Lee” and film yourself having sex. Also, try to refrain from sending nude pics of yourself over your cell phone, and do not let your partner photograph you in the buff or in provocative poses! Other people from whose embarrassment you can learn include Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Jennifer Lawrence. (History and Headlines Note: Though these were not all cases of revenge porn, they could have ended up as such!)
Before this sort of thing became popular, cell phones and the internet having made it pretty easy, Cold War spy agencies were known to engage in this sort of behavior in order to pressure enemy agents into betraying their respective countries.
In a bizarre twist, when the President of Indonesia, Achmed Sukarno, was threatened by the KGB with the release of a video of him having sex with women who were not his wife, he reportedly liked the video so much he eagerly watched it over and over again and proudly asked for more copies to distribute to his friends and the public! Obviously, the extortion attempt did not work…
Question for students (and subscribers): Is revenge ever justifiable? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Bristow, Kyle. The Revenge Pornography Victim’s Guide to Removing Pictures from the Internet. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.
