Townspeople Irritated Teen Girls Weren't Punished for Nude Photo Leak

Eight high school boys in Liberty, Missouri have been suspended for sharing nude photos of their female classmates on Instagram, Twitter, and in text messages. The 16 girls pictured in the photos weren’t suspended, just “verbally reprimanded,” according to Liberty Public Schools. This is becoming a huge controversy on both a local news websites and in men’s rights forums, because the girls are the ones with the boobs.

According to Fox 4 News Kansas City, the eight boys, who all attend Liberty High School, were handed suspensions between two and 10 days after the photos were discovered on their phones. A public Instagram account featuring photos of the girls was also found; it’s still there, and still has followers — including one man who according to his social media profiles is 60 years old — but the photos have all been deleted.

The school district told Fox 4 in a statement that the incident was being handled with “appropriate discipline,” adding:

Such incidents provide good reminders for our students to use good judgment before posting anything on digital devices. Digital citizenship is taught in all schools and will remain a priority as technology use continues to increase in our society.”

We’ve already established that teens should stop putting their goddamn nude photos on the internet, which is, at the very least, tacky, and frequently constitutes child pornography, even when all the participants are willing and aware the photos are being posted. But Fox 4 commenters as well as the Men’s Rights subreddit are furious that the girls aren’t being punished equally, even though in this case they don’t appear to have consented to having their photos blasted across the Internet.

“All parties should be punished and the girls should seek some sort of counseling or something,” writes one commenter on Fox 4’s Facebook page. “Cause there are obviously other issues if they are sending nude pictures at that age.” (The boys don’t need counseling, clearly, because publishing other people’s nude photos is just teen boy behavior, we guess.)

A reader poll on Fox 4 shows the same results — some 80 percent of readers say the girls should have been punished equally for sending the photos to the boys. They’re right in tune with Reddit’s MRAs, who agree that this is just what happens and the girls should accept it:

[P]eople think so little of women that they need to be protected. Even if they did have their pictures uploaded online, they fucking knew that was a possibility. Does it suck? Yes, but when you send naked pictures to someone it’s out into the ether. I know this, so why would I expect that I am somehow superior? Why would I expect that others wouldn’t know this too?

It’s certainly true, though, that everyone involved could be in legal trouble. Liberty Police are reportedly investigating the incident, and under Missouri law, the teenagers could all be charged with a Class A misdemeanor for possessing or distributing sexually explicit images of a minor. And the girls certainly know now not to trust their male friends not to exploit them, and not to expect the adults in their community to care.

Image via Google Maps