Celebrity photo hacking - a sexual offence?

Jennifer Lawrence has broken her silence this week on the hack and subsequent leak of dozens of nude photos of herself.

The leak on August 31 was the biggest of its kind, involving dozens of celebrities - all female.

Speaking to Vanity Fair Miss Lawrence said, among other things: "It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime. It is a sexual violation. It’s disgusting."

I agree with her wholeheartedly and the scandal is all the more shocking for the blasé attitude assumed by some men. 

It was an invasion and theft of privacy that resulted in loss of control of her own body.

"It is a sex crime." 

A sex crime is a crime with a significant sexual motivation or component. I concede is a very general term. 

It can range from indecent exposure to groping to rape to sexual slavery. Miss Lawrence's branding of the hack as a sex crime does not mean it is as bad as rape. 

Nudity does not equal sex but someone hacking private sexually explicit photos for gratification is without doubt a sex crime. The hack itself was sexually motivated. 

In this case the hackers stalked Miss Lawrence specifically with the intention of getting nude photos of her. Convicted of such a crime one would surely have to be placed on the sex offenders register. 

The fact this stalking was done digitally or electronically should not change anything with regards to its seriousness. 

Victim blaming

Whenever a hack like this occurs, and they are sickening frequent, a large portion of social media sites such as Twitter and Reddit engage in victim blaming. 

Celebrities, as alien as they may seem, are people too and celebrities have as much right to do what they want with their bodies as anyone else. Because they choose to use that right for sexually explicit does not, in any way, excuse their right to privacy being so heinously invaded. 

On the Vanity Fair cover Jennifer Lawrence is naked with much of her body underwater. Again, some people think that belittles her argument. It does not. 

To be quite frank I think it makes perfect sense to be nude on the cover. She is delivering her point loud and clear. She decides when she is seen naked, no one else.

This is a photo distributed consensually. What she does consensually, what she chooses to allow in the public domain, should have no bearing on what images or otherwise she wishes to keep private. 

The same victim-blaming happened when topless photo of the Duchess of Cambridge were circulated in the European press. Unnervingly it appears to be a lot more prominent when women are involved.

“Just because I’m a public figure, just because I’m an actress, does not mean that I asked for this,” she says. “It does not mean that it comes with the territory.”

Although she might not appreciate it, Miss Lawrence has become the face of the hack. As a young, smart and attractive Oscar-winning actress perhaps the public psyche was shocked most be her being a victim, the court of public opinion would appear to be on her side moreso than swimwear/lingerie models Kate Upton and Kelly Brook, who were also victims. 

This should not be the case. What was done to them, and other female celebrities was disgusting - a textbook example of the misogyny in society but just because Miss Upton shows parts of her skin and uses images of her body for a living, does not make her any less a victim. 

An argument is made that celebrities should know better than to take photos in the first place but why should they have to adhere themselves to special rules because of their celebrity status. 

“Anybody who looked at those pictures, you’re perpetuating a sexual offence."

Perhaps Miss Lawrence's most damning statement and an unerringly accurate one for any of the doubtless hundreds of thousands who did look at the images. 

Note the verbiage; perpetuating, not perpetrating. She is not equating looking at the pictures to a crime, she's saying, correctly, by viewing, sharing, spreading, and generally revelling in the pictures you perpetuate the crime. 

The most inaccurate thing Miss Lawrence does say in the Vanity Fair interview, or the extracts I have read, is when she blames websites. Websites are not to blame. Websites are simply middlemen. 

It is the content providers she should be angriest at. Blaming a website is akin to blaming Polaroid had the images been physically stolen from her.

"I started to write an apology, but I don’t have anything to say I’m sorry for."

Miss Lawrence or Miss Brook or any of the other victims did not do anything different to what a lot of women do. None of them should apologise. An apology would only serve to exacerbate the belief they had done something wrong.

Apologies should be given to them, for being held, not to a higher standard but to a lower one. That they are celebrities does not stop them being sexual beings, nor should it make them ashamed of that. 

But that is what has happened.