OPINION
By Heidi Stevens
Chicago Tribune
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Powerful piece by Heidi Stevens of the Chicago Tribune on the Rob Kardashian-Black Chyna saga.
Chicago Tribune
To paraphrase Dr. Seuss: A person’s a person no matter how closely they associate with a Kardashian.
So Blac Chyna, the target of ex-fiance Rob Kardashian’s social media antics, deserves no less privacy and humanity than the rest of us.
Kardashian posted multiple nude photos of Chyna (with whom he has a daughter) on Instagram on Wednesday, along with a bunch of accusations about elective surgeries and jewelry he paid for and other men she slept with.
Instagram took down the images shortly after noon, at which point Kardashian directed his followers to Twitter, where he re-posted them. Those have been taken down too.
“This is, in many ways, exactly what the revenge porn law talks about,” Louis Shapiro, a criminal defense attorney, told the Los Angeles Times. “A prosecutor here could choose to make an example of him even if she doesn’t want to cooperate.”
California passed a law against “non-consensual pornography” in 2013. Violating it is a misdemeanor resulting in up to six months in jail.
Illinois passed a similar “revenge porn” law in 2014, making it a felony to post sexually explicit videos and photos of another person online without his or her permission.
Nowhere in the laws is there a clause saying, “Unless the subject slept with other people, in which case: bring it.” Nowhere do they state, “Unless the subject used to be a stripper, in which case: her body is no longer her own.”
Chyna used to be a dancer at a gentlemen’s club in Miami before she became famous dancing in music videos. (I’m unclear why the patrons get to be “gentleman,” while the entertainers get to be treated as sub-human.)
Her past job was mentioned repeatedly in social media posts Wednesday as justification for helping Kardashian’s temper tantrum go viral, as though taking one’s clothes off to make a living means you forever surrender agency over your body.
Nope.
Chyna, or anyone for that matter, can choose when, where and with whom to share her assets and when, where and with whom not to. Always. Forever. That never expires. It’s pretty basic.
If I donate $100 to a nonprofit, that doesn’t mean I’m OK with someone walking up and stealing $100 from me the next day. But you were giving it away yesterday …
Same thing with your body. (I have no idea, at this point, whether Rob Kardashian counts as a nonprofit. Last I checked he designs socks.)
Anyway, it’s unseemly, at best, and misogynistic, at worst, to pretend the way Chyna’s being exposed and pilloried is OK.
Spending capital, emotional and financial, on a person and having that person cheat on you is no fun, but it doesn’t give you carte blanche to violate that person’s privacy and agency.
It’s hard to look at this saga and not detect an element of cultural disgust at a sexual woman. She likes it? She flaunts it? Take her down. She deserves it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne couldn’t have dreamed up Instagram when he penned “The Scarlet Letter” in 1850, but he sure had our number when it comes to shame.
We love to dole it out, and we reserve the bulk of it for women.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Heidi Stevens is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
