The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

All My XXX’s Live in Texas

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 73 Comments

The Lone Star State has become the Porn Star State:

When a friend told Hollie Toups that topless photos of her had been posted on an Internet pornography site, she felt horrified, but she didn’t feel alone: She recognized more than a dozen other South Texas women on the website, she said.
Last Friday, Ms. Toups and 16 other women filed a civil lawsuit in Texas state court against the site, Texxxan.com, alleging that their intimate photos were posted illegally and included information that made them easy to identify. They are seeking damages and to have the site closed down. . . .
Legal experts say they are seeing an increasing number of such lawsuits targeting so-called revenge porn, in which intimate images are posted online, often by jilted former lovers but also by computer repairmen or hackers who gain access to private photos. . . .
“I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’ve been exploited,” said Ms. Toups, a 32-year-old graduate student in criminal justice, who lives outside Houston. She said she had sent the photos years earlier to a former boyfriend, wasn’t sure how they had ended up on the Internet, and hasn’t sued the former boyfriend. She said the photos appeared on the website alongside a link to her Twitter account . . .

Notice the contradiction: Hollie is stupid enough to send naked photos of herself to at least one of her (perhaps numerous) boyfriends, but Hollie is also smart enough to attend graduate school in Texas.

Talk about your Higher Education Bubble . . .

Hollie and her fellow “revenge porn” plaintiffs want you to think they’re victims of something besides their own stupidity:

Erica Johnstone, a San Francisco lawyer who has represented about a half-dozen victims of revenge porn sites, said that “the emotional toll on women can be devastating,” and includes depression and anxiety.
Ms. Toups said she at first became reclusive last summer, when she learned that her revealing photos had landed online. “I shut everyone off but my mom,” she said, adding that when people greeted her in public, she wondered, “Is it because they are polite or have seen me topless?”

It’s because you’re dumb, Hollie. And also because you’re a naughty girl.

See, here’s what this lawsuit is really about: These tramps are suing for the right to keep their promiscuity secret. They want to be able to send naked photos of themselves around the Internet — “Woo-hoo! Check me out!” — whenever it suits their fancy, but they imagine that somehow they can keep it from becoming general knowledge that they are the kind of girls who send naked photos of themselves around the Internet.

Hollie’s attorney makes this dubious legal principle clear:

The lead lawyer for the Texas plaintiffs, John Morgan of Beaumont, Texas, said he plans to sue the owners and operators of the porn site once he learns their identities.
“None of these women consented to having their photos used,” Mr. Morgan said, adding that all of his clients subsequently suffered bouts of depression. “This site has to be shut down.”

“None of these women consented to having their photos used” . . . how?

That’s the question, you see.  The women consented to having their photos “used” by whomever the chosen recipient was. And when they hit the “send” button on their computers, they consented to that usage, but are now suing because the implied contract between naked-photo sender and naked-photo recipient has been breached, and that the property which the sender in fact consented to share with the recipient was subsequently shared with others, and that the “revenge porn” site is now deriving profit from that breach of (implied) contact.

But how do we know that Hollie Toups or any of her fellow plaintiffs are telling the truth about how their naked photos got online?

Hollie Toups says she only sent her topless photos to only one of her ex-boyfriends, but are we just supposed to take her word for it? For all we know, she was sending those photos to prospective “sugar daddies.” Such arrangements are reportedly all the rage nowadays:

As college costs continue their stubborn rise, and with work harder to come by during an anemic economic recovery, some students are resorting to a rather unusual measure in order to pay their college bills.
“Sugar Daddies,” wealthy older men who provide financial support to younger women in exchange for sex and companionship, have seen a rise in popularity among college students struggling to find a way to pay tuition.
College student membership on SeekingArrangement.com, a website that matches sugar daddies and sugar babies, has increased by 58 percent from December 2011 to December 2012
“Currently, we have over 2 million members, 44 percent of which are college students,” Leroy Velasquez, public relations manager at SeekingArrangement.com, told ABC News. ”It’s very difficult to retain a part time or full-time job, especially when you have an academic life. With SeekingArrangement, we offer these types of relationships.”

Doing the math here — 44% of 2 million — that means there are 880,000 college girls currently seeking “sugar daddies” via the Internet, and who knows what kind of photos these girls are sending to their . . . uh, clients? Patrons? Benefactors?

Do I have any reason to believe that these Texas floozies were using their naked photos for such purposes? No. But I can’t rule it out, either.

Notice that I am trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible.

It’s not that I am entirely insensitive to the “emotional toll” suffered by these women, it’s just that I’m sick and tired of people trying to blame others for their own stupidity, then expecting everybody to view them as victims, when the answer to their problems is just common sense:

DON’T TAKE NAKED PHOTOS OF YOURSELF! DON’T LET YOUR BOYFRIENDS TAKE NAKED PHOTOS OF YOU!
STOP BEING SUCH DUMB SLUTS!

And stop expecting the rest of us to feel sorry for you.

 

Category: Sex, Texas

Comments

73 Responses to “All My XXX’s Live in Texas”

  1. JeffS
    January 24th, 2013 @ 11:26 am

    Well, you completely missed my point, while making my point. You ought to re-read that Franklin quote again.

  2. K-Bob
    January 24th, 2013 @ 11:49 am

    My wife takes seriously her role as “chief giver of $hit” and “the one who keeps me from believing I know everything.”

    She’s saved me from many a disaster, of course.

  3. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:37 pm

    So you’re due, sometime between now and the next GOP presidency…

  4. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:39 pm

    They may not have a natural right to use them but there’s no way to stop them except abstaining in the first place.

  5. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:42 pm

    And we don’t know the ex posted them to the ‘revenge’ site. Not like there’s a signature. Taking a porn site’s word for the source of a picture is kind of like believing a bargirl’s life story while you buy her overpriced drinks.

  6. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:44 pm

    It’s really hard to maintain security on your information once your computer is out of your hands. The Best Buy Geek Squad, for example, were notorious for plundering hard drives on PC’s they serviced.

  7. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:48 pm

    The difference is, our generation learned from its mistakes, those of us that lived. This generation has the survival instincts of krill, except krill don’t block up Facebook and Twitter with their whining.

  8. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:50 pm

    And they’re not interested in learning, because there’s always a shiny new gadget or app being pimped for them to make the same damn mistakes all over again.

  9. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:52 pm

    I’m mean serioiusly, what sentient organism says to itself, “Hey! I’m going out and get shitfaced! Lemme bring a camera and livebroadcast it to a planetfull of complete strangers I might send a resumé to some day!”

  10. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:54 pm

    Professionals doing it for a living are making career choices. Amateurs doing it for free are idiots.

  11. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:57 pm

    Yes, I can see that intimidating any Russian porn hub. Or a Nigerian Minister of Finance.

  12. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 12:59 pm

    On the other hand, if you’re stupid enough to open a site like that on US soil, your ass is basically grass.

  13. richard mcenroe
    January 24th, 2013 @ 1:03 pm

    Great. I’m buying land in Texas. Now I can look forward to ads for dirt.

  14. joethefatman
    January 24th, 2013 @ 1:05 pm

    Oh GOD… I hope it’s not THAT long!

  15. Bob Belvedere
    January 24th, 2013 @ 1:16 pm

    She reads this blog, eh?

  16. K-Bob
    January 24th, 2013 @ 1:46 pm

    You can tell she doesn’t by the lack of screaming.

    My screaming, that is.

  17. K-Bob
    January 24th, 2013 @ 3:09 pm

    College nasty meat market?

    Probably an app for that.

  18. Susie White
    January 25th, 2013 @ 12:10 am

    You think someone is a slut just because they actually ”trusted” someone they cared about and offered them a picture of their naked body and somehow someone else got a hold of that image but it’s now their fault. As someone (you yourself) who proclaims to have been harassed and stalked for what you have posted online, I would have thought you would have been more introspective before posting this.

    Justify your post any way you see fit – you and others will
    continue to try to place the blame on the victim. Just remember that the people in those photos are indeed people, with lives and friends and family, and they deserve
    privacy and respect. Why is it OK for you to demand that for yourself but not for them? What makes you different? Have you never made a mistake?

    Ask yourself this. For the simple mistake of trusting someone else, did these victims deserve to lose their jobs, their relationships, their right to live without fear of being stalked and assaulted, their lives in fact (RIP Amanda Todd). Really? If you can say then you sir, are part of the problem, not part of the solution. I challenge you sir, to be
    part of the solution. Can you? Sadly right now I doubt you can.

  19. Quartermaster
    January 25th, 2013 @ 7:37 am

    The use of “slut” here is most likely hyperbole. Figures of speech may be beyond you, but the problem is created by the primary victims in this case. I didn’t take nekkid pics of my wife when we were young because such things are always a time bomb. You never know who will get them if they are discovered, and it is always best to treat such things as though they will be.

    Those women whose pics were posted on such sites were stupid in the extreme. If there really is a problem, the problem resides with the victims and no one else. The Franklin quote made by RSM below is quite apropos here.

  20. Quartermaster
    January 25th, 2013 @ 7:43 am

    I can tell you’ve never been in the Military. Sailors, Soldiers, Airmen and Marines often say they are going to go out and get plastered.

    Now, one can doubt the intelligence of a man who voluntarily signs on with an organization where he may torn to pieces, or incinerated at the office, but I have as yet to meet one of those covered in the list above that wasn’t sentient.

  21. Quartermaster
    January 25th, 2013 @ 7:46 am

    Don’t take pics of yourself you wouldn’t send to Ma or Grandma.

  22. Susie White
    January 25th, 2013 @ 12:15 pm

    I’m well aware of hypebole and what it means. I’m not saying these people made wise decisions, but calling someone stupid or a slut for making a bad judgement call in trusting someone may make you feel better about yourself but it doesn’t do anything to solve the problem. Please stop calling these victims stupid or sluts or otherwise denigrating them because when you do, you are becoming part of the PROBLEM. Why, because the only way to stop this is to shut these sites down via lawsuits.
    Victims don’t pursue this for the very reason of the behavior being exhibited here and being victimized all over again. How about offering up some empathy and compassion. Such a small thing to ask but apparently beyond so many. I only hope I you ever find yourself in the position of needing understanding and compassion
    from strangers that you are not treated so poorly.

  23. Susie White
    January 25th, 2013 @ 2:38 pm

    And no “the problem” is not created by the primary victims in this case as you state. The problem is created by the individuals who posted their pictures wihout their permission and the revenge sites that attempt to profit off of them and in several cases attempt to extort money. The vicitms may have unwittingly provided ammunition for the problem but they didn’t create it.

    I wonder though what you would say if the victim was unaware photos had even been taken of them. Example: if someone slipped someone a roofie, if someone took pictures of someone in a dressing room or bathroom, or a situation like Erin Andrews who was spied on through her hotel room door and had naked pictures leaked. Was that their fault also?