Cav's Place

I was saying in the previous post that we need to figure out what to do in order to maximize the positive and minimize the negative consequences of this, but that first requires identifying precisely what “this” actually involves, other than an obvious invasion of privacy. And the answer is, perhaps oddly enough for many, “not much”. I mean, all that happened was that the Internet apparently suddenly found out that a number of women, some of whom aren’t exactly strangers to revealing themselves, have naked bodies under their clothes and engage in sexual activities. Imagine that…
However, our society tends to depict sexuality, and women’s sexuality in particular, as something shameful that needs to be hidden away from the eyes of the world, and as such many do make a big deal out of something that, violation of privacy aside, shouldn’t necessarily be treated differently from pictures of food and people eating, for example. Sadly, while some of those affected seem to be largely ignoring the matter and a few even appeared to take what happened in good humor, others reacted in ways which only make matters worse.
Now I’m obviously not referring to those taking action against harassment or the, shall we say, persistent unwanted attention generated by the leaked images, as that’s perfectly normal. However, lashing out at anyone who may look at the pictures, threatening all those who share any of them with legal action, serving sites with orders to take them down due to copyright violation or first claiming those depicting you are fakes and then having lawyers warn sites not to publish them because you were underage when they were taken even though apparently the file data says otherwise shows a degree of desperation that shouldn’t exist. If the point should be to ride this out with your head held high, not to mention to make something positive on a larger scale out of it, there’s no room for anything that merely serves to enforce the notion that you’re highly vulnerable to the impact of the leaks.

Should probably mention at this point that I did experience something of the sort after I stopped going to school. Had continued exchanging e-mails with one former classmate whom I considered a close friend at the time and after well over a year, when she suddenly stopped talking to me, another former classmate, who could never stand me and was probably unhappy that their source of entertainment was taken away, sent me a message to tell me she had been passing my e-mails around in class and they were even read out loud during breaks, while also using the sort of language you’d expect to ask for more intimate details about my girlfriend and mock the problems I had with hemorrhoids.
Now I’ll say I reacted quite well to that, promptly shutting him up by calmly correcting the few details he had gotten wrong while trying to prove he did indeed read the extremely personal e-mails I had sent during that time and asking him to tell the others to see about raising as much money as the winner of that season of Big Brother was to receive, since I was apparently followed around for way longer anyway. In addition, I resolved to be even more of an open book than I was until then, to minimize the risk of being surprised by anyone learning anything I didn’t already make public on my own. However, the moment was definitely uncomfortable, especially since I wasn’t the only one affected by it, and if I had the choice between that and having a bunch of naked pictures end up all over the Internet, I’d have taken the second option any day!

Not that anyone needs false friends to have their privacy violated in such a manner, considering what’s been happening in recent years and how easy it now seems to be to become a “person of interest” for one reason or another, or to have some of your communications monitored even if you’re not. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that some leaked documents revealed that the sheer amount of nudity and sex that was intercepted was a real problem for security agencies, some of those tasked with monitoring demanding methods to filter out such images and messages, so if you sent or stored anything of the sort on-line in recent years, it may have been seen by at least a few pairs of eyes other than those the content was intended for, even without any hackers getting involved.
In other words, on the one hand we have employees of the state, equipped, trained and paid by your taxes, who have the law on their side and are often also aided by major corporations as they violate your privacy looking for reasons to charge you of a crime. On the other hand, we have some guys who most likely operate on their own resources while both the authorities and the corporations try to find ways to stop them and prevent this from happening again, who violate your privacy looking for something to jerk off to. Once again, if given the choice I’m quite sure I’ll take this second option, obviously as long as it remains limited to this and doesn’t lead to things such as identity theft or stealing financial information.

Some may claim I’m only saying this because I’m a man, and while that’s far from entirely correct, there may be some truth in it. After all, while I’m sure there are plenty of well-known men that significant numbers of straight women, gay men and bisexuals would be interested in seeing naked, I rather doubt it’d have been considered this much of a scandal if this would have happened to them instead, and I’m almost certain the victims themselves would have reacted in a much more balanced and likely even humorous manner. Yet that only serves to prove one of my points.
This gap between men and women when it comes to the general public’s perception of their sexuality needs to be bridged, likely even before we can get to the greater issue of making the simple concept of regular, everyday nudity and sex more socially acceptable. After all, it seems that many of the pictures reveal only breasts, which means they’re only worth noting because those depicted are women and for some reason society expects and frequently even requires women to keep theirs hidden. If it’d have been pictures of men instead, few would have cared simply because there’s nothing unusual, much less shocking, in seeing a man’s bare chest.
For this reason, while what I heard about regular women posting pictures of their breasts to show solidarity with those who were hacked is not a bad idea and may go some way towards reducing this senseless stigma associated with women exposing themselves or being exposed in such a manner, I believe a message would truly be sent if similarly well-known and desirable men would do it as well. Considering what I said above, in plenty of cases nothing more than a bare chest may be needed to underline this discrimination and the need to do something about it, though it would obviously help if at least a few would tastefully go further, both as a stronger show of solidarity and as a way to challenge this prevailing misguided notion that nudity and sex are inherently “dirty” and shameful.

The worst part is that, as we all know, while this typical, everyday nudity and sex, which is simply natural and can be liberating and fulfilling for many, is shunned, certain more or less perverted forms of sexuality tend to be generally accepted when they’re used to shock, to advertise or simply to attract attention in one way or another. I mean, even without considering some of the “leaks” of supposedly private images that we now know were in fact publicity stunts, glance at a few tabloids on any given day and you’ll probably notice several stories about revealing outfits or “accidental” flashing of various body parts that are considered to be more or less business as usual, yet at the same time you now have messages posted by some who weren’t affected stating that thankfully all of their private pictures are of cats and food, suggesting that they wouldn’t exactly be affected even if their accounts would be hacked as well.
That’s completely wrong and it’s a problem that needs to be addressed no matter how much society strives to avoid doing so and even to silence those who attempt to start the debate. If the images in question were never meant to be public and they suddenly end up out there, your privacy has been violated in exactly the same manner whether you were exposed while playing with your pussy or while playing with your other kind of pussy. In addition, any rational analysis will find few reasons to see this regular, everyday sexuality as wrong, but the same thing definitely can’t be said about this carefully tailored use of the natural state of our bodies and of entirely natural and, under the right circumstances, likely beautiful and meaningful behaviors for the purpose of obtaining various gains, seeing as we’re simply talking of the exploitation of people’s instincts for the purpose of manipulating them.

Still, while this event has enough of an impact at least on certain groups to have the potential to nudge society’s views of sexuality in general and women’s sexuality in particular at least a short distance in one direction or the other, I’m probably going too far for one post, so let me get back to the matter at hand. A significant number of women, some of them famous and most of the others well-known to at least some groups of people, have had their accounts hacked and private pictures and videos in which they appear naked or even engaged in certain sexual activities have been made public, and the question is what should they and what should we, as in those of us who took a somewhat more rational interest in the matter, do about it.
Though I noticed my own curiosity lessening significantly as I wrote this, I’ll stand by my previous statement and say again that I don’t think it’d be wrong to look at whatever’s already public. What most definitely is wrong, on the other hand, is using this incident to demean or harass the women in question and, while in most cases those who do so tend to go away on their own if ignored, those who insist may need to be set straight. Actually contacting the victims yourself and mentioning this issue, or attempting to trigger a response from them at this time, is most probably a terrible idea, however, even if you only mean to show support. In addition, I believe that these efforts to accurately match each picture or video to a person even when the face isn’t visible are also wrong, seeing as, whether we’re talking about simple eye candy or about, shall we say, more practical applications, as long as it’s neither your partner nor a sex worker whose services you’re interested in using, an image of an attractive naked person of the sex you’re attracted to should be no different from that of another.
On the other hand, those who were affected by this need to behave in a manner that’ll make it clear they’re not vulnerable to any of the attacks they may find themselves facing because of what happened, which unfortunately some of them haven’t done. They obviously should take whatever legal action is appropriate against the hackers themselves, but otherwise their behavior must prove beyond doubt that they’re comfortable with their bodies and their sexuality, and that they know perfectly well that neither what can be seen in those pictures or videos nor the fact that these files exist and were perhaps sent to someone else as well should be seen as illegal, immoral or wrong in any other way. In many cases, a brief humorous reaction or even ignoring the matter entirely may be enough, but they may need to state all of this in just so many words if they end up being accused of tarnishing their image or of crap like no longer being suitable role models.

I’d have more to say, most of it obviously about the potential wider implications and the bigger problems which this incident merely served to highlight once again, but this is already even longer than I thought it’ll be. As such, I’ll stop here and hope that, somehow, more good will come out of this than bad and some years down the line we’ll know that, likely against the intentions of the hackers, the end result of this scandal was a step, however small, towards a more rational and natural view of everyday sexuality in general and women’s sexuality in particular. Not that this is particularly likely, of course, humans being humans, but one can hope, and one can do his or her part regardless of the odds.