When is Revenge Porn not Revenge Porn?
What’s the difference between Hulk Hogan and Holly Jacobs?
Last week, a Florida appeals court ruled that Gawker.com was within its rights when it chose to post a one minute clip from a covertly made sex tape featuring Hulk Hogan. Due to Hogan’s celebrity status and penchant for publicly discussing his relationships and affairs, the judge felt that he’d waived the right to privacy in this specific case. (Though it should be noted that, as with all legal issues, this one isn’t over until it’s over, and this decision could still be overturned.) In an era where “revenge porn” is being outlawed left and right, it’s interesting to see a judge take the stance that publishing a graphic video of someone without their consent is perfectly okay — just so long as they’re famous (and scandalous) enough.
The idea that celebrities are different class of being, judged by different rules, is not a novel one: the legal distinctions we make between celebrities and civilians is what allows, say, paparazzi to get away with activities that might otherwise be considered stalking. But if revenge porn is truly as awful as its opponents claim, why is it okay nonconsensually publicize the sexual exploits of a celebrity, just because it makes a good story?
It’s impossible to discuss this story without talking about gender. Holly Jacobs — the founder of advocacy group End Revenge Porn — is a young, white, heterosexual, and conventionally attractive woman: the exact portrait of a stereotypical sexual victim, the exact kind of person that we are conditioned to feel pity for. Hulk Hogan, on the other hand, is a sixty-year-old, rich, white man who made his fame and fortune beating the snot out of people on TV. To many, the idea of the Hulk as a victim of coercion or sexual abuse is laughable at best; conditioned as we are to believe that “men don’t get raped.” It seems worth wondering whether the courts might feel differently about the newsworthiness of Hulk’s sexual exploits if he were, say, young, pretty, and female — like, for example, Erin Andrews.
For those who don’t remember: a few years ago, Erin Andrews was covertly taped while naked in her hotel room. The video was leaked online and became a major news story, and the man who secretly taped Andrews was subsequently sent to prison. To be sure, there are differences between the two stories: Andrews never had a major lawsuit against any of the press outlets that covered the story, but then again, none of the press outlets that covered the story paid for or published footage (TMZ was offered the footage, but declined to purchase it). Nevertheless, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the overwhelming sympathy afforded to Andrews has largely been denied Hogan — even though, at the end of the day, they were both the victims of the same offense.
If we truly want to vilify revenge porn, we need to vilify it across all cases: whether it happens to a famous person or a civilian, to a man or a woman. And if we feel that there are certain instances in which it’s acceptable to nonconsensually publish video of someone’s sexual exploits, we need to be very, very clear about what those instances are. And if those instances are simply “when that person is a man,” perhaps we need to take a long, hard look at our cultural conversation about sexual abuse.
