When we think of "revenge porn", what usually comes to mind is a terrible ex-boyfriend who posts naked pictures or videos of a woman he wants to humiliate online. And to be fair, that's the most common image of this crime because that's the form revenge porn most often takes. This week, however, we've seen not one but two men lose their jobs (and possibly their careers) after consensually-shared pictures of their genitals were made public by women seeking to embarrass them.

On Monday, former NSA officer and conservative pundit John Schindler was reportedly placed on leave from his professorship at the Naval War College when a text message exchange that included a picture of his penis was posted to Twitter and re-published on Gawker (that link is rather obviously NSFW). And Tuesday, Adam Kuhn – the chief of staff to Rep Steve Stivers (R-OH) – resigned after a woman tweeted alleged pictures of Kuhn's penis to his boss's account.

It's been a hard week for dick pics.



No matter how you feel about these men and their politics or work, let's be clear: they are being punished for acts of which they were the victims. Jennifer "Ruby" Roubenes Allbaugh, the woman who posted Kuhn's alleged picture, told a reporter that she was seeking "revenge" and tweeted "I hate you, AJK". The Twitter user who outed her relationship to Schindler and apparently allowed a third party to post the picture of his penis only refers to herself online as Leslie, but she tweeted on Tuesday, "I wanted to inform his wife & embarrass him".



Revenge porn, which will soon become illegal in New York state and was already made so in several others, is meant to shame, humiliate and potentially ruin the lives of its victims. This week's episodes, though, have been played more for laughs than seen as serious crimes – perhaps in part because they happened to men. But policy has only recently caught on to how devastating revenge porn can be to all its victims.



Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the soon-to-be-released Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, told me (in a conversation about a related Supreme Court case) that the problem is that the law moves much slower than the internet does.



We do eventually criminalize certain invasions of privacy that are made possible by technological advances - like with "Stephanie’s Law", which made invasions like video voyeurism a felony, but not until 2003. (The law came about after Stephanie Fuller found her landlord was secretly taping her through a camera hidden in a smoke detector above her bed – which would hardly have been possible two decades ago.) But laws like that don't address the consensual sharing of images that are later spread without permission, in part because that only became a large-scale problem because of changing technology and social norms.

What isn't new about revenge porn is the old-school victim-blaming – the line of thinking that suggests that, by creating and sending to individuals intimate pictures of yourself, you should expect that they will be more widely disseminated. Young women, whose bodies are already frequently seen as public property, are particularly subjected to this kind of stigmatization – and, though men are not often blamed in the same way, they're also not seen as "victims" either (and they should be).



But whether it's teen girls or grown men who are victimized by hackers or vindictive exes, making "revenge porn" illegal everywhere would be a no-brainer. Using privately-shared intimate images in order to shame and humiliate ex-partners is harassment and it causes tangible harm. The fallout makes it difficult for victims to get or keep jobs, to maintain relationships or live a normal life. (For some women whose pictures were shared without permission, it also meant having to move to avoid strangers showing up at their doors expecting sex.)



So instead of laughing or gawking at adults – even men, even conservative men –who sent "naughty" pics to other consenting adults (and forcing them to leave their jobs in shame), let's simply punish those who broke their trust. A culture of consent demands that both women and men ask for and receive it, and not proceed without it.

