Unsolicited pictures

[Phoebe]

Interesting question that arises from contemplating the actions of the Louis CKs and Anthony Weiners of the world...

If somebody exposes themself to you without permission in real life it's a crime. If somebody tries to peep at you when you are inadvertently exposed without your permission, that's a crime too in real life.

So that leads me to think that anybody who send you an unsolicited dick pic or steals/takes naked pictures of you without permission is committing a sex crime of exactly the same type, or in the case of stealing the photos may be an even worse type. I think people who send unsolicited dick pics to other people, or who flash pornographic videos and images on the screen when you didn't go searching for them on the Internet, or who send emails with pornographic contents that you did not solicit in any way... I think all those people should be charged with crimes and vigorously prosecuted just like they were flashing themselves to people on a real-life street corner. And if you do it to kids that should count just like that.

I realize the entire world would go crazy and explode from the import of this conclusion, but I don't see why that's not our moral and legal conclusion. I don't see why we've just chosen to accept a world where a woman gets sent dick pics when she's identified as a woman on the internet, and we just act like that's no big deal and so common and so totally unmanageable that we can't even prosecute it. I want to see the names of the people who send those dick pics put on a billboard. I want the people who send out that unsolicited pornography to be punished for it just like they committed a crime, which they did.

[mimekiller]

I think some of this stuff should be discouraged but I'm hesitant to want to add even MORE laws to a punitive system(the idea that sex crimes in this country are not punished harshly and extremely is INSANE to me and one of the biggest myths in public discourse) that is already doing more harm than good.

[Phoebe]

It kind of depends on the sex crime. Some are hardly reported, hardly prosecuted, and the punishments seem light relative to the seriousness of the issues. Others, it swings the opposite direction. I probably agree with you a surprising lot just given some of the cases I've heard about. I really don't think relationships between people close to the age of consent + not that far over it should be punished in the way cases of actual child molestation should be. Yet sometimes it's about the same outcome. Unless you're in Alabama. I'm just annoyed that as a society we have decided to throw up our hands and tolerate dick pics and reprinting hacked private materials. It's not like we couldn't do something about that if we really wanted to. Meanwhile, we're treating 15 year olds who send selfies as if they're somehow morally worse than the adults who send them unsolicited dick pics! The moral world is askew in here somewhere.