Legal Responses to Nonconsensual Pornography: Current Policy in the United States and Future Directions for Research

Technological advances have created new avenues for the perpetration of sexual violence. The widespread availability of cameras has made it easier to take covert recordings of an individual’s intimate body parts, and whether sexually explicit images are recorded with or without an individual’s consent, growing access to the Internet has facilitated the nonconsensual dissemination of those images. Yet criminal laws have not kept pace with technology in most jurisdictions across the United States, and victims of nonconsensual pornography typically have no avenue by which to seek justice. There have been efforts to reform laws in a variety of jurisdictions, some successful but others not. The present study examines the extent to which laws across the United States address nonconsensual pornography. Results reveal that current laws are plagued with a variety of caveats that make prosecution of nonconsensual pornography difficult, suggesting that legal reform addressing this problem has been insufficient. This research calls for increased attention to the links between policy and criminal justice management of the issue. In particular, theories from feminist criminology and psychology are used to explore how policy development related to nonconsensual pornography could be influenced by broader structural features of society. Further empirical study is needed to both advance the social science literature related to violence against women and guide policymakers as they navigate this rapidly changing area of law.


Legal Responses to Nonconsensual Pornography: Current Policy in the United States and Future Directions for Research
Pornography has never before been as widely available or variously specialized as it is now, due to individual users' ability to generate and contribute their own material to the online market. Indeed, the development and rapid growth of websites that allow users to upload and share pornography (e.g., YouPorn.com) have revolutionized the online pornography industry so much that it is said to be in its second generation: "Porn 2.0." As part of this movement, there also has been growth in the demand for reality-based nonconsensual pornography. This genre of pornography has been fueled by the widespread availability of cameras that make it easier to take covert recordings of an individual's intimate body parts as well as the increase in access to the internet. For example, a plethora of websites showcase sexual images and videos that were recorded covertly without women's knowledge by peeping up their skirts (i.e., upskirting) or down their blouses (i.e., downblousing). Others display sexually explicit images of women and men that were recorded with or without consent and then nonconsensually disseminated, often by formerly trusted partners (i.e., revenge porn). This kind of nonconsensual distribution has been shown to occur not only after relationships fail, but also within the context of casual and even committed relationships (Drouin, Vogel, Surbey, & Stills, 2013). A survey of American adults revealed that 10% of ex-partners have threatened to post sexually explicit photos online, and about 60% of those threats became reality (McAfee, 2013). Many revenge-porn sites include victims' contact information, leading them to fear not only for their reputation but also their safety.
The technological advances that have facilitated the spread of nonconsensual pornography have, in fact, created new avenues for the perpetration of sexual violence. Yet, criminal laws have not kept pace with technology in most jurisdictions around the United States, and victims of nonconsensual pornography often have no avenue by which to seek justice. One might expect that laws designed to protect privacy would prohibit the recording of intimate body parts or the distribution of sexually explicit images without the subject's consent. However, strict interpretations of voyeur laws offer inadequate protection to clothed women in public spaces, rendering upskirting and downblousing legal in most jurisdictions. For instance, in October, 2015, Washington, D.C. prosecutors were forced to dismiss voyeur charges against Christopher Cleveland, who had been arrested for taking upskirt photographs of women seated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Although the police collected numerous images of women's pubic areas and buttocks from Cleveland's camera, Superior Court Judge Juliet McKenna ruled that the evidence had to be suppressed because, in her opinion, women who dress and position themselves so that their intimate parts may be viewable in public have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" (District of Columbia v. Cleveland, 2014; for a critical discussion of women's responsibility to avoid victimization by dressing modestly, see Gardner, 1995). In addition to stipulations regarding limited expectations of privacy in public spaces, laws usually require that recordings be done surreptitiously, but cameras are now ubiquitous, often integrated into other devices such as phones and laptop computers, and recordings can be made easily in plain sight. Moreover, even when legislation exists at the national level, it may not dictate how subjurisdictions (e.g., states, counties, etc.) respond to nonconsensual pornography. As an example, in the United States, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004 criminalized upskirting and downblousing, but, by 2006, only 16 of 50 states had enacted statutes that could be interpreted as offering protection against these acts (Bell, Hemmens, & Steiner, 2006). Thus, as of a decade ago, unless federal law enforcement agencies were involved in arresting and prosecuting perpetrators, nonconsensual pornography was unlikely to be addressed in 34 states.
In contrast, there is no federal legislation prohibiting revenge porn, although a number of states have reformed their laws to address it. Even so, most laws still do not protect victims who recorded images themselves or consented to their recording, regardless of the fact that they did not consent to the distribution of those images. In addition, laws against revenge porn often target those who post sexually explicit material with the express goal of causing distress to the subject, but it can be difficult to be prove the motives underlying intent. These kinds of stipulations have led some (e.g., Franks, 2016) to suggest that existing policies are weak, ineffective, and in need of reform.
Toward this end, politicians and policymakers who wish to successfully protect victims of nonconsensual pornography will need guidance. In what jurisdictions do the laws fall short?
In 2006, Bell and colleagues provided an analysis of federal and state laws dealing with upskirting and downblousing. In the decade since it was published, however, this area of law has been the focus of a great deal of attention and change. Moreover, Bell and colleagues' analysis did not address whether the laws offered protections to victims of revenge porn. Thus, the first goal of this paper is to critically examine current policy related to the issue of nonconsensual pornography in the United States. An exploratory content analysis was conducted to determine whether current federal and state statutes adequately address this issue.
Yet, it is not sufficient to assess simply whether the laws in any given jurisdiction offer protection to victims of nonconsensual pornography. When they fail to do so, it is also necessary to understand why. Thus, the second aim of this paper is to explore how current policy has been shaped by structural patriarchy, and how future policy development might be affected by framing the issue as violence against women. That is, although more research is needed, existing evidence suggests that women are more likely to be victims of nonconsensual pornography than are men (e.g., Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, 2014;Fleschler Peskin, Markham, Addy, Shegog, Thiel, & Tortolero, 2013;Hudson, Fetro, & Ogletree, 2014;Strassberg, McKinnon, Sustaita, & Rullo, 2012;but see McAfee, 2013). Even if women and men are equally likely to be victims, many citizens endorse the myth that men cannot be victims of sexual violence (e.g., Struckman-Johnson & Struckman-Johnson, 1992). These actual and perceived gender differences in prevalence could influence how nonconsensual pornography is perceived within a given society and, consequently, structural patriarchy could influence legal responses to this issue.
Nonconsensual pornography can be construed as abusive toward women because it affects women's basic human rights to security over their bodies, privacy, freedom of expression, dignity, and protection from degrading treatment or attacks against their honor and reputation (United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948). According to the United Nations, "violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women, and that violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men" (United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, 1993; see also, Yodanis, 2004). These unequal power relations are known as structural patriarchy, which serves to legitimize and trivialize violence against women. This risk requires careful scrutiny of powerful institutions that propagate patriarchal ideals, including the law. Thus, it is necessary to consider how structural patriarchy is reflected in existing policy dealing with nonconsensual pornography. Further, the argument is presented that policymakers who adopt the feminist perspective on violence against women will be better positioned to identify the fundamental tenets on which nonconsensual pornography laws should be based and, subsequently, communicate the intended mandates of those laws to the public. The paper concludes by providing direction for the scientific investigation of the effects of framing on policy development related to nonconsensual pornography.

Method
Criminal statutes pertaining to nonconsensual pornography from across the United States, including the federal government, each of the 50 states, and the District of Columbia, were compiled between August 2015 and February 2016. Sources included Bell et al. (2006), the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (2016), and government websites describing current statutes at the federal and state levels and in the District of Columbia. Specifically, statutes listed by Bell et al. and the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative were cross-referenced against the government websites to verify they were still valid. In addition, the government websites were independently reviewed to identify any other statutes that might offer protection against upskirting, downblousing, or revenge porn. A total of 75 criminal statutes were identified as addressing nonconsensual pornography and included in this study (see Table 1).
All statutes were coded to ascertain how the nonconsensual pornography offense was classified and whether certain stipulations were or were not included. (See Table 2 for a complete list of coding categories and levels.) Specifically, it was noted whether statutes protect against upskirting and downblousing only in private spaces, explicitly acknowledge that it occurs in public spaces, or require the victim to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public. With regard to revenge porn, statutes were coded to determine whether prosecution is possible when the victim consented to recordings that were later distributed, the victim did not consent to recordings that were later distributed, or the victim had a reasonable expectation that consensually made recordings would not be distributed. Statutes were also assessed to determine whether they require that nonconsensual pornography recordings were made surreptitiously (i.e., clandestinely, furtively, secretly, or without the victim's knowledge); a specific form of recording is explicitly referenced; the victim must have been partially nude, nude, or engaged in sexual activity; the victim must be identifiable in recordings; the offense caused harm to the victim; or the perpetrator had a specific motive underlying intent for committing the offense.
To ensure the coding was reliable, the author and a research assistant each independently coded a random selection of 25% (n = 19) of the statutes. Cohen's κ was calculated for each code to determine the proportion of agreement over and above chance, revealing that agreement was significantly different from zero for all codes (see Table 2 for all κs, 95% CIs, and ps). Given that interrater agreement ranged from moderate to perfect (Landis & Koch, 1977), the author resolved discrepancies and coded the remaining 75% of statutes (n = 56) along each of the dimensions described previously.

Results
Twenty-seven percent (n = 20) of statutes identify nonconsensual pornography as a problem related to the improper recordation or dissemination of sensitive images or messages (e.g., "capturing image of private area of another person," "unlawful distribution of sexual images or recordings"), 23% (n = 17) as a privacy violation (e.g., "invasion of privacy," "interference with privacy," "violation of privacy"), 20% (n = 15) as voyeurism (e.g., "voyeurism," "video voyeurism," "disseminating voyeuristic material"), and 11% (n = 8) as surveillance, eavesdropping, or peeping (e.g., "visual surveillance with prurient intent," "Peeping Tom"). Another 9% (n = 7) of statutes referred to nonconsensual pornography using more than one of these classifications, and a final 11% (n = 8) called the offense by a variety of other names (e.g., "disorderly conduct," "harassment by telecommunication device," "sexual cyberharassment"). In line with the inconsistency in terminology used, there is variability in how the offenses are classified. Thirty-three percent of jurisdictions treat nonconsensual pornography as a misdemeanor, 23% as a felony, and 41% as either a misdemeanor or felony depending on the circumstances. (See Table 2 for number of jurisdictions within each level of each code).
Next, the 75 statutes are examined for aspects that are likely to present challenges to prosecuting upskirting and downblousing specifically, revenge porn specifically, and nonconsensual pornography in general.

Barriers to Prosecuting Upskirting and Downblousing
To examine the extent to which existing statutes present barriers to the prosecution of upskirting and downblousing, the present analysis focused on whether statutes allow for privacy violations that occur in public spaces and whether expectations for privacy are required to be reasonable. Results revealed that 25% of statutes blatantly stipulate that the offense must occur in a private space. For instance, in Connecticut, a person is guilty of voyeurism only when the victim "is not in plain view" (CT Gen. Stat. § 53a-189a). The majority of statutes (60%, n = 45), however, are ambiguous about their scope in this regard, mentioning neither private nor public spaces. Even so, nearly half (47%, n = 21) of those statutes qualify that expectations of privacy must be reasonable. Only 15% of statutes unambiguously extend protection to public spaces. As an example, Maryland allows that an individual can be a victim of visual surveillance with prurient intent "regardless of whether the individual is in a public or private place" (Md. Code Ann., Com. Law § 3-902). Moreover, 82% (n = 9) of those statutes qualify that privacy expectations in public contexts must be reasonable. Thus, statutes that explicitly prohibit nonconsensual pornography in public are 81% more likely than statutes that are ambiguous on this issue to stipulate that expectations of privacy must be reasonable, OR = .19, 95% CI [.04, 1.00]. This difference is statistically significant, χ 2 (1, 56) = 4.39, p = .04, ϕ = .28.

Barriers to Prosecuting Revenge Porn
To examine the extent to which current statutes might impede the prosecution of revenge porn, one must determine whether the statutes address the nonconsensual distribution of images that were recorded either by the victim or with the victim's consent as well as whether the statutes stipulate that the victim had a reasonable expectation that consensually made recordings would not be distributed. Although 53% (n = 40) of statutes bar nonconsensual distribution of pornographic images, only 19% provide protection in cases in which those images were consensually recorded but later distributed without the victim's consent. For instance, Texas specifies that defendants cannot claim as a defense to prosecution that the victim either "created or consented to the creation of the visual material" or "voluntarily transmitted the visual material to the actor" (T.P.C. § 21.16). In Idaho, the crime of video voyeurism occurs when a person disseminates "any image or images of the intimate areas of another person or persons without the consent of such other person or persons and he knows or reasonably should have known that one or both parties agreed or understood that the images should remain private" (ID Code § 18-6609). This statute also makes assumptions about what victims should reasonably expect in regards to the potential nonconsensual distribution of consensually recorded images, as do 64% (n = 9) of the statutes that explicitly address consensual recordings.

Barriers to Prosecuting Nonconsensual Pornography in General
A variety of other statutorily imposed conditions could present barriers to administering justice in cases of nonconsensual pornography in general. To begin, consider issues related to the nature of the recordings themselves. Thirty-three percent of statutes require that recordings be made surreptitiously. With regard to the type of recordings that may constitute nonconsensual pornography, the large majority of statutes (89%) clearly prohibit both videographic and photographic recordings. Still, 5% of statutes bar only photographic recordings, and another 5% mention neither type of recording, referring only to problematic observations or communications.
Another set of issues concerns assumptions about the conditions that would result in a privacy violation. According to 29% of statutes, nonconsensual pornography must involve victims who are either partially nude, nude, or actively engaged in sexual activity. Consider, for instance, West Virginia's statute against criminal invasion of privacy, which requires that nonconsensually recorded images depict the victim while he or she is "either clothed or unclothed so that (A) all or any part of his/her genitals, pubic area or buttocks is visible or (B) in the case of the female only, a part of a nipple of her breast is visible and without a fully opaque covering" (W.V.C. § 61-8-28). Another condition expressed in 16% of statutes is that victims must be identifiable from the recordings. As an example, Nevada's statute barring the unlawful dissemination of an intimate image unambiguously excludes from prosecution cases in which "the person depicted in the image is not clearly identifiable" (Assembly Bill 49 of the 2015 legislative session [Section 5 of Chapter 399, Statutes of Nevada 2015, at page 2232]). Hawaii requires both of these conditions to be met by stipulating that a person is guilty of a violation of privacy in the first degree only if he or she "knowingly discloses an image or video of another identifiable person either in the nude . . . or engaging in sexual conduct . . . without the consent of the depicted person" (HI Rev Stats § 711-1110.9).
Also of importance, 12% of statutes define nonconsensual pornography as a criminal offense only if it is harmful to the victim. For instance, in North Dakota, the offense of distribution of intimate images without or against consent requires that the distribution result in "actual emotional distress or harm" for the victim (NDC § 12.1-17-07.2). Maryland further requires that a person must "cause serious emotional distress to another" to be found guilty of revenge porn (Md. Code Ann., Com. Law § 3-809).
Finally, 59% of statutes include language detailing the perpetrator's intent for committing the offense. Of these statutes, 21% (n = 9) require that the perpetrator committed the offense for the purpose of invading the victim's privacy; 43% (n = 19) specify that the goal was to psychologically harm the victim; 27% (n = 12) specify that the perpetrator's motive was to threaten, harass, or coerce the victim; 16% (n = 7) identify financial motives; and 57% (n = 25) denote that the perpetrator's motive was sexually entertainment or gratification. (All categories of intent were coded non-mutually exclusively.)

Discussion
Evaluating how governments respond to the contemporary issue of nonconsensual pornography is of paramount importance. As discussed, technological advances have made it easier for sexually explicit images to be recorded and distributed without women's consent, but the research presented herein suggests that criminal law has not kept pace with the problem in the United States. To start with, the present analysis revealed a lack of consensus in terms of the name of the offense targeted by the statutes, just as Bell and colleagues (2006) found ten years ago. There was also a fair amount of variability in the class of crime nonconsensual pornography is considered to be. The level of inconsistency in the names and classification of offenses across statutes reflects a lack of conceptual clarity about the nature of the behavior being criminalized.
This poses a problem for victims, who may struggle to have their experiences recognized, and police and prosecutors, who may be unclear about when nonconsensual pornography has crossed the boundary between legal and illegal behavior.
Moreover, even when statutes have been adopted, they frequently include provisions that may make it difficult to prosecute or convict perpetrators of nonconsensual pornography. This research examined the frequency with which such provisions appear in statutes. For instance, to understand how well current statutes address nonconsensual pornography in the form of upskirting or downblousing, one must examine the extent to which the statutes recognize that privacy violations can occur in public spaces. Results revealed that a substantial minority of statutes offer no recourse for victims of nonconsensual pornography that is recorded in public.
Moreover, although most statutes neither explicitly limit their scope to private spaces nor expand them to public ones. Although this ambiguity might be construed as offering some flexibility for identifying when nonconsensual pornography is a criminal offense, it is important to recognize that almost half of those statutes impose limits by qualifying that expectations of privacy must be reasonable. Prosecution and conviction in jurisdictions governed by such statutes will depend on legal decision makers' interpretations of just how realistic it is for an individual to expect to maintain privacy in any given set of public circumstances. Recall Superior Court Judge McKenna's opinion that women who wore dresses and sat on the steps of a public memorial had no reasonable expectation of privacy (District of Columbia v. Cleveland, 2014). One might assume that the greatest level of legal protection against upskirting and downblousing is offered by statutes that explicitly acknowledge that there is an expectation of privacy even when in public. Yet those statutes are significantly more likely to include stipulations that require expectations of privacy to be reasonable in context. Thus, even when policymakers have purposefully attempted to create statutes that bar nonconsensual pornography violations that take Relating to the nature of the recordings themselves, one-third of statutes require that recordings be made surreptitiously. As noted previously, high-quality recording devices are now widely available and typically included as standard equipment in mobile technology such as phones, tablets, and laptop computers. Statutes that require actors to behave covertly are incongruent with the fact that nonconsensual pornography can be recorded easily in plain sight, and provide a clear example of how the technology of modern society has outpaced our laws.
Defense counsel may argue that phone camera recordings are not covert if taken in plain sight, as in a case involving a registered sex offender who recorded upskirt videos of more than 100 teenaged girls and women in Los Angeles County, California. Whereas the defense attorney in that case argued that "evidence showing defendant held his phone in his hand while recording . .
. established he did not conceal the phone," the prosecutor rebutted that "the camera was concealed within a telephone" (The People v. Johnson, 2016, p. 9). Although the prosecutor was successful in securing a conviction in that case, the arguments presented demonstrate how outcomes may hinge on the issue of surreptitiousness.
Whereas most statutes explicitly ban both videographic and photographic recordings of a nonconsensual nature, several do not. It may be important for laws to be explicit about the extent to which the illicit behavior results in a detailed and permanent record, as being recorded versus observed could produce a greater violation of privacy and more harm. In fact, statutes often include language that reflects assumptions about these exact issues.
Another barrier to the prosecution of nonconsensual pornography involves assumptions about the circumstances that result in a violation of privacy. More than a quarter of statutes stipulate that victims were recorded while either partially nude, nude, or actively engaged in sexual activity. This is problematic because victims of upskirting, downblousing, or revenge porn could be depicted in images that show that undergarments covered their genitals, buttocks, or nipples or even other intimate parts of their bodies, such as their cleavage or upper thighs.
Such images are not as sexually explicit as others, but they still expose parts of victims' bodies which they did not intend to have viewed by the public. Similarly, approximately one in six statutes require that victims must be identifiable from the recordings. Provisions such as these may narrowly define the parameters under which victims can seek justice, even though victims may feel just as violated whether or not they can be identified in nonconsensually recorded or disseminated images.
It is also important to note that a substantial minority of statutes require evidence that the victim was harmed by the nonconsensual pornography. This stipulation not only reflects assumptions about behaviors that result in harm, but also creates the possibility that successful prosecution and conviction will depend upon interpretations of how individual victims are affected in specific cases. These statutes not only require that the prosecution prove that a victim experienced emotional distress but also that the distress was "actual" or "serious," conditions that are ill-defined and likely to be based on legal decision makers' subjective judgments. To be clear, other forms of sexual violence have been shown to have serious deleterious effects on women's mental health (e.g., Tjaden & Thoennes, 2006) and nonconsensual pornography has been linked anecdotally to shame, embarrassment, fear, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even suicide (e.g., Bazelon, 2013;Bloom, 2014;Chiarini, 2013;Jackman, 2016). Yet statutes that stipulate that the victim experienced harm are concerning because systematic research on the psychological effects of nonconsensual pornography is lacking and different victims are likely to be affected in different ways.
Finally, the majority of statutes include language detailing the perpetrator's intent for committing the offense. Of these statutes, many describe motives that reflect the same assumptions just discussed, including that the perpetrator committed the offense for the purpose of invading the victim's privacy or to psychologically harm the victim. Other motives are recognized, too, however (i.e., harassment, financial gain, sexual gratification). Yet, past research has shown that legal decision makers struggle to recognize distinctions between different categories of mens rea or criminal mental states (e.g., Ginther et al., 2014;Severance, Goodman, & Loftus, 1992;Shen, Hoffman, Jones, Greene, & Marois, 2011). Moreover, these statutes go beyond requiring that prosecutors merely establish a perpetrator's criminal culpability and further outline very specific motives that must be proven in nonconsensual pornography cases. This is worrisome because what should be relevant is whether the perpetrator intended to record an image or distribute it without the victim's consent, not why he or she wanted to do so.
Thus, when statutes define intent in a way that suggests perpetrators were driven by a given motive, they present yet another potential obstacle to legally addressing the problem of nonconsensual pornography.
The present analysis highlights a variety of issues in current law which may raise challenges for those seeking to prosecute nonconsensual pornography. Of course, it is possible that the jurisdictions with multiple statutes dealing with this problem are able to offer victims a convoluted pathway to justice. However, no path could be clearer than one paved by a single, straightforward policy outlining nonconsensual pornography as a crime. To be sure, data on the success and failure rates for prosecuting and convicting perpetrators across different jurisdictions is needed to better understand the implications of the language formulae used in current statutes.
Even so, both the current research findings and actual cases in which perpetrators were not brought to justice (e.g., District of Columbia v. Cleveland, 2014) suggest that continued reform is needed to offer sufficient legal protection to citizens who are subjects of nonconsensual pornography.
According to Franks (2016), for policy to be effective, it must be explicit about the parameters of the offending behavior by addressing nonconsent to either the recording of sexually explicit images or the distribution of such images. Franks also suggests the policy must avoid confounding the perpetrator's intent to engage in nonconsensual behavior with his or her motives for doing so. Moving forward, policymakers should be mindful of crafting legislation that will achieve these goals. It is further suggested herein that the battle against nonconsensual pornography will be waged more successfully if the legal response is not influenced by discourses that blame victims and trivialize the victimization experience. Next, a violence against women perspective is used to analyze shortcomings of current policy and suggest future directions for policy development and research on this issue.

An Analysis of Findings from the Violence Against Women Perspective
The current content analysis indicates that patriarchy has influenced legal responses in ways that generate predictable, self-reinforcing outcomes. Consider, for instance, statutes that make assumptions about the level of privacy women can reasonably expect in public. Such policies provided the basis for Superior Court Judge McKenna's 2014 ruling in the Washington, D.C. upskirting case discussed previously (District of Columbia v. Cleveland, 2014), which echoed the myth that women who go out in public braless or wear short skirts are "asking for trouble." Although scholars have been calling attention to the role this belief plays in generating a rape-supportive culture for more than 35 years (e.g., Burt, 1980;Hildebrand & Najdowski, 2015), it is still widely endorsed in the United States (for review, see Edwards, Turchik, Dardis, Reynolds, & Gidycz, 2011). Policies that are predicated on such beliefs are problematic because they undermine women's agency: They dictate what behavior is considered appropriate, imply that women are responsible for their own victimization, and, ultimately, deny or justify violence against women (Jones & Aronson, 1973; for review, see Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994).
Another example of how patriarchal beliefs manifest in existing statutes is evident in judgments about just how sexually explicit a recording must be to constitute a violation of privacy, whether the victim must be identifiable, and the level of harm that must be generated by nonconsensual pornography. Such judgments likely have the effect of trivializing the victimization experience and negatively impacting women's sense of dignity and self-worth.
Pornography in general reduces women to body parts for the purpose of others' sexual consumption (MacKinnon, 1989). This sexual objectification ties women's value to their sexual utility and denies them various aspects of their individual human qualities (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997;Vaes, Paladino, & Puvia, 2011). These potential negative consequences of nonconsensual pornography are discounted by statutes that use rigid boundaries to categorize women's victimization experiences as either valid or invalid. Approaching nonconsensual pornography from the violence against women framework might not only make it easier to recognize how structural patriarchy relates to existing policy dealing with this problem, but also increase the likelihood that efforts to improve legal responsiveness to it will be successful.

Implications for Future Policy Development
An important next step is to understand what factors promote or impede policy change on this issue. Given actual and perceived gender differences in victimization (e.g., Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, 2014; Hudson et al., 2014), it is important to consider whether effective criminalization of nonconsensual pornography will depend on advocates' and policymakers' recognition that the problem is a gendered issue and, moreover, constitutes violence against women. As noted by Chong and Druckman (2007, p. 104), "an issue can be viewed from a variety of perspectives and be construed as having implications for multiple values or considerations." Nonconsensual pornography has been framed as an issue involving free speech (Scheller, 2015), copyright (Bartow, 2012), privacy (Citron & Franks, 2014), and cyberbullying (Klein, 2012), among other things, but it is rarely discussed in terms of violence against women (but see Henry & Powell, 2015;Mathen, 2014;Powell, 2010). Rather, violence against women is often defined narrowly as violent, forced sexual assaults which are perpetrated by strangers (for review, see DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013). Yet gender-based violence occurs on a continuum including a wide range of abuses known to affect many women, including, for example, domestic violence (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013) and street harassment (Gardner, 1995). As such, violence against women can be broadly defined to include not only physical and sexual abuse but also psychological, verbal, and economic abuse (see DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2001).
Indeed, the United Nations defined violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life" (United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, 1993, Article 1). Given gender differences in victimization rates (e.g., Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, 2014) and links to outcomes such as stalking (Branco, 2015), psychological distress (Bazelon, 2013;Chiarini, 2013), and suicide (Jackman, 2016), nonconsensual pornography appears to fit this definition.
To the extent that the gendered nature of this offense is ignored, statutory responses to nonconsensual pornography are likely to continue to reinforce structural patriarchy and gender inequity. In contrast, framing nonconsensual pornography as violence against women and highlighting its deleterious effects on women's human rights might help to increase both the visibility and perceived legitimacy of the problem. The use of violence against women framing might confer the benefit of attaching the issue to ongoing movements aimed at improving women's rights and status and attracting the attention of organizations that work for this cause.
As noted by Tierney (1982, p. 210), "the public definition of a social problem and the official solutions proposed are products of interaction and negotiation among established and emergent groups, organizations, and interests." Thus, framing might relate to the ability to successfully mobilize resources (e.g., research funding, media coverage, lobbying) for the purpose of putting pressure on governments to respond to nonconsensual pornography with appropriate legislation.
The United Nations' adoption of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993) is itself a prime example of what has been achieved by advocacy organizations working to link gender-based violence to human rights. Now, because the United States is a member state of the United Nations, federal and state governments can be encouraged to accomplish the goals of the Declaration by enacting policy against violence against women and being accountable for the human rights issues created by the problem (for review, see Joachim, 1999).

Future Research Directions
This review highlights a critical need for research aimed at examining whether nonconsensual pornography disproportionately and negatively impacts women's basic human rights as well as how structural patriarchy relates to policy development. Researchers should integrate the feminist criminology, sociocultural, and psychological literatures to advance these agendas. For example, an important focus of future work should be on cross-national comparisons, which would expose how structural patriarchy influences the development of policies aimed at curbing violence against women across a variety of societies. Feminist and social psychological scholars have been calling for researchers to acknowledge and account for the impact of patriarchal structural relations and ideology in their work for decades (e.g., Bartky, 1975;Sherif, 1982). Given that the world is becoming increasingly globalized and interconnected, it is more important than ever to understand potential impacts of sociocultural differences on responses to violence against women. Therefore, structural patriarchy should be used as a theoretical tool for understanding legal responsiveness to nonconsensual pornography.
Future work should also link structural conditions to social psychological principles derived from framing, gender role, social dominance, and attribution theories. For instance, researchers could explore how structural features of society interact with individual difference variables to shape citizens' views on nonconsensual pornography specifically and violence against women in general. That is, societal context shapes citizens' attitudes and beliefs about women's rights and roles, and societal relationships between men and women are likely to shape reactions to violence against women. The extent to which citizens adopt patriarchal attitudes could determine the values they place on men's versus women's rights (see, e.g., Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994) as well as their attributions for men's and women's behavior (see, e.g., Haj-Yahia, 1998). These psychological mechanisms could determine whether citizens frame nonconsensual pornography as gender-based violence or support the criminalization of that behavior. Such work would apply theories related to framing, social dominance, and attributions to a novel problem while also contributing to the growing body of work focused on understanding reactions to violence against women (see, e.g., , the moral psychological literature aimed at understanding when citizens believe behaviors should be sanctioned (e.g., Darley, 2009;Weiner, 2006), and the broader field of feminist criminology (Chesney-Lind & Morash, 2013).  Chong and Druckman (2007, p. 104), framing effects "occur when (often small) changes in the presentation of an issue or an event produce (sometimes large) changes of opinion." Future work could focus on developing social norms interventions to correct misperceptions about the acceptability of nonconsensual pornography and violence against women (Dardis, Murphy, Bill, & Gidycz, 2015), which have proven to be effective at preventing some forms of sexual aggression (e.g., Gidycz, Orchowski, & Berkowitz, 2011). By considering reactions to an issue that has only recently manifested due to technological advances, such work would lay the foundation for future studies aimed at understanding the effects of policy on citizens' perceptions of nonconsensual pornography.
Further, as gender equality improves, laws are reformed, and the context in which citizens are socialized changes (Inglehart & Norris, 2003;Mintz, 1998), research can explore how citizens' reactions to this issue shift. Indeed, for the furtherance of equality, it will be important to call attention to men victims of nonconsensual pornography and to ensure that framing the problem as violence against women does not lead to the denial of men's victimization experiences.
Also, research on the issues discussed herein would lay a foundation for future work aimed at understanding the downstream effects of policy development related to offending, reporting, and criminal justice management of nonconsensual pornography. It is especially important to consider potential effects of failing to adopt policy on this issue. Does it communicate tolerance for violence against women? As noted by Gardner (1995, p. 86), "When without significant penalty, public harassment abuse to women of whatever kind and in whatever context sends a symbolic message that men's rights and control are predominant and omnipresent and can be communicated even in an arena where all citizens-especially womenare most vulnerable." This possibility must be evaluated in context. Frames that deny that nonconsensual pornography constitutes violence against women could serve to reinforce patriarchal relationships between men and women in society as well as ideological beliefs that support gender inequality. In societies marked by gender inequality and inadequate responsiveness to violence against women, citizens are more likely to endorse attitudes that support patriarchy and undermine women's basic human rights (Ogle & Batton, 2009). Indeed, research has shown that violence against women is more likely to occur in societies characterized by more versus less structural patriarchy (e.g., Brownridge, 2002;Fulu et al., 2013;Yoshioka, DiNoia, & Ullah, 2001). This link appears to be mediated by ideological patriarchy, as men who endorse more negative attitudes toward women are more likely than others to engage in sexually aggressive and violent behavior against women (e.g., Koss, Leonard, Beezley, & Oros, 1985;Malamuth, 1986;Muehlenhard & Falcon, 1990;Stith & Farley, 1994; for review, see Flood & Pease, 2009). In addition, patriarchal attitudes have been linked empirically to victims' reluctance to report sexual violence to the police (Heath, Lynch, Fritch, & Wong, 2013). Even if victims do report their experiences, the sociocultural and policy context will shape the reactions they receive from individuals in their communities and the institutions with which they interact (Flood & Pease, 2009). These issues are especially concerning considering the current climate of the United States, in which Donald Trump, a self-confessed sexual predator, was elected as President. For all of these reasons, it is important to understand whether failing to provide nonconsensual pornography victims with the opportunity for legal redress has the unintended negative effect of legitimizing and encouraging violence against women. If so, policy reform on this issue is not only desirable, but crucial.
All of these issues are important to study to gain a better understanding of causes and correlates of legal responsiveness to nonconsensual pornography and to promote policy development in the area of violence against women. Such work must acknowledge the influence that sociocultural context can have on policy development and implementation. Rigorous attention to context could both advance basic scientific knowledge about how people think about violence against women and have wide-ranging implications for policies dealing with nonconsensual pornography and other gender-based violence.