Last weekend, sexual objectification became a central talking point for most media groups after the leak of roughly a dozen celebrities (more were reported to be leaked, but the leaks did not happen). I thought two things were interesting about the articles on Celebgate (also known as TheFappening):
- I found a little over 60 articles that portrayed the female celebrities as victims.
- I found no articles portraying the three male celebrities that were also leaked, as victims, though their content was far more graphic than that of their female counterparts.
I can’t say I was surprised. The men clearly weren’t the leak’s targets and were merely collateral damage. Secondly, there is a general assumption that the perpetrator/s are male—though no individual/s have been caught. Regardless, a part of me wondered…
…if a similar number of male celebrity nudes were leaked and three female celebrities were collateral as part of it… would we be hearing about the female victims, regardless of who leaked them and whether they were the target?
I had an uncomfortable feeling that the answer to that question was a resounding ‘yes’.
So why did Celebgate happen and why were the male victims ignored? Here are a couple of different ideological positions on that question, pick the one you’d like to read about:
Which perspective would you like to see next?