You can see the sweat on his back as he bends over the woman you later discover he is having sex with. He looks like some kind of sinister gargoyle on the side of a medieval building ready to attack.
But he’s not. He’s an ordinary Australian man who had sex with a woman then decided to film it and upload images from that video onto a private Facebook men’s group. It happens all the time apparently. It’s called revenge porn by popular culture and increasingly ‘image based abuse’ from those who are trying to make people understand these are not “sexy” images, these are photographs of women who, due to the absence of their consent and often the absence of their knowledge, are being abused as we look.
It strongly appears the woman did not give consent to these images being posted and had no knowledge of the man’s actions. In the private men’s Facebook group in which she is laid bare she is reportedly not covered by a black strip. She is naked, vulnerable, in the midst of a private act, beneath the sweating gargoyle who shared these naked images and decided to write above them: What’s the biggest whale you have harpooned?’ I went through a tubby phase and landed this 130 kg beast.
There are 14,500 men in the private men's Facebook group. The comments began as soon as the post was uploaded. Other, no doubt, sweating men behind screens and keyboards joined in the abuse. More than 100 men chimed in chanting with hate and bile toward the "whale" on the bed. There was abuse, judgement and objectification (what a clinical name for such a personal, harmful act). There were calls to choke her, feed her a sandwich, go harder.
The man who posted the screen shots, who I cannot name for legal reasons although I would so desperately like to, added to the comments thread with more photographs of him having sex with the "130kg beast".