Posters of revenge porn are reportedly using a website called “MaleGeneral” to share nonconsensual pornographic photos or videos of gay men, often using the site’s forums to ask for photos of specific men, or identify men in certain photos.
According to the website’s GitHub wiki, MaleGeneral was created in 2008 as an offshoot of a 4chan catalog of camgirl and camboy photos, and now continues to thrive on its own, as evidenced by a Dazed feature following a man named Jack who says his private photos were posted to MaleGeneral without his permission.
While Dazed reports some of the photos on the poorly designed website are of men selling pornography through fan subscriptions, many posts feature men who possibly haven’t consented to having their nude images disseminated on the internet.
Though the website allows takedown requests, it requires users to identify themselves in a particular manner with a photo—if they don’t, the site uses the photo to further shame the revenge porn subject. MaleGeneral also frowns upon people who file takedown requests to an internet service provider—”turds,” the website calls whistleblowers. As a result, Jack said he didn’t attempt to take his photos down and instead kept quiet, hoping no one knew the website existed.
“I was disgusted…and of course, I didn’t want to do that so I kept quiet about it, thinking no one knew the website existed. I was never ashamed because I knew a lot of people do send photos like that, it was just unfortunate it was me that all this happened to,” Jack told Dazed.
While 38 states in the U.S. have outlawed revenge porn, or the dissemination of nonconsensual pornography with the intent to harm, Congress has yet to criminalize it nationally, with the Senate last introducing a bill in November.
“It is possible that posting these images may be a criminal offense under the so-called ‘Revenge Porn’ law, but that would require intent to cause the victim distress, which is difficult to prove,” Alex Haydock, a legal assistant at Open Rights Group, told Dazed. “Laws around harassment and copyright may apply in some circumstances, but this still leaves some room for people to share explicit images without permission.”
H/T Dazed