Jezz, Ashley Madison eh? A lot of people are really quick to judge the current and past users of ashleymadison.com but how society is treating the users bothers more than the fact that there’s a websites that facilitates cheating. Yes, it’s ironic that the trust that the users had in the site was violated much like the trust the partners had in the users was violated and no, I’m not trying to say people should be cheating, but everyone seems quick to condemn the users for being on the website in the first place and here’s why the issue isn’t so clear cut.
When the iCloud services was breached earlier this year there was a big push from v/bloggers and news outlets to abstain from looking at the stolen pictures. The argument was that consenting adults should feel free to do anything within the confines of the law with whoever they want and it didn’t matter if you thought storing intimate images online was a dumb thing to do. Blaming the iCloud users for having images in the cloud (damn I hate that term,) was victim blaming and I got the vibe that most people were on the same page about this. That same ‘don’t blame the victim’ mentality hasn’t been extended to the AM users and isn't a massive double-standard? When we as a society condemn the hackers who steal intimate images of celebrities and post them online but then in an almost identical breach of security (not technically, but identical in magnitude,) we give little regard to the hackers and instead say ‘meh, they’re just getting what they deserve’?
People change. Some people might have the same priorities in their twenties and then find that in their 40s they’ve become completely different people. Peoples relationships are as diverse as humans themselves and to say that cheating automatically makes you a jerk is just ridiculous and close-minded. The point here is that the only person that you’re qualified to make decisions for is yourself and living in a free society also needs to include the freedom to change, or be a total jerk, or associate with whomever you want. If you respect someones right to email intimate images of themselves to their partner and then have sympathy for them when those decisions go awry, you should also respect and sympathize with the AM users. People can make their own decisions regarding their sex lives just fine and we shouldn’t judge AM users for making decisions about their relationships without knowing any of the context in which those decisions were made.
