| The article intentionally obfuscates the difference between images depicting sexual abuse that did not happen, and actual sexual abuse. Ironically this makes it harder to address the problem on the level where the actual abuse happens i.e. bullying, lack of empathy, teenage body image issues in the properly fucked up american high school environment. For example here the word "abuse" technically refers to the making and spreading of these images and attendant bullying, but obviously has connotations of actual sexual abuse: >Despite all this, Radnor’s administration failed students in the days and weeks after it learned about the abuse, This is maybe subtle but later the article gets more explicit about it: >this technology [...] bears little difference from the non-consensual intimate imagery that’s plagued young girls and teenagers since the invention of the camera. (i.e. a straightforward equation of images of nudity that did not happen, and images produced by actually pointing a camera at someone who is physically present with their nude body) >Because the images aren’t “real,” authorities grapple with how to handle them. Putting "real" in scare-quotes, very nice. Dorfman is also quoted doing some nice sleight of hand, going in one sentence from "It was about the creation of the videos" to "and then share them with others as if the girls were something to be passed around." - i.e. equating the making of videos depicting unreal events with something that almost sounds like gang rape. Anyway enough examples, article is full of them. I'm not saying there's no problem here, just that these people seem to have some kind of ideology of the sanctity of the image, i.e. a realistic image always depicts real events, and should always be interpreted as if it does. If it does not, clearly that's a problem to be corrected by reinforcing the connection between images and reality by making it impossible to produce realistic images of non-real things. It strikes me as exactly the wrong way to go about it, that can only make the bullying and harrassment (the actual problem which should be solved on the social level) worse by making its ammunition stronger. (Slight aside but I do think the closing quote by Woelfel makes a good point) |