May is Sexual Violence Prevention Month in Ontario. In other locations, the month may instead be referred to as Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM). Draw the Line (OCRCC)’s use of language offers a helpful distinction:
- In 2022, the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres (OCRCC) discussed how since #MeToo, the drive for awareness was successful. Disclosures that were shared began to lift the shame and stigma attached to conversations around sexual violence. With this culture shift, the OCRCC chose to shift from awareness to prevention. The choice of wording, in using ‘violence’ as opposed to ‘assault,’ was also intentional, in an effort to move away from a legal term and shift emphasis to the experience and impact of sexual violence.
Back in March, the Northwestern Ontario Women’s Centre hosted the annual Flag Raising Ceremony for International Women’s Day; here a crowd of activist, allies, and community members came together to hear the words of our guest speaker, Karen Slomke. Karen is a registered Social Worker who has worked in the community of Thunder Bay for the past 30 years. Her speech drew from her own understanding of how trauma informs and impacts our community on an individual and collective basis in this time of technology, with an emphasis on the local event in March 2025 where citizens of Thunder Bay were charged with exploiting other citizens through the sharing of intimate, stolen images of local women.
Below is Karen’s speech in full, shared at the beginning of this month of awareness as a reminder that “our collective action today can change the future for all of us in our communities”:
Good morning, everyone, I am honoured to be speaking with each of you today as a part of the celebration of International Women’s Day. And thank you for the kind introduction. Today, I am speaking specifically in relation to the recent event of twelve local individuals being charged with offenses related to the stolen images of local women and girls.
I will talk about the influence of technology on relationships, privacy and consent – specifically how it impacts women and girls in our community. While issues of privacy violations and online harm can affect anyone, we know that girls and women disproportionately bear the consequences of these actions.
The community harm of this ongoing behaviour of stealing and sharing the images of women and girls needs to be addressed if it is to ever change. It not only impacts the women and girls in the images, but every woman and girl and every person who cares about women and girls. This impact creates trauma responses in every layer of our community due to the powerlessness experienced through these careless and criminal actions.
The generational age of the accused in this local case are among the first generations of adults who grew up with intimate photos of others on their phone, on their person, in their pocket, in their home. The images they carried were not purchased and were not produced with the intention of publicity. The early normalization of breaching privacy, combined with a lack of clear legal consequences may have contributed to a false sense of entitlement – where individuals falsely believed they had the right to possess and share intimate images that were never meant for them.
Asking for nudes is a phenomenon that intensified with the cell phone due to the ease of taking and sharing images privately and instantly. The delayed consequences to possessing and sharing images was due to the unmonitored nature of the internet. This created a false security that having and sharing these images was not illegal. These slow consequences create time for significant harm through further and further sharing and manipulation of the images. The images themselves are not the issue unless they were attained through extortion – it is the violation of ownership, privacy and consent that has caused and continues to cause harm. Indeed, if individuals were carrying around a physical stack of the intimate images presently in their phones, they would be easily perceived as breaking community codes of behaviour.
Secondly, there is a significant shift in the intrinsic rewards of individuals involved in these behaviours. The act of illicitly obtaining and sharing intimate and sexualized images does not foster trust or connection with the women in the images. Instead, these individuals experience a fleeting rush of power that is reinforced not through genuine intimacy but through secrecy and control. This creates harmful dynamics among men, where the act of sharing images with one another becomes a bonding experience at the expense of women’s safety and dignity.
There is a lack of meaningful and easy access opportunities for men to create connection with each other in our community. Historically, many men found a sense of purpose and camaraderie through altruistic community service. Today, while sports and gaming provide social connection, they often prioritize competition and performance over emotional and social well-being.
The environments of sports and gaming connect the quick release feelings of power as more comfortable, attainable and sustainable, than the slower growth of connection and intimacy which require a different vulnerability and different expectation of reward. As time goes by, we see the continued growth of sport and gaming, and the reduction of community involvement in care activities with all populations. Our society may be becoming less and less familiar with emotional connection and accountability that creates safe relationships. Expanding opportunities for men to engage in meaningful, altruistic community-driven activities could help shift these dynamics.
There is an incredible need for men and boys to value, experience and appreciate the privilege of connection and emotional intimacy and trust with women, as it is intrinsic to women’s safety. When women and girls’ identities are reduced to objects such as images, as things to have power over, instead of being valued as someone to share intimacy, it is psychologically easier for men to harm women through all forms of violence. Men need to understand that the feeling of power is a brief and easily corrupted experience which can lead to more and more extreme behaviour. This disconnect is evident in the current epidemic of violence against women and girls in Canada right now. Current data shows a woman or girl is killed in Canada every 48 hours.
Previously, a women’s identity was only named after she was dead when she was the victim of an interpersonal crime. Women now appear to be recognizing that the shame of criminal behaviour belongs to the assailants and that women’s anonymity only perpetuates the lack of true accountability of the men in question. Women are choosing not to ‘protect’ their identities when they are victimized which actually holds the assailants and the community to greater account, as women’s voices are changing the stories of how we interpret crime. Women’s bravery to name their experiences without internalizing the shame of men’s behaviour is an important change in the narrative of the violence men perpetuate.
There is a clear need for new community and society norms. Imagine a new tradition: On the eve of every International Women’s Day, men collectively commit to deleting any images that were never theirs to keep. A simple but profound action that respects privacy and integrity. We would delete any images that are not connected our mutually chosen current relationship. This would reinforce the knowledge that images of women’s and girl’s bodies are not images of objects, but extensions of a person’s identity that you cannot own simply because the image exists.
Further, we need to normalize deleting all intimate images of a former partner as a standard part of ending a relationship – just as people once returned personal belongings like jackets or keepsakes after a breakup, while keeping gifts meant to be theirs. This preventative action reinforces mutual respect and value.
Secondly, that along with new norms of terminating relationships, we need to teach boys and men how to process emotions of sadness, disappointment, rejection, anger in healthy ways – without resorting to revenge, control or violence. Relationships are not about winning or power; they are about mutual respect and shared vulnerability. Perhaps with more education on experiencing and processing these emotions there will be a decrease in the revenge behaviours we now see that are compromising women’s personal and family safety. Men’s capacity to manage the emotions of loss and change would decrease the significant and increasing violence and femicide that currently haunts our society.
The third step would be for adults to get off their technology and get personally involved in the care of community through participation in volunteer organizations directed at addressing community concerns. This would replace the fleeting rewards of power over others with lasting rewards of the collaborative power of creating change.
Fourth, women and girls impacted by these criminal behaviours deserve the time, support and resources to return to wellness through opportunities that create mental wellness and personal, family, and community safety. Women and girls deserve to live in a safe and supportive community of allies and advocates. This safety is, in part, created by men taking accountability for their mental health, because all men have emotions, all men are susceptible to trauma, and all men are accountable for their behaviours. Men need to be aware of their emotional struggles and access their own opportunities to improve their capacity for processing emotion before those emotions create negative behaviours. Accountability for this incident could look like at least 117 apologies and a presentation at every school around the dangers of their behaviour.
Lastly, I do hope someone does some qualitative research with the group of charged individuals to determine the necessary educational strategies to assist all men in their clear understanding of the value of women as people, and to ensure their clear awareness that no aspect of a woman or a girl’s life is ever up for possession, or ownership by another person. Our collective action today can change the future for all of us in our communities. Let’s not wait- let’s start now.
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