Revenge 2.0, Or How To Protect Yourself From The Intrigues Of The "former" In The Era Of Gadgets - Sex, Society

BBC Russia journalists went online at the end of July with a large-scale study of "revenge porn" - revenge of former lovers through the publication of photos, videos and other materials of a personal and intimate nature

Together with sexologist Yuri Prokopenko, we are trying to figure out what this phenomenon is, why it should be feared, who is prone to this kind of revenge and how such situations can be avoided.

What is revenge porn?

“In the state system“Justice”, the BBC reports,“over the past three years, about 30 verdicts have been found concerning “porn revenge” and the surveillance of exes. Their real number may be greater, since not all decisions are included in the public part of the system. " At the same time, "there is no separate article for" revenge porn "and other ways to get even for an insult in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation."

A quote from a video in a BBC article:

“There is no separate article for 'revenge porn' and other ways to get even for an insult in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. As the analysis of judicial statistics has shown, the punishment is usually imposed under the articles “Violation of privacy”, “Illegal access to computer information” and “Illegal circulation of special means intended for secretly obtaining information”.

“This is not surprising,” Yuriy Prokopenko comments, “there is no meaningful definition of revenge porn. If you watch the video carefully, you will notice that this concept is not separately introduced or explained. The word is beautiful, capacious, I admit it. But this is akin to a story about a supermarket. Department store - I know. Supermarket. And what is a supermarket? Universal self?

What is revenge porn? It is intuitively clear that we are talking about the distribution of intimate materials. But what does the surveillance have to do with it? And from the point of view of language, it should have been "pornographic revenge", but can revenge be pornographic? Be that as it may, it seems to me unreasonable to multiply entities. This is how we get to the "frying pan" or "member shaming".

Is this necessary if we are talking about banal revenge, which is already being carried out in violation of the law? There is hooliganism, there is penetration into the home, there is a violation of the secrecy of correspondence, there is interference in private life, and so on. This is quite enough, even if the temptation to isolate it into a separate phenomenon, calling it a beautiful compound word, is very great.

Meanwhile, in foreign practice, the phenomenon, which the BBC journalists called "revenge porn", is given some attention. And by the way, a clear definition is given.

Quote from a video in a BBC article:

“In other countries,“revenge porn”is most often legislated as the unauthorized distribution of materials of a sexual nature (nonconsensual pornography), notes Ekaterina Tyagai, partner of Pen & Paper.

The Philippines was the first country to criminalize such acts. In Israel, they are punishable by up to five years in prison, and in Germany there is a rule obliging partners to remove sexual content from gadgets after a breakup, Tyagay says.

- Let's see what kind of cases the BBC deals with in the material about the so-called "revenge porn": this is the "showdown" of the "former" with the use of materials intended for personal use. That is, the attacker distributes documents (in this case, a photo or video), which, perhaps, do not bear the stamp “Top secret”, “For official use” and so on, but still are not publicly available. Are an element of private life, it is illegal to disseminate information about which without the consent of the individual.

These materials are intended only for a certain circle of people (and, strictly speaking, generally for one person). That is, the attacker took these documents outside the boundaries of the group in which the original owner or owner of these photographs intended to distribute them. Everything, nothing else.

The mechanics here are exactly the same as if, after watching the detective story, I began to tell everyone who the killer was at the entrance to the cinema. This is also the dissemination of information to a disinterested target audience. But this is perfectly legal. But the dissemination of information that should be protected is already illegal. How illegal it would be to show the same photos and videos of "exes" of an intimate, sexual, even pornographic nature to children in the park.

Why are the “exes” taking revenge?

- You and I are offered to deduce a separate concept as old as the world, history, - explains Yuri. - Revenge of former lovers existed all the way to the maturation of mankind from dawn to the current nightmare. “Nightmare” - because today gadgets, the Internet and technical knowledge enable the participants in the conflict to throw out their painful manifestations to a wide audience. As a result, the topic, originally intended for two or three, becomes public.

“Oh, she rejected my love, I’ll go kill myself,” sighed the heroes of the romantic centuries. Challenged each other to a duel over women. Maximum - spread rumors (at the level of the current slogans "Lenka is a whore" on the walls of the entrances). But for the most part they simply pestered their former lovers with groans and epistolary outpourings.

To this day, a fairly standard request for my consultations is persecution from the "former". Let's say, "We parted for three years, but he still calls, congratulates on all the holidays, asks to return." Yes, this is a classic abuse in relation to this woman, but in this situation at least two are involved. And in this context, this is "normal": they sort out their relationship without involving third parties, so this cannot be compared with the fact that strangers are notified by unknown people about the personal, intimate life of someone they know (for example, a colleague).

I am deeply convinced that avengers who involve other people in clarifying their painful relationships, that is, they carry out revenge at the expense of the characters not involved in the situation, in 99% of cases these are mentally unhealthy people, who are at least in a state of some kind of neurotic breakdown or depression. Not to mention the fact that there may be really psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, etc.

It is these people who are able to arrange surveillance, to conceive a plan that requires long-term implementation, that is, to do something systematic. And only 1% of them are just scoundrels pursuing their own mercantile goals, often financial ones (it's not so much about blackmail - “if you don’t put 100,000 under a stone near Black Lake, then your photos will be transferred to your wife,” as it was in all the time, how much about discrediting colleagues, "hooking up", etc.). As for the rest, these are stories from the series "so don't get you to anyone" and "if it hurts, let it be bad for you too."

A quote from a video in a BBC article:

“People go to such an extreme step as publishing candid photos when they cannot express their pain in any other way,” says psychologist Polina Soldatova. “They perceive the breakup as an act of aggression towards themselves and respond accordingly,” she adds.

- There is no doubt that their own pain pushes the intruders to revenge, - Yuri Prokopenko continues, - but there is a nuance. Respected psychologists love to find reasons and explanations for certain human reactions, but one should not confuse explanation with justification. Every person reacts painfully to rejection, and a person affected by pain is an unhealthy person. He definitely needs help. But only not everyone is sent under the influence of their pain to send intimate photos of their former loved ones to their colleagues at work.

In life, what a person did is much more important, and not why he did it. If three people beat me up in the alley, robbing and maiming, then they break the law. And this does not change in any way, even if later we learn that all three of them were beaten by their fathers in childhood. Yes, we have an understanding of the origins of the problem, but this does not change the essence of what we have done. "She left me, there is emptiness in my soul, I will go and blow up her apartment building." I am deliberately exaggerating in order to explain the abyss between certain causes and effects. We must evaluate reality first, and only then - the psychological or sexological background. And only to take action and help people with painful reactions to safely and legally release their pain.

How to protect yourself?

A quote from a video in a BBC article:

“Revenge porn can undermine all forms of psychological protection of a person: people are not ready for the fact that they will be destroyed by those whom they recently trusted,” says psychologist Polina Soldatova. Sometimes the result can be tragic: for example, in 2019, an employee of the Italian car factory Iveco committed suicide after an intimate video of her participation was sent to her colleagues."

- From the point of view of the law and from the point of view of moral and ethical standards, the personal and intimate life of a person cannot and should not in any way influence his social and professional life, but practice shows that in our society it is easier to behave carefully than to defend their rights, - says Yuri. - If you follow the trends, you may remember several high-profile scandals involving teachers, doctors, police officers.

Representatives of these respected professions have become victims of online harassment and even lost their jobs due to publicly available photographs. And formally, there was nothing inadmissible in these materials. History is silent on the basis of what personal benefits the "righteous mothers" or the girls' colleagues decided to pay attention to their photos in swimsuits, asking: "What will she teach my children?" or "What does this police protect me from?" (and I think that the prerequisites were personal: the teacher smiled awkwardly at someone's husband at a meeting, for example). But in the end we become witnesses to trolling and bullying, although legally personal life and career cannot and should not be interdependent.

A quote from a video in a BBC article:

“According to Russian court statistics, men are most often decided on 'revenge porn'. In this, Russia does not differ from other countries: in world practice, women are victims of this form of clarification of relations in 90% of cases,”says Ekaterina Tyagai, partner of the Pen & Paper collegium”.

A quote from a video in a BBC article:

“According to psychologist Polina Soldatova, women are less likely to become“porn avengers”because of the generally accepted gender roles, according to which a woman has no right to wash dirty linen in public, that is, talk about problems in relationships or family.

In addition, the male body is less objectified, and in fact the only thing that men can send to their beloved is a photo of the penis, as in the story from the North Caucasus. In the case of women, there is usually more photographic material for potential revenge, the psychologist explains.

- Women create certain risks for themselves, easily getting involved in this "sharp" game with photographs and videos of an explicit sexual sense with themselves in the lead role. Thus, they give potential avengers compromising evidence against themselves. It is clear that this is due to the historically rooted notions that female nudity is attractive, and male nudity is far from always (that is, no one expects seductive movements from men on camera, and their "dignity" often appears in a close-up photo, leaving a face "Owner" behind the scenes). Consequently, men are harder to compromise through photos and videos.

Perhaps the “righteous” who are eager to blame the victim for everything (“put on a too short skirt”, “but there was nothing to change”, “I wouldn’t take pictures of nude - there would be nothing to send to colleagues,” etc.) are right in something: the game itself goes beyond privacy, and it is worthwhile to understand in advance that intimate pictures will end up in strangers. After all, hacking someone else's account, acting on someone else's face, just using “inappropriate” intimate topics is not so difficult. And young ladies who engage in a sexual game using photos and videos should think in advance about protecting such personal information.

The private and intimate life of a person is a sphere not intended for prying eyes and assessments. Everyone has the right to express their sexuality in any way - of course, within the framework of the law

Recorded by Ekaterina Alipova