Irish private pictures leak solidarity statement

Raise Your Voice extends all our support and solidarity to anyone affected by the leaking and sharing of private pictures online in the last number of days. This is a gross violation of the victims’ trust, their privacy and their autonomy. Fundamentally, it is an issue of consent. The long-term harms caused by this are potentially enormous. It could impact the job prospects, personal and family lives of the victims. Nobody should have to endure that, and we offer you every support possible if this has happened to you.To make matters worse, we understand that there were over 500 Irish men involved in this act, and they shared tens of thousands of images. Many victims may not know that their pictures were leaked, and they may not even know the images exist. Individuals were requesting images of women that they knew, it was broken down by location for ease of searching. There was even a file called “under 16s”, which is by definition child abuse and exploitation. When we speak of “rape culture”, this is what we mean. This is not “bad apples”, this is a huge issue, and it speaks to a certain mindset, clearly illustrating the need to address cultural issues.In responding it is vital that we do not fall into victim blaming; the solution to this is not to tell young women not to make or share intimate pictures.

It is not inevitable that men will behave this way. Any solution that treats this problem as something that the victims invited somehow fundamentally misunderstands that this is a problem devised and caused by the men involved. Solutions must be targeted at the cause of the problem and nowhere else. There is a petition at this link where you can add your voice to the calls to make the sharing of images of adult women a crime.

The Irish Justice Minister is looking at the issue at present, and every voice helps. https://www.change.org/p/irish-justice-department-make-revenge-porn-a-criminal-offence-in-ireland

Men, please use this opportunity to have a conversation about this issue to the men and boys in your life. Do not sit idly by if your friends engage in this behaviour. Step up and intervene, do not be complicit.