Imagine you are at a bar. You’re dancing with your friends. Someone comes up with a camera and asks you to pull down your top for them. You say, quite clearly, ‘no’. From behind, someone grabs your top and yanks it down.

Then imagine that that footage is sold all across the nation for men to jerk off to.

Now imagine that a court of law tells you that you consented by being in the bar and dancing, despite the fact that you said no. Imagine that that court finds in favor of the pornographers, allowing them to continue to distribute that footage for however long as they like.

You’d probably feel pretty violated.

This is what happened to a married mother of two from Missouri.

This is one of those instances in which I don’t even know what to say, really. I’m so angry, so infuriated, and feel so threatened by the ruling that it’s hard to even make a logical appeal.

After all, what does this mean for other women? Does it mean we can’t go out to bars anymore? Are we not allowed to dance? Must we first do a sweep of the room to make sure that there are no men with cameras about?

The jurors seem pretty happy with their decision, and confident that her being in the bar and dancing implied consent. I don’t see how that can be the case when she verbally denied consent. There’s nothing implied there — it has been explicitly stated. She did not want her breasts to be exposed.

I’m horrified that, as we speak, there is a company in America that is legally distributing a video of a woman having her boundaries violated. This woman will have to live with her breasts being viewed by men all across the country for the rest of her life, with no say in the matter.

The court told her that she didn’t have rights to her own body.

There is, of course, a lot of ridiculous things happening on the internet. People saying she deserved it, people saying she was “asking for it”. This stupid comment has been deconstructed so many times that I’m not even going to bother being a rational adult. I’m just going to say that those people are cockfaces and move on.

The one that’s kind of new(although really is just a variation on the theme), is that she was “asking for too much money”. Like if she’d asked for less, she would have won.

What does that mean? Is the right to control your body only worth $1 million? $500,000? What’s the price tag on consent? If a woman is raped, what is that worth? If a woman is assaulted, how much is that worth?

How much money do you think Girls Gone Wild has made off of that footage? How many copies of it do you think were sold? Yes, I am aware that they come in collections, and that hers was not the only footage on there, but think about it.

If GGW has to pay so much that they lose their profit on that video, it will reinforce the idea that they have to get explicit consent for every shot. Every girl must sign and date a form. Every girl has to be sober and capable of consent. Otherwise, they have to shell out so much money that they don’t profit.

After all, if they can still profit while taking advantage of women, they will continue to do so. If someone striped you(pants included, if you’re a guy, as there isn’t the same stigma about a guy’s chest) without your consent, filmed it and sold it, how would you feel? How much do you think that is worth?

What is the price tag on your dignity?

[Also, men, if you're confused or uncertain on how to be a good feminist ally? Read this. That's a goddamned ally.]