Revenge porn

Revenge porn is the distribution of sexually explicit images or videos of individuals without their consent, with the punitive intention to create public humiliation or character assassination out of revenge against the victim. The material may have been made by an ex-partner from an intimate relationship with the knowledge and consent of the subject at the time, or it may have been made without their knowledge. The subject may have experienced sexual violence during the recording of the material, in some cases facilitated by psychoactive chemicals such as date rape drugs which also cause a reduced sense of pain and involvement in the sexual act, dissociative effects and amnesia and such.

The possession of the material may be used by the perpetrators to blackmail the subjects into performing other sexual acts, to coerce them into continuing a relationship or to punish them for ending one, to silence them, to damage their reputation, and/or for financial gain. In the wake of civil lawsuits and the increasing numbers of reported incidents, legislation has been passed in a number of countries and jurisdictions to outlaw the practice, though approaches have varied and been changed over the years. The practice has also been described as a form of psychological abuse and domestic violence, as well as a form of sexual abuse.

Revenge porn most commonly refers to the uploading of sexually explicit material to the Internet to humiliate and intimidate a subject who has broken off a relationship. The term is however also often broadly used to describe non-revenge scenarios, including nonconsensual pornography distributed by hackers or by individuals seeking profit or notoriety (often formally referred to as non-consensual intimate imagery, NCII, or image-based sexual abuse, IBSA). The images are usually accompanied by sufficient information to identify the target individual (a process known as doxing), typically names and locations, and can include risqué comments, links to social media profiles, home addresses, and workplaces. In some cases, victims are exposed to workplace discrimination, cyberstalking or physical attack.