by K. Ryan
The words hung in the air, but I’d had nothing left to say and really, nothing left to lose. What was the worst that could happen at this point?
Mr. Newman had studied me quietly, taking in my words, judging the sincerity of them, and weighing just how much the circumstances surrounding my termination mattered to the job at the museum. I never flinched, never once shied away from his scrutiny, and maybe, in the end, that was enough. Finally, he’d nodded tightly and pressed a cool smile on his face.
“Alright then,” he’d told me. “Let’s continue, shall we?”
A day later, he’d called to thank me for applying, but said the museum had passed on hiring me. When I asked him why he’d made the decision, he’d skirted around the issue with as many vague deflections as possible before finally admitting that he just didn’t feel comfortable hiring me given my ‘history’.
Maybe I was the only one who saw the irony in his use of the word ‘history’, but what can you do?
So, the museum was a dead end and that was just the way life worked—figuring out where to go next was never going to be easy and I knew that. As frustrating as it was that my past had outweighed my qualifications, just walking inside and turning in my resumé was enough for me. It wasn’t fair that I’d been turned away for something so out of my control, but it was still a first step towards reclaiming some sort of career again. While I knew I’d have to answer for my ‘history’ at every job interview I ever went on again, now I had that answer well-prepared. I didn’t know where that path would lead, but I knew, with time, I’d figure out that part of my life, too.
At some point, I wanted to be in a position that would let me quit the café and really leave that last reminder of the scared, pathetic girl I used to be behind.
But now as I sat in front of my computer, it still didn’t quite feel like enough. I wanted to do more, but I just didn’t know what that more was. On pure reflex, I opened up the rant I’d written the day after Christmas and skimmed through it. The anger, the pain, and the frustration I’d felt then—and still felt—slammed over me yet again. I hadn’t forgotten about those feelings; I’d just set them aside for the time being, but now I was ready to revisit them.
In my rant, I’d laid out the groundwork and it was time to keep building. There were obviously more women out there like me, who’d had their privacy ripped away and posted on the internet for everyone to see, but I’d just never felt strong enough to actually dig deeper and see what those women had to say.
After a quick search, I read story after story about women who’d gone through and were still going through circumstances similar to mine. Every story had its own variation, but what we all had in common was the way it’d made us feel: humiliated, scared, violated, and stripped of our power. Most related feeling betrayed by their ex—someone who was supposed to love them, but turned into a tormentor instead. There were plenty of resources out there now; one in particular that caught my eye was the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which seemed to be one of the driving forces behind recent legislation in the country and even had a hotline you could call for legal advice.
I even came across a story about a teacher in Indiana, whose experience was nearly identical to mine right down to being unable to report her ex for his crime because of nonexistent laws, except for the fact that she had the full support of her school district behind her.
God, I thought, what would that have been like? Everything would’ve been so different if they’d just listened to me.
But the story that really resonated with me the most was the woman who described feeling as though she’d been sexually assaulted over 30,000 times, which was how many times her picture had been shared online. I pushed further in my search and found similar testimony, women who’d said they’d felt raped, women who said commenters online had even went as far as to threaten to hunt them down and actually rape them, and women who were too afraid to even step outside for fear of being recognized.
At the end of the day, it all came down to control. I’d ended our relationship and Justin had wielded his control and his power over me by taking his revenge just because he could...wasn’t that what motivated most rapists anyway? Control? Power?
Tears stung my eyes and I furiously wiped them away with my thumb. I didn’t want to cry anymore. Justin and every single person who’d seen, downloaded, and commented on my pictures didn’t deserve anymore of my tears.
I clicked onto another article describing a woman who’d been drugged by her ex-boyfriend, who later sexually assaulted her, filmed it, and posted the video online to over 35 porn websites. For reasons not outlined in the article, the police failed to prosecute him even after she charged him with rape. However, the woman took further action by filing charges against him in Britain because that was where he’d been when he initially posted the video, where her ex was about to be brought to trial. It wasn’t the full charge he deserved, but it was something—some sort of justice for the crime that had been committed against her.
Every single instance I’d read about that mirrored my own were all non-consensual. Every woman had been violated when her body was put on display without her permission as a means to exploit and humiliate her.
With that thought, I opened up a new tab and did a quick search for Wisconsin’s new law. I knew it existed, but since it was pretty much useless to me, I didn’t even really look into it when the bill was signed well over a year ago. The language was muddled and just vague enough to allow for interpretation and that in itself was infuriating. But when my eyes fell on the punishment, all I could see was red.
A misdemeanor? That was it? Up to nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine?
Now, I was sitting here, glaring holes into my computer, and seething. It wasn’t fair. The punishment just didn’t fit the crime and I was just as angry with myself. I’d lost more than just my privacy and deep down, I’d always known that—I just hadn’t allowed myself to see it until this moment. My eyes flicked back to my holiday rant and I squinted in thought, my mind flying back to the woman who’d had to go all the way to Britain to even attempt to get justice for herself.
Where was my justice? The simple answer was that it was nowhere to be found. All my aggressors, every single last one of them, were walking around with no consequences and with no true understanding of the damage they’d left in their wake. It didn’t matter that Justin had eventually apologized and tried to get the pictures removed—he was the one who’d started it and he’d deserved more than just the beating he’d gotten from Noah. They needed to know what they’d done. They needed to understand how they’d made me feel.
But how would I—ah. That was it. The answer was so simple. I’d had a platform this whole time and hadn’t even realized it.
My blog.
Thousands of hits a day of people reading about moisturizers and dry texturizing sprays...why couldn’t I use my blog for something personal, too?
I knew what I needed to do now. I needed to tell my story. I needed to take back the control and the power that had been ripped right out from under me.
Everyone around me had always wielded the power—my mom, Justin, the school, the students and staff, the town. Now I needed to take it back.
I had nothing left to lose and so, with “Shake It Out” playing in the background, I started typing:
I know I don’t normally post much personal information on here and many of you have asked why I’ve chosen not to include video tutorials or even pictures of myself other than my hand for a swatch or close-ups of parts of my face. The problem is that I’ve been hiding behind my computer screen. I haven’t wanted anyone to see my face or know my name. In reality, I’m no different than the thousands and thousands of people everyday who use online anonymity to achieve a purpose.
For some, it’s completely innocent. For others, a screen name signifies a power you wouldn’t have otherwise. Abraham Lincoln once wrote, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's characte
r, give him power.” How we use this power online defines us. It illuminates us. It shields us. It empowers us. It excuses us. It defiles us.
For years, I’ve hidden behind the anonymity this blog provided. It was my shield, my platform to write about a sort of guilty pleasure that, honestly, I’m still a little embarrassed about even though I know I shouldn’t be. This blog gives me the means to indulge those guilty pleasures without the responsibility and the accountability attached to giving you my real name.
But through this last year, I’ve learned that the things we do online can follow us around like a ghostly cipher, sucking away at real life and threatening our actual lives. It’s easy to forget and even easier to hide behind.
Today, the hiding stops. Today, I want to use this incredible platform you’ve given me for a different purpose.
If you Googled my full name, Emma Owens, you’d see some images that might shock you, depending on your opinion about racy photography. Well, racy isn’t really the right word. Let’s just call this what it really is, shall we? It’s porn. You heard me. P-O-R-N. But there’s an adjective we’re missing too: revenge. Put that together and you get revenge porn.
I never knew that term existed until it happened to me. I took those pictures for my then-boyfriend, who later became my fiancé, and then my ex-fiancé. The circumstances involving our break-up aren’t important. What’s important is that we broke up and he posted those pictures online as a means to punish me.
I’m not sorry those pictures exist. They’re hot as hell, aren’t they? They represent a time in my life when I was uninhibited and experimenting with my sexuality in a safe environment with someone I thought I loved. It’s taken me longer than I care to admit to feel that way.
I am sorry, however, for my response to the posting of those pictures. I wasn’t strong enough to stand up for myself. I wasn’t strong enough to defend myself. Instead, I remained passive. I let it happen to me and I didn’t fight back. In fact, I took it one step further: I ran all the way from Hickory to Milwaukee to hide and lose myself in the big city.
I’m done with hiding. I’m done with passivity. Today is the day I start fighting back.
If you dug a little deeper in your Google search, you’d probably also find that I used to be a teacher, too. The day the school and the student body got wind of those pictures was the day I also lost my job. And that day I learned just how cruel teenagers can truly be when I walked into my classroom and found the word, “slut”, written on my whiteboard in red letters. There’s no coming back from that. No excusing it away. Even now, I’m sure they don’t see the damage their words did.
I can’t blame the administration for letting me go. If I’d been in their shoes, I would’ve felt like my hands were tied and that I had no other choice, but they also never once asked me for my side of the story. The online chaos that followed was predictable. The student body had a field day with this one—my pictures and various memes of those pictures popped up on Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and any other social media platform you can think of.
Thousands upon thousands of comments later and I was a 21st century Hester Prynne, wearing a self-inflicted scarlet S online for the masses to see (S, of course, for slut). Or even better yet, I’d suddenly morphed into Blanche DuBois, whoring myself out for free and somehow expecting people to sympathize and show mercy when the court of public opinion never stoops low enough to exude an emotion as human as mercy. Those comments ruined my life. Ruined doesn’t even completely cover it. Demolished is probably a better adjective. Decimated might be better even yet.
A teacher ruined by her students. Is there anything more ironic than that?
What infuriates me now is the response to those pictures. The adults in the situation, namely myself, the administration, my fellow teachers, and the community members—all of us dropped the ball. Nobody stood up and told the herd they were wrong. That they were cruel. That their actions could have lasting consequences. That their actions had destroyed not just my life, but my career, too.
Silence is validating and by remaining silent, every single adult involved sent the message that 1) it’s okay to shame a woman for her sexuality 2) it’s even more okay to make that woman feel as though she’s worthless, dirty, a slut, and a pariah 3) blaming the victim is socially acceptable 4) by taking those pictures, I’d somehow brought it on myself and 5) it’s totally fine to write vulgar, immature comments about someone online because you can hide behind your smartphone when you do it.
Like I said, we dropped the ball.
As educators and adults, we are responsible for teaching children the right way and the wrong way to deal with real-world crises. We are supposed to be the example and the models. The day those comments were allowed to flow freely through the school and the day I was released from my position...all of us failed. We’re supposed to teach the future leaders and citizens of our country how to act like decent human beings who care about others, who defend others, and who are able to walk in someone else’s shoes. We lost a valuable opportunity because we’re supposed to be the moral compass, but on that day and all the days that followed, there was no moral compass to be found.
If you’re wondering what happened to my ex-fiancé, I can honestly tell you that I don’t know other than that he was not charged with a crime. When this happened over a year ago, Wisconsin still did not have legislation regarding this type of cyber crime. We do now, even though it was already too late to help me. The legislation itself, if you really study the fine print, will probably leave you just as frustrated as I am. The wording is vague, messy, and almost indecipherable because it’s muddled in political jargon that just doesn’t get the job done. Someone convicted of revenge porn in Wisconsin currently could face up to a $10,000 fine and/or nine months in jail in exchange for ruining someone’s career and reputation and causing severe emotional trauma to the victim.
Those terms are not acceptable.
Now, we are one of 25 states that actually has any sort of revenge porn legislation, which is progress in itself, but what we currently have is not enough. While this bill stipulates that a person cannot post anything online of a sexual nature without the other party’s consent, this bill does not cover the intent to humiliate and demonize the person, usually a woman, represented in the picture through the person’s sexuality. Our legislation needs to be re-evaluated and re-drafted so that the punishment fits the crime.
The problem here is that revenge porn is a sex crime and should be treated as such, but it’s not. The pictures that were posted of me online were of a sexual nature with the purpose to humiliate and punish me, to make me feel ashamed of my body, and to get revenge. If that is not sexual violence then I don’t know what is.
Some people might say that if I had never taken those pictures in the first place, I wouldn’t have found myself in that position. I reject that. All that statement does is validate rape culture. Why should I just ‘expect’ that those pictures would’ve shown up online? Just because I’m a woman, because I’m young, because I was a public figure in my community, doesn’t mean I asked for this.
Based on my understanding of the law, the first stipulation surrounding sex crimes is that it must be a non-consensual act.
I did not consent to have my entire hometown see pictures I took privately for my boyfriend, who I trusted and who I thought I loved. I did not consent to be humiliated. I did not consent to be a laughingstock and a social pariah.
I did not consent.
It was, however, my choice to exercise a healthy sexual relationship and I have the right to decide who, where, when, and how. The fact that the choice was taken away from me is absolutely disgusting. Anyone who looked at those pictures, commented on those pictures, and downloaded those pictures is perpetuating a sex crime. It’s as simple as that.
There are only two people who I’ve actually given permission to view those pictures: the first, my ex-fiancé and the second, the man I’ve been waiting my whole life to
meet who I loved and who I pushed away because of my stupid insecurities, because I didn’t believe I was worthy of the kind of pure, whole-hearted love he offered me.
Why is it so difficult to remember that I’m a human being? That I was somebody’s teacher? That I’m somebody’s daughter? Somebody’s sister? Somebody’s friend? Why is it so difficult to understand that, first and foremost, I belong to myself and nobody else? Why am I not entitled to privacy? Why does society believe it can shame, disgrace, and embarrass women for doing what men have always done—enjoy sex?
It’s not dirty. It’s not indecent. It’s just life.
I wish I could tell you that I’ve moved past this, but I’m not quite there yet. I’m still angry. I’m so goddamn angry. And that’s okay. I think that’s a perfectly acceptable response to the situation and for a long time, I blamed myself for allowing this to happen to me. I bought into what people were whispering about me behind my back and shouting in my face. I allowed other people’s opinions of me to shape my opinion of myself.
That also stops today. I’m strong, resilient, funny, talented, shy, beautiful, unique, and none of those things have anything to do with the pictures of me online, as it should be. They are all separate entities and one does not necessarily preclude another. I’m not a slut and I’m not a whore. I’m a woman and that’s all you ever need to know.
