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Sex
It is easy for large companies to put their names on a piece of paper and say they support a vulnerable community, but it is their actions that will truly tell their commitment to this ideal. However, the LGBTQ+ community’s response to the signings of this brief has been largely positive, with many detailing that they are not anti-business, but simply want to be included fairly within the workplace. They want to participate in the open market as much as the next person, and they want to be employed and reap all of the benefits they may sow. Being supported by major companies is a huge breakthrough, and it is a sign of positive change to come. As a citizen of the United States, I am hopeful that businesses are truly waking up to the world we live in and understand the undertaking required of them to provide a fair workplace environment for all employees. We cannot live with inconsistency, and I am hopeful that with corporations backing this prospect, we will soon see a federal law banning sexual discrimination in the workplace.
Criminalising NonConsensual Pornography Zoe Timmons SF Law Editor’s Note: This article discusses sexual assault, which some readers may find distressing. The phenomenon of image-based sexual abuse, commonly referred to as “revenge porn”, is a widespread issue, and one which highlights the concerning gaps in Irish law when it comes to gendered crime. It refers to the dissemination of intimate visual materials without the consent of the person being portrayed, often initiated by the breakdown of a relationship where one person threatens to leak sexually explicit material of the other. Admittedly, the idea that image-based sexual abuse is confined to instances of a spiteful ex-partner, sharing private material of the other in the name of revenge, is somewhat outdated. It also fails to consider those who have been targeted by strangers or hackers whose sole interest is gaining from the exploitation of others. Regardless of the perpetrator, the means of attack tends to be the same: the material is generally shared online, amassing thousands of views on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and quickly spreads beyond the grasp of the person portrayed. Image-based sexual abuse is vicious in its scope and proliferation, in the sense that material can receive hundreds of “hits” before the person portrayed even has any knowledge of the distribution. Thus, the term “revenge porn” is misleading and has largely been abandoned by advocates and scholars alike, as the term fails to capture the severity of the crime, trivialising and minimising the heinous act in one fell swoop. This can by no means be defined as pornography produced for entertainment purposes; images or videos exchanged during the course of a relationship being weaponized against someone is, by all definitions, sexual abuse. Additionally, the phrase “revenge porn” has dubious origins. Professor Erika Rackley traces the term back to an infamous perpetrator of said crime: Hunter Moore, “the most hated man on the internet,” who, in 2010, launched a website dedicated to posting non-consensual sexually explicit material of unwitting women. In a legal sense, revenge porn represents a total invasion of privacy and violation of data protection rights; however, on a more personal level, for those subjected to this form of exploitation, it carries with it shame and stigma. Having the most private, intimate parts of one’s life broadcast online can have devastating effects: it sees people, principally young women, robbed of their autonomy, their dignity, and their rights. The impact of such abuse can be long-lasting and far-reaching. Not only do they have to come to terms with their bodies being objectified by strangers online, but in certain cases, personal details including names and addresses are shared alongside the images or videos. People may face cyber-bullying, fear unemployment, or even experience being ostracized from friends and family. All too frequently, the onus is placed upon the person portrayed to scour social media and various websites in a desperate attempt to contain the spread of the content. Meanwhile, there are websites that are directly profiting from the non-consensual distribution of intimate material. Pornography sites such as PornHub
