Rep. Katie Hill: The Most Important 'Revenge Porn' Case?

Rep. Katie Hill of California's 25th District wasn't supposed to win the 2018 election. After all, the seat had been held by Republicans since the 1992 elections, first by Howard McKeon, then Steve Knight did a four-year stint. He's the one Hill defeated, in part because of her election platform which included reforming healthcare, rebuilding the middle class, addressing income inequality and affordable housing, and getting big money out of politics. On that last note, she ran her entire campaign without accepting a dime from corporate PACs, amassing a little over $1 million from 5,100 individual donors. And of course, the other reason Hill won was that her district, which includes the northern San Fernando Valley and parts of Santa Barbara and San Bernardino Counties, not to mention Californians in general, had become sick of Donald Trump and his cronies screwing everyone from the working poor to veterans to immigrants to environmentalists... the list goes on. Of course, Hill is just 32 years old, so one might almost expect that she'd done a bit of sexual experimentation—she's admitted to being bisexual—and of course, that's part of what did her in, politically. But according to most political commentators, what actually forced her resignation this past Sunday was the fact that nude photos of her and one of her 2018 campaign staffers surfaced on the far-right-wing website RedState.com, as well as in the UK's The Daily Mail, all thanks to her soon-to-be ex-husband Kenny Heslep, who'd joined the women for a threeway or two—and those who think religio-conservative media in the U.S. aren't making bales of hay out of this just haven't been keeping up with the news for the past decade or so. Or as The Guardian's (UK) Moira Donegan puts it, "Hill’s own conduct—tacky, unprofessional, and ill-advised as it was—pales in comparison to what is being done to her, which amounts to a misogynist right-wing smear campaign. The publication of the nude photograph belies any claim RedState and other Republicans may make to being concerned about the ethics of Hill’s conduct." After all, a picture's worth a thousand words, right? "Revenge porn, an increasingly common tactic of misogynist rancor, is ... a particularly hateful gesture, meant to humiliate and degrade its target," Donegan continued. "The very point of revenge porn is to discredit its victims, because in the misogynist logic that propels it, for a woman to have sex is to surrender her claims to privacy, authority, or the belief or sympathy of others. What Hill’s attackers want us to think is that if she was worthy of being a congressperson, she wouldn’t be having sex at all." And of course, there was no need for RedState and others to publish the nude photos. After all, they'd already published some intimate text messages between Hill and the staffer... but a picture's worth a thousand words, right? "The use of certain images, while holding back on more scandalous ones, showed editorial restraint many outlets seem to have forgotten—that you can post enough to show something happened without posting too much and losing the point of the story," RedState senior editor Joe Cunningham laughably claimed, implying that there were more sexually explicit photos of Hill out there to whet the appetite of the ravenous, anti-sex conservative hordes. (By the way, RedState is part of Townhall Media, which sends out Townhall Daily, a collection of conservatives' writings. Townhall Media, in turn, is an affiliate of the Salem Media Group, which according to Right Wing Watch claims to have "successfully reached audiences interested in Christian and family-themed content and conservative values" for over 40 years. And what's more "family-themed" and "conservative" than nude photos of a female Democratic politician?) So let's be as clear about this as was sex-positive feminist journalist Jessica Valenti, who wrote on Medium.com, "Revenge porn is a form of domestic and sexual abuse. It’s a way to control, humiliate, and punish. ... Make no mistake: Hill was the victim of a crime, but she’s the only person being punished." Make that "punished in spades." Just today, Newsbusters.org, formerly the Christian News Service, published three—count 'em, three—articles on Hill, mostly dealing with how the major TV networks have been handling the news, terming it a "bizarre sex scandal"—and mostly claiming that those mainstream sources haven't spent enough time "examining" (that is, bashing) Hill's behavior. Altogether, Newsbusters has published six screeds on Hill since RedState broke the original story. And while a couple of news outlets have made mention of Hill being the victim of a "double standard," that point was driven home by Jezebel.com's Esther Wang, who noted, "California Representative Duncan Hunter, after all, is alleged to have had numerous affairs in recent years, including with a member of his staff, the aide of another Republican member of Congress, and several lobbyists. These romantic and sexual relationships came to light when the Justice Department charged Hunter with illegally using campaign funds to pay for everything from his vacations to his boozing habits and found that he had spent thousands to finance his affairs. Yet despite these both ethical and criminal violations, Hunter, whose federal trial will begin next January, remains in office." As for Hill herself, she's planning to sue The Daily Mail for claiming that Hill has a Nazi symbol, an iron cross, tattooed somewhere on her body, but her political career has at least been put on hold—if not deep-sixed entirely. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is empowered to choose a replacement for Hill until a special election can be held, and it seems likely that another Democrat will be chosen to replace her, though just when that election will take place is unknown.