What To Do With Your Home-Made Porn

On Monday a woman wrote to Slate’s advice columnist, Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence.

I will tell you up front that I consider Yoffe to be among the best of the breed. It is not easy writing an advice column, and she does a fine job. Monday, however, she did not.

Yoffe received this note which I will reprint in its entirety: “I married my ex-husband when I was 21. Early on, we took Playboy-style pictures and saved them as slides. We divorced years ago and he kept the slides. I recently asked for our joint slides to digitize the pictures of our foreign travels. I found the old nudie pics in the slide boxes he happily sent me. I do not feel comfortable with sending these slides back to him. I want to burn them. Do I need to warn him before I destroy these slides? I have no reason to believe he would share them after all this time, but with the ease with which pictures travel the Internet, I do not want them going public. Your opinion, please.”

I would guess that this woman is not the only person who has starred in home-made porn or semi-porn. I find nothing especially strange in the woman’s wish to burn the slides.

I was surprised to discover the Yoffe does. I accept that she wants to spare the woman more embarrassment, by treating the exposure as nothing very important. Still, if you had discovered that “nudie” pictures of you were stashed in your ex-spouse’s home, how would you feel? What would you do?

To be fair to all involved, I will quote Yoffe’s answer in its entirety. You can judge for yourself what it shows. For me it sounds like it was written by Miss Imprudence.

Yoffe writes: “It sounds as if you are on good terms with your ex, so I think you should be honest and say while you were looking at your old photos of your trips to the Tetica de Bacares mountains in Spain and the Grand Tetons out West, you came upon some photos reminiscent of those sites you'd both forgotten about. Tell him now that you've stumbled upon your old photo shoot, you want to hang onto this evidence of a fitter time. You have a strong case since you're now actually in possession of the photos and they're images of you. He'd be hard-pressed to make the case that he owns them; surely he's not going to try to re-open your divorce settlement over this.

“But don't burn them! If you looked good enough to be an amateur Playmate, why destroy the evidence? Everyone is entitled to an envelope of sexy pictures stuck in the sock drawer. When someday you're clearing everything out for the move to the retirement community, how nice it will be to find these again and think, ‘Irrefutable evidence that I was hot’!"

So, Yoffe has now created a new entitlement. She wants this woman to look forward to the day when she will be sitting around the old age home showing her new friends pictures of her more vibrant, younger, more firm and more fertile body.

I hope I am not the only one who finds it strange that grandparents would want to be remembered for their youthful hotness. Is it really an achievement worthy of being engraved on your tombstone: When Young, She Was Really Hot?

Yoffe is also not helping the young women and girls who are being assailed with invitations to sext pictures of their genitalia to their friends.

When a boy tells your daughter that she should sext him a picture of her bare naked self, because she will never be as young and ripe and hot again, well then, should she do it because when she enters the geriatric ward she will want to have a few pictures of her younger hotness?

If it’s such a good idea, then why would it be a bad idea for a young person to emulate it. Yoffe goes astray in failing to entertain this possibility.  

Shockingly, Yoffe expresses no awareness of the risks attendant on the existence of such pictures. None whatever. Has she already forgotten what happened to Anthony Weiner?

The author of the letter seems all too aware of the risks in having these slides in someone’s sock drawer. Yoffe does not seem to know that children and other humans often rummage through sock drawers?

Perhaps this woman does not want her children seeing her in that posture? Perhaps she fears that her children might show them off to their friends?

Yoffe does not seem to understand that when your nudity is in put on public display, you lose respect. Why would anyone want their children or grandchildren to respect them less?

However well the woman and her ex-husband are getting along now, who knows whether or not they will always be on such amicable terms. Many divorces are not as amicable as this one, and in some of them, similar pictures have been used for ill intent.

Surely it is within the bounds of our imagination to see a man trying to negotiate a smaller alimony payment by threatening to release compromising photos onto the internet.  

And what if the woman has an important career, in public service or in a respected profession. Doesn’t the existence of such photos subject her to blackmail threats?

We have read a good letter from a woman who has good moral sense. She is looking for guidance from a respected advice columnist, and said columnist is trying to talk her out of her good moral sense.

As for her explicit question: Should this woman just burn the slides or should she discuss the matter with her ex-husband?

The answer is clear enough: She should burn the damned slides.

Usually Emily Yoffe knows better, but she seems to be far too infatuated with the ridiculous idea that every issue in life can be resolved by an open and honest conversation.

Think through what might happen in the course of the conversation that Yoffe recommends.

Do keep in mind that the man might well have forgotten about the slides. Why is it to anyone’s advantage to remind him of their existence? Might he find a current use for them?

If the woman brings up the issue with her ex-husband isn’t she inciting both of them to recall the times they spend taking the pictures? Explain to me what either of them has to gain by this mutual remembering.

And what should she say if he decides that he wants to hold on to the slides? If he took the pictures himself doesn’t he have some rights to them?

If the woman follows Yoffe’s advice and says that she wants to keep the slides, then why should he not have the right to make his own copies?

Since the woman wants to burn the slides, why doesn’t Yoffe respect her wishes? After all, the pictures are of her; doesn’t she have a right to control who does or does not see them?

Have we really arrived at the point where moral dilemmas are resolved in favor of what is going to titillate your friends in the old age home?

Last Monday Emily Yoffe’s first piece of advice was radically and egregiously wrong.