release your own nudes.

Originally published in The Guardian as “I work in politics. I refuse to let a nude video stop me from running for office”

When Representative Katie Hill’s nude photos were leaked online, I watched with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I saw them posted across every social media platform. I saw her naked body, saw it commented upon and reviewed, criticized.

I was sitting on my couch and wrote a quick tweet:

“Almost every woman I know has taken nudes at sometime in her life. As more women under 40 run for office, we are going to have to figure out how to stand together and say it’s the leaking of them, not the taking of them, that is shameful.”

The tweet got 1,000 likes quickly. The next day it had 34,000. I watched people in the comments tell the stories about how nude photos had been used against them. I watched many people, mostly men, repeatedly blame women for sharing nudes, instead of blaming the people who leaked them.

By the time I woke up on Wednesday morning, the tweet had almost 100,000 likes. I felt something in me burst like a bubble. I drafted a post on Facebook to share something I had only ever told my closest friends – I cared so deeply about this issue because it was my story, too.

I was only 19, and desperate for a roommate when I met the man who would go on to get me very drunk, film me without consent and release the evidence.

I am 32 now and I can still feel the sensation of how it felt to have my world crumble around me. My boyfriend left me. I was forced out of the online community where I’d found a home. I was utterly, hopelessly alone. I even contemplated killing myself, especially as this man threatened to show my parents the video.

He made DVDs and sent me a copy.

When I saw it, I threw up.

I’ve built a life for myself in politics. I’ve moved on. I have a partner I love and an adorable house. Two cats and a dog. A great job.

I’ve run dozens of people for office. But I never let myself consider running for a seat of my own. All I could imagine was the humiliation I would feel if this man used that opportunity to finally release my secret to the world.

As the jobs I’ve gotten have become higher profile, I had near-constant anxiety that today, tomorrow, next Tuesday might be the day I lost everything again.

The day I wrote my Facebook post, texts, DMs and calls kept coming in with wave after wave of support. It felt good to hear some things: this was assault. I didn’t deserve the shame I was carrying. He was in the wrong.

But what felt even better, almost magical, to hear, was comment after comment that said something familiar: me too.

Woman after woman who were holding themselves back, who were not running for office, not going to school, not starting a business because someone – in some dark corner of the internet, or an abusive ex, or a high school fling – had taken away their choice. Released their nude photos. Put videos on revenge porn sites.

This really isn’t about Katie Hill. It’s about the long fight women have had to have agency over our own bodies.

It’s about how we are asked to be both the virgin and the whore. It’s about how women still aren’t allowed to own our sexuality.

And it’s really, really about the fact that nudes are an expected part of 21st century romance. In the dark teenage drama Euphoria on HBO, the main character explains this beautifully. Exchanging naked photos and snaps is just how many young people build intimacy in a digital world that increasingly lacks it.

It is not enough to tell women in their 20s and 30s that they just shouldn’t send nudes. A great number of us already have. We shouldn’t have to feel shame that we trusted someone, that we wanted to feel closer to them. Or that we weren’t given a choice.

Sharing someone’s private photos without their consent is a violation of their privacy and their trust. It’s wrong, and the people who do it should be held accountable for their actions.

The United States should follow in the footsteps of the many countries that have made the sharing of revenge porn a federal crime. But in the nation of Brock Turner and Brett Kavanaugh, substantial reform doesn’t seem likely soon.

What we can do now is tell our stories. Of how we’ve been hurt, our trust violated. We can keep talking about it. We can leak our own nudes. We can sue. We can fight.

We can’t be afraid.

I know I’m not, anymore.