I agree with Jeff here that it’s about time that we started viewing the release of privately made sexual photographs and videos to anyone other than their intended audience as a form of sexual assault. The motivation to do so is indistinguishable from that as a rapist—-using sex as a tool to dominate and humiliate someone, while puffing up your own sense of power—-and often the results could be even worse for the victim, because her assault was performed in front of a crowd. And I agree with Jeff that we need to consider Carrie Prejean’s ex-boyfriend the scum of the earth for releasing this video, and it’s true that it’s a case of sex being used against a woman to silence and humiliate her, as she’s claimed.
All that said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with learning something from the fact that this video exists. That the video was released in an act of sexual assault, and should be treated as such. But that doesn’t mean that the act of making the video isn’t something that also matters, when the person who made it is a spokesperson for legally controlling and punishing the sexual behavior of others. I hope we can be nuanced enough about this to see that Prejean is both a victim and a horrible hypocrite. I think it’s important to realize that all these sex scandals involving the moral scolds of society demonstrate that right wingers really do get into being moral scolds because they want to reserve sexual pleasure for themselves while denying it to others. Also, that homobigotry isn’t really about some kind of strict view of human sexuality evenly applied, but that it’s basically just bigotry and attacking people for being in a minority.
Still, I think there’s a lot of clarifying value in thinking of the release of private photos and videos as a form of sexual assault, and thinking of the women in the images as the victims of this assault. Perhaps that will cause anyone who considers publishing these sorts of things to realize that they are participating in a sexual assault if they do so, and will cause them to reconsider. And for anyone applauding a man who releases this stuff, perhaps it will cause you to reconsider.
It also helps explain the psychological dynamics in this case. Two Indiana high school girls, while goofing around with their friends, took pictures of themselves in lingerie licking penis lollipops. I can’t tell from the story, but it seems that the pictures might have been hidden behind a privacy wall on MySpace, making the person who copied them and handed them to the principal a sexual assailant, if that’s what happened. Even if they weren’t private, the motivations for doing this sort of thing are similar. But of course, there was no way the principal could be a mature person about this, but instead he had to leap into “join the assault” mode.
An uknown person was able to access the pictures, copy them and hand them over to school personnel. They were eventually given to Couch, who suspended both T.V. and M.K. from all extra-curricular activities for the school year, including athletics, which both of the girls participated in.
The lawsuit claims that both teens’ parents spoke with the principal and were told that he could cut down the punishment to suspend them from just 25 percent of the girls’ activities only if they went to three counseling sessions and individually apologize to the school’s athletic board, which is comprised of the school’s varsity head coaches.