Activists Fight to Secure Legal Recourse for Revenge Porn Victims
LatestFor all its benefits, the rapid development of social media has brought with it new occasions for exploitation and harassment — and oftentimes these offenses go unpunished. But women are mobilizing to combat one especially pernicious form of online sexual violence: revenge porn.
According to End Revenge Porn, it would be more precise to use the term “nonconsensual pornography, defined as the distribution of sexually graphic images of individuals without their consent.” Broadly recently interviewed a number of women who have been the targets of nonconsensual pornography, generally after a vengeful ex-boyfriend sought to humiliate them — sometimes even render them vulnerable to physical attacks.
Anisha Vora and Nyika Allen, both of whom appear in the film, sought legal recourse after discovering that their ex-boyfriends had posted intimate photos of them across the Internet. But as Broadly traces their narratives, the film demonstrates how ill-equipped law enforcement remains when these cases arise. And in some states revenge porn has yet to be treated with the severity necessary to eliminate it. From Broadly: