ABSTRACT
In June 2015, it was widely reported in Australia that a significant number of nude and intimate images of Australian women had been uploaded to the image-board site 8chan without the consent of the women depicted (news.com.au, 2015). 8chan is one of a number of socalled ‘chan’ image-board sites that have attracted attention as platforms for anonymous online transgression, ranging from minor pranks to significant breaches of privacy. When women contacted the 8chan administrator, American software developer Fredrick Brennan, to request the removal of their images, his response reflected the misogynist libertarianism for which the ‘chan’ boards have become infamous. After refusing to remove the photos without a formal legal order, Brennan disputed that the non-consensual circulation of the images on his site constituted genuine victimisation, since the humiliation of the women was simply ‘the cost of being a slut’. He went on to write sarcastically that ‘a woman who smiled with her tits uncovered is at one time strong and empowered and another time a victim, of course’.1 The clear implication was that a woman who posed consensually for a nude photo could not legitimately claim victimhood if that photo was later circulated without her permission. Links to the nude images spread widely through Facebook and other
social media platforms. Victims reported multiple harassing contacts
from men who had viewed the images and uncovered their identities.2
Posters on 8chan are anonymous so, while a number of victims suggested that their malicious ex-partners were responsible, the individuals who originally uploaded the images without their consent could not be definitively identified. Mass media coverage of the incident was generally condemnatory of the people and site who circulated the images; however, popular morning television show Sunrise posted an article to its Facebook site asking ‘What’s it going to take for women to get the message about taking and sending nude photos’? Although articulated in more civil tones, this sentiment shared common ground with Brennan’s position that public humiliation is the probable ‘cost’ of making intimate images, and hence victimised women share some responsibility for their plight. Underpinning this logic is the view that there is something inherently risky if not amoral about women making nude images of themselves, particularly when these are shared with other people. Prominent Australian feminist and journalist Clementine Ford
responded succinctly with a Facebook post of a photo of herself with ‘Hey #Sunrise get fucked’ written across her exposed chest (Ford, 2015). In the accompanying text, Ford expressed her exasperation at the victim-blaming logic of the Sunrise post:
