Amber Heard has spoken up about being a victim of revenge porn in 2014, calling the experience ‘devastating’. It comes as she campaigns to change the laws pertaining to revenge porn, which continue to leave women vulnerable every day.
In an op-ed for the New York Times, Heard spoke about being one of many female celebrities involved in a 2014 hack that saw 50 of her personal photos stolen and released to the public. At the time, hundreds of nude images of celebrities were shared across websites like 4chan and Reddit.
‘Complete strangers were consuming my most private moments without my permission,’ she writes. ‘I faced a flood of unwanted propositions and harassing messages. The hack jeopardized my physical safety, my career, my sense of self-worth and every relationship I have had or will have. And because nothing disappears from the internet, the torment will never end.’
Comparing the experience to being stripped naked in a busy street on a never-ending loop, she commented on the blame-culture that comes with crimes of this nature, saying 'all you can hear is the crowd shouting "you deserved it".'
And while she claims people are particularly unsympathetic when a celebrity's privacy is violated, she says we should all be concerned as it has never been so easy to become famous.
‘The power of social media makes it possible for any person to be dragged before the eyes of the world,’ she explains. ‘Non-consensual pornography in particular forces a horrible kind of fame on its victims. And the average non-consensual pornography victim has very few resources to manage the fallout of that involuntary fame.’
She makes the point that if she, a ‘high-profile white woman [with] fantastic legal counsel…resources and advantages’ can fall victim to revenge porn without her hackers being reprimanded, we all can. And because of this, she is supporting the Holly Jacobs Cyber Civil Rights Initiative – which Jacobs founded after her own experience of revenge porn forced her to change her name. The organization is fighting to change legislation around revenge porn, as it is currently classed as harassment rather than an invasion of privacy.
‘Harassment laws punish perpetrators whose explicit motive was to cause harm or distress to victims,’ Heard writes. ‘But a personal vendetta wasn’t what motivated the people behind the hacking of my photos and those of other female celebrities. It’s not what motivated the Marines who traded naked photos of their female colleagues in their closed Facebook groups, or the California Highway Patrol officers who circulated intimate photos of women they’d arrested as a “game” or the men who operate “revenge porn” sites for profit and notoriety.’
What matters is not why the perpetrator disclosed the images; it is that the victim did not consent to the disclosure
This is exactly why the term revenge porn should be changed, Heard argues, because it is focused on intent rather than consent. ‘What matters is not why the perpetrator disclosed the images; it is that the victim did not consent to the disclosure,’ she says.
Ultimately, reclassifying the offence as a privacy violation will better protect women and hopefully result in more convictions. In the same way that releasing medical records or personal data is punished, nude photos should be too.
‘I can tell you first-hand that acts of non-consensual pornography are humiliating, degrading and life-altering,’ Heard concludes. ‘Non-consensual pornography is one of the worst violations of privacy, and no amount of power or privilege can protect you from it. But those of us with power and privilege do have a particular responsibility to work toward ending it.’
Luckily, in the UK, we have specific laws around revenge porn that make partaking in it a criminal offence in and of itself. We can only hope the US soon follows suit.
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