#WomensLives, Revenge Porn and Closure
If you follow me on social media, you probably saw me post using the hashtag #WomensLives this week. BlogHer and SheKnows have partnered with PRI for the #WomensLives news incubator. It’s a non-profit effort to make sure that female-centered stories are elevated. Only 24% of news stories are about women, and only 6% of stories highlight gender in/equality. (Nobody is being paid for this – not SheKnows, and not me. We’re all involved with #WomensLives because it’s the right thing to do)
Why join #WomensLives?
When asked if I wanted to take part, I immediately said yes. Spend more that an hour with me, and you’ll know I am very invested in gender equality, and feminism. I’ll be sharing stories with you here and there. And the first story posted hit a little close to home. Congresswoman Jackie Speier is on a quest to criminalize revenge porn, which is just one of the issues that women face online. Women face threats of rape for expressing opinions about inequality. They’re doxxed simply for being women in male dominated spaces, like gaming or sci-fi. (Doxxed means having private information like addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers posted online) I could rant about the misogynistic GG (not going to spell it out to keep those creeps from finding this blog) for ages, because that is their MO.
The Tape
When I started to think about how women are treated online, especially when it comes to revenge porn – it made me think of the very unsettling turn my offline life took last summer. In September I blogged about Celebrity Photo Hacks, and what was going on in my life. Just after the Fourth of July, TheBoy (my husband) and I learned that about a decade ago a close and trusted friend of ours had stolen a tape containing about 10 minutes of intimate moments of ours. They’d taken it from our things while helping us move, copied it, and put the tape back. We only learned of the theft because someone the friend was disputing with had the tape. They threatened to contact us (which is why I refer to them as the Extortionist). That led to the friend (the Thief) telling us before that could happen.