ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how heterosexual men discursively account for making public sexually explicit material of an intimate partner. It shows the complex ways in which masculinities, manhood acts, femininities and sexualities are invoked by men to account for their practices. Most men in the dataset claimed the women deserved being posted because they were reported to have controlled the relationship, committed infidelity, passed on an STD and deemed unclean more generally, stolen money or committed sexual acts in return for money, and stolen 'his' children, thus constructing online pornography as, in their own terms, a legitimate form of interpersonal revenge. In some cases, men could be seen to position themselves as the wronged victims in seeking revenge: in other words, positioning the ex-partner as the perpetrator of a form of gender violence and abuse. Overall, revenge was reported positively by at least some men posters as a supposedly equalising action downplaying any culpability.
