That this debate continues to flourish around the periphery of the real issues of this regrettable incident suprises me. There are two salient points: in a secluded, pirvate house, far enough distant from a public road as to be hard to see clearly or properly, a married couple had their privacy invaded by, allegedly, a criminal act. Secondly, a woman of some celebrity was deliberately stalked to enable some people to make money from her humiliation. The rest is persiflage and not to be taken seriously. Considerations such as the size or shape of the Duchess' breasts or the colour of her skin are nothing to the purpose.
We have seen a spokesman for Closure maintain that the photos “are by no means degrading” and “show a beautiful, in love, modern holidaying young couple, in their normal life.” “I would love a photo of my bollocks to be taken in secret, printed in a magazine and viewed by millions of people across the country,” he did NOT add. Women, we should remember, do not get to define their own reality or have the last say on their own feelings or experiences. Catherine, making clear that she considered the photos degrading was not deemed relevant because some man decided that they were not. Closer’s female editor has also described the photos as “not in the least shocking”, using that classic tactic of wheeling out a woman to defend misogyny, a gay person to defend homophobia or a black person to defend racism.
Already there are claims that these photos are on Creepshots and similar ugly sites for perverts, including those given to Revenge Porn. One of those engaged in researching possible legal routes for victims of these despicable sites is Professor Mary Anne Franks, associate professor of law at the University of Miami. "What unites Creepshots, the Middleton photographs, the revenge porn websites," says Franks, "is that they all feature the same fetishisation of non-consensual sexual activity with women who either you don't have any access to, or have been denied future access to. And it's really this product of rage and entitlement."
Franks finds it interesting and bewildering that the response to these situations is so often to blame the woman involved. The argument goes: "'You shouldn't have given those pictures to that person', or 'You shouldn't have been sunbathing in a private residence', or 'You should never, as a woman, take off your clothes in any context where anybody could possibly ever have a camera'. That's been shocking to me, that people aren't just outraged and furious about this, but they're actually making excuses for this behaviour, and blaming women for ever being sexual any time, at all.
"Even in a completely private setting, within a marriage – it couldn't be any more innocuous than the Middleton situation – and yet people are still saying things like: what was she expecting, she's famous and she's got breasts, and therefore she's got to keep them covered up all the time. I do think it's a rage against women being sexual on their own terms. We're perfectly fine with women being sexual, as long as they are objects and they're passive, and we can turn them on, turn them off, download them, delete them, whatever it is. But as soon as it's women who want to have any kind of exclusionary rights about their intimacy, we hate that. We say, 'No, we're going to make a whore out of you'."
Women everywhere, from every walk of life, should be insulted and angry at this egregious violation. Every man or boy in my life is, too, on the Duchess' behalf.
