When we talk about revenge porn, we typically think of it as a crime—because that’s what it is legally considered now, in at least 13 states—committed by men against women. To a large extent, that’s pretty much what it is. That appears to be changing, however, with the arrest of Rachel Lynn Craig, a Virginia woman who now has the dubious distinction of being one of the state’s first women to be charged with distributing revenge porn.
According to state police, Craig, 28, was arguing with her ex-boyfriend when she stole a naked photo of his current girlfriend from his phone and posted it on Facebook. When the woman contacted her to take it down, she warned the victim “not to mess with her.” She’s now being charged with posting nude images of another person on the Internet and making it accessible to others, which is a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Craig is not the only woman to be charged under Virginia’s new revenge porn law, which took effect in July. Another woman, whose name is (seriously) Crystal Cherry, was also charged with posting nude photographs of her ex on Instagram and Twitter shortly after the law took effect.
Revenge porn victim’s rights advocate Annemarie Chiarini speculates that the spike of woman-on-woman cybercrime is related to popular websites like ShesaHomewrecker.com, where cuckolded wives and girlfriends post explicit photos of their partners’ mistresses.
But of course, as anyone who’s seen Mean Girls (or actually, like, experienced it firsthand in high school) knows, it’s not very surprising that women like Craig and Cherry post revenge porn, nor that they can derive just as much enjoyment from the suffering of other women as men do. What’s surprising is that more of them haven’t been punished for it yet.
H/T Huffington Post | Photo by symo0/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)