I don’t remember the exact words my friend used. But I can recall the gist of it and his obvious discomfort. What he told me was stranger than I could ever have imagined. He said that he had encountered images of me on a porn site: manipulated, faked images, my face on other bodies, galleries of pictures uploaded by someone who claimed to be my boyfriend. I didn’t know how to react. I had my arms very close to my sides and I was gripping the edge of the sofa. I was utterly confused – I’d never shared any intimate photo of myself with anyone. How had I ended up in DIY porn?
I remember thinking that my male acquaintance was using the language of subtlety and complexity while I was a stuck record, shouting the same things on loop: That’s impossible. Then: What have I done to deserve it?
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“Deepfake” porn – where an image is digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness with that of another – is sometimes used in a malicious attempt to humiliate female celebrities, figures in the public eye.
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I’d also just finished reading Laura Bates’s book Men Who Hate Women and her examination of “incel” culture and online misogyny.
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You wouldn’t need to be an expert in coding to have produced some of these – there were various levels of sophistication on show, and I now know that there are apps that make faked images and videos at the click of a button.
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It was obvious that someone had downloaded ordinary images (mostly holiday photos or selfies from social media such as Facebook, but some could have simply been accessed through a search engine) and used those to create the new pictures.
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My partner was always there to listen, but I was aware of the need to protect my stepdaughter from some of my turmoil, especially as – like many teenagers – she was having a difficult time dealing with the disruption to her normal life caused by Covid.
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I don’t want to live my life looking at everyone and wondering, “Was it you?” I am fairly trusting by nature and sometimes that backfires, but being open to the world also creates opportunities for intense joy.
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