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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

For your eyes only

I t’s big news all over the Internet: America’s BFF Jennifer Lawrence’s nude photos have been leaked to the ?public sphere.

Someone hacked into Lawrence’s iCloud and found the private photos and made them available to the public.

A number of other famous women, including Kate Upton, Victoria Justice, Ariana Grande and others were also hacked and had their photos made public.

Both Lawrence and Upton have confirmed the photos are indeed authentic, while others involved in this massive assault on privacy have said the photos are fake.

Regardless of fame and authenticity, the very idea that someone would hack into a woman’s personal digital storage and leak intimate photos of her to the public at large is an affront to female sexuality.

The women involved in this so-called scandal have been exploited and had their bodies and sexuality shared with uninvited audiences.

This act is a great crime against the women involved and the female body. The hacker has made a spectacle of these women and their intimate photos.

The hacker has made these photographs something to be sought out and discussed in Internet forums in the same fashion that one would view and discuss the latest and greatest memes and Internet trends.

Internet forums invite discussion and criticism or even praise for these photographs, but they are not meant for discussion.

They are the private property of famous women who have been wrongfully stolen from their personal digital storage, and sharing them exploits the subject of the ?photographs.

There are countless men and women who send nude pictures of themselves to other people.

It doesn’t matter for what reason these intimate photos exist. It doesn’t really even matter that they do, indeed, exist.

What matters is that the subject of these photos has an intended audience when they take these photos.

Anyone who chooses to disregard the subject’s personal privacy and shares these photos with other people is also exploiting that person’s body and sexuality because others are being invited into the personal and intimate sphere without the subject’s permission.

The argument of “if you don’t want your nude photos leaked on the Internet, you shouldn’t take them,” is a victim-blaming argument, similar to the argument of “her skirt was too short.”

Jennifer Lawrence has handled the situation with decorum and class.

She has not moved to apologize or take responsibility for the situation, nor should she, for she is the ?victim.

It was her privacy and her body that have been compromised. It does not matter in the slightest what she does with her personal space or her body and sexuality.

That is no one’s business but her own, and an apology or taking responsibility would only encourage the victim-blaming mentality that circulates within society.

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