Why are we so obsessed with nudity?

This week I made a homemade ice cream! Who would have known that this would ever be the highlight of my week? Things are that bad.

The best part of it is that it tasted amazing when I topped it up with fruit salad! Well, I also managed to bake a cake (which was inedible- because of the devil and his demons), but let's focus on the positives for now.

I'm loving the man I am becoming, or whatever that is people say when they're going through tough times and want to sound positive.

The truth is you have to find things to do that will act as your emotional anchor through this period. What have your coping mechanisms been this week?

One of my coping measures is being online. It's one of those things that we should do less of but when things get tough, I find myself doing more of.

I don't even know what I go to look for but I go there anyway. It's my escape from the 'real world' - which is funny when I say it out loud because there's no escape when you're going online; that's just a seamless part of the rest of the world.

This week we got some good news: the number of people who have recovered from Covid-19 disease has risen to 22; they include Brenda and Brian, who went on media tours like pop stars.

NUDES LEAKED

Online detectives otherwise known as #KOT DCI started doing a bit of digging on the two youngsters and some things weren't adding up.

I was enjoying the drama! It's interesting to see how in one-hour people can find all your online profiles and the name of your childhood cat and your grandmother's sister's watchman.

At some point, however, things went South, never to recover again. Someone leaked Brenda's nudes! I was so disappointed.

I don't know what was more disappointing - me not seeing this coming, the man who leaked them or people's reactions online.

I watched the conversations on Twitter and they were going downhill, with her nudes being made into memes. It was disgusting.

In the digital era, nudes are now part of our daily lives. We now have more ways of expressing ourselves from the era of men getting excited over petticoats.

We moved from raunchy letters, to phone sex, to nudes and video calls! I'm always one for free and full sexual expression.

I've met a number of 'lady in the streets and freaks in the sheets' types and I like that people are living open lives.

POWER PLAY

The ugly part about it though is when some people who you may have entrusted with your most intimate images decide its fair game to share them.

I don't understand exactly what goes through the minds of men (because it's primarily men who do this) and why we don't drive sense to our fellow males.

Apart from the fact that it's a criminal offence (as per the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, 2018), it's absolutely despicable.

I remembered a story I read a while back on a Telegram channel where members shared leaked nudes. It's still active and has 75,000 members.

Those are not accidental members. Those are tens of thousands of people actively looking for leaked nudes and that's perhaps reflective of the fact that we don't view it as something serious or wrong, or a form of sexual violence, or something that you should be ashamed of.

Many times men who do this do it as a power play — bitter men who have been dumped, annoyed men who can't imagine their exes moving on, and men who feel that they're "teaching her a lesson", and the ones we all know who do it to brag to their friends that they bagged a certain girl (who they never thought they ever would)

AMICABLE SOLUTION

Those aren't bad or terrible men though. They're men just like you and me who feel that it's fair game to shame women sexually because it's the quickest go-to for men who feel that they need to assert dominance over women.

We can't let this be the norm and let it slide any longer. It's harmful to the people it happens to and causes untold pain.

I've had two friends who this happened to and one quit school for a full academic year because of the shame.

The leaked visuals caused indescribable emotional and psychological pain, just because some man somewhere couldn't handle rejection.

There is nothing powerful about shaming women. If you disagree with a woman and you can't cobble together a logical argument, don't reach for her sexuality.

Think about why you disagreed and work towards becoming a better human being.