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Video transcript

We’ll be coming up with four things we’ve already done that made us feel 

good, safe, or in control after or during the abuse

. You can write this down if that’s a safe and accessible option, otherwise, just make a mental note. These could be things like, “I started doing more exercise,” “I talked to my friend about what happened” or “I blocked requests on my social media.” It can even be, “I took this Bloom course.”

Now whenever we feel difficult emotions coming up during these sessions, we’ll come back to this note and remind ourselves of how we’ve already taken care of and shown up for ourselves. 

Bonus Content: Types of image-based abuse

Bonus Content: Reporting image-based abuse

Bonus Content: The social consequences of victim blaming

Bonus Content: What’s wrong with calling it revenge porn or sexting gone wrong?

We explore the social context of image-based abuse and learn tools for processing our emotions, understanding our responses, and healing from trauma. We remind ourselves that we are not to blame. 

Image-based abuse and rebuilding ourselves

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Overview

We discuss the impact of image-based abuse on our lives, understand its social and cultural context, identify some common victim-blaming myths, and recognise that we are not to blame for the abuse. 

The social context of image-based abuse and victim-blaming 

Session 1

‘Image-based abuse and rebuilding ourselves.’ 

I’m Francesca, and this is Paz, and we are here to bring you our very first session. 

If you’re here today, chances are that your life has been impacted by image-based abuse. This abuse is carried out through images and videos; from the leaking of our nudes to an abuser sending us unsolicited pictures. If we shared our images consensually and these were misused, this is also abuse. Image-based abuse doesn’t only happen online, and it’s not only sexual. No matter your exact experience, we hope you will find our course helpful. 

 Definitely, our goal at Bloom is to inform, empower, and support your healing journey. Together we will unpack image-based abuse. You might have questions or want to understand your experience better, invest in your healing, and empower yourself with practical tools for recovery. No matter what stage of your journey you are at, this course is for you.

Before we start, you might want to explore some definitions of the different types of image-based abuse, in which case, head over to our bonus content. Finally, remember that you can pause this video whenever you want a break.

Yes, definitely. So, we’ll start today with a grounding exercise involving

We are going to try and imagine a place or scene that makes us feel safe. It can be somewhere you’ve been before, a place you remember, maybe from a holiday. Or it could be somewhere you’ve heard about, maybe in a story, or even a place you invent. Paz, what are you imagining as your safe space?

 I’m in my grandma’s garden, she lives near the beach like 600 kms south of my city so whenever I go it’s like a big trip and I love to sit in her garden. What about you?

 That’s so beautiful. I actually just went to Costa Rica, and there was a place that was kind of a garden, like a hot spring thing. And it was in the hot river and I felt very healthy, very warm and very safe. 

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take together a few deep breaths. Notice the feelings and sensations that come up in your body. Notice if you are feeling positive. Have a look around and take a mental picture. This is your 

’ and you can come here whenever you want to feel calm and secure.

A grounding exercise that works for some of us may not work for others. That’s why we’ll be doing a different one in each session, so we can all find exercises that suit our needs and abilities. You can access more grounding exercises on our platform. 

 Surviving image-based abuse can radically change our lives. Some of these changes may be noticeable, like deleting all our social media accounts or relocating. Others might be less noticeable, like constant feelings of anxiety or fear around someone knowing our name or recording us. 

 that the abuse and its overwhelming reach not only significantly changed our relationship with our bodies, emotions, and sense of identity, but that it also had consequences for our family, school, community or work lives. 

 We’ll explore this impact throughout the course but remember that every experience of image-based abuse is 

 There is no right or wrong way to feel, and there most certainly is no such thing as an overreaction.

After image-based abuse, it’s natural to think: why did it happen? Why did someone do this to me? Am I to blame? 

You’re not alone in thinking this way. 

 No, and most image-based abuse is designed to harm, humiliate, threaten, control, coerce, manipulate, and objectify us. Ultimately, this abuse is rooted in the same social structures, which enable all violence. And in all forms of abuse,

Research tells us that abusers may have motives, like wanting money, 

. Consider celebrity deepfakes, such as those experienced by Hollywood actress 

. In deepfakes, the face of a person is taken from their image and superimposed onto the body of another person, creating a morphed explicit visual. 

People who create celebrity deepfakes usually don’t know the celebrities personally, so they are likely doing it for reasons like gaining fame, asserting control, and maintaining their power. It also points to the dehumanisation of women and a feeling of entitlement over our bodies in the public eye. In the case of Rana Ayyub, her deepfakes were circulated to discourage her from pursuing investigative journalism.

No single motive drives abusers to be violent. They carry out these actions with entitlement; they feel they have the right to abuse us because we are at a disadvantage.

There may be no way to make sense of why image-based abuse happens. But what we can do is understand that this was a choice the abuser made.

 And we are not to blame. If you want, you can repeat this with us each time we say it: I am not to blame. It was not my fault.

 I am not to blame, it was not my fault. The social and political context, in which image-based abuse occurs, significantly influences our experience. Most of us live in patriarchal societies where men hold the power, and women and marginalised genders are largely excluded. Even though we are usually targeted by image-based abuse, despite their power and dominance, men also experience it as well as other harms of a patriarchal system. 

‘Society, patriarchy, and sexual trauma’

We know that no two people’s experiences of image-based abuse are identical, and they differ based on things like class, age, race, caste, gender, profession, nationality, disability, ethnicity, and sexuality.

What does that mean? Well, let’s consider an example. Ofcom’s 

 highlights that in the UK, women from ethnic minorities were three times as likely as white women to have experienced sharing of intimate images and four times as likely to have received an unsolicited sexual visual. Targeted both because of gender and ethnicity, these women are experiencing the 

Or for example, as a trans sex worker, people might dismiss our experiences of image-based abuse, saying this is normal for sex workers or that our gender identity is to blame. Actually, this is

, where others hold us responsible for the acts of the abuser. The risks of victim-blaming are higher for marginalised groups already subjected to everyday prejudices. Dealing with this can really wear us down. We’ll talk more about victim-blaming soon. 

Now living in a patriarchal society means that even before the internet, image-based abuse was being practised. For example, 

abusive partners could submit our pictures to pornographic magazines

 or abusers could take photographs of unsuspecting neighbours. While the internet has facilitated such abuse, it is not the root cause. In a patriarchy, there are always practices to subdue the less powerful. And in many countries, image-based abuse is still practised offline.

How much our social lives and interactions change after this abuse can be shaped by the opinions of people around us and the values of our culture. For example, many communities are male-dominated, so image-based abuse is often discussed in a way that stigmatises survivors of marginalised genders. As members of these communities, we absorb these ideas. In these conversations, the term ‘stigma’ refers to a behaviour or a property of a person that a community defines as ‘allowed’ or ‘not allowed.’ This doesn’t always correlate with our legal or formal systems. 

 For instance, in many places, sex before marriage is stigmatised or even criminalised. So we might experience stigma because a video of us having sex was circulated, but also because others believe we ‘shouldn’t have been’ having sex in the first place if we are unmarried. In some communities, a lot of value is placed on family honour or preserving the community’s reputation, so after abuse, we will be told that we have ruined the so-called family name or be kicked out of our house or community. 

. In many communities, simply being seen doing something considered ‘inappropriate’ through a patriarchal lens can get women killed. It could be filming an innocent video for TikTok, a video of us dancing with our sisters fully clothed, or a picture with a romantic partner when we are forbidden to date. 

This might also be linked to ideas of so-called ‘honour’ so there might not be nudity in the images and yet we face consequences. Despite this, the problematic terms ‘revenge porn’ or ‘sexting gone wrong’ are often used for image-based abuse. Visit our bonus content to find out why we don’t agree with these labels that contribute to victim-blaming. 

The good news is that more and more forms of image-based abuse are being recognised as a crime, in countries like 

Japan, UK, Pakistan, Mexico, the Philippines, and Australia

. But as a newer and fast-changing form of abuse, the general understanding of it, the laws around it and their implementation is often lagging. 

Many survivors seeking justice through the legal system may feel disappointed by their response; a form of re-traumatisation when we feel that our experience was dismissed. 

You are not alone, and you were not at fault

. Actually, it is the system that has failed you.

 We also know that technology is often built with inherent bias. Work is needed to ensure that it addresses the needs of survivors, such as through prevention and safety features. If we tried to report abuse to tech authorities, this might have also been hard to navigate. To learn more about types of reporting, look at our bonus content.

 As we explore this very large, complicated issue, remember that we can always return to this truth: no matter what we experienced,

We do not need to carry society’s shame

. But this can be particularly difficult to accept when we are being victim-blamed. 

People may have said things to us like “You should have known better,” “Why did you trust them?” “You were foolish to take those pictures,” or “How did you not see the red flags?” 

 is when others make us feel like we are to blame for the abuse, because of something they think we have done. 

 We may hear these comments from family, friends, and those in our community, but also on the internet. People who know nothing about us victim-blame us online or even begin trolling and abusing us further. We get questions like: why did you allow this to happen, why didn’t you stop it, or why didn’t you contact authorities? 

 We might also observe paradoxes in people’s views. For example, sharing nudes might be considered typical for couples in our generation but if these are used to abuse us, others hold us responsible instead of seeing this as ordinary behaviour.

 Being blamed for what happened can be excruciatingly painful. We often internalise these comments, and they make us doubt our decisions so that we feel irresponsible and stupid. For example, we may have been told we’re ‘bad’ or ‘invited’ the abuse because we were in a particular location, wore certain clothes, or talked to a stranger online. 

 It can be easy for us to believe that we could have prevented the abuse if only we ‘knew better’ or saw what others claim to have seen. It’s normal to feel bouts of extreme shame, guilt, and regret. 

Victim-blaming can often come from those supposed to help, like police, healthcare professionals, or support workers. This can be more difficult to face because we might need their help, but they may lack proper training. As members of this society, they express the same harmful opinions. Know that they are wrong to treat us in this way, and it is okay to feel lots of different ways in response to this treatment. 

 Unfortunately, victim-blaming can go beyond spiteful comments and accusations. In our bonus content, we explore how sometimes there can be consequences like being socially cut off, mocked, or punished at school, in the workplace, or in our communities at large. This could be why the abuser targeted us in the first place. 

 Others may also be minimising our experience, telling us we have no reason to be upset. Or that there are bigger problems in the world. Some people don’t fully understand the extent of the harm we face. They say things like “It’s not 

 abuse” or “It was just online so it wasn’t 

bad.” We may be told to ignore the abuse. 

For example, if an abuser sends us explicit pictures, we might be told that it happens to everyone and is no big deal. All this minimisation can be really painful to experience, and even more so when the abuse is ongoing. The marks physical abuse leaves on our bodies, sometimes mean that it’s taken more seriously. 

 The complicated mix of victim-blaming and dismissal can be really difficult to face. But let’s be clear. Comments by others don’t define us. We are not the things people say we are, and we should not have to change our behaviour because of them. 

 We are never to blame for who they chose to be. To trust and want to trust others is an essential part of being human, as is the basic expectation that others will respect our safety and privacy. 

As we’ll learn in this course, while the impact of image-based abuse on our life may be invisible to others, for us it is as real and traumatic as any other violence. We understand this, and we are with you. 

 To wrap up our session, we’ll do a short activity. We’ll be coming up with four things we’ve already done that made us feel 

. You can write this down if that’s a safe and accessible option, otherwise, just make a mental note. These could be things like, “I started doing more exercise,” “I talked to my friend about what happened” or “I blocked requests on my social media.” It can even be, “I took this Bloom course.” 

 Exactly,  one of the things I usually do is I try to speak with my friends and I try to take care of my body and listen to the body signs telling me if I need to set more boundaries or rest, etc. What about you?

 I think that’s really helpful, isn’t it? Sometimes it can be hard to be in tune with that and what the body is telling us and sometimes yes, we might need to rest or be outside or do something else. And sometimes I like to try and feel the things, if I need to cry then I need to cry. If I need to be with my anger, I’ll be with that. And that also weirdly helps me feel more in control because I’m more connected.

Absolutely. Now whenever we feel difficult emotions coming up during these sessions, we’ll come back to this note and remind ourselves of how we’ve already taken care of and shown up for ourselves. 

As we do our healing work in Bloom, we will try to hold onto three facts:

 Together, we have unpacked why image-based abuse happens, learnt about victim-blaming, and reminded ourselves that we are not to blame. In our next session, we’ll start unpacking our emotions. Remember, that our community is here for you. 