Not Happening: The online world finds another way to exploit women’s privacy

The last couple of weeks would have been bad for you, if you are a woman, online. While we already know that the internet is a hostile playground, we have been reminded yet again, and rather forcefully, that despite all our promises of equality and freedom, the internet is not a very good place for women. The latest in the continued exploitation of women’s privacy and bodies is what has been called “Fappening” in popular parlance and picked up by other media. Fappening is a new word that refers to people touching themselves sexually, while looking at private pictures of famous women, online.

And unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have probably heard about the infamous hack into Apple’s idrive, and illegal downloading and distribution of a handful of naked or sexual pictures of famous Hollywood celebrities that have gone viral. Come to think of it, given the almost obscene spike in Google’s search results, registering that the whole world is united in its quest for the smutty, you, like me, have probably even searched for and ogled at the authentic nudity of your favourite movie heartthrob. While I do not have a moral high horse here — we are all bound together in our collective perversity — there are a few things that need to be, perhaps, talked about in the light of different responses to Fappening.

First thing first, the women whose photos have been stolen from their phones, do not have to give either an apology or an explanation about anything. While these women are famous celebrities and, hence, will have a public relations team working to either subdue or strategically respond to this entire phenomenon, the expectation that these women (yes, celebrities, but still women) owe us, the spectating society, any explanation, is shameful. Within the myriad worlds of the internet, there has been a prevalent trend to first leak and expose people’s private lives, and then force them to speak for it. This happens even more if you are a woman, and it leads to some really scary instances of cyber bullying that have resulted in young people leaving heart-rending note-card videos narrating their own pain and in some cases, killing themselves. While the internet is a space for transparency and accountability, the onus of being transparent and accountable is often misplaced on to the bodies of those who need to be protected rather than those who are committing the treacherous acts of invasion.

It is also, perhaps, time to stop calling Fappening a scandal. Painting it as scandalous, implicitly feeds into the rape cultures of slut shaming that have become so matter-of-fact in social media worlds. This is a case of security, of illegal possession and of continued fetishisation and sexualisation of the female body, which is celebrated by bro and lad cultures online. This crime, of invading privacy and exposing somebody to make them vulnerable, is not a scandal about the women who are in those pictures. If anything, it is a scandal about how one of the most tight-lipped, closed, and opaque computation companies has allowed for such security breaches and not bothered to offer an apology or an answer to those who put their trust in their glossily branded services.

Social media has become a hunting ground, where those who can be are often put into spotlights of shame. By either condoning it, participating in it, or not fighting against it, we become complicit in acts like Fappening.