Revenge porn — in which men post naked photos of their ex-girlfriends as a means of publicly shaming them — had an accidental birth when Hunter Moore launched "Is Anyone Up" in 2010. When Moore shut the site down in August of 2012, he gave over the domain rights, in what seemed to be an act of penance, to anti-bullying site BullyVille. But it was too late, as men across the country were inspired by the phenomenon and more sites like, Texxxan began to pop up. Now, some women have begun fighting back with lawsuits coming out of Texas, Massachusetts, California and Arizona.
HuffPost Live discussed the issue with Kelly Hinson and "Jane Smith," two victims of revenge porn abuse, as well as Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School Of Law, Mitchell Matorin, a lawyer out of Massachusetts who represents a number of victims in revenge and involuntary porn cases, and Robert Jensen, the author of "Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity."
"I didn't choose to have my photos plastered all over the internet and the comments are really disturbing because they can post my name, where I live," Hinson said, describing a common chain of events in the revenge porn sequence. "They said I should abort my baby with a rusty coat hanger."
Matorin took issue with the term "revenge porn," saying it's "catchy" but "doesn't really reflect the problem."
"In most cases, these are random attacks by people who either don't know them at all or the victim has no way knowing who it is," he said.
As one comment showed, women are consistently blamed for taking the photographs to begin with. Franks took exception with that, saying, "There's nothing bad about a woman taking a picture of herself or engaging in sexual activity if that's her choice and the idea is that we're allowed to punish women for doing that as if they've done something wrong says a lot about this culture that produces revenge porn to begin with."
Jensen backed Franks' thoughts on gender with his ideas on pornography and masculinity: "It's not just the men posting this. We also have to ask in the terms of rape education, bystander behavior. The men who are taking pleasure in this. They're socialized the same way," he said.