"my husband and his friends exchange nudes of their wife’s and GF’s."

hello readers,

as always, i want to start this episode by thanking my anonymous reader for submitting her question and encourage anyone else to submit a question.

i’ve been getting quite a few questions that pertain to naked photos lately, as well as a few that pertain to said photos being shared without the consent of the creator of said photos.  so i wanted to start today’s column with a blurb about that. (i am not, nor do i claim to be a lawyer, by the way)

first things first, 46 states now have revenge porn laws of some kind on their books.  the act of distributing (the legal word is ‘disseminating’) pornographic images of someone without their consent generally falls within the scope of those laws. all of that to say, there shouldn’t need to be a law for people to know that sharing intimate photos of someone without their permission is wrong—but there is. 

and now, your regularly scheduled programming: 

my husband and his friends exchange nudes of their wife’s and GF’s. 

i found out that my husband has been receiving nudes and sending mine that i have sent to him to his friends. i feel so violated and embarrassed. he doesn’t find anything wrong with it because i don’t care if he watches porn but i do mind when it’s someone we know! i’m so heartbroken and he acts like i’m acting crazy!

first of all, i am extremely sorry that this has happened to you.  i think that anyone that sends an intimate photo is entitled (morally and legally) to the expectation that that photo not be shared or circulated.  your husband and his friends violated that.   

it makes me angry to hear that your husband felt it was okay to share these photos.  and it makes me sad to hear that within this group of male friends, not one of them said “i don’t think we should be doing this.” 

it is unfortunate that i need to include this, but i feel that i do—people in your life might tell you that you deserved this.  it is a sentiment that i see thrown around a lot in celeb nude leaks or political scandals.  ‘if you don’t want your naked pictures online, you shouldn’t have taken them.’  i’ve even seen people who claim to be progressive echoing this sentiment. the sentiment, however, is obviously bullshit—and those who hold it are assholes. 

i tell you this, not to minimize what your husband did or deter you from taking some kind of action to retaliate, but rather to prepare you for what i think might be some of the difficulties associated with doing so.  in my opinion, the lack of respect your husband has demonstrated for you in this scenario—and continues to demonstrate by not apologizing—is grounds for the termination of your relationship.  and that isn’t even addressing the fact that your husband sees nothing wrong with looking at intimate photos of women in his life that he does not have permission to look at.  which, also, even if these women had consented to him looking at their intimate photos, you having a mature attitude about him watching pornography does not give him permission to solicit sexual content from the women in his life.   which is what he should have had to do to see these photos—had it not been for the fact that he’s an absolute creep who seems to view the women in his life as trading cards for him and his fucking creep friends. 

at minimum, you need to tell every single one of the women who’s photos are being shared that this is going on.  because, as i’ve said in the past, the longer these photos are circulating via this text or email chain or whatever, the more likely they are to end up on the internet and out of their/your control.  if no one in this group see’s sharing these photos with their friends as an issue, who’s to say someone in the group doesn’t feel the same way about sharing them on the internet? 

i encourage you, too, to make your support available to all of these women after making them aware of this situation.  if ever there were a red flag for controlling behaviors or abuse—well, i think ‘exchanges nude photos of spouse/girlfriend with friends without her consent’ definitely checks the necessary boxes.  as i’ve said before, i predict a lot of minimizing in regards to this situation—particularly from these men—and i think that, within all of that commotion, it’s important for you all to make sure that if any of these women choose to stay with these partners, they are doing so because they’ve chosen to forgive their partners—not because they don’t feel safe leaving.