Copyright Your Nudes: Fighting Revenge Porn and Online Abuse
8/23/19 - Bad people aren't only on the internet, but digital life sure gives predators and creeps more permission to make other people miserable. Fortunately, lawyers are fighting back. We talk about the taxonomy of predator behavior, how to anticipate their playbook, and turning victims to warriors with New York attorney Carrie Goldberg. Her new book is Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls. Content warning: sexual assault, revenge porn, and online harassment are discussed. If you or someone you love has experienced a violation of your privacy, it's not your fault.
Transcript below.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.
CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
Image: Carrie Goldberg and her associates fight abuse online.
LINKS
How to copyright your nudes // This isn’t new!
Resource: Without My Consent
Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls
Carrie Goldberg has a law firm and is on Twitter.
TRANSCRIPT: COPYRIGHT YOUR NUDE: FIGHTING REVENGE PORN AND ONLINE ABUSE
[Ads]
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: What are we talking about today Ann Friedman?
Ann: Today's conversation is one that I think is maybe a little overdue on CYG. In the past we've talked about various types of harassment and recourses for that harassment. Today we're taking kind of a new angle on things.
Aminatou: We're talking online invasions of privacy of all kinds, specifically revenge porn and online abuse.
[Theme Song]
(1:23)
Aminatou: Hi Ann Friedman!
Ann: Hello, hello.
Aminatou: How's it going?
Ann: You know, I'm over here. It's kind of warm. Podcasting in my underwear. You know, work from home feelings. How are you?
Aminatou: I am watching a storm roll through Brooklyn right now and it is quite intense. It looks beautiful but also I'm really happy to be inside, you know what I'm saying?
Ann: From afar it seems like it has been storming in Brooklyn all summer or maybe I just hear about it more.
Aminatou: I feel like August -- well, no, you live in a town where it doesn't rain. I feel like summer showers are much more common than we . . . like every summer everybody pretends that it doesn't rain all August. It's just like rain all the time. And it feels great because it cuts through the heat. I love it.
Ann: Oh my god, it is true. I mean I have to say that the thunderstorm as heat relief is one thing I really miss about living in the Midwest, like a really good thunderstorm. So cathartic.
Aminatou: You mean in Can City?
Ann: Oh my god.
(2:20)
Aminatou: I'm recalling all of our Midwest city names.
Ann: Ugh. Perfect lead-in to remind everyone that we're going on tour.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Wow, one day we'll be really good at transitions.
Ann: Sometime we should play a game at our live show where people throw out a topic and we have to artfully transition to it from whatever we've been talking about.
Aminatou: Oh that's so good. That's so good. Podcast mad libs. I'm into it.
Ann: It seems terrifying but anyway that will not be happening on this fall's tour I'm pretty sure where we will be going to some excellent cities: Toronto, Detroit, Denver, Austin, and Houston.
Aminatou: I will also be going to Toronto so let's talk about it. [Laughs]
Ann: Toronto. Let's talk about the fact that I think there are tickets left in all of these cities so we would love to see you there and the schedule with the exact dates which are all in late September or early October is at callyourgirlfriend.com/tour.
Aminatou: We also have some new merch in the CYG shop. Some of it has already sold out and is getting restocked. It turns out, you know, the crowd loves a dad hat so that's coming back soon. But if you would like to buy some CYG merch you can go to shopcyg.com.
(3:40)
Ann: I mean slash a mom hat. Dad hat, mom hat. Wait, is dad hat the actual term for this kind of hats?
Aminatou: Yes, they're called dad hats.
Ann: How did that come about? I feel like this is . . .
Aminatou: Wait, hold up, maybe I'm lying. Maybe I am like fully lying. So let's ask the global hive Google. Yeah, they're called dad hats and dad caps. Sorry that I made it into a gender binary situation.
(4:00)
Ann: Friend-of-the-podcast Mercedes Krauss has a hat in this style that says fun mom on it which is great.
Aminatou: Oh my god, her hat is so great.
Ann: But also, sorry, not blaming you personally for the dad hat phrase but I'm like is this not just a baseball cap, like a hat? I don't know.
Aminatou: Listen. As someone whose head is too big for all sorts of hats and does not participate in the hat economy this is just an overall sore part for me.
Ann: Do you participate in the wrap visor economy? Because I feel like that is a winner for heads of all sizes.
Aminatou: So I definitely have a wrap visor that friend-of-the-podcast Amanda got me when we went to Hawaii and it says "Beach please." It was great. [Laughs] That's maybe the best accessory that I own. But, you know, my head is really too big. It's like my head then you add hair. I don't mean like oh, I've got to loosen up the tabs. There is no tab that fits my head setting. So I feel like maybe I just have to go into a hat store and talk to someone about this.
Ann: Wow, yeah. I mean because that's normally what I think of as a really good solution for heads that are not served by the current hat economy.
Aminatou: Yeah, some of us just have big heads. But you know what? We're okay with it. My big head for all of my big brain! It's great.
Ann: Listen, I was just about to say it's because your brain is so big. That's all.
Aminatou: Oh my gosh, okay, please come and see us on tour. Feel free to buy some merch if you want. There is also -- will be some dedicated CYG exclusive merch on tour. So, you know . . .
Ann: It all fits together, all these opportunities. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Okay. Wow, wow, wow. Okay. What are we talking about today Ann Friedman?
Ann: Today's conversation is one that I think is maybe a little overdue on CYG. In the past we've talked about various types of harassment and recourses for that harassment but today we're taking kind of a new angle on things.
(5:55)
Aminatou: We're talking about like online invasions of privacy of all kinds, specifically revenge porn and online abuse.
Ann: What is revenge porn?
Aminatou: Revenge porn is basically when somebody uses or distributes sexually-explicit images of you without your consent. For example let's say you are in an intimate relationship with someone or you send a nude of yourself to someone because you wanted to do it and then that same image is used as a form of punishment or a form of humiliation later in a way that you didn't consent to.
Ann: Yeah, that would be an invasion of your privacy. We're not talking about a stellar album by Cardi B. We're talking about an act that you should have some legal recourse over. So this is where we talk all the time about how much we love a lawyer and people who are using more structural mechanisms to address bad behavior like this. For a lot of the early history of camera functionality in cell phones people took very much like a victim-blaming attitude of like oh, if a photo of you exists out in the world in a context you don't want it to exist in, if it is public when you meant it to be private, if it is anywhere that you did not consent to, that is sort of your fault because you took a sexy photo. And I think . . .
Aminatou: Right. Which is a thing that we don't say to people when it comes to like financial privacy or we don't say to you when it comes to medical privacy, Right? But when it comes to sexual privacy somehow we find a way to blame victims.
Ann: Right. We're not like you opened a credit card. It's your fault that someone charged a bunch of packages at FedEx which is something that happened to me recently. No one was like shame on you for owning . . . yeah. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Ann, shame on you for owning a credit card. I can't believe this kind of fraud has happened to you.
Ann: Right, exactly. And so it is really interesting to sort of think about this in the context of any other violation or fraud on one hand. But on the other hand it's like it is very different, right? Because while the person who stole my credit card just, you know, wanted money this is often used as, I don't know, like a much more personal and nefarious form of attack. It is not just like . . .
(8:08)
Aminatou: I mean it's about humiliating you right?
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: Which is not like what a thief has when they, you know, when they use your credit card and buy shoes on Etsy.
Ann: Which should make us more sympathetic to someone who is having some images of themselves used without consent in this way right? Like not less. It should make us more like oh my god, what do we do about this problem?
Aminatou: I mean I hear you but that's also not how patriarchy and misogyny work. [Laughs]
Ann: What?
Aminatou: You know. Yeah, and I also think that part of it too is we don't have a healthy attitude towards sex and sexuality and so much of these conversations are cloaked in shame right? You might feel really humiliated and embarrassed if you are involved in some sort of big financial fraud scheme which does happen to a lot of people. People feel stupid or they feel dumb or they feel -- you know, there's a lot of shame about talking about it.
But I think that when it comes to this kind of very intimate, you know, form of abuse there's a different kind of shame that shapes up because now you have to talk to a lot of people including law enforcement about your own body and your nudity and just things that are really intimate to you. And again we just don't live in a society that makes that a normal thing to talk about. So instead of feeling like you were violated you can also leave feeling like you had a hand in a lot of the humiliation that you're experiencing.
Ann: Right. I've been really interested to see, I'm a fan of a publication called Salty which I love and recommend and will link to in the show notes, it's at saltyworld.net. And I noticed an article there recently about copyrighting your nudes which is like one way to ensure that you have a better toe hold if you want legal recourse to fight someone using these without your consent. And I was just like it was very much mind-blowing to me to think about that.
(10:00)
And I know this is not like a brand new thing that this publication has pioneered but it was like it's a step-by-step here is how you actually pursue a copyright for photos of yours that you want to remain private and it blew my mind.
Aminatou: Yeah, I mean it's really interesting. When I was researching doing this article I found this stat that actually 80% of revenge porn photos are selfies which means that you are the author of your own selfie essentially which is how you can use copyright to help you. Also the copyright office is weirdly getting hip to this. So I would not say the government is encouraging it but they're definitely telling you this is one of the only ways they can help you.
You know, and I also think there should be no shame. Everyone's nudes are fire. Your nudes are fuego. You should be proud of them. And, you know, taking ownership of that and giving the government a little bit of money to copyright your nudes, I'm down for that.
Ann: Yeah, I mean and that's like a good point. This article makes clear that a registration fee to submit them is between $35 and $55 depending on the type of photos when I'm like that is not cheap, right? Like it is definitely not cheap.
Aminatou: It's not cheap but if somebody is infringing your copyright you can get up to $150,000 per photo. So I'm not saying that's going to make up for the harm that you have incurred but that $35 is going to pay for itself.
Ann: Ugh. Can I also just make a side note which is when I think about the selfie in the light of intellectual property which is essentially you are the author of your own photo in which you feel good and sexy and possibly nude I really feel very positively about the selfie in general right? And I really think a lot about how this is not a new idea either. We've been talking about the selfie and women as self-authors in particular for quite some time.
(11:45)
But I really love the reminder of like guess what? This is not just a thing you made for someone else; it is a way of you creating a narrative for the world about yourself and your own body. And I think that also really cuts to the core of why it is such a violation when someone uses that image specifically to harm you or humiliate you.
Aminatou: Yeah. You know, and also I think it's just the copyright aspect of it is so interesting to me too because copyright is all about what has creative value right? And so if you look at the current laws they actually explicitly allow for pornographic or obscene material as the government would call it. [Laughs] And basically anybody over 18 can register that kind of material.
But when I think about it in the sense of well your photos and your property do have creative value. This is the way that people consume your nudes and you should feel proud about them. I feel proud about mine so, you know, it's great.
Ann: Ugh.
Aminatou: None of this obviously is legal advice so [Laughs] -- which is my favorite thing that my lawyer friends tell me when I ask for legal advice, you know? Or I'm like "Hey, I just watched an SVU. Like can you do . . ." And they're like this is not legal advice.
Ann: Right. Like this is not a legal advice podcast. We're just two women who love to talk about the law. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Right, and we love the copyright office so here we go. But I did talk to an expert, Carrie Goldberg, who's an attorney who specializes in sexual privacy violations, particularly revenge porn and online abuse. She's the author of Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls. Her book is out now wherever you buy books and I have to say it was a very illuminating read for me. You know how you said earlier at the top of the show that we love lawyers who find new ways to work within existing structure. That's essentially like what Carrie did. The book is great in that she tells these really intimate stories about some of her clients and also like, you know, tells her own story of how she came to do this work.
(13:50)
And the TL;DR is she was a victim of someone that she would call a psycho in the taxonomy that she's created and she was already a lawyer but she needed to become -- she needed to become this kind of a lawyer to advocate for herself and to advocate for her clients. There's no room for victim-blaming in the Carrie Goldberg world because she just really prepares you for the fact that there are people out there who wake up every day intending to harm someone. And that's not your fault but that's just the reality of human life. And the more you can be prepared for that and the more you can start seeing these red flags the more you can be armed for when you actually need the services of a lawyer like her.
Ann: I love it.
Aminatou: So here's an interview I did with Carrie.
[Interview Starts]
Carrie: My name's Carrie Goldberg and I'm the author of Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls. And I'm the owner of law firm C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, and we fight psychos, stalkers, pervs, and trolls.
Aminatou: I'm so happy that you're a lawyer. I don't think I've ever said that to anyone before. [Laughter] But I'm very -- I'm just very happy that you're a lawyer. Can you tell us a little bit about what your book is about?
(15:00)
Carrie: There are kind of like two major things. The first is sort of my purpose for being alive which is to proselytize that basically every single one of us is a moment away from crossing paths with somebody hellbent on our destruction. That's happened to all my clients whether they're breaking up with a vindictive ex or they were prayed upon by a predator or they are the victim of online harassment, every single person has crossed paths with somebody who has dedicated their life in one way or another to torturing my clients. And it's a dark idea but I think it's important for people to know that it can happen to anybody. And so it's really important that if a friend or loved one or even you becomes the victim of somebody that they're given compassion and empathy knowing that the same thing could happen to you.
(16:00)
Aminatou: Thank you for saying that because that is such an important point. Even among like, you know, very progressive like whatever people who know we still have a tendency to think the first time that somebody tells you a problem, especially in the realm you deal in, like what did they do to attract that? You know? Or just thinking that that is a problem that happens to other people. So as much as it's dark I appreciate you framing it as a this could happen -- like it could happen to anybody.
Carrie: Absolutely.
Aminatou: It could truly happen to anybody because that's now how being a victim works.
Carrie: Yeah. And then the other mission of the book was I wanted to demystify the types of predators that I see in my firm over and over and over again because it's almost like they're operating from the same kind of playbook. And I think that if you're the target of somebody and you don't know what to expect that's the scariest thing in the universe. And if you can actually kind of realize that that person, whether it's an ex or somebody actually kind of falls into a taxonomy and there are certain behavioral characteristics then it suddenly feels more controllable. Then I lay out ways that we can handle it whether it be helping a person report it to the police or an order protection or reporting conduct to Internet service providers if it's happening online.
And so we've kind of broken it down into the categories of assholes, psychos, pervs, and trolls, and my publisher wouldn't let me use the word assholes in the title. [Laughter] But that is -- so we used stalker instead but really stalker and psycho are kind of collapsed into the same category.
Aminatou: Well can we get a little bit into each of the categories? So the psychos, the stalkers, the pervs, and the trolls, like what are a defining characteristic of each of those?
(17:58)
Carrie: Okay, so this is really, really reductive.
Aminatou: What? You mean a couple minute interview is not going to cover the many, many tens of thousands of words you've written? [Laughter]
Carrie: And I actually saw somebody criticize my book saying I used the word crazy and psycho too liberally and haphazardly.
Aminatou: You know, we should all work on our ableist language. I think that's fair.
Carrie: But starting with what we call psychos, they are trying to settle a score. They've been harmed so they feel and they've put aside everything else in their life to destroy another human being. They seem to not have impulse control and they kind of attack relentlessly and they escalate. So to give you an example, my client Francesca, she broke up with a man that she realized had been sending her all these impersonating emails and impersonating other people and revenge porning her while they were together. So when she broke up with him he started this horrific campaign of harassment. It started with him revenge porning her and then he started sending -- impersonating other people and sending the non-profit where she worked faxes saying that she was having sex with her homeless clients and that she was consuming child pornography on the job and sent it to the board members of that non-profit. He reported her to the licensing social work agency to try to get her license removed. He started contacting everyone in her family then it continued to escalate where he was -- he faked his own death and actually . . .
Aminatou: Oh wow.
(19:45)
Carrie: In a mass shooting he faked his own death, impersonated a family member to speak to an actual journalist who then wrote an actual article about him. It was absolutely unrelenting. It was really creative. You know, other characteristics is he was really charming. You know, in the beginning he swept her off her feet. It was an Insta marriage kind of thing. Those kinds of characteristics we see in what we call the psycho because it's just sort of overwhelming. Ultimately he impersonated her and sent bomb threats to Jewish community centers all over the country and finally then the FBI and the DOJ took it seriously because hey, it's no longer just one woman who's being attacked. Now we've got a whole -- a lot of people. And something we see quite often with law enforcers is they prioritize things based on the amount of financial loss.
And so if you're one woman or one man that's being stalked it's not a financial loss the same way that if, you know, 24 Jewish community centers are having to, you know, respond to the threat of a bomb and police are dispatched all over the place and their investigations. Like that's a financial loss that our feds will actually take seriously. I digress.
Aminatou: That's not depressing at all.
Carrie: No. So what I call the asshole is the psycho who is able to stop, okay? So it's somebody who has lashed out in a moment of anger or range or drunkenness and done something cruel or mean. Maybe posted a person's naked images on the Internet. But then they can . . .
Aminatou: Impulse control steps in.
Carrie: It's an impulse control issue, exactly. But then they can get beyond it.
Aminatou: Right.
(21:40)
Carrie: And sometimes the difference between an asshole and a psycho is that the asshole might have other anchors in their life to keep them from going completely overboard.
Aminatou: Right.
Carrie: They might have a job or children or family members or friends. Psychos usually don't have those things. They don't have anything to lose. And they think it's clear there's also a mental illness. But assholes don't necessarily need to be stopped by the police. They can stop themselves usually. Sometimes we have to give them a nudge at our law firm to help them stop.
Aminatou: [Laughs] This is a lot.
Carrie: Yeah.
Aminatou: So this is the type you call the stalker type correct?
Carrie: No, I actually call -- psychos and stalkers.
Aminatou: I'm sorry, I got the taxonomy wrong. Yeah.
Carrie: Stalkers are more like the psychos. The asshole is their own kind of category. They suck and I think probably we all have an experience with somebody who's been vindictive toward us without it escalating into a life-enveloping issue. So next category is the troll. These are people that usually are aggressing online, usually anonymously, and they often kind of pile on mob-like . . . you can kind of think of the trolls in Gamer Gate where they all decided that Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn were the devil and that they were personally responsible for bias in journalism. And they just got clobbered. They got doxxed. They got hacked. All their personal information was posted online, their banking information, their parents' information. The trolls are usually acting sort of together. Not always. But we see it often with far right-wing extremists. You can just go to AOC's Twitter account and see the comments on anything she tweets. It's just a hodgepodge of trolls.
(23:38)
That leaves us with the pervs and they're the ones who are abusing their power and control to sexually dominate another person. And sometimes it's for sexual gratification. That kind of doesn't really matter whether or not it is.
Aminatou: It doesn't matter what the intention is; it matters that they do it.
Carrie: Yeah. And so that can manifest online or offline. We have a lot of cases where our client is the victim of "sextortion" where somebody has -- usually an older man has groomed a younger child that he's met online and he's anonymized himself to seem as though he's a peer of hers and they develop a friendship whether it's through a gaming community or something else, through just Instagram or Facebook, and then over time he starts to pressure her into sending naked pictures or camming and then blackmails her with those pictures. He uses the blackmail pictures to get more pictures and force her to do more humiliating things and send videos. I mean ultimately these clients describe it as being somebody's sex slave. Somebody they've never met in most cases but they're completely at the mercy of because these people think this person really will distribute and post and send to their family members the often very humiliating torturous material. And then the other kind of analog version if our sexual predator who's physically aggressing, assaulting, raping.
(25:28)
Aminatou: Like women that they meet through the Internet?
Carrie: Yeah. I mean not always but it's -- I mean it's rare that in a case that involves a sexual assault these days that it's not from a first date through a dating app.
Aminatou: Can I ask you about that? Like you said it always starts with "I met them online" oftentimes in your line of work. There are obviously so many benefits to that, like to dating online or whatever. It's like sure, if you don't meet your person at the bar or you don't meet them at work or whatever like online is work now. But there was a part of me that was really torn about how alarmist, you know, my own kind of alarm bells went off. And also a lot of just being like no, these are the same kinds of precautions that you should be taking no matter where you meet someone. Is it that the Internet is uniquely bad? Or is it that the Internet can be weaponized in a specific way that exacerbates real life problems that we already have?
(26:33)
Carrie: I don't believe the Internet is a problem. This is a people problem. The Internet has made it so convenient to injure another person. When it comes to online dating I am an alarmist but that -- I mean people in my office still online date. Like I went to the wedding of one of my associates who met her spouse through the Internet. So it's like I'm an ambassador of closing your Tinder account. But it has created a new way of -- a new social way of meeting people whereas, you know, before you might meet someone through a friend or at a party or even at a bar. And so your initial encounters, you're going to notice those things, kind of the subconscious cues.
Aminatou: Yes.
Carrie: From an in-person interaction that you won't have access to when you're communicating online. And I think one of the pernicious things about it, and this is what true predators do, is they develop a really gorgeous rapport with their victim before they meet so that then -- and I'm using she pronouns, it's not always a woman victim, it's not always a male predator -- but if she's groomed to already be really excited and feel like she knows him at their first encounter she's going to silence any of the red flags that she gets from that initial encounter, that face-to-face thing.
(28:10)
And also because there might not be any overlap in social networks if he does something criminal he's not going to have to deal with the ramifications of his social circle finding out and ostracizing him. And that's what we're losing with Internet dating is the risk of a would-be predator of ostracize -- how do you say that -- ostracization?
Aminatou: Ostracization.
Carrie: [Laughs] The ostracization if you do something horrible. Our communities because of the Internet have become so global and we don't know each other and everything's remote and anonymous that the casting out of the tribe is something we've lost because of the Internet. And so it makes people who already are inclined to be that way more reckless and predatory.
Aminatou: Right. Like the social tether is a way of staying accountable in so many other ways, right? And also a way -- and also like a mode of protection.
[Ads]
(32:12)
Aminatou: I am really curious about using the existing tools of law enforcement basically to fight a lot of the issues that you're faced with. Because I think from a person that is not a legal mind and I am not a tech mind, to me it has just felt very overwhelming. Like my take on it is always like oh, there are no protections under the law for someone who is -- if you're going through revenge porn or if you are going through online stalking or cyberbullying and that's a very uninformed take. And so reading you has just been really mind-expanding in that way of okay, what are the tools actually that we can avail ourselves of? Like not saying that they're perfect but I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more about that.
Carrie: Yeah, so true Amina. So many people come into this conversation and kind of have this bias and belief that oh, with the Internet the laws can't keep up with the times. And it's not really true. We actually have had stalking laws and harassment laws for decades. I mean that still isn't very long. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Yeah.
Carrie: But they -- they pre-date the Internet and we actually have hacking laws that were created in the '80s before we even really, you know, had anything to hack. What's been slower to get are the laws that protect women: the revenge porn laws, the sextortion laws, the ones that really relate to sexual violence and domestic violence that overlap. Because I think that it's not the laws that can't keep up but the lawmakers. Even it took five years for New York to finally pass a revenge porn law. It was introduced five years ago.
Aminatou: Can you define revenge porn for our audience?
(34:00)
Carrie: Yes. It is the non-consensual dissemination of sexually graphic images and videos. So basically if somebody posts a naked picture or video of you on the Internet or texts it to their friends then that's "revenge porn." We usually use the term non-consensual porn but revenge porn has taken off.
Aminatou: Right. And to be clear it's like if you consensually give it to someone they can still disseminate it non-consensually. The predominant feeling that I encounter a lot in this -- not that these are my stories to tell -- is always this sense of guilt of oh, but I gave this nude willingly or I was in a relationship with someone and it was consensual. And it's like well actually there is nothing wrong with, you know, exchanging nudes with your partner for example or someone you want to be your partner.
Carrie: Right.
Aminatou: But the minute that you're not okay with how that's being used then you are in revenge porn territory.
Carrie: Right. I totally agree with what you said. Consent in one context is not consent in another. So I can consent to give you the picture without consenting to you posting it on Facebook. And there's implied consent, like I shouldn't need to tell you that if I give you a hot nude when we're dating that I don't want you to send it to everybody my dad does business with.
Aminatou: Right, because that's also usually a punishment right?
Carrie: Right.
Aminatou: You only do that to punish someone.
Carrie: Right, exactly. Or I mean we actually have a lot of cases though where the intent isn't to punish. It might not even be to humiliate. You know, with our younger people it's like "Hey, I've got this trophy of the hottest girl in eighth grade and I'm going to send it to all my friends." Or sometimes it's curiosity or boasting of . . .
Aminatou: Just toxic masculinity, yes.
(35:50)
Carrie: Yeah. It doesn't always -- like revenge is an acute term but the motive really doesn't matter when we're talking about the harm. And also a lot of . . . you've heard of a lot of celebrities who were hacked and then their pictures are disseminated and then posted and reposted and reposted and liked. The people who are responsible for that kind of downstream distribution don't necessarily have a vendetta against Jennifer Lawrence or somebody.
Aminatou: Right.
Carrie: It's just like they might hate women or they might actually just think oh, she's really hot. I can never have somebody like that.
Aminatou: Oh, the mysteries of misogyny.
Carrie: Yeah, it's never very useful to figure out what -- you know, what they're thinking.
Aminatou: I was reading in this wonderful interview you did in Elle recently where you said, you know, "There's going to be in August all these people who know my shit. The darkest moment in my life, it's just going to be out there which is super liberating but it's just fucking with me." I feel a lot of compassion for that and identify a lot, you know? And I was thinking also a lot about how a lot of your clients don't have a choice, right, about having their shit out there. And yet here you are writing a book where you are -- you are making a decision to share a lot of very intimate and painful things that have happened to you. And so I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about that choice.
(37:20)
Carrie: It's really -- it's emotional for me. I talk a little bit in that Elle article about how I'm pretty open about the fact that I started my firm because I had an ex-boyfriend who was stalking me and threatening me with revenge porn and filing false police reports and created a real legal mess but also scared the -- I lived every day in fear of him for six months.
After I got my order of protection I quit everything and started the law firm. What I haven't been open about is that prior to meeting him I was in a deep depression following a pretty grisly sexual assault and I was in a very vulnerable position when I met the next man.
Aminatou: Who was the one that you -- the one who had put you through hell for six months?
Carrie: Yeah. So when I met him I was in a pretty depleted position where I was really susceptible to his charms and his desire to protect me. I told him what had happened very early on and he was very protective and was really upset that this had happened and he was going to -- I mean he was going to get vengeance on me, you know, on him.
And that's what I needed to hear at the moment. And so I, you know, just really just was all-in on that relationship and was very immediately dominated by somebody who could easily dominate me when I was in a very emotionally frail state. And what I think I've learned from that is that nobody who becomes a victim -- it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's not separate from the rest of their life. And we all have histories of multiple things happening to us and it's relevant what's happened to us. It's hard to articulate this because I haven't talked about it very much.
Aminatou: Well thank you for talking to me about it.
Carrie: The cumulative impact and also the sequence of events can lead us into really frail and susceptible moments where it's easier for somebody to prey upon us.
Aminatou: Right, there are no emotional vacuums.
(39:45)
Carrie: Yeah. And so I originally just . . . I wrote about this sexual assault and I decided to put it in because I think it's a really crucial part of the story and also because it felt like . . . I needed to do it kind of for my clients because I just dive into the most gruesome details of their lives in my complaints and they give me everything. They give me details. We put them in legal complaints that we file and sometimes they become public documents. I mean in many cases we get permission to file as a Jane Doe, but they're telling me everything.
And I had a holiday party and I invited some of my clients and there was this moment I'll never forget where three of my clients met each other, and they're all people who were under vicious, vicious attacks by psychos and then they all have had very public legal cases. And so there's a trauma in going through the legal system and then there's an additional trauma of having it become public and reported about in the news, not to mention the underlying trauma of what actually happened.
And to see these three people meet, they knew each other's stories from having read them in newspapers and magazines. They'd been so honest about what had happened and I was just thinking about how generous they were with . . . and I mean it was like a public good that they've done by not just holding their offender accountable but disclosing what happened to them in order to do it. And being open with the media so that other people could learn from this. I was inspired by that.
My clients, they're heroic. Just on the way here I was talking about some of my 13/14-year-old clients and it's really there's nothing better than to have somebody who's very socially ignored take on like a many billion dollar defendant and force that defendant to come to the table and plead their case against a 14-year-old girl of color from Brooklyn.
(42:18)
Aminatou: I'm just like getting goosebumps. I love that your law firm motto is the law firm that turns victims into warriors because clearly that's true and clearly you care so much. I hate when people say like "Here's the silver lining of something bad that's happened to you." I actually want to push all those people into oncoming traffic because I don't believe we need trauma to learn anything. We need trauma to . . .
Carrie: Yeah, what doesn't kill you -- yeah, what doesn't kill you . . .
Aminatou: Actually I don't believe that. I would've lived a great life if I had not been traumatized and I don't need to learn any of those lessons so this is not the way I mean that. But it's just very heartening to know that there is still a benefit in sharing your story. I think that especially in this moment where we are really under assault in every way by powerful institutions and our politicians and our president is literally a rapist, to think about the fact that actually you don't have to shrink. If you tell your story there are still people who will latch onto that and you will free other people in telling your story and you'll free yourself. So thanks for being, as you call yourself, a ruthless motherfucker.
Carrie: [Laughs]
Aminatou: Because it's just, you know, this is just not the time to be quiet. And every day I wake up and that's not my impulse. My impulse is just I want to crawl into a hole, you know? And then just remembering that no, actually people are brave and so I have to be brave too. And so I really, really enjoyed talking to you and I enjoyed reading your book. It was really painful and it was hard and I just was like ugh, why does this happen to people, you know? But the truth is actually that's not the frame. The frame is that bad things happen to people all the time. You have to be prepared for it. And my hope is really that people -- people will pick it up for years and know there are things that they can do, you know?
Carrie: Yeah.
(44:00)
Aminatou: And that there are so many ways they can fight and that they don't have to feel ashamed about the bad things that happen to them.
Carrie: It's absolutely true. And you asked earlier and I kind of went on a deep digression about all the tools that are available but there are so many tools. There's, you know, family court, orders of protection, cease and desist letters, I know what you did last summer letters [Laughs] to send to offenders. And no one is expected to know that stuff which is why it's so important that people who've had something horrible happen to them, that they surround themselves with good advisers.
Aminatou: Yeah. I mean, you know, and not to end this on like a bummer note of how bad the state sucks, I think that for a lot of us availing ourselves of tools from the state that are supposed to protect us is really -- it's very contentious and it's very hard, you know? I think that as a woman there are ways that I don't trust the state. As a black person there are ways that I want nothing to do with the state. And, you know, or with law enforcement. And yet right now, you know, I'm like this is the best that we have so we're going to muddle through it.
Carrie: Totally. I mean they have a monopoly on who gets punished. It's insane.
Aminatou: Well Carrie where can Call Your Girlfriend listeners keep up with you?
Carrie: Ooh! So the best case . . .
Aminatou: Can we come see you at court? Is that an option? [Laughs]
Carrie: Oh my god, that would be pretty fun to just like have . . . okay, so today we're filing our first SCOTUS petition.
Aminatou: Yes!
Carrie: So if they decide to hear our case then we can just pack the court. But I'm ferocious on Twitter, @cagoldberglaw and then my firm website is also cawgoldberglaw.com. We have a monthly newsletter that we send out that . . .
Aminatou: Oh I'm subscribing to that.
Carrie: It's fun stuff. And then I've got a little website for the book which is nobodys-victim.com, no apostrophe. Nobodys-victim.com. Thank you for having me Amina. This has been a really fun conversation.
(46:00)
Aminatou: Are you kidding? I'm going to show up at court. I don't care which court.
Carrie: [Laughs]
Aminatou: I'm going to be wearing my loudest outfit. Because for those of you who are at home who do not know, the story of Carrie Goldberg is that she's also one of the most fabulously-dressed New Yorkers. That's just -- not to diminish your intellect and all the hard work that you do, but if we're going to go here, not going to show up at court looking like a copy. Don't worry. I'm going to look like you. It's going to be perfect. [Laughs]
Carrie: Fashion show.
Aminatou: That's right. I'm sure it's very disarming for people in court when you walk in and you look amazing and they look like every factory churned out human being.
Carrie: You know, opposing council has never openly discussed that with me. [Laughter]
Aminatou: I'm going to look into it.
Carrie: It's not been in their legal papers and I have never gotten an injunction to dress more shabby. But, you know, there's always a first.
Aminatou: You are the best. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Carrie: Thank you so much.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: Ann, she is such a bad-ass. Like . . .
Ann: I appreciate her so much. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Such, such, such a bad-ass. You know, and also there's just really something to be said about -- again about not feeling ashamed about something that happened to you that you did not do to yourself. And also there's so many people that want to help and Carrie is one of those people. So it makes me really, really, really, really happy that she's a practicing lawyer.
(47:30)
Ann: Yeah. And also like, you know, that idea that we were talking about earlier before her interview of a taxonomy for some of these behaviors being hopefully a consolation. If you can see patterns it means that this is systemic which means it is bigger than any one person's action. Like I've often found a lot of comfort in knowledge like that when it is like oh, wow, the system is actually designed to produce people who perpetuate this kind of abuse or to protect people who perpetuate this kind of abuse because then we can also have people like Carrie who are working towards systemic solutions which so important.
Aminatou: And her book is called Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls. So you should definitely give it a read. Another resource that has been really helpful to me in thinking a lot about how to fight online harassment is this organization called Without My Consent. You can find them online at withoutmyconsent.org. There are a lot of really good resources on there about what you can start doing in the wake of online harassment. If you are someone who is experiencing online harassment you should know that you are definitely not alone and even though it seems very daunting there are places that you can go for help.
Ann: And also it's not your fault. That's the other thing that may be the most important thing to end on: it is not your fault.
Aminatou: It's not your fault. It's not your fault and you should not shrink back from life online or offline because of it.
Ann: It's true. We want to see you on the Internet!
Aminatou: I know, definitely. See everybody on the Internet.
Ann: With your consent we want to see you on the Internet. [Laughter]
Aminatou: Consensually. Thank you. Ann, I will also see you on the Internet.
Ann: Always. Always.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf where Sophie Carter-Kahn does all of our social. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.