Imagine a woman who falls in love, trusts her partner, and shares an intimate photograph with him during a private moment in their relationship. Perhaps she is hundreds of miles away and wants to feel close to him, or perhaps they have been together for years and sharing intimate photographs is simply part of their relationship. Whatever her reason, she makes a personal decision to share something deeply private with someone she trusts.
Months later, the relationship ends, and she learns that the photograph has been circulating among his friends. Someone uploads it to a website. Strangers begin viewing it, saving it, and sharing it with people she has never met. She has no idea how far it has traveled, who has seen her naked body, or whether the photograph will eventually reach her employer, her family, or her children.
The man responsible never laid a hand on her.
Yet he has exposed the most intimate parts of her body to an audience she never agreed to, leaving her to live with the knowledge that strangers have been invited into a private sexual moment without her permission. We have a name for what happened to her. We call it "revenge porn." I believe that term fails her, and I believe our understanding of sexual violence must evolve.
Consent to Intimacy Is Not Consent to Exposure
As a trial attorney who represents survivors of sexual assault, I have spent years confronting the ways society questions, minimizes, and misunderstands sexual violations. I have seen how easily the conversation shifts from the conduct of the person responsible to the decisions of the person who was harmed. What was she wearing? Why did she trust him? Why didn't she leave? Why did she put herself in that situation? Now we hear a different version of those same questions. Why did she take the photograph? Why did she send it? Didn't she know it might end up online?
What troubles me is how quickly these questions transform an act of betrayal into a discussion about the victim's judgment, as though choosing to share her body with someone she loves somehow diminishes her right to decide who else gets to see it. Consider this: If a woman consents to undress in front of her boyfriend, no one would reasonably argue that he now has permission to invite ten of his friends into the bedroom to watch her. Her consent to be intimate with one person does not extend to his friends, his coworkers, or complete strangers.
Why should the principle change because the intimacy was captured in a photograph? The answer, in my view, is that it shouldn't.
A woman who sends an intimate photograph has consented to sharing it with its intended recipient. She has not surrendered ownership of her sexual privacy, nor has she given anyone permission to turn her body into public entertainment. And when someone deliberately crosses that boundary, the violation is sexual in nature, regardless of whether physical contact occurred.
Why Our Language Matters
I have a particular objection to the phrase "revenge porn," because both words distort the nature of the harm. Revenge suggests retaliation, inviting us to examine the perpetrator's grievance rather than the victim's violated consent. Pornography suggests sexual entertainment, obscuring the fact that the person depicted never agreed to become part of anyone's entertainment.
Sometimes the person distributing the image is an angry former partner. Sometimes it is a stranger who obtained a private recording, someone secretly filming another person, or someone using artificial intelligence to manufacture a sexual image that never existed. The circumstances differ, but the violation rests on the same principle: someone has taken control of another person's intimate image or sexual representation without permission.
Legal scholars Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, and Ruth Houghton addressed this issue in their 2017 research, Beyond 'Revenge Porn': The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse. They argued that nonconsensual creation and distribution of intimate images should be understood as image-based sexual abuse, situated within the broader continuum of sexual violence.
Their argument recognizes something I believe our society has been slow to acknowledge: sexual violence involves more than physical force. It also involves coercion, intimidation, exploitation, and the violation of sexual autonomy. For decades, we have worked to establish that consent is fundamental to sexual relationships. Yet when the violation happens through a photograph or video, we often treat it as an invasion of privacy rather than recognizing its sexual character. Privacy is certainly part of what has been violated, but describing the harm solely in those terms fails to capture its deeply personal nature.
The Trauma Does Not End When the Photograph Is Removed
In a study published in Social & Legal Studies, researchers interviewed 75 survivors of image-based sexual abuse across the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Their findings described harms that extended far beyond embarrassment or reputational damage. Survivors experienced profound disruptions to their relationships, sense of safety, identity, personal freedom, and ability to move through everyday life without fear. The researchers identified a particularly disturbing feature of this abuse: its persistence.
For a survivor whose intimate images have been distributed, there is often no certainty that the violation has ended. Even after a website removes the material, she might never know whether someone downloaded it, saved it, or intends to share it again. Think about what that uncertainty means for a woman trying to rebuild her life. She might begin a new relationship while wondering whether her partner will someday encounter the photographs. She might pursue a promotion, enter a new profession, or become a parent while fearing that something she shared privately years earlier will suddenly reappear. The violation follows her into moments that should belong entirely to her.
While not every survivor experiences the same psychological consequences, the research makes one thing unmistakable: the harm is not confined to the screen on which the image appears. It reaches into the survivor's relationships, opportunities, confidence, and sense of control over her own life. The body might not have been physically touched, but the person's sexual autonomy has been violated.
The Law Has a Definition. Survivors Have an Experience.
As an attorney, I understand the importance of legal precision. Under New Jersey law, criminal sexual assault is defined by specific statutory elements involving sexual penetration or certain sexual contact. Nonconsensual distribution of intimate images is addressed through other legal provisions, including New Jersey's invasion-of-privacy statute. I am not arguing that distributing an intimate photograph and committing rape are identical acts, nor am I suggesting that every form of sexual violence should carry the same criminal charge or punishment. Different conduct requires different legal analysis, and those distinctions matter. What I am challenging is the belief that our criminal statutes should determine the boundaries of what society recognizes as sexual violence.
The law assigns names to offenses for purposes of prosecution, proof, and punishment. Those names do not necessarily capture the full experience of the person who was harmed. When a woman describes the nonconsensual exposure of her naked body as a sexual violation, why should our instinct be to correct her terminology rather than understand what she is telling us? Why should the absence of physical contact become the deciding factor in whether we take the sexual nature of her experience seriously?
Recognizing image-based sexual abuse as part of the continuum of sexual violence does not diminish the experiences of survivors of physical sexual assault. It recognizes that violations of sexual autonomy occur in different ways, with different consequences, and that each deserves to be understood on its own terms. We do not need to erase legal distinctions to recognize the humanity of the person standing before us.
We Need to Change the Conversation
I want us to think differently about the woman whose former boyfriend distributed her intimate photographs. I want us to stop asking why she trusted him and start asking why he believed her trust gave him permission to expose her. I want us to stop describing her experience as a scandal, a humiliating breakup, or an unfortunate consequence of taking nude photographs. And I want us to recognize that a person does not forfeit the right to sexual autonomy by choosing to express sexuality privately.
Women should not have to live in fear that the intimacy they willingly shared with someone they loved will one day become a weapon against them. They should not have to explain why the public exposure of their bodies feels deeply violating, or defend the legitimacy of their suffering because the person responsible never physically touched them.
As someone who has dedicated much of my legal career to advocating for survivors, I believe our responsibility extends beyond pursuing accountability after harm occurs. We must also challenge the attitudes and language that prevent society from recognizing the harm in the first place. The term "image-based sexual abuse" is an important step toward that recognition. Understanding it as part of the broader spectrum of sexual violence is the next. Because the fundamental question has never been whether a photograph was real, whether a video was recorded voluntarily, or whether the person responsible ever physically touched the victim. The question is whether the person whose body or sexual identity was exposed gave permission for that exposure.
She consented to intimacy. She did not consent to an audience. And when someone takes that choice away from her, we should have the courage to recognize the violation for what it is. Sexual violence does not always leave physical evidence. Sometimes it leaves a person wondering whether she will ever again have control over who gets to see her body.
