TW: sexual assault, domestic violence, suicide
In the wake of the Georgia Harrison and Stephen Bear “Revenge Porn” upset, reality TV star Zara McDermott’s BBC documentary Revenge Porn came at a critical point. Another one of the many, many women and girls affected worldwide, Zara McDermott showcased an exceptionally raw and hard-hitting documentary of her own experiences.
We’ve watched her many times, through the gaze of a hungry British public using reality shows to satisfy our appetites. This time, though, Zara came across genuine, relatable, and just like any other girl. Especially as many other girls have experienced similar trauma, with the Revenge Porn helpline reporting a record number of calls in August 2020; the surge likely exacerbated by lockdown, the BBC suggested.
Starting by taking us through her most notable experience, Zara describes how, whilst she was in the Love Island villa in 2018, an ex-boyfriend shared images of her without her consent, and almost overnight they went viral. We hear from one of Zara’s friends, Charli, who describes her own anguish at the situation, especially given Zara was still unaware of what was going on in the “outside world”, safely cocooned in the confines of the Mediterranean villa. Charli talks about how she desperately tried to report every single image she saw, begging others to delete the pictures from their phones and prevent further spreading of her friend’s photos, but as she said in the documentary: “I was literally trying to put out a wildfire with a bottle of water.”
”The wounds inflicted by this incident on the family were unfathomably deep”
The distress that befell Zara on her return from the villa was clearly still very real as she describes what happened in the documentary, stating: “I wanted to die.” As much as she must have come leaps and bounds since first finding out, the anger, hurt, and pain of the experience remains plain to see. Hearing from her brother and parents, the wounds inflicted by this incident on the family were unfathomably deep, and yet despite this it was refreshing to understand that the family’s hurt is attributable to anger at the deed, rather than at the victim. Even with the progressiveness of today, victim-blaming remains all too common.
But Zara had been blamed for another event, further back in her past when, at the age of 14, something very similar occurred with a boy from her school. Not only did she have fellow students and teachers treating her differently as a result, mothers from her neighbourhood slated her to her own parents, ruining both her reputation as well as future relationships. Zara’s documentary focuses on empowering the once-belittled female voice, but it is hard as the viewer not to become furious at the injustice of it all: boys and men seem to always get away scot-free, and even other women join in with the pile-on. The focus on the ugly vitriol faced by many in the setting of school brings back disturbing memories, and I doubt I am the only one to which they come. Zara is a few years older than myself, but even five to six years ago, the concept of the patriarchy was virtually non-existent amongst teenagers, and we had no understanding of the internalised misogyny we all expressed on a daily basis. The documentary is adept at describing a bigger pattern on a smaller scale: women are constantly facing the consequences for male actions, intentionally malicious or otherwise, and we desperately need to distance ourselves from this female-blaming culture.
”Story upon story reveals the stark realities of the psychological burden of revenge porn”
Speaking to other women who had been similarly affected, the film gradually transcended through the various forms that revenge porn can take. Whilst falling victim to any form is a horrific ordeal, Zara slowly eases us into the truly disgusting depths of male power. Emotional abuse by way of threatening to share explicit images with a woman’s family and friends resulted in a suicide in 2017. Story upon story reveals the stark realities of the psychological burden of revenge porn, exposed in their ugly forms.
There was a glimmer of hope, though, at the end of what seems like a long, dark tunnel. A man who had purposely set up his ex-girlfriend so that he could film them having sex one last time, before sending the secretly filmed video to her close family, friends and work colleagues, received a 4-year jail sentence during the making of the documentary. Finally, it feels, society is beginning to take this more seriously. In hearing of official, legal consequences for a perpetrator, a strange kind of optimism ensues.
”The criminalisation of revenge porn has its limitations”
But this was really part of the most extreme end of the spectrum. For as Zara had pointed out, the criminalisation of revenge porn has its limitations: you have to prove that the person who shared your images without consent was doing so with malicious intent – and often that’s not possible. And so in realisation of these restrictions, another campaign that Zara is fronting is the criminalisation of threatening to expose compromising pictures of another without their consent, an act that in itself causes a severe amount of distress and upset, and a method of blackmail, that currently carries no consequence.
Illustrating the fluidity of trust that exists in male-female relationships particularly, Zara’s documentary was thought-provoking, if challenging at parts. It is never nice hearing about the distress faced by young women, never mind vulnerable schoolgirls, but it is the sad reality. Candid and unfiltered, the film carries the atmosphere of someone who is still trying to understand why another had chosen to inflict on them so much pain. It felt innocent, and yet informed, and I would recommend it to all women, young or old, as it so perfectly paints a picture of the all-too-relatable and undeserving hurt female victims face.
Lucy Dunn
Featured image courtesy of ROBIN WORRALL via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes made to this image.