Leaked nudes raises question of victim shaming

Over 100 celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Selena Gomez and Kate Upton, were alleged to have had private and explicit photos leaked online last Sunday after a hacker accessed their cellphones through a cloud-based storage network.

Photos like these are nothing new in this era of social and digital media. This specific case is just significant because of the number of people who had their photos leaked and the prominence of who they are. However, it has also brought up the problem of victim shaming.
It doesn’t take a very thorough internet search to find any number of people blaming the celebrities for taking the pictures in the first place. For lack of better wording, if they didn’t want their pictures leaked on the internet, then they shouldn’t have taken them.
It doesn’t help matters that the hacker used software designed to allow cops and spies to siphon data from iPhones.

I would argue that the only person to be blamed is the person willing to invade someone’s privacy to this extent.

Victim shaming is pervasive throughout society. If a person shouldn’t want x to happen, then they shouldn’t do y. Some of us even pass this belief on to our children. We don’t tell them the consequences of having sex, we tell them not to do it and hope they heed that advice instead of taking the necessary precautions to avoid pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

We tell victims of rape that they should not have been wearing something that could be considered revealing instead of blaming the rapists for not being able to control themselves. We teach people what steps to take in order to not find themselves in a situation where rape is possible and then blame them for not taking those steps when they are raped.

If we are going to blame the victims for putting themselves in a situation, then we might as well blame soldiers for being killed. We should blame people who are murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time instead of blaming the murderer for taking someone’s life.

These celebrities have a right to privacy as much as anyone else does. They have a right to do things in their private life that anyone else would. Who are we to blame them for doing something that private citizens have done? Who are we to blame anyone for something that was done to them? The blame rests on the person doing the action, not the person receiving the action.

As a society, we must show that it is okay for victims of anything to come forward and not be afraid to be accused of bringing what happened to them on themselves. We are making people feel as if they are wrong for being wronged.

Fortunately, the person who decided to invade these people’s privacy will be brought to justice one way or another and be forced to pay for their crimes. However, it is time for the rest of us to realize that we aren’t helping anyone by blaming the victim of a crime for being a victim of the crime.