#action movies can exist without misogyny I know it’s shocking

[plutoids-thoughts]

Am I listening to the age of extinction soundtrack for the fourth time this week? Unimportant.

What’s more important is WHO IS CUTTING ONIONS????

[granvarones]

Since last August, we have been working hard to make this Gran Varones Fellowship happen. When we launched Gran Varones on this date exactly five years ago, it has been our commitment to build power at the community level. It was this very commitment that inspired us to launch the Gran Varones Positive Digital Arts Fellowship. Gran Varones was awarded a grant (our very first!) from ViiV Healthcare to launch a year-long (March 2019 – January 2020) national fellowship to develop the leadership of a cohort of six HIV positive Latinx Gay, Queer, Trans and Bisexual Men ages 21-35. This cohort of creatives will be supported with resources to combat HIV stigma and promote family acceptance in Latinx communities through digital storytelling, community building and cultural organizing.

Through an online application process, we received responses from brilliant applicants from all over the country. Narrowing the list down to six people was almost impossible. In fact, we were originally budgeted to select five fellows but decided on six because, well, why not? 

We selected six brilliant creatives from just as many cities. We prioritized creatives who are new to the digital organizing and/or storytelling space. And after sharing time and space with them during our first of two convenings a few weeks ago, we are excited about all of the magic that they will be creating as individuals and as a cohort. 

In addition to creating content for GV, each fellow will organize a community-based event. This will expand our commitment of building power through storytelling by making it even more accessible. These six fellows are going to create a new earth! Here are the six Gran Varones Positive Digital Arts Fellowship:

Carlos Moreno (He/They) Los Angeles, CA

A Gemini in his 28th year of existence, Carlos is a proud Chicanx living his truth as an HIV Positive Queer person from Tucson, Arizona. A product of migration, this first generation being strives to make a helpful and lasting impact on the HIV/AIDS community, both globally and locally. He has stood alongside others in the fight against HIV/AIDS in prevention and as well as in care. Unscathed by stigma, He has navigated the last ten years of his life by reclaiming any animosity he's faced and turned it into a therapeutic artistic expressions. A natural introvert himself, Carlos has struck chords with folks using simple imaging and messaging, leaving faces shocked, surprised, amused, or not in agreement, but definitely began a conversation. Carlos wants nothing more than for other Poz folk to join in on this ARTivism movement, share their experiences and connect with others so that we don’t all feel alone, especially Queer and Trans people of Color. It has been a dream of his to see there be space for distributing such products at events where other LGBTQ/Hetero/ HIV/AIDS information is being accessed. Carlos believes that it is important that people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS have access to the same empowering messages the HIV Negative and prevention communities do, that they are equally represented with pride and equity. Without a real push for some financial assistance, these items may only be limited to the creator and not have the opportunity to help inspire other Poz communities to flourish.

José A. Romero (He/They) Durham, NC

is an abolitionist organizer, immigrant defense strategist, and Poz Poet living in Durham, NC. The first in their bio-family born in the “US”, José is the descendant of working-class immigrants from Morazán, El Salvador and Michoacán, Mexico. Born in Washington State and raised between there and Michoacán, José’s political awakening arose while witnessing kindred femmes undo misogyny and while learning English to confront the borders their family endures. José moved to Philadelphia to attend the University of Pennsylvania where they were active in movements to confront anti-blackness/homophobia. In Durham they use their research background and direct-action experience to honor past, present, and future radical ancestors. Inspired by apocalypse and alchemy, José’s abolitionist organizing for black/brown flourishing includes work with Durham Beyond Policing, Durham’s Participatory Budgeting Steering Committee, and various immigrant/queer/trans defenders. They have worked on anti-deportation/sanctuary cases across NC and are a proud member of Southerner’s on New Ground working to end money bail, abolish ICE, and pleasurably undo anti-blackness in Latinx communities. José is currently Directing the first Latinx Southern Regional Health conference for the National Latino Commission on AIDS. They’re working on two collections of poetry titled ICEBREAKERSand POZITIVE. They are the host of an open mic series and queer friendship/dating party collectively called MELT. They make their money working at a queer punk bar, as an interpreter, and as a consultant. You can find/book them at @PupusaPapi_27 on Instagram and @RomeroFlux on Twitter. José dreams of curating an Arabic/Mandarin/Spanish exhibit/mixtape as well as opening and inviting y’all to a mobile Freedom School dedicated to astrobiology, pupusas, synesthesia, and uprising.

J. Aces Lira (He/Him/His) Chicago, IL

Aces Lira is an MSW/MA graduate student in Women Studies and Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago. As a Research Assistant, he is based in the US Regional Network within the International Partnership for Queer Youth Resilience (INQYR) and is getting a foot in the door on all things research-related. Outside of the books, Aces orchestrates portraits along with art through different mediums and also lives for National Park excursions.

Marci Garcia (He/Him/His) Brownsville, TX

Sometimes life feels just like one of those theatrical plays or big screen movies; a bunch of dialogue, drama, adventure, tragedy and tears, and a lot of laughter and happy moments as well, all combined. My movie opens in Mexico, born and raised until the age of 10. I was a lucky boy that grew up in a very loving family; abuelos, tios, primos and my beautiful parents and brother always by my side. Still, I was a lonely kid. A kid that knew he was different and had a very a hard time fitting in, all the way through high school and college years. Never an obstacle to aspire to go out in the world and follow my dreams though. Today, I feel I am blessed and thankful to life for being different. I didn’t choose to be who I am, I just got lucky. Throughout my professional career I have wanted to find the place where I know I am not only getting a paycheck but also making a positive difference somehow. Again, through life’s unique way of arranging things I believe I have found that. I am currently part of an extraordinary non-profit organization whose goal is to provide sexual education, HIV prevention and wellness services to the community of South Texas. Being here truly inspires me to become more involved, gain knowledge and to help out combat the HIV stigma that is still out there. I know because I see it, I hear it, I live it. I believe I am working for this agency for a reason. I believe I am ready to accept and say who I am, what I am and what I aspire to become.

Dimetri O’Brien (He/Him/His) Washington, DC

Strategic, multidisciplinary designer & social media coordinator with a spirit for service & innovation born in Port of Spain Trinidad with roots in Jackson, MS . Dimetri has worked with a multitude of clients on projects ranging from graphic design to consultation & management and although his skill set is vast, his greatest expertise revolves in the worlds of programming for YMSM ages 18-29, social media, brand identity design, content creation and print collateral. Dimetri currently serves as a communications assistant in Washington, DC managing communications and branding for a national non-profit agency. His graphic design portfolio can be viewed at "dimmydoesit.com"

Raúl Xavier Ramos (He/Him/His/They/Them/Theirs) Brooklyn, NY

Raúl is a 26-year-old Boriqueer social justice organizer based out of Brooklyn, New York. Using graphic design and performance art as forms of accessible political education , Raúl is dedicated to the liberation of all queer and Gender Non-conforming people of color, persons with disabilities, and those that experience realities in ways the culture would call "mentally ill." Healing justice is at the center of Raúl's work, having become Poz at the turning point of his adult life. He is unapologetic in how he loves and in the ways he fights for justice.

[riverpheonixs]

The women in River Phoenix's life After all this years being a fan of River and many other people, I was able to observe a certain behaviour that always bothered me but I never addressed properly: the way people treat and judge the women whose had a relationship with a famous man they admire. This happens way before the internet, we can see this behaviour with Yoko Ono. The woman is an incredible conceptual and performatic artist way before she met John Lennon but for what is she most famous? For ending The Beatles. Which, of course, it's not true. It doesn't need much research to see that Paul, John, George and Ringo weren't having a good relationship and were diverging in interests and in what direction they should carry on their songs, sound and careers. The band was already doomed to end soon with or without Yoko, Paul already said himself. Plus, I think racism has a lot to do with the way people still ridicularize Yoko, I don't think she would be attacked and called witch that much even today if she was a pretty and blonde white woman. Another famous situation of blaming and judging the women for the wrong things that happened to the men: Courtney Love. Courtney, a very good rock musician, was already attacked moral and verbally by Nirvana fans when Kurt Cobain was still alive, he even talked about how fans should be nice to her in a concert. And, of course, after his suicide people started to blame Courtney. They keep attacking her and trying to discredit her in any possible way, either if it's in her personal or professional life. The fact that Courtney is not an model of perfect woman and has a very rebelious and agressive attitude (kind of like Kurt) doesn’t help either, women are always judged when they don’t have a good and proper ladylike behaviour, it’s like men are allowed to be rebelious rockstars but not women. It doesn't need much effort to see it, there's ALWAYS gonna be someone attacking her after more than 20 years. We can also see a terrible and sexist behaviour when young fans attack the new girlfriends of some teen idol either for saying she is too ugly for them or not good or talented (if she's also an artist) enough. I realized after this cases and many more that the women will always be blamed by the general public and with River’s public wouldn't be different: We have his first girlfriend, Martha Plimpton Martha and River dated from 1985 to 1989 and kept being friends until River's death. Both of them said they started a relationship because they had a lot in common, but what I most heard about Martha is how she is not pretty enough to date River. Which is a shallow thing to say specially being fan of River and knowing how he despised all this. I also heard how maybe it wasn't "true love" since she left him and didn't save him, and that she maybe dated him for his sucess. And honestly... 1) She started dating him before Stand By Me was even out, he wasn't sucessful back then. 2) It's not hard to imagine yourself in Martha's situation at all. Imagine being a teenager, being with someone you love whose alcohol and drug problems have increased, you kept insisting he should stop with all that for almost 4 years but he doesn't listen. What would you do? She has her own life to take care and she has the right to move on, like Martha said he needed to want to change for himself. And I honestly would do the same if this happened to me. After Martha we have Sue Solgot We don't know much about her since she's not in the entertaiment business. We only know some little things that are said in River's interviews at that time and biographies. We know she went to college in the city where River lived, we know she had a girlband in that college and she met River in a local concert, River first said he wasn't River Phoenix like he always used to but then he said the truth to her and asked her for a date. Shortly after, they started living together. What bothers me the most in Sue's case is how people say she was only with him because of his fame and how they talk about the fact that River helped her by paying her college education like is a bad thing. I mean, we don't even know much about her, she doesn't even accompained River in any of his movie premieres or in Hollywood (it really seems like River didn't want this part of his life involved with the business), how we can assume this without considering other reasons? Remember we don't know much about her. Plus, I don't know about you but if I dated and lived with someone and this person was having trouble at paying their college education and I had the money I would help. There's also the fact that River told Peter Bogdanovich, the director of The Thing Called Love, that they broke up because River cheated Sue, she found out and cheated him. But River himself told Peter he understood her actions, that this was the way she found to protect herself. It's honestly ridiculous to blame only Sue for the break up since both of them made their mistakes for things to end this way and River admited it. Sue also said River was having more problems with drugs, that he was changing a lot and didn't want anyone nagging him about it. After Sue we have Samantha Mathis Samatha may be the one most judged and blamed and we all know why. People always say she dated him for his fame, they keep judging her for not doing enough to save him the night he died or even pointing out that she "acted suspicious" for not knowing what to do and just start to cry and bang her head in the wall the moment River started to collapse. They also judge her for supposedly date someone else in the next year after River's death. She met River in 1992 on the set of The Thing Called Love, Samantha was dating someone else and Peter Bogdanovich said how interested River was in Samantha and how he was flirting with her on set anytime he had the chance. River already had two long relationships ended because he didn't want to change and look for a way to end his problems with drugs. Again, it's just a way to put yourself in her place and it's not hard: Imagine being a young woman in a place where drugs are common between young people, you meet a cool guy who happens to have some problems with drugs and start to date him. You know him only for a short period of time. I wouldn't feel I have the right to demand him to stop, he is an adult and he should know what he's doing. Of course, that might be worrisome but what you can truly do if he doesn't want to change for himself and doesn't want to be nagged about it? There's also the fact that people judge the way she reacted to River collapsing. And who are we to judge that? We weren't there, people in shock react differently to a such difficult situation. You truly need more empathy in such a delicate matter. You need to remember she was only 23 back then and I don't think she ever experienced and faced death in such a brutal way before. And, of course, the other thing about Samantha is how they judge her for dating someone else "that fast." Well, let's remember she wasn't a 50 years-old widow married for 32 years. She knew River for an year only, they spend their time together and unfortunately things didn't end well for River, but it wasn't her fault and she needed to move on with her life. With all three of them I see the pression of how they should love River in a very unrealistic and romantized way, the way I don't believe love actually exists, let's be logicals. Maybe if some of them died right after him like Sid and Nancy or Romeo and Juliet people wouldn't be judging them that much. On the contrary, they would be romantizing their lives, love and story together. I've seen those things being said over and over again throughout the years and the worse thing is that they are said not only by young fans but by people way older than me, it makes me see that this concerns the whole society and is very problematic. Remember, River was not a perfect and innocent boy totally influenced by everyone like the press always wanted to paint him and how he always hated people assumed he was. It's okay to recognize that he had flaws and that he wasn’t a perfect boyfriend in his relationships with those women and still admire him. Maybe the idolization towards some artists linked to sexism and misogyny has gone too far to the point that people forget these men are humans, they make mistakes by themselves, they have their on minds and the women or the people around them are not the only ones to blame when something terribly wrong happens. It might be painful to some of you, but the truth is that the world doesn't revolve around River or any other famous man. Women, just like men, are humans and have the right to take care of  their own lives and do what's best for them.

[exploringsocialinformatics]

Blog #6: The Internet Could Empower Women If People Would Just Be Cool For Once

I wrote this based on the article Young Women’s Blogs as Ethical Spaces by Mia Lovheim, which I chose because I was interested by how constructive the Internet was framed and because, as a woman who has strong opinions on the internet, I know that isn’t necessarily always the case.

I have been a woman on the Internet for roughly seventeen years and it has opened up so many opportunities for me to express myself, to meet and engage with people I could’ve never connected to in real life and to collaborate with similarly-minded writers and artists. I’ve made lifelong friends online, fallen in love online (I wouldn’t recommend this but it’s fun while it lasts!) and developed so many aspects of my identity.

The only reason that I have been able to do these things is because I have done them in woman-dominated spaces and queer-dominated spaces.

Because while I’ve shared my opinions on Tumblr as a curated, personal space, I’ve shared the same opinions on Twitter and had someone threaten to rape me.

The internet is amazing! It’s also a toxic cesspool that limits my ability to express myself and open up my ideas to a wider audience! Both things are simultaneously true even though it’s sometimes difficult to rectify them.

There’s an encouraging amount of literature surrounding gender-based harassment online. Many of them give strong examples of the kind of harassment that women and female-presenting people face when they do things like say words and have emotions where people can see them online. Most women won’t need to dig into that literature because they see this in their daily lives; men experience online harassment at dissimilar rates and of a dissimilar nature (harassment aimed toward men is typically homophobic or belittling their masculinity; gendered but not nearly as violent [Jane 533]), but if they’d like to see examples of the vitriol that women face, all they need to do is read replies to tweets by women who talk about politics or sports or video games or television or music or movies or. . .you get the picture.

The point of this is not that the internet is irredeemable—although I am going to share enough of that literature that it may appear that we absolutely should burn it down and start over—but that it needs to be redeemed. We’ll get there, though.

Amnesty International has done a lot of work studying the issue of online harassment of women. In response to the #WomenBoycottTwitter day, they commissioned a poll that included women between the ages of 18 and 55 in Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK and USA. They found that 33% of women in the United States had experienced online harassment or abuse—and it’s important to remember the context that these are not all necessarily people who are actively using social media, especially considering the age range (”Amnesty Reveals Alarming [. . .]”).

TIME reports that the United Nations did a study that said that 73% of women have experienced online harassment—I would lean toward accepting theirs as it seems Amnesty’s sample size was limited (Alter 2015).

I’m going to toss out a list of statistics that came from the Amnesty poll that are genuinely upsetting to consider:

41% of women who had experienced harassment were made to feel physically unsafe

26% were doxxed by their harassers

46% said the harassment was rooted in misogyny specifically

25% were threatened with physical or sexual violence  (Amnesty International 2017)

Remembering again that this was a poll targeting women and not just women who are regular social media users, these numbers are staggering. And these aren’t just individual occurrences or one-off attacks. The nature of Twitter in particular means that messages spread rapidly—and so do attacks. According to studies of Twitter’s abuse reports, at least 29% of the reports filed by women were addressing ongoing attacks (Women, Action & Media) and according to an additional poll from Amnesty: the more visible and vocal a woman in, the more frequent harassment she’ll endure. A study of 778 female politicians and journalists (disproportionately women of color) found that they received abusive tweets every 30 seconds—1.1 million a year between them.

I couldn’t possibly get into #GamerGate here and give it the attention it deserves but, if you managed to avoid that nightmare in 2014, it’s something to look up that will really cement this problem for you.

And it is a problem—but it’s not just a problem because women feel threatened, because allowing a culture of harassment and degradation like this is inherently wrong, because this is something that impacts our lives on a semi-regular basis even if we’re not public figures. It’s also a problem because women are being silenced.

Even back in the early 90s before the insane access that we all have to each other online, women were “found to introduce fewer topics of discussion and receive fewer public responses than men” (Megarry 29). It’s no different than women speaking less in a classroom or meeting (Tannen 2017)—just a different venue. That form of silence seems more rooted in social norms, though, and in the early 2000s, according to Rodriguez-Darias and Aguilera-Avila, “the expansion of the online world was hailed as a catalyst for the development of democracy, equality and women’s empowerment by enabling access to information and social support” (63).

All of that is still true in 2020 and has made an incalculable difference to women all across the world. It’s just that now they’re statistically far more likely to receive hundreds of threats of violence and rape and have their address shared all across social media platforms because they said something about a video game.

Those threats and that atmosphere that makes women feel unsafe and like they can’t truly express themselves creates a framework that holds women back. When I said that I formed my identity on the Internet, it’s some of the most tender important parts of me—if I had been faced with this kind of harassment when I was younger, it would have been detrimental and I would have lost one of the few safe spaces I felt I had. People use the internet to convey their identities in so many ways that can be taken away from women: hashtags “convey attitudes and social identity” (Fox, Cruz, Lee) but also makes it easier for harassers to target you, “gendered avatars and usernames” (Assuncao) allow for gender expression that. . .makes it easier for harassers to target you, and all of these things tie into self-esteem that women could be building if they had access to positive, empowering communities. And it is unquestionably impacting their self-esteem: according to Amnesty International’s report, 61% of women experienced lower self-esteem and Emma A. Jane compiled information about how women described their experiences with online harassment, with words like “distress, pain, shock, fear, terror, devastation and violation” (536).

Because of that distress, that fear, that terror—women self-censor themselves. According to the same Amnesty report, 76% changed the way they used Twitter after facing attacks and 32% stopped talking about certain topics altogether. By being forced to endure the same gendered violence and discrimination that we face in the real world in a virtual setting, it’s like there’s no escape.

There’s one issue that can be brought up to complicate this: freedom of speech. This argument doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny on a base level. Social media networks aren’t actually entirely beholden to the First Amendment—which prevents the government from silencing you, although its reach has differed—and Twitter has a conduct policy that prohibits threats, slurs, degrading people, wishing ill on people, etc (Hateful Conduct Policy). The Internet often exists as a lawless, Wild West-type place, though (your Reddits when poorly monitored, your 4Chans, for example), and there will always be people on it that will believe that the freedom to speak their minds supersedes everything else. Freedom of speech is important and these are useful conversations to have to make sure that the platforms that we’re using are operating equitably.

A platform that allows women to be shamed or threatened into silence is not operating equitably, though. We should have the freedom to speak openly without worrying about our safety. Twitter is already addressing this issue but it hasn’t been enough—according to the survey of their abuse reports, only 55% of reports led to suspended accounts, 67% of women who reported said they’d done so at least twice and, mostly notably—Twitter’s staff at the time of their study (2014) was 79% men (Women, Action & Media).

Let’s loop back around to my ultimate point here: redeeming the Internet. Focusing on Twitter, there are plenty of plans of actions they could take to do better, including hiring more women and actively listening to their feedback, training their employees more thoroughly to recognize and address forms of harassment, and being more open about condemning both misogyny and other systemic issues like the spread of White Supremacy. These are all relatively small steps that could start to change the wider culture and start the inevitably unbearably slow process of detoxifying the Internet so it’s accessible for everyone.

Resources

Alter, C. (2015, September 24). UN: Cyber Violence is Equivalent to Physical Violence. Retrieved from https://time.com/4049106/un-cyber-violence-physical-violence/

Amnesty and Element AI release largest ever study into abuse against women on Twitter. (2018, December 18). Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/12/crowdsourced-twitter-study-reveals-shocking-scale-of-online-abuse-against-women/ 

Amnesty reveals alarming impact of online abuse against women. (2017, November 20). Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/11/amnesty-reveals-alarming-impact-of-online-abuse-against-women/

Assuncao, Carina. (2016). “No girls on the internet”: The experience of female gamers in the masculine space of violent gaming.” Press Start, 3(1).

Fox, J., Cruz, C., & Lee, J. Y. (2015). Perpetuating online sexism offline: Anonymity, interactivity, and the effects of sexist hashtags on social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 436–442.

Jane, E. A. (2012). “Your a Ugly, Whorish, Slut.” Feminist Media Studies, 14(4), 531–546.

Megarry, J. (2014). Online incivility or sexual harassment? Conceptualizing women’s experiences in the digital age. Women’s Studies International Forum, 47, 46–55. 

Rodríguez-Darias, A. J., & Aguilera-Ávila, L. (2018). Gender-based harassment in cyberspace. The case of Pikara magazine. Womens Studies International Forum, 66, 63–69.

Tannen, D. (2017, June 28). Do Women Really Talk More Than Men? Retrieved from https://time.com/4837536/do-women-really-talk-more/

Twitter. (2020). Hateful conduct policy. Retrieved from https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy

Women, Action & Media. (2015, May 15). Reporting, Reviewing, and Responding to Harassment on Twitter.

[gyrlversion]

Heres What Its Like To See Yourself In A Deepfake Porn Video

On a busy workday in March, 28-year-old Kate felt an urgent tap on her shoulder. Her colleague wanted to show her a video, so she glanced at his computer and was shocked to see her own face staring back, wincing and moaning. She appeared on-screen to be lying naked on a couch with her legs in the air while a man repeatedly penetrated her.

Kate felt sick. Her co-workers, who’d gathered around to see what was going on, instantly fell silent when they saw the video. It looked real and even identified Kate by name, but she knew it couldn’t be. Beyond the obvious — she’d never done porn — she could tell it wasn’t her body; only the face was hers. It had to be some kind of hoax… but would other people believe it?

“It was horrifying,” Kate, who lives in Texas, told HuffPost. “I’d never seen anything like it.”

The video, which is still online and has tens of thousands of views, is a deepfake — a doctored video created with artificial-intelligence software that can make someone appear to do or say anything. Deepfake algorithms use a dataset of videos and images of an individual to create a virtual model of their face that can be superimposed and manipulated. In Kate’s case, her face was swapped onto a porn actress’ head.

“When it’s Photoshop, it’s a static picture and can be very obvious that it’s not real,” said Kate, who’s been the target of previous misogynistic attacks. “But when it’s your own face reacting and moving, there’s this panic that you have no control over how people use your image.”

At first, deepfake porn almost exclusively featured female celebrities; their television and movie appearances gave video creators plenty of material to work with. But now, as the technology has advanced and become more broadly accessible, ordinary women with even a small selection of public photos or videos of themselves are being targeted too.

HuffPost spoke to six women who have been digitally inserted into porn without their consent. Those quoted here are identified by pseudonyms to protect their privacy, and are speaking out to call attention to an issue that’s been left to fester in the shadows.

Most public discussion on deepfakes thus far has centered on the potential political problems they could cause in the future, even though they already pose a real threat to women. Lawmakers have fretted about how the videos could hypothetically make a presidential candidate appear to say something defamatory on the eve of next year’s election. Satirical deepfakes of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have recently dominated headlines as warnings of what’s to come.

Meanwhile, as deepfake porn continues to upend women’s lives, there’s been little media coverage, and there still exists no criminal recourse for victims.

“The harm done to women when it comes to this kind of sexual objectification is happening now,” said Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami and president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. “It’s almost like people have forgotten that this is what this technology really started out as, and the conversation around women has fallen away.”

Deepfakes Are Rooted In Misogyny

Deepfakes have been weaponized against women for as long as they’ve existed. The term “deepfake” was coined in 2017 by an anonymous Reddit user who shared doctored porn videos like the one above, which portrays “Wonder Woman” star Gal Gadot. Today, major porn websites are filled with deepfakes, despite promises to ban them. (MindGeek, which owns Pornhub and other erotic video sites, did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the no-deepfakes policy it announced more than a year ago.)

Other tech platforms have wavered in their approach to deepfakes hosted on their sites, torn between calls to stamp out disinformation and to protect free expression. Inside the federal government, legislators have started to sound the alarm about the videos, and a few have introduced bills to regulate them, such as the DEEPFAKES Accountability Act from Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.). But so far, none have resulted in action.

Once something is uploaded it can never really get deleted. It will just be reposted forever. Tina, a victim of nonconsensual deepfake porn

Without any such intervention or effective policies in place, deepfake porn has carved out a comfortable space online — and it’s thriving. In addition to free, easy-to-use deepfake generator apps, there are now photo search engines (which HuffPost won’t name) that allow people to upload pictures of individuals to find porn actresses with similar features for optimal face-swapping results. There are even deepfake porn forums where men make paid requests for professional-looking videos of specific women, and share links to the women’s social media profiles for source imagery. HuffPost has observed requesters seeking porn with female Twitch, YouTube and Instagram influencers, as well as the requesters’ own co-workers, friends and exes.

On one such forum in March, someone asked for a sex video of Tina, a 24-year-old Canadian woman, and dropped a link to her YouTube channel. Four days later, a deepfake popped up that appeared to show her bent over naked on a bed with one man thrusting behind her and another stroking his penis near her head. The video, which is virtually seamless, is still up with thousands of views.

“I was definitely shocked and disturbed,” Tina, who learned of the video when an acquaintance sent her a link, told HuffPost. “It felt really weird and gross to see my face where it shouldn’t be.”

The video poster and claimed creator is a middle-aged man, according to his profile. Tina has no idea who he is. She thought about trying to get the video taken down, but didn’t see a point once she realized it had already been shared to other websites.

“You know how the internet is — once something is uploaded it can never really get deleted,” she said. “It will just be reposted forever.”

Someone makes an anonymous, paid request for deepfake porn of their crush.

It Could Happen To Anyone

Until recently, convincing, deepfake-style video manipulation could only be done by highly skilled editors. Hollywood filmmakers have digitally inserted actors into movies posthumously, for example, which required a considerable amount of footage of the actors’ faces to work with. Now, rapidly advancing technology has democratized this kind of deceptive video-editing practice at women’s expense. We’ve reached a point where even amateurs with relatively few pictures of their target’s face can create deepfake porn on their own.

One self-proclaimed video creator, who describes himself online as a 25-year-old Greek man and “one of the first guys” to make deepfake porn, solicits donations and paid requests on multiple forums. People have watched his videos more than 300,000 times.

Deepfakes are “no different from a photoshop manipulation or artist drawing/rendering,” the man, who did not reveal his name, told HuffPost. Asked if anyone ever requests that he remove the sex videos he uploads, he replied: “There are no takedowns.”

Despite his disregard for women’s privacy, he seems rather concerned with protecting his own: “I’m accepting payments in bitcoin and other crypto currencies (no paypal/credit card due to privacy reasons),” he wrote in one post. In another, he listed his price range as around $15 to $40 per video.

“Women can tell men, ‘I don’t want to date you, I don’t want to know you, I don’t want to take my clothes off for you,’ but now men can say, ‘Oh yeah? I’m going to force you to, and if I can’t do it physically, I will do it virtually,’” said Franks. “There’s nothing you can really do to protect yourself except not exist online.”

She’s hopeful that as people become increasingly aware of deepfakes and deepfake porn in particular, they’ll become more skeptical of what they see online.

“The only silver lining, if you can even call it that,” she said, “is that the more people know about this, the more they’ll start to question if [revenge porn videos] are real.”

But deepfakes have also broadened the threat of revenge porn, or nonconsensual porn. A vindictive creep no longer needs nudes or sex tapes of a woman who’s spurned him to leak online. He just needs her Facebook or Instagram photos to deepfake into existing porn. And as these videos get easier to make, they’re also getting harder to recognize.

There’s nothing you can really do to protect yourself except not exist online. Mary Anne Franks, president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative

Like so many women, Amy, a mother and business owner who’s based in Los Angeles, has been harassed in the past with crudely altered images that were disturbing but clearly fake. She’d never heard of deepfakes until she was featured in one that portrays her having sex, and labels her a “slut.” In the comments section, people have commended the anonymous creator for the video’s believability.

“It didn’t get really concerning until the technology and skill level of those putting it together got better — to the point where people might actually believe that was me,” Amy told HuffPost. “If we see a video of something, we take it as fact.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, has been working in recent years to develop machine-learning algorithms that can detect manipulated videos, including deepfakes. Much of the challenge lies in keeping pace with deepfake software as it continues to evolve.

“As the people making these videos get more and more sophisticated with their tools, we’re going to have to get more and more sophisticated with ours,” Edward Delp, a media forensics expert at Purdue University who’s conducting research for DARPA, said in a recent interview with HuffPost. “It’s going to be an arms race.”

Nicolas Ortega

Malicious deepfakes are usually posted anonymously and designed to go viral.

No Real Options For Victims

Maya, a 29-year-old woman who also lives in Los Angeles, wasn’t aware that she’s featured in deepfake porn until HuffPost contacted her last week. She was aghast to learn of the video, which identifies her by name and appears to show her masturbating. But she wasn’t entirely surprised: She’s been receiving a lot of messages lately from strangers requesting sex.

“Being violated in such an intimate way is really a weird feeling,” Maya told HuffPost. “The idea of people sexualizing me makes me feel like I’m being fetishized, receiving unwanted attention, losing respect as a person and no longer safe.”

The unfortunate reality for Maya and other women in her situation is that there’s not much they can do now that the videos are out there. Lawsuits can be extremely expensive, and in order to sue for harassment, impersonation, defamation or even misappropriation of image — which typically only applies for celebrities — you need to know who you’re suing. Like many victims of nonconsensual deepfake porn, Maya has no clue who created or posted the video of her.

And because online intermediaries, including social media giants and deepfake forums, are shielded from liability for third-party content thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, suing the sites that host the video would be pointless too. Platforms can’t get in legal trouble for the things their users post, and aren’t required to remove them. As a result, trying to get abusive content taken offline is often futile.

“As disappointing and sobering as it is, there aren’t a lot of options for victims,” said Carrie Goldberg, an attorney specializing in sexual privacy. Deepfake websites exist “to monetize people’s humiliation,” she added. “It points to the infirmity that Section 230 has caused when there are websites that are so arrogant about their immunity from liability.”

Since malicious deepfakes are usually posted anonymously and designed to go viral, victims’ advocates such as Danielle Citron are urging lawmakers to develop a policy that’s focused not only on punishing the producers, but also the distributors. She and Franks are working together to draft a federal criminal law that would hold platforms accountable for wittingly amplifying hoax videos and enabling them to be spread around.

“If [there are] impersonations or manipulations that do not reflect what we’ve done or said, platforms should — once they figure it out — take it down,” Citron, who’s a law professor at the University of Maryland, said this month at the first congressional hearing on deepfakes. At this stage, she noted, there’s no way to filter the videos from being posted, so platforms should be required to remove them as soon as they’re flagged.

Free speech proponents worry that unless it’s done very carefully, forcing websites to restrict certain content could lead to broader repercussions for online expression.

But as Franks argued, unbridled deepfake porn is already doing just that.

“There’s a massive chilling effect that deepfake pornography has on women’s speech,” she said, “because the way to make yourself safer is to censor yourself.”

Pornhub

Pornhub is still riddled with deepfakes, despite promising to ban them more than a year ago.

Women Are Being Silenced

Investigative journalist Rana Ayyub has experienced firsthand the silencing effect Franks described. Last spring, she was the victim of a targeted disinformation campaign in India that was intended to intimidate and humiliate her.

The abuse began the day after she publicly condemned a political party’s shameful response to the rape of a young girl. Suddenly, screenshots showing a series of defamatory tweets falsely appearing to be from Ayyub began circulating online. She then realized a deepfake porn video featuring her face was spreading across social media like wildfire, alongside her name and phone number. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, and Ayyub started getting calls and messages asking for sex.

“It was devastating,” she told HuffPost UK. “The entire country was watching a porn video that claimed to be me, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything.”

Even now that the video has been debunked as fake, Ayyub will never be able to fully move on. She can’t undo the damage to her reputation, and she’s afraid of drawing more attention to herself on social media.

“I used to be very opinionated; now I’m much more cautious about what I post online. I’ve self-censored quite a bit out of necessity,” she said. “I’m constantly thinking, ‘What if someone does something to me again?’”

Kate, the woman from Texas whose co-worker found deepfake porn of her, has struggled to move forward too. When she contacted her lawyer, he explained that the case would be incredibly difficult to fight because she didn’t know who was behind the video.

With no viable legal options on the table, Kate reluctantly turned to the deepfake forum where the video was posted and asked for it to be removed. The site owner told her she wasn’t the only woman on the page, then stopped replying, Kate said. She felt hopeless.

“It’s grotesque to know that it lives out there and there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said. “These things are so horribly believable, and you desperately want to say, ‘That’s not me!’ But that would just bring more attention to it.”

Like Ayyub, Kate has also started to limit what she shares online for fear that her content could be distorted and used against her without consequence yet again.

“Pornographic deepfakes and revenge porn and all that kind of stuff are only going to make women want to say less,” she said. “As these videos get more prolific and realistic, is this something we’re just going to be expected to accept as the cost of being online?”

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