The New York Times International - 05.08.2019

(backadmin) #1
..
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


РЕ


ЛИ

З

П
О
Д
ГО

ТО

ВИ

ЛА

ГР

УП

mation points implied:
П

mation points implied:
Get Your Ball.Get Your Ball.П

mation points implied: mation points implied: ПП
А

to dogs is request or command, excla-
А

to dogs is request or command, excla-
mation points implied: mation points implied: А

"What's

News"

РЕЛИЗVK.COM/WSNWS

ПОДГОТОВИЛА

ГРУППА

"What's News"

VK.COM/WSNWS
Free download pdf