Revenge porn is a crucial challenge both men and women face today; therefore, understanding its causes is necessary to help identify the best ways to eradicate it. Revenge porn has been a challenge that victims have had to deal with for the longest time. One of the most famous cases that marked the beginning of this problem involved the Hustler Magazine in the US, which posted sexually explicit material about women without their consent. As technology advances, this issue exacerbates because the perpetrators rely on it to distribute the content. One of the most significant factors that promote revenge porn is sociocultural norms. Objectifying women is a critical cause of revenge disproportionate porn victim blaming, which is considerably associated with the type of sexually explicit material these perpetrators utilize to humiliate their victims and their sexual identity.
General Overview
Revenge porn happens when one partner shares sexually explicit content on the internet. The victims of this act are always sexual partners of the perpetrators who aim to abuse or retaliate (Gámez-Guadix & Daniel, 2). These videos or images go online without seeking permission from the victim. Most of the individuals who post this content are malicious former sexual partners. Even though both males and females can be victims of revenge, in most cases, women are the victims. One can utilize various strategies to obtain this content, including taping a partner in a compromising situation without their knowledge, forcefully taking videos during a sexual assault, and when one shares content voluntarily. Even if one shares content voluntarily, posting them without permission renders the act non-consensual.
Since the perpetrators want to punish the victim, they always include abusive language or details that enable viewers to identify the person. Even though any woman can be a victim, there are discrepancies based on sexual identity (Hearn & Matthew, 873). The extent to which straight, lesbians and bisexual women experience victim blaming varies as society perceives them differently regarding sexual conduct. Revenge porn and victim-blaming can adversely impact the victims. For example, it is significantly associated with mental health challenges, considering the shame and stigma associated with it. Even though men are primarily the perpetrators of this unfortunate act, both males and females objectify and blame victims of porn revenge. Although people may not admit to wrongfully blaming these victims, it can happen unconsciously. Various processing biases and aspects can influence an individual to attributions of declaring that a victim of porn revenge is accountable for the event.
Revenge Porn and Objectification
Roberts and Fredrickson developed a concept to help explain that sexual objectification occurs when people overlook a woman’s personhood because they have lowered her to the status of an object. Their theory is called the Objectification Theory (Serpe et al., 2). It states that this objectification occurs when society treats women’s sexual functions and bodies as her ideal representation. This model has helped comprehend the impacts of this objectification. This personal or sociocultural lowering happens because society has trapped these victims of objectification in a ubiquity of lasting objectifying encounters. Naturally degrading, these encounters never capture their personhood.
When people objectify an individual, it can involve denying them human qualities. Even though understanding the objectification process is crucial modern research overlooks this concept (Serpe et al., 2). Instead, researchers focus more on the internalized impacts of the occurrence. People who objectify others feel that their victims are less human. These perpetrators perceive her with less mind. This degradation plays a significant role in gauging objectification. On the other hand, one is less likely to objectify a woman when one contextualizes her with human traits. This dehumanization varies across sexual identities. People should never deny anyone essential human traits. However, this denial worsens as the objectification exacerbates.
When one objectifies the other, one views this victim as an instrument to an end. Therefore, the objectifier may feel they have the right to utilize the body they objectify as a personal instrument (Champion, 75). Therefore, the victim, primarily female, serves as an object that should help satisfy his desires and wishes. When videos or images of victims of revenge porn go viral, the viewers never capture her personhood; instead, they crudely describe what her body looks like. Degrading the depiction of revenge porn victims online is stigmatization. People believe these women are to blame and do not see anything wrong with shaming them. They lower these women to objects available online for persecution.
Blaming a woman after their image or video leaks on the internet can cause secondary victimization, which involves adverse impacts. When people continuously blame a victim of porn revenge, she may start believing that her actions have caused her challenges (Patella-Rey, 788). Even if a woman voluntarily takes the photo or video, she is not to blame if the perpetrator posts the content without her consent. This behaviour also manifests when People blame domestic violence and rape victims. People can tell the woman that she was not supposed to take a photo or video and send it. Even though doing so is typical among individuals in sexual relationships, they blame the woman instead of criticizing the perpetrator’s actions. They may criticize for being too naïve. It can lead to justifying porn revenge as viewers will argue that the woman’s behaviours were inappropriate; hence she deserved the treatment.
The individuals who engage in these systematic errors in reasoning do so because they desire to protect themselves. Blaming a porn revenge victim is a self-protection and distancing mechanism (Attrill-Smith). They believe that only individuals with inappropriate behaviours become victims; therefore, they are safe because they act right. One may blame a victim without intending to because such cognitions influence them to do so. Social constructions considerably influence people to have these non-conscious biases.
Sexually Explicit Content Modes
Another crucial aspect to regard when studying porn revenge and victim blaming is the type of sexually explicit material these perpetrators utilize to humiliate their victims. Even though both videos and images are dehumanizing, they have varying effects on the viewers (Attrill-Smith). The photos these individuals post are static images. On the other hand, the videos they post online are motion movements which play for more than a second. Therefore, these contents exhibit variances in how they affect people who consume them. As an illustration, one can tell the level with which the victim enjoyed the sex from a video than when one views a static image. Therefore, sexual content depiction is significantly associated with how viewers judge the person in the image or video. This depiction creates perceptions and attitudes determining how badly people humiliate the victim.
One can utilize various strategies to obtain this content, including taping a partner in a compromising situation without their knowledge, forcefully taking videos during a sexual assault, and when one shares content voluntarily. In some cases, the viewers can tell the perpetrator’s strategy to obtain the content (Attrill-Smith). This knowledge considerably impacts the extent of victim blaming. When people realize that the person in the image or video got involved voluntarily, they may blame them more than when the perpetrator does it forcefully or secretly. That can adversely impact the victim as they share the sexual content with their lovers with good intentions without knowing it would end in ruin.
Sexual Identity and Variation in Objectification
Even though every woman has increased chances of victim blaming after porn revenge, the extent to which it occurs varies across sexual identities. People treat straight, lesbian, and bisexual women differently when their images or videos leak online because of the discrepancies in how they perceive them (Serpe et al., 3). Viewers, whether male or female, objectify these individuals differently. For example, women who get involved in sexual activities with females and males suffer more than their peers with different sexual identities because of harsh stereotypes. Society considers these individuals who are reckless regarding how they conduct themselves sexually. Bisexual women complain about general mistreatment from men because people consider their sexual identity a factor they can use for enjoyment and entertainment. They complain about dealing with disrespect from men due to frequent eroticization. They have become victims because these men regard them as instruments for entertainment.
The porn industry has also played a considerable role in exacerbating the objectification of bisexual women. Numerous representations of these individuals happen in this industry because the primary target audience is straight men (Attrill-Smith). Therefore, pornography plays a crucial role in perpetuating that bisexual women are hypersexual. This belief worsens objectification. When people can tell from a video or an image through the writings or the cats that the female victim is bisexual, they consider her promiscuous and hypersexualized. In a society with gender norms, viewing a woman having sex with a man and another woman looks gross, making it difficult for people to sympathize with her. Thus, they view her as a possible object.
Lesbians also experience victim blaming differently when involved in porn revenge. Unlike lesbians, bisexual and straight women are more prone to the adverse impacts of objectification (Serpe et al., 3). Lesbians have female-female sex; therefore, they are never concerned with getting the attention of males. Social constructions of the sexuality of women affect them less than their peers who get involved with men. Men get involved more in victim blaming after porn revenge than women. Therefore, since they are less interested in content involving lesbians, objectification reduces.
Gender Differences
Gender significantly influences how people will treat victims of revenge porn regarding blame games and the extent to which one will experience the blaming. When a video or image of victims leaks online, their gender considerably impacts how and whether people blame them (Fido, 109). For example, men blame women more when their sexual content leaks. On the other hand, they are more lenient with other men. Even though women are more lenient with male victims of revenge porn, they believe that men deserve this poor treatment if they cheat on their partners during the act. Therefore, they believe it is a punishment a man deserves when he gets involved in infidelity.
Regarding gender differences sharing sexually explicit content of a partner on the internet is gendered violence. Therefore, to help deal with the problem, people must view this act within the model around an individual’s identity regarding the gender they have sex with (Attrill-Smith). Sex and gender also matter. Misogyny is a significant cause of men’s tendency to post these compromising sexual content online. Their chauvinist attitudes and entitlement make them feel like women deserve the mistreatment. In a misogynistic society, how others perceive a man can be more influential in inspiring him to expose the content than the desire for revenge.
Porn revenge is a way of doing gender. For instance, in a patriarchal society, the man is supposed to consume sexually explicit content (Eleuteri et al., 3). On the other hand, women should expose their nudity to women. These social constructions encourage the growth of porn revenge worldwide. Sometimes men post sexually explicit content to help them do gender. The sociocultural norms educate them that they should exert their sexual influence over females. Moreover, porn revenge allows them to portray women in sexually explicit ways which demean them. For instance, they claim that it is her fault when a woman’s image or video leaks online because she is promiscuous.
Even though women and men post such content and can both be victims, there is a significant discrepancy in victimization. The cognitive biases evident in how people treat victims of porn revenge are because of social constructions (Attrill-Smith). When an image or a video of a man leaks on the internet, it affirms his masculinity. On the other hand, the woman gets unfair treatment as people will slut shame her. This unfair treatment exposes the societal double standards that manifest worldwide despite the claim of gender equality. These standards surround sexual conduct in both genders. They help explain why society praises a man when his sexually explicit content leaks and condemns the woman because of the same matter.
Another significant aspect that helps explain why men mostly blame female victims of porn revenge is that the perpetrators are male. Even though women can also post images or videos of men or other women, in most cases, the perpetrators are male (Serpe et al., 4). Therefore, they blame the female victim because they identify with the person who has posted sexually explicit content. They blame them because it helps them with self-protection and distancing. They perceive their conduct as justifiable in a society which promotes misogyny.
Conclusion
Overall, even though both women and men can be victims of porn revenge, there exist significant discrepancies in the extent to which people blame these victims. This disproportionate blaming, which involves the woman dealing with more shame, results from sociocultural norms that encourage objectifying females. Even though any type of sexually explicit content can lead to victim blaming, it is also a crucial aspect in determining the severity of the problem. Videos allow the viewer to gauge how the victim felt during the sexual activity; therefore, it influences to what extent they will blame her. Moreover, sexual identity also impacts the extent to which men blame these victims. Bisexual women receive the harshest judgement because people perceive them as promiscuous and hypersexual.
Works Cited
Attrill-Smith, Alison, et al. “Gender differences in videoed accounts of victim blaming for revenge porn for self-taken and stealth-taken sexually explicit images and videos.” (2021).
Champion, Amanda. “Examining the impacts associated with technology-facilitated sexual violence: A mixed methods approach.” (2020): 1-71.
Eleuteri, Stefano, Valeria Saladino, and Valeria Verrastro. “Identity, relationships, sexuality, and risky behaviours of adolescents in the context of social media.” Sexual and Relationship Therapy 32.3-4 (2017): 1-8.
Fido, Dean. “Matthew Hall and Jeff Hearn, Revenge Pornography: Gender, Sexualities and Motivations.” (2020): 108-109.
Gámez-Guadix, Manuel, and Daniel Incera. “Homophobia is online: Sexual victimization and risks on the internet and mental health among bisexual, homosexual, pansexual, asexual, and queer adolescents.” Computers in human behaviour 119 (2021): 106728.
Hearn, Jeff, and Matthew Hall. “‘This is my cheating ex’: Gender and sexuality in revenge porn.” Sexualities 22.5-6 (2019): 860-882.
Patella-Rey, P. J. “Beyond Privacy: bodily integrity as an alternative framework for understanding non-consensual pornography.” Information, Communication & Society 21.5 (2018): 786-791.
Serpe, Christine, and Chris Brown. “The objectification and blame of sexually diverse women who are revenge porn victims.” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 34.1 (2022): 1-20.
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