On August 31, stolen photos that depicted female celebrities in some state of undress made their way to the Internet. The list of celebrities affected included such high-profile names as Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence and model Kate Upton. As expected, the Internet came to a screeching halt as the photos spread.
The affected celebrities and their legal teams are learning firsthand that once something is online, it really is there forever. The stolen photos have spread faster than they could be taken down. The fact that the pictures, as well as a good deal of other personal information, were allegedly stolen using Apple’s iCloud system should certainly be cause for concern regarding the safety of all the personal information we store in our cell phones and laptops.
But this breach in Apple’s seemingly impenetrable software is not the most concerning part of the incident. Rather, the most alarming facet of the case is that various people, from Internet chat room users to cable news commentators, are blaming the cyber attacks’ victims for the events that transpired.
The naysayers claim that celebrities should not have taken the private pictures if they did not want them on the Internet. As Nik Richie, who runs The Dirty (a gossip website that posted the pictures), said, “These celebrities need to blame themselves for taking these pictures in the first place.”
No matter how you feel about the morality of taking these photos or the notion that these celebrities should have understood the risk of hacking, nothing changes or excuses the fact that private property was stolen. Those photos belong to those who took them, and releasing them was a massive (and illegal) invasion of privacy.
If my roommate left his laptop in plain sight for me to take, I do not have a right to steal it — he certainly is not “asking” for it. We have the right to do whatever we please in the privacy of our homes, and celebrities should not be excluded just because we as a culture are obsessed with their every move.
This notion that these celebrities got what they deserved is indicative of a larger pattern of victim blaming that is pervasive when discussing many crimes, especially those related to sex. Far too often, victims of crimes like rape, abuse or sexual harassment are assigned all or some of the blame for what befell them because they “were asking” for it. People find various reasons to pin the blame on the victims, from dressing a certain way to acting flirtatiously to not refusing at the very first sign of an advance.
For example, after video footage surfaced of NFL star Ray Rice dragging his unconscious wife from an elevator, ESPN commentator Stephen Smith stated in July that abuse victims need to learn “about the elements of provocation” so they could avoid them.
Never in my life have I heard of a carjacking that was justified by the assumption that the victim behaved or dressed in such a way that suggested that he or she wanted the car to be stolen. So why do we, as a society, use this as a means to place blame on the victims of rape or abuse, much more heinous crimes?
Nobody ever asks to be a victim of a crime. This attitude of blaming victims assumes that we have an individual responsibility to protect ourselves from crimes. Instead, we should realize that we are not animals in the jungle that cannot handle our impulses, but human beings who must fully understand the consequences of our actions.
