‘This is my cheating ex’: Gender and sexuality in revenge porn

Introduction

Revenge pornography (hereafter, revenge porn) is the online, sometimes offline, non-consensual distribution, or sharing, of explicit images by ex-partners, partners, others, or hackers seeking revenge or entertainment – also referred to as non-consensual pornography (NCP) or violation by way of the distribution of sexual images or image-based sexual abuse. ¹ However, there is immediately a major caveat to be added, namely, that the terms ‘revenge porn’ and ‘revenge pornography’ are themselves open to severe critique:

The term ‘revenge porn’ is misleading … First, perpetrators are not always being motivated by vengeance. Many act out of a desire for profit, notoriety, or entertainment, including hackers, purveyors of hidden or ‘upskirt’ camera recordings, and people who distribute stolen cellphone photos. The term ‘revenge porn’ is also misleading in that it implies that taking a picture of oneself naked or engaged in a sexual act (or allowing someone else to take such a picture) is pornographic. But creating explicit images in the expectation within the context of a private, intimate relationship – an increasingly common practice – is not equivalent to creating pornography. The act of disclosing a private, sexually explicit image to someone other than the intended audience, however, can accurately be described as pornographic, as it transforms a private image into public sexual entertainment. (Franks, 2016: 2)

Whilst revenge porn can be located within several broad frameworks, we focus here on what this relatively recent phenomenon tells about the dynamics of gender and sexuality, through detailed analysis of posters’ texts on the largest revenge porn site, ‘MyEx.com’. We address how tropes around gender and sexuality are drawn upon in online spaces in accounting for actions across what are presented in the posts as different gender-sexual permutations of poster–postee, for example, male–female, male–male. In particular, we examine commonalities and differences in the complex, and sometimes contradictory, ways in which gender and sexuality are invoked in posters’ accounts of their motivations for revenge pornography.

While there is a vast literature on the uses and abuses of pornography, and how different forms of pornography can be understood in relation to gender and sexuality, the great majority of studies focus on the production and consumption of commercial pornography (Boyle, 2010; Elund, 2015; Itzin, 1993; Paasonen, 2011). Less examined is non-commercial pornography, such as various forms of ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) or ‘home-made’ pornography, which might or might not be consensual. Less examined still is the online non-consensual revenge porn.

Pornography, from its very naming, is fundamentally gendered, sexual and sexualized, for example, in the assumed gender and sexuality of those depicted, and those viewing and/or reading. With its recent technological intensification, through websites, iPhones and similar devices, revenge porn resurfaces various established debates, such as those on: distinctions between pornography and erotica, the ethics of pornography, the effects of pornography on behaviour (cf. Itzin, 1993; Segal and McIntosh, 1993), its relation to the sex trade, and the gendered-sexual semiotic, textual and discursive conventions of pornography (Boyle, 2010; Paasanen, 2011). Even with such differences in analysis, pornography is, typically, seen as heavily embedded in gender and sexual power relations, often, though not always, with connections, implicit or explicit, to gender-sexual domination. More broadly, the structure of much of the sex industry is highly and hierarchically gendered, sexual(iz)ed, and heteronormative (Dines, 2010; Hughes, 2002; Jeffreys, 2009). Much heterosexual pornography instances patriarchal, sexist, and complicit masculine practices that maintain patriarchal and sexist relations. Within these structures and contexts, the pornographic practices of various men and of various masculinities persist, as producers, practitioners, and consumers. Having said that, there is increasing diversification of porn (Attwood, 2009), and many genres, and indeed sub-genres, of porn, including those within DIY porn, gay porn, lesbian porn, queer porn and trans porn, that may or may not reproduce gender hegemony (Wilkinson, 2017).

While these debates necessarily frame our own study to a large extent, we are also interested in the specificities of revenge porn, as against pornography more generally. This means contextualizing the recent major growth of online revenge porn as part of the wider explosion of (online) sexualization and (online, often non-commercial) pornography (Dines, 2010; Hughes, 2002; Jeffreys, 2009), pornographization (Attwood, 2009) and ‘mainstreamification’ of pornography (Empel, 2011). Revenge porn can, thus, be understood within a long historical development of pornography, in part through different technological affordances, with moves from pictorial and written to photographic to video, and now to online pornography. Specifically, online revenge porn has been facilitated by characteristic features of information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as: reproducibility of images, personalization (Wellman, 2001), and intertwinings of ‘real’ and ‘representational’, online and offline (Hearn and Parkin, 2001), codex and net (Gilbert, 2013). Revenge porn is yet another example of the multiple possibilities for online socio-sexual violences, violations and abuses, such as cyberbullying, cyberstalking, trolling, and online aggression, misogyny and homophobia, with their dire negative effects.

The 2013 online survey ‘Effects of Revenge Porn’ (Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, 2014) found that 90% of victims of revenge porn are women ranging from teens to early 30 s. However, there are reports of victims as young as 11 (Ridely, 2015), and a review of the 30 or so platforms either specifically for or used for revenge porn (BBC, 2014) shows people who appear to be, or are reported to be, much older. The growth and popularity of revenge porn is illustrated by the infamous Hunter Moore’s website ‘IsAnybodyUp’, providing online user-generated pornographic content. Before it was closed in April 2012, it averaged 150,000–240,000 unique page views per day (Dodero, 2012). Indeed, the site received approximately 35,000 submissions of photographic content each week, although half were claimed to be consensual (Hill, 2012). In a 2014 survey of 1100 New Yorkers, nearly half (45%) reported that they had recorded themselves having sex (New York Post, 2014). An online survey by the internet security company McAfee (2013) found more than 50% of adults shared sexually explicit material through their mobile devices, whilst 50% said they stored such images online, and 16% they had shared sexually explicit images and videos with complete strangers. Such surveys suggest that while many people have access to visual material that could be used for revenge, the majority do not so use it. Some studies have found that while many young people may have viewed pornography, relatively few have taken naked pictures of themselves or others, and even fewer had sent them to other people (Ringrose et al., 2012; also see Puccio and Havey, 2016). Growth in revenge porn has been attributed, by some, to sexting (DoSomething.org, 2015; GuardChild.com, 2015; Hasinoff, 2015). While this increases image circulation, it does not explain abuse of those images in subsequent revenges.

Methods

Discussion

As noted in the introductory sections, there are various ways of analysing revenge porn, and thus particular posts and extracts, for example, the psycho-social dynamics of revenge, or the expansion and affordances of ICTs. While it is difficult to separate out different analytical frameworks, our focus here is on gender and sexual positioning, and the use of gender and sexual meanings in the practice of and accounting for revenge porn. In particular, we were interested in how posters of revenge porn invoke gender and sexuality to account for posting explicit images of an ex-partner, and what were the similarities and differences between different sexual framings of revenge porn: male-to-female, female-to-male, male-to-male, female-to-female online postings. In addressing these questions, eight basic gendered-sexual themes were identified across sexual ‘orientations’ of poster–postee: sexually discarded; sexual trophyism; sexually degraded; risky sex; sexual dissatisfaction; kinky sex; sexual promiscuity; and phony sexuality. Analysis of the posts in this way highlights how the written texts ¹⁰ worked by invoking tropes about gender and sexuality in accounting for their actions.

In terms of similarities between the different sexual framings, what is clear is that the display of sexual orientation, whether heterosexual or same-sex, is through antagonism, power and control, or worse, towards those who have been, and maybe still are, the object of desire. The structure and direction of revenge porn, and its non-consensual and abusive form, parallel in text those respective forms of past or present sexual attraction. Sex, desire, even love, are structurally paralleled by (attempted) revenge, humiliation, abuse. The intensity of desire, and its disappointment or frustration, provide the grounds for revenge and abuse, as indicated in the revenge porn text, and sometimes shown in the accompanying visuals (see Note 3).

This structure of affect is comparable to the dynamics of power and control in marriage continuing after separation and divorce (cf. Delphy, 1976). Revenge porn is one way of continuing the gender-sexual dynamics of gender, sexuality, power and control post-separation into abuse, or even beginning a new phase of more explicit power, control and abuse. For example, numerous studies of ‘domestic violence’ and ‘intimate partner violence’ have pointed to the risks of violence and abuse in post-separation, as summarized by Macdonald (2013: 3):

Domestic violence may start or escalate at the point of separation and/or post-separation (Abrahams, 1994; Hester and Radford, 1996; Humphreys and Thiara, 2003; Richards, 2003) and the post-separation period can be a time of acute danger for women and children, where risk of homicide increases (Wilson and Daly, 2002).

More specifically, this may involve the exertion of power in relation to loss of control and/or of an (ex-)partner and/or power to continue controlling an (ex-) partner or power enacted through gender and sexuality. Such revenges were generally explained by justifications rather than excuses, so that the avenged person (the passive postee) is the one to be blamed (as active) for the actions performed towards them (the active sexual poster), comparable to men’s justifications for their violence to women (Ptacek, 1988; Hearn, 1998).

However, such exertion of power and control, and its justification, was not unrestrained, and here a certain contradictory complexity is apparent. What was common across all eight central themes was that the poster claimed their ex-partner had committed some misdemeanour leading to the breakdown of the relationship, and so claimed positioning as supposed victim. Claiming ex-partners had committed a misdemeanour was often not enough for the poster’s claims to appear legitimate; posters frequently engaged in self-legitimation practices, probably to avoid or reduce the risks of being interpreted as having ‘sour grapes’ or simply being vindictive. This could suggest certain moral rules are employed, whereby to write more than a minimum required some ‘good reasons’. If written texts were to be used, then the ‘logics’ used needed to be credible, and thus not open to further shaming of the poster as an inadequate partner, lover, spouse themselves.

At the same time, there are clear differences between discursively constructed gender/sexual orientations and genres of the posts and posters. The precise textual devices by which revenge porn is differentially practised, and justified, is then less about the affordances of ICTs, and more about gendered/sexual discursive positions and possibilities within dominant gender/sexual orders. For example, in the posts, references to women’s bodies can be used not only to exact heterosexual revenge on them directly, but also on another (male) partner of the woman concerned, and so indirectly onto her. Focusing on gender and sexuality as discursive framings in this way is not to stereotype such practices according to sexual orientation. Different sexuality positionings, such as male–female or male–male, may invoke various straight and gay conventions respectively, as in the appeal to known or unknown other readers and audiences of assumed similar homosocial gay or straight men (cf. Heinskou, 2015; Thomson, 1999). It is through these devices, such as the appeal to similar (to the poster) others, that the differences between male-to-female, female-to-male, male-to-male, female-to-female online postings are most explicitly enacted.

To put this a little differently, using one example, men’s postings of revenge porn, both straight and gay, and the discourses employed within and around them, draw on dominant repertoires of masculinities. In this sense, they are perhaps less novel than they may appear at first sight; rather, they are often extensions and elaborations of well-charted ways of abusing others, especially in the context of the extensive sexist and misogynist texts online. On the other hand, posts by those positioning as women, whether straight or lesbian, tend to involve different forms, for example, of women posters as scorned revengers, or of women postees as unfaithful or not a real lesbian. Justifications of such gender/sexual positionings often rest on external referencing, for example, to the/a man’s sexual/penile inadequacy, incapability and just deserts, or the lesbian women’s promiscuity or her inability to be a real and consistent lesbian, but rather a pretend lesbian, a pretesbian.

Having said that, a further word of caution is necessary, as in commenting on such positionings, we are not seeking to attribute such meanings exhaustively from specific posts, as there may well be considerable complexity and contradiction in the texts, given the nature of some of the online postings. Furthermore, we do not necessarily assume a match between online and offline person, for example, it is possible that not all the ‘lesbian postings’ may be lesbian women or those identifying as lesbian or even by women at all.

Finally, we note how the mass of online revenge porn, while complex and even contradictory in its accounting, seems to be strongly based in binary, non-queer gender positionings. In that way, despite the potentialities of virtual sexualities, ¹¹ it reproduces broader gender hegemony. Online revenge porn is another site for the performance of gender hegemony, even with the variable sexual orientations said and shown. In contrast to possible blurrings of binary gender/sexuality (cf. Monro, 2005; Roseneil, 2005), revenge (porn), it seems, is not (yet) very queer.