This is why women want safe spaces

This is why women want safe spaces

No wonder women don’t feel safe anywhere! While researching for The ultimate guide to bra-fitting, I spent time on the sub-Reddit, r/abrathatfits. This is an amazing resource, helping women everywhere find a bra that fits—they offer sizing advice and share information, and you can post a picture and have women with expertise check the fit on you. This should be a safe place; a portion of the internet carved out for women helping women.

Imagine the horror these women faced when it emerged someone had been browsing through, lifting the images and posting them to Pornhub. This someone had been posting image uploads on r/abrathatfits from as far back as 2013—in some cases, the user had gone through the poster’s image history and included shots of their face.

In total, 52 albums were published to Pornhub with images found on this online community. The fact most of these albums had very few views (ranging between 10 and 20 views—although some counted up to 150 views) is of little comfort to the women feeling violated and ashamed.

Yes, these women were sharing images of themselves in bras, but there’s nothing sexual or indecent about these pictures. They felt—and should feel­—safe to post these without fear of them being relegated to pornographic material. It’s not unexpected they should feel confident their photos won’t be posted elsewhere, when porn sites thrive on the overtly sexual and graphic by their very nature. And the moderators at r/abrathatfits have long extolled the need to stay safe online, recommending women hide or obscure any identifying features, delete any photos after they’ve received the help they need and consider using a ‘throwaway’ account (an account not linked to their main account, email or other identifiable data) so they can’t be identified publicly.

Many porn sites do have takedown request forms aimed towards people who have had images uploaded without their consent, but this doesn’t stop the images springing up again on the same or a different site; and certainly doesn’t prevent their appearance in the first place. Consider the impact on these women’s lives; they reached out to a community to find advice when the offline world has been unable to provide it (just how many women are wearing the wrong sized bra right now?) and found their vulnerability relegated to porn without their consent. These women are likely employed and unaware they could be recognised on a porn site—they certainly didn’t ask to be there. A quick browse of the comments on r/abrathatfits suggest this isn’t the first time images have been lifted, but it’s the most prolific. The moderators are used to people faking their way into the community and using the images for their own pornographic benefit. Is it the violation they get off on?

This isn’t dissimilar to the Apple iCloud leaks, where George Garofano engaged in a phishing scheme targeting celebrities between 2012 and 2014; he obtained access to their iCloud accounts, took their photos and shared them publicly. Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Kate Upton, Vanessa Hudgens and Kirsten Dunst were among the celebrities targeted, with Lawrence calling it a ‘sexual violation.’ She was right; regardless of what you think about taking nude photographs or posting your images online in search of advice, sharing them for pornographic use is a violation. When a woman goes to a beach and spends a pleasant afternoon in a bikini, she doesn’t expect to be photographed and have her images uploaded to Pornhub without her consent; despite being in the public domain and ostensibly ‘asking for it’. The same goes for the women frequenting the r/abrathatfits community.

This is why women are calling out for safe spaces; there are creeps everywhere and we just want somewhere without them for once.