On photos

This would be a good time to tell you about how my own photos were misused. I've alluded to it, but I haven't addressed it directly until now.


It really started two or so years ago. I was volunteering and chatting with a few other volunteers. It came up that I had a blog. Later, one of those other volunteers accessed my contact information without my permission from the database of the organization where we were volunteering and asked me for my blog URL (and later asked me out). I thought it was pretty inappropriate at the time, but I let it go and provided the link, and forgot about it.

A half-year or so later, I headed to the Cape to hang out with Nina. It was a crazy, crazy time: I left early on a Tuesday morning, just after letting in the guys who'd refinish my bathtub. The night before, I'd taken a few hours to relocate my friend's cats (said friend was in DRC, finalizing the adoption of her child). After working somewhat late. And the day before that, I'd hosted an alum event at my house. So I didn't have a lot of time to pack. When I got home from the cats, I stuffed some crap into a bag: a sleeping bag, clothes, and beach gear (i.e., swimwear, towel, and the first thing I found that could serve as a beach mat). That thing was a christmasy fleece blanket with little snow-flake decorations. The next morning, I let in the bathtub guys and hopped on a plane (and then a boat).

Afterward, I posted to this blog some pictures from the Cape. Overwhelmingly, they are pictures of sunsets and whales and water and beachscapes. And queens. But there were also a few pictures of me, playing with my friends at the beach. Because why not? That's part of the vacation. In those pictures, I'm wearing attire appropriate for the occasion (i.e., swimwear). I thought nothing of posting these pictures. If anyone's looking for skin on the internet, they can do a hell of a lot better than this blog. One picture in particular was pretty goofy and, I thought, unflattering; I posted it because it was comically absurd: I was lying on the xmasy fleece blanket, doing a crossword.

Now, it takes a special variety of loser-douchebag of human garbage to (1) scroll past a bunch of stunning pictures of interesting things and then focus on the swimsuit pictures and (2) download those pictures and send them to another volunteer at the same organization, but I later learned that it was that loser-douchebag of human garbage who'd acquired my contact information and then my blog link earler. I still didn't regret posting the picture--I mean, I was aware of the risk that anything put on the internet could be downloaded, and I was, as stated earlier, wearing clothing appropriate for the occasion. But it was still pretty low for dude to download and send the picture. Over the months, my blog log showed that loser-douchebag of human garbage continued to download the picture, so eventually I deleted it. It just wasn't worth it.

Where does this bring us? I'm telling you all this in the context of the celebrity photo-hacking crime and some of the less-than-enlightened responses, which are mostly along the lines of, "don't be naked if you don't want people to see it." I've already linked to many a column on how that's bullshit logic. On how women have a right to wear what they want and do what they want and still have their humanity and boundaries respected. I have a right to play with my friends on the beach, in a swimsuit, and post pictures of that to my blog, without having some pervert download those pictures and share them out of context. Where they're no longer a reflection of me as a human, but a depiction of me as an object. Sure, it's technologically possible for pervert to do that. That doesn't make it right. It just makes him a pervert. I'm still a human, with friends and lots of fun beach memories. At the end of the day, no one can take that away from me: I'll always be human, and anyone who tries to chip away at my humanity will merely be a loser-douchebag of human garbage.