One of the biggest female streamers on Twitch wants to take a harder stance on revenge porn—nude photos that are posted online without their owners’ consent. Imane “Pokimane” Anys said in a recent Twitch stream that it should be “illegal” to possess nudes without their owners’ consent, and that she wanted to work towards “facilitating legislation” against it.
“There are some companies that I’m going to message…not companies. Organizations that are involved in certain causes. I’m going to be like…Listen: If you ever need someone to…” Pokimane made talking hand gestures on stream. “I’m your girl. Because I think if you wanna pass a bill, you usually go in front of a group of politicians and you explain your cause…I’ll do it.” Kotaku reached out to Pokimane to ask which organizations she planned to work with, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Pokimane was initially vague about what she was taking a stance against, but she eventually clarified that she was talking about revenge porn. “I think it should be illegal to even have your phone, your PC, on your anything…having photos that someone doesn’t consent to you having.”
There are several reasons why she is taking this stance now. Pokimane talked about how her viewers would message her about how their former partners would leak their nudes. She felt that those individuals were rarely punished for “ruining” girls’ lives. “So many things online go without repercussions and they really shouldn’t,” she said.
The U.S. currently has laws against revenge porn in nearly every state. But as Hasan Piker pointed out in a recent stream about Pokimane’s comments, enforcement against revenge porn is complicated and murky. Cops are hardly the most empathetic or competent investigators of gendered violence. Besides that, surveilling every electronic device for revenge porn would be a massive privacy violation. “The only way you can tackle revenge porn is at the point of distribution,” he said.
Pokimane seemed optimistic about preventing revenge porn by stigmatizing it. “If [an ex] shares [nudes] with someone, that person should be so scared of having that photo because the person whose photo they have—didn’t consent to giving it to them.”
Sisi Jiang
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