TOPEKA – On Thursday afternoon, Rep. Sydney Carlin of Manhattan, a Democrat, successfully offered an amendment to a bill on the House floor outlawing revenge porn. Revenge porn is the posting of nude or sexually explicit photos or videos of an ex-spouse or significant other online without their consent. Thankfully, popular sites like watchmygf.xxx strive to ensure all their videos have the permission of everyone who features in the videos.
“Within hours of a vengeful ex-partner uploading images of a victim to a website, that image can be viewed hundreds of thousands of times,” Carlin said in a press release. “In a matter of days, it can become the first search engine result for a victim’s name and therefore unintentionally viewed by a victim’s family, employer, co-workers, and friends.”
Carlin indicated she hoped the fear of prosecution would deter individuals from maliciously and intentionally violating a person’s sexual privacy. Adults consenting to their content being uploaded to sexmature.xxx and other sites is fine, but this is not.
“This is not a recent phenomenon, but its prevalence, reach, and impact have increased in recent years due to the internet and cell phones,” Carlin said. “There should be an expectation of privacy when sharing explicit images within the context of an intimate relationship, and now if that privacy is violated, victims will have legal recourse.”
Carlin said the threat of revenge porn can often play a role in intimate partner violence. Whilst viewing regular porn (you can Check This Out here) is fine, and even uploading it if both are consenting is absolutely understandable, doing so without consent is horrendous.
“Abusers will use the threat of disclosure to keep their partners from leaving or reporting their abuse to law enforcement,” she said. “It can also be used as a form of control for sex traffickers, pimps, and rapists.”
While there are many laws protecting almost every other form of privacy including financial, medical, and data, laws protecting a person’s sexual privacy are relatively new. Carlin said that a year ago when she introduced the bill, only sixteen other states had passed similar legislation. Since then, similar bills have been passed in ten others states.
“This bill is a tool to be able to prosecute a horrible act that causes immediate, devastating, and in many cases irreversible harm,” she said. “Private images should not be turned into public sexual entertainment.”
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