Why we should care about cyber sex crime

MANILA, Philippines - While viral Internet events like The Fappening affected me because I could easily empathize as a woman, in a sense they still felt like they were happening somewhere far away. They took place in the world of celebrity, where naturally legions of onlookers were eager to bear witness, even before they even knew what they would be bearing witness to.

As a regular human being who is already thankful if a Facebook post of mine gets one like, I felt relatively safe. In a similar scenario, I could hope and maybe even expect that not too many people would care. The only reason they have been clamoring around these photos and videos is because the subjects were famous, right? Who cares about a writer with 400 followers on Twitter? Wrong.

Yet another sex video surfaced this week, featuring a boy and a girl who are not yet even out of school. Prior to being assigned to write about them, I did not know their names. And yet there they were, having made enough rounds on the Internet to merit my editor asking me to write about it at the last minute in a national broadsheet.

The ingredients for a ‘scandal’

I ask myself why. What special ingredient did they have to gain this much unfortunate attention? They came from good schools, I guess. There is some social standing to be shattered. But other than that, nothing much besides the fact that we can now bear witness to their act of copulating. It’s hard to believe that it’s that big of a deal when the cause is stated plainly, but that’s our society for you. Pretty much all you have to do is get caught having sex, or anything along such lines, and people will bother to find out who you are. They will come for you, babe. Rest assured.

The possibility of being involved in a sex crime has become one of our greatest contemporary fears. And I guess this is due to our still prevailing attitudes toward sex. We still see it as this shameful, scandalous deed, as opposed to something natural and inherently human. We still see it as the territory only of married couples, even though nobody’s sex drive ever waited for their possessors to get hitched. We still have so much trouble grasping that pleasure can simply be a good thing — and that we were anatomically hardwired to crave and receive it. Lastly, we still see sex as something worthy of being exposed and freaked out about, instead of the part of life that it is.

I guess this is where we suggest that people don’t take compromising videos and pictures of themselves, just to be on the safe side. We say this simplistically, without even bothering to consider that self-voyeurism could be one of the desires they crave to be satisfied, just like any fetish, fantasy, or favorite position. What about our OFWs in long-distance relationships? You don’t think they maintain their sexual relationships through the only way that’s available to them? It turns out that was what Jennifer Lawrence was doing in her photos.

Why people take sex videos

There are a million other reasons why people take sex videos and naked pictures of themselves, and it is a lot more common than our pa-conservative culture has led us to believe. I was about to attempt to legitimize these reasons like the previous examples, but I figured I don’t have to. We don’t deserve an explanation because these bodies, images, moments, and lives were never ours to begin with. It’s amazing how having illegally-obtained access makes it so easy to feel entitled. Entitled to look, entitled to have an opinion, entitled to even say your fellow woman is hot and feel like you just did her a favor in the middle of her sh*t storm. As Lawrence effectively put it, even about her loved ones who peeked, “I didn’t tell you that you could look at my naked body.”

Our current notions of ownership are skewed. I don’t think it’s right that people these days feel the need to fear or even abandon certain parts of themselves just because there are assholes out there ready to shame them, and a massive audience (which I hope you’re not a part of) ready to help carry this shaming out. I don’t think it’s right that the ones intruded on are the ones who face disgrace, while the intruders (or even the idea of these intruders, since they’re not easy to catch) walk away smug and unscathed in our heads. I don’t think it’s right that a woman’s body is considered public property just waiting to happen, and suddenly it’s her job to hold her skirt down as hard as she can.

Incidentally, I interviewed an extremely passionate rape victim yesterday, who pointed out to me that sharing tips as to how not to get raped is another way of saying, “Don’t get me. Get the next girl.” It’s the same with these “scandals.” When we vilify the victims, instead of the perpetrators, and what was done to them, we allow these crimes to continue and be unaccounted for. And when a society doesn’t actively pursue the real root of the problem, we create a world where we all just have to hope and pray that it never happens to us — when we could have just come together, communicated, fought for our rights, had each other’s backs, and created a world where it was simply unacceptable to violate anyone that way. We’ve been collectively agreeing on the wrong things.

I don’t know how to stop the hackers. But we are the audience that they cater to. That’s power, and (excuse the cliché) responsibility.

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