Revenge porn is more than just a criminal offence

You have to be some special type of sleaze-bag to retrospectively destroy what you shared with someone, in the name of cold revenge.

A rundown of what revenge porn is, in case anyone doesn’t know: revenge porn is the un-consented distribution of private sexual materials, either online or offline, with the malicious intent of causing distress or embarrassment. Once images are online they can be extremely difficult to remove, as this is the internet. It typically happens to young women – sometimes very young women. And it still struggles to be taken seriously: this week, a serial revenge porn offender received only a caution. He published explicit pictures of one of his ex-girlfriends, encouraging those who saw them to rape her because “she deserves it”. He admitted four offences.

This is what else you need to know. If someone wanted their sexy underwear shots, or nudes, to appear on the internet, then they would share them on the internet. But no. They decided to give you a little show, because at that point, you were their world. They didn’t want you to share that with the world-wide-web.

But after a while, they were done. Maybe it ended badly: they were done with being under your thumb. Accept it and move on – don’t post publicly what was meant just for you because you’re cry wanking in your room.

Once you share these photos, all you are saying is, “look how fit my ex is! Look how much she trusted me and look how obsessed with her I am.” It’s not clever, it’s not smart. It’s not a declaration of love, it’s not a proposal picture from the Eiffel Tower. It’s slut-shaming someone for having the audacity to be intimate with you. It’s just a twisted declaration of your desperation and no one is going to want to date you afterwards.

You’ve ruined any chance of ending that relationship with any dignity. You’ve imprisoned yourself in a sordid little world, and hopefully the authorities will catch up with you soon and imprison you properly. You shouldn’t be interacting with the world once you’ve done something so inhumane.

Relationships are a thing of passion. It’s fun to send a cheeky nude to brighten your partner’s day – to make them blush with the thought of the pleasure to come. It’s a sign of affection, and you shouldn’t be sick with worry that one day it’ll end up on your newsfeed, or you’ll get a text from a friend saying, “umm is this you?”

Why can’t you entice your lover with shots of you in your underwear? You bought the set with someone in mind and showing them off is fun. But similarly, things change: sometimes you fall out of love. So you throw the pants away and you move on with your life. But the other person doesn’t. They cling to memories, twisting them into something sordid, obsessing over these images like a misanthropic troll under a bridge. If you’ve ever been the victim to such pathetic games, believe me when I say it says much more about them than it does you.

They burn the bridge of their relationship until it’s as black as their perverted little heart. Girls will see how malicious they are, that they’ve sold their decency out of some twisted thrill of revenge.

Well fuck them.

Look at how childish they are. How cowardly, how bitter, how pathetic that they couldn’t deal with their emotions like an adult. That they have to turn the person they once loved into a porn-star for the world to mock.

The government is acting. Last year it launched an initiative called ‘Be Aware B4 You Share’, reasserting that sharing explicit material of this form is a crime. It is intended to “discourage” those who consider doing it, to remind them that it is “unacceptable”. It’s a damn sight more than that. It is disrespectful, offensive, low, pathetic. It is shameful.

These people are literally cold pissing on any fire, spark, or flame they once had with someone for the sake of making themselves feel better. It’s a betrayal of the most poisonous, miserable kind.