Lawsuits against individuals who distribute revenge porn and campaigns to criminalize this practice have made headlines in recent years, but do victims face a tough battle?
A shocking new study from the United Kingdom found that the vast majority of people actually approve of revenge porn under specific circumstances. Revenge porn is a term that refers to the act of sharing intimate, explicit, or sexual images or videos of another person, often an ex-partner, to display them publicly without their consent. Notably, some popular social media platforms, such as Facebook and Snapchat, are already notorious for such activity. While more than 30 states in the United States have laws against this act, one report claims that one in every 25 Americans retaliates against their victims by posting pornographic materials.
### How Can Anyone Approve of Revenge Porn?
Researchers at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom examined the opinions of 100 adults, aged between 18 and 54, with 82 of the participants being women. The findings were both unbalanced and astonishing; 99% of participants expressed some level of non-regretful agreement towards publishing revenge porn if they broke up with their partners. If you think that wasn’t shocking enough, 87% of respondents felt stimulated, either for entertainment or arousal, by the idea of committing revenge porn.
However, despite the overall agreement with laws prohibiting such instances, the percentage of those who actually posted revenge porn against their ex-partners was significantly lower, at only 29%. Additionally, the researchers found that those who had posted revenge porn were not in a sound mental state overall and were more likely to exhibit disturbed psychological traits, Machiavellianism, or narcissism. Impulsivity and a lack of empathy were particularly evident, traits commonly associated with psychopathy.
It is also worth mentioning that the study, titled "The Malicious Side of Revenge Sexuality: Dark Personality Traits and Sexual Ideology," was published in the International Journal of Technology Ethics. The researchers concluded that while most participants in the study were unlikely to have committed this vengeful act themselves, there was a general acceptance of it among the participants. They warned that these findings could have serious implications, especially when considering the facilitative role of internet users in the rapid dissemination of revenge porn.
