Why Is Our Nakedness Used Against Us? (Updated)
(Important update below.)
I just read about 4chan threatening Emma Watson . To me, this just emphasizes why we need to destigmatize nudity in general and female nudity in particular. Why should the possibility of releasing nude photos even be a threat in the first place? It’s hard to imagine comparable photos of men being used as a threat. If Watson really wanted to strike a blow for women’s equality, she should pull a Dirty Harry and say, “Go ahead. Make my day.”
It’s only our indoctrination that we should be ashamed of our bodies that makes this threat even possible.
Oh, yeah, and I’m speaking as someone who has had naked pictures of her posted on the internet without her permission. Let me tell you, I want copies. I looked damn fine in them!
The fact that women are more ashamed of naked pictures than men are, or at least we’re supposed to be, only serves to highlight society’s double standards regarding sexuality.
There’s not a whole lot to say about this because it’s none too subtle.
Update: Damn, I’m feeling like an idiot now. It turns out that the Emma Watson nude photos was a hoax by a company called Rantic Marketing.
Watson’s face and the countdown clock has been replaced with a banner that says, “#shutdown4chan” and an open letter to President Barack Obama that claims celebrity publicists hired the marketing company to popularize a call for Internet censorship and the end of 4chan.
Although I’m not a fan of 4chan by any means, I don’t support censorship. I would like to see the people who stole the photos prosecuted for the appropriate crimes like theft. Being an advocate for free speech occasionally mans supporting speech you don’t like. I would like to see internet harassment taken more seriously, but as harassment, not as an issue of restricting offensive speech.
Sorry everyone.
(Ah… and I was feeling so proud of myself for not falling for the lady with three breasts hoax. Pride goeth before a fall – or something like that.)
An even better explanation from Business Insider.
fojap 
I think you’re right about the nudity taboo in the long term. As a society we’d be a lot better off if we could ditch the ridiculous notion that skin is “sinful.” But I don’t think the issue is really nudity; it’s about privacy and breaches thereof. Make nudity unexceptional, and these arseholes will merely find another way to dox people they want to harass.
I half agree with you. Certainly these people get their jollies out of hurting people so for LOLs, or whatever, they’d do some other vile thing. However the fact that these are, presumably, heterosexual young men who seem to want to humiliate attractive women has a lot to do with society’s perceptions of male and female sexuality. For instance, I understand that this is called the “Fappening” and “fap” is supposed echo the sound of men masturbating. Somehow, the notion that men are masturbating to pictures is supposed to make it all doubly icky. Yet masturbation is a normal, healthy activity and I have no doubt that they masturbate to all sorts of pictures and probably their fantasies of what these women looked like naked before they ever got hold of the actual pictures.
I’m not being very articulate here, but if this society didn’t have some wacked out attitudes about sex, these (presumably) young men wouldn’t be directing their anger in this particular way. Maybe they wouldn’t even be quite this angry. After all, we live in a world where young men are told how important it is to have sex and young women are told how important it is to withhold it from them, setting up this particular dynamic of resentment. Actually, until young men lash out in anger, and many don’t, I’m highly sympathetic to their predicament.
So, the double standard regarding sexuality has both created the anger and given it an outlet. I’d really like to see the whole edifice brought down.
Nudity should be encouraged