Sex Tapes and Why We Might Have a Bigger Problem on Our Hands

Fame often comes with many burdens in tow, chief among these burdens being the almost complete lack of privacy that many celebrities and famous people have to bear. The glamour, attention and occasional worship can sometimes make all the other inconveniences seem like a fair bargain. Still, when all the chips are down, the truth remains that everyone has the right to exist privately in their own space, without fear of judgement or ridicule.

Over the years, we have seen sex tapes of people, both famous and otherwise, leaked to the public. The people in these sex tapes eventually become the butt of nasty jokes and are never allowed to live down the memory. If we look carefully beyond the sex tapes themselves, we will find a more significant problem that is the inability of adults to understand and respect consent and boundaries.

Are we slowly becoming a people to whom everything is a joke? A people so invested in their ignorance that the lines between what is acceptable and what is not have blurred to the point of disappearance? Many will argue that the making of the tapes themselves is the problem. Others think that people are allowed to do whatever they want in the privacy of their homes as long as the acts are consensual. Whatever your school of thought may be, I believe that the main issues lie with the concepts of boundaries and consent and the fact that these two issues have proven time and time again to be too hard for the average Nigerian to grab.

In the end, the cause for concern isn’t just in the making or leaking of these sex tapes but the eagerness with which they are received and distributed by the public because this is where the power lies. The people who leak or threaten to leak such content depend on the public’s thirst for scandal and their propensity to judge and condemn everyone but themselves. Without this, such people have zero leverage. One would think that with the amount of free pornography available on the internet, people would stop drooling at the announcement of another leaked sex tape, but it isn’t the sex that riles them up but the promise of humiliation that it holds.

Maybe we will one day realize that we are now at an age where privacy breaches like this should be heavily condemned and not propagated, but on the other hand, maybe we won’t.