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T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 2019 | 9

It was April 2008 when I took my first

prescription anxiety pill. It helped calm

the fear I felt whenever I spotted my

ex-boyfriend driving behind me on my

way home from work.

He was a 260-pound bodybuilder who

posed with machine guns on social

media.

Back when we dated, when he was

angry with me, he would punch his car

and tear up the plants outside of my

house in fits of rage. We broke up. And

eventually, I stopped seeing his car. I

breathed a sigh of relief. It was over.

But it wasn’t.

Two years later, I discovered an

online gallery of nude photos of myself

after Googling my name. My photos

were alongside galleries of other wom-

en that my ex had dated. My full name,

the city where I lived and my occupa-

tion were listed in the gallery as well.

The room started spinning. My hands

shaking, I messaged my ex-boyfriend

and demanded that

he remove the pho-

tos. He blocked me. I

called the police. But

they were powerless

because what he had

done was not a crimi-

nal offense in Florida

at the time. After

sending a copyright

infringement notice to the website

owner, the photos came down.

But it was just a matter of time until

they resurfaced. And they did.

The worst website was PinkMeth-

.com, a site devoted to humiliating

women with shaming comments under

their nude photos. Next to their photos

were links to their Facebook, Twitter

and Myspace accounts.

Women in the comments section

begged for their photos to be removed:

“I am being stalked at work. PLEASE,

PLEASE, PLEASE remove my photos.”

I combed through the comments under

my own photos: One remains seared in

my mind: “Right click, save as.”

It was a sickening reminder that, no

matter how many times I got my photos

down, they would appear again.

I was among the first women in the

United States to file a “revenge porn”

lawsuit and speak publicly about the

experience. It was the only way for me

to get my photos down. In 2013, I sued

Pink Meth, my ex-boyfriend and Cloud-

flare, who served as a proxy server for

the site.

When my photos were first posted, I

filed a police report, and a deputy was

assigned to my case. He promised he

would protect me. Several months later,

he told me my case was closed and

asked me out. The relationship didn’t

last long. After I left him, he threatened

to disseminate more sexually explicit

photos that he had found of me from my

first relationship.

I didn’t get justice with Pink Meth or

my ex-boyfriend. My lawsuit took a

nose-dive. But I did get justice when I

filed a complaint against the cop — he

was fired after a yearlong investigation

by the local sheriff’s department.

When I told a good friend about this

ordeal, he said that if he had children, he

would not let them near me. My doctor

compared my trauma to bad reviews he

had once received on Yelp. A professor

called me a publicity whore.

Over the course of two years, I went

from 5’8” and 130 pounds to 110 pounds.

My mother cradled my face in her

hands while looking at the skeleton I’d

become. “I don’t recognize my daughter

anymore,” she said.

I was eventually hospitalized after

spending a whole year in bed; there was

simply nothing left of me inside.

Last month, New York became the

46th state to criminalize revenge porn.

Depending upon the state, posting

revenge porn is either a misdemeanor

or a felony. In New York, it’s a Class A

misdemeanor. Representative Jackie

Speier recently introduced a federal bill

that criminalizes revenge porn. The

long odds it faces are a slap in the face of

victims who have risked everything in

coming forward.

Some people claim that revenge porn

is free speech, and should not be crimi-

nalized. But this is missing the point.

Although men can be victims of revenge

porn, we cannot ignore the fact that

women make up the large majority of

victims. That’s because revenge porn is

not just about intimate images. It’s

about stripping women of control over

their own bodies and forcing them to

live as communal property.

I will never forget the profound sense

of loneliness I felt sitting in my bedroom

the first time I discovered my images

online. It was hard to imagine then, but

there were others who were living with

the same sick knots in their stomach,

emptiness, and shame.

Over the past few years, they have

come out of the shadows to tell their

stories. A British YouTube star who won

a substantial sum in a lawsuit, an anon-

ymous law student who obtained a $6.

million civil judgment against her per-

petrator and a movie star who saw her

perpetrator receive a 9-month prison

sentence. While I have not met them,

they are sisters to me. As time goes on,

more victims will speak out and join us.

These days, I am happy. I can taste

food again. My bones are hidden under

a healthy layer of fat. Two years ago, I

enrolled in law school, and I count the

days until graduation. My story has a

happy ending. But for every happy

ending, there is a victim living her life

while wanting to end it.

It has been called “revenge porn,”

“involuntary pornography” and “non-

consensual pornography.” But using

these terms is like calling rape “involun-

tary sex.” It simply doesn’t reflect the

emotional, psychological and physical

costs. Revenge porn is cyberrape, and

we should call it as such.

The courts are loath to embrace new

exceptions to the right to free speech, as

they should be. But the courts also

recognize that those who are harmed by

speech, such as victims of defamation,

can mitigate the harm through telling

their side of the story. It’s called

“counter-speech” or “more speech.”

But cyber-rape victims do not have

this luxury. If we speak out about our

experiences, it comes at a cost. Every

time we speak, our intimate photos are

viewed millions of times, they are fur-

ther disseminated. We live the trauma

all over again.

Those of us who have come forward

are sometimes called “silence break-

ers.” But it’s not so much that we have

been silent all these years. It’s just that

no one listened.

CLAIRE MERCHLINSKY

We should

call it

“cyberrape,”

not free

speech.

Rebekah Wells

REBEKAH WELLSis the founder of Women

Against Revenge Porn.

The trauma of revenge porn

It’s about

stripping

women of

control over

their own

bodies.

We talk to dogs. Happily so, for there is

little bleaker than seeing a person

texting while dragging a dog by her

leash. It’s so natural to talk to dogs

that for a long time I wasn’t even

aware when I did it. But now I have

evidence that I — that we all — talk to

our dogs. For now, I’m listening.

Everywhere I go I encounter dogs:

on the sidewalk, in the parks, in stores

and airports, at readings, at my dog

cognition lab. Most of the dogs are

with people. Consequently, it is not

long before I hear people talking to

their dogs. Sure, much of what we say

to dogs is request or command, excla-

mation points implied: Sit; Come; Go

Get Your Ball.Once I began really

listening, though, what surprised me

was how much is not mere directive.

Heading down a city sidewalk one

morning, when sleepy dogs and people

stumble out for the dog’s morning

micturition, I saw a woman with two

small dogs, both in sweaters, one of

whom had lifted a rear leg to aim

directly onto a scaffolding pole. “You’re

going first: excellente! Awesome job!”

The dog’s owner crooned. I pulled an

envelope out of my bag and scribbled

down her words. Thus began my long

foray into public eavesdropping on the

dog-human dyad.

“YOU’RE SO CUTE AND SO SMART.

AND WORTH MONEY! I COULD MARRY

Y O U.”

— Woman to her goldendoodle

Once I began listening for other own-

ers’ dog-directed soliloquies, I found

that they were ubiquitous. I might

catch two or three snippets on a long

block. It began to seem as though the

act of a person walking by sometimes

prompted an owner’s conversational

opening to her dog — as though to

emphasize how not-walking-slowly-

down-the-sidewalk-alone she is. Not at

all alone: She is with someone.

“WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING? I

DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU.”

— Woman to her very sniffy black-and-

white dog

As every “Hi, puppy!” directed dog-

ward demonstrates, the way we talk to

dogs overlaps with the way we talk to

babies. A Harris poll found that 95

percent of us consider dogs our family

— so are we simply talking to them as

if they were our children? “Pet-di-

rected speech” certainly shares many

features with baby talk: We raise the

perarticulation is didactic, a way of

teaching a growing human our lan-

guage. When we are talking to dogs,

we are under no illusion that they will

grow up to use the language them-

selves.

“DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.”

— Woman to thoughtful dog

Still, we do talk to dogs as though we

are in a running conversation. After

several hundred scribbled overhears, I

began to notice some patterns in the

dog-speech. One category of utter-

ances is pure enthusiasm, the Cheer-

ing Squad:

“LET’S LEAD! LEADER! YAY!”

— Woman leaving house with tiny dog

“GOOD STOP! I REALLY LIKED THAT

HALT, GUYS.”

— Dog walker to her five charges, upon

navigating a street corner

“C’MON, YOU MADE IT THE WHOLE

WAY. ONE MORE STEP!”

— Man on top step to puppy sprawled

on second-to-last step

Our running

commentary

tells us a lot

about who

we are —

and who

we think

animals are.

Things people say to their dogs

JOSH COCHRAN

Alexandra Horowitz

H OROWITZ, PAGE 11

pitch of our voice and make it sing-

songy. We use a fairly limited vocabu-

lary with infants, and with dogs too:

more “You’ve been bad” than “What

you did was morally indefensible.”

Language is telegraphed: We tend to

repeat words, slow our speech, shorten

phrases and drop some categories of

words, like articles.

On the other hand, when speaking to

infants, we hyperarticulate our vow-

els: exaggeratedly saying Look at the

doggeeeeee!to babies — but not nearly

as much to dogs. It’s a subtle but key

difference that marks a rift in our ways

of thinking about kids and pups. Hy-

Opinion

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