Last week Brandon Cook posted a screenshot from a Melbourne ‘lads group’ on Facebook, where a bloke, Lindor Jonuzi, had been sharing nude photos obtained by infiltrating women-only spaces online. Since he posted the screenshot, Jonuzi lost his job, and Cook was been putting up with death threats. He wrote for PEDESTRIAN.TV about mens’ double standards when it comes to nude photo sharing.
Last week, a man named Lindor Jonuzi stole semi-nude images of a seventeen-year-old girl from a woman-only Facebook group.
The girl’s name was Kamila. Lindor snuck into the group, took off with her snaps and reposted them to a secret ‘lads’ group, with the explicit aim of ‘roasting sluts’. Before long, however, his post was found and spread around. Eventually he lost his job and his behaviour was publicly exposed.
I would know, because I’m the guy who exposed him.
I’ve seen and read multiple comments online involving dudes sticking up for the “poor guy who got fired”, shattered I would “ruin his life”, and trying to pin the blame not just on me, but on Kamila. She has received abuse, threats and hate mail from men.
Fast forward less than a week, and we have yet another instance of a man rejecting a woman’s consent, and deceitfully acquiring images of her. I’m referring to the story of Sydney gal Tegan Portener.
The twenty-two year old was travelling via train to Newcastle, and awoke from a nap only to catch a thirty-year-old man seated directly in front of her, attempting to sneakily film up her shorts.
She proceeded to film him right back with her phone, and vocally confronted him, before posting his mug to the Internet for all to see. He’s since been charged with “filming a persons’ private parts without consent” and “offensive conduct”.
Hell fucking yes. Tegan is incredible, and him getting charged is a killer result. Her actions have undoubtedly shown heaps of past and potential perverts that this kind of invasive behaviours aren’t okay. I haven’t seen a single man defend his actions or criticise the results. The collective mood is that justice has been achieved.
What happened to Kamila and Tegan aren’t quite so different. In both scenarios, a man has attempted to use deception to acquire footage of a woman without her consent, and been caught out in the process. Tegan’s creeper essentially pulled the “real-life” version of the theft of Kamila’s photo.
Yet not a single bloke has chimed in on reports to say “taking it public was too far”, or “why’d you have to punish him?” or – my favourite – “but everyone makes mistakes”, unlike with Kamila’s story.
This is because Tegan’s creeper did something that none of those men would ever dream of defending. It involved wilful deception and malicious intent – and it also occurred offline.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure there’s a stack of dudes out there maligning her actions. I’ve already heard a man say, “Well, you should always be careful of your surroundings!” – like women should wear floor-length gowns in transit, lest their nethers be set upon by camera-wielding peeping toms. In fact, I’m kind of scared to look deeper, because Never Read The Comments.
Still, the subtle argument is that one is more vile than another. One instance feels less disgusting because it occurred online, therefore men are less willing to call it out. But is it?
A seventeen-year-old victim of abuse has been angrily blamed. Not for any kind of crime, but for the consequences faced by the offender. Her story is viewed as less of a violation to these men because it occurred online. That is a huge problem.
When men choose to stay silent because one case somehow feels lesser than another, then we’re doing ‘being an ally’ wrong. It’s time that we started realising that the gap between cyberspace and offline reality isn’t as wide as we think – and violation is violation, online or otherwise.
A woman posting images of her body in a closed forum shouldn’t expect that they would be stolen, and we shouldn’t excuse it because it occurs online. Just like a woman riding a bus shouldn’t expect photographs being taken up her shorts.
And we must recognise that these experiences – of dangerous men going out of their way to make women feel unsafe, and women being victim-blamed and told to put up with it – occur every day for women. It’s getting pretty damn tired.
Guys, we have to loudly disapprove of this kind of stuff – like Tegan did when she publicly exposed her creeper’s face. Because this will continue to happen until men start to hold other men accountable.
When a seventeen-year-old girl receives death threats for the consequences of her private images being stolen and shared to ‘roast sluts’, something isn’t right. When a pervert feels so entitled to a woman’s body that he films up her shorts in a public place, something is definitely off.
And when women feel alone in sticking up for themselves, men need to do something.
Photo: Getty Images / Artur Debat.
