Katie Hill's farewell speech after less than a year as a member of Congress from California's 25th district was apologetic, to the people she said she let down, and it was defiant, to the people she said had set her up, who practiced the "gutter politics" of a "misogynistic culture," and who exploited and punished her with a double standard about sexual conduct whose male transgressors, she said, are found anywhere from Congress to the Oval Office.
In the ordinary course of things, the allegation that the promising young Democrat had an affair with a member of her congressional staff _ something which Congress banned only last year, and something she denies _ would have been investigated by the House Ethics Committee, and the outcome and consequences known.
But it was Hill's intimate relationships during her divorce, and the publishing of naked photos of her that sprayed gasoline on the process and, in the end, burned it all down, turned a serious procedural matter into a salacious internet sensation, and lit a match to discussions about so-called revenge porn, about women's sexual identities, and about that double standard.
Hill is just the latest and highest-profile target of this particular kind of online harassment. Years ago, after explicit images of Holly Jacobs were posted online, she decided to dedicate herself to helping other victims, and founded the Florida-based Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, an online resource advising and advocating for victims. She's also hoping that the same Congress where Katie Hill briefly served will make "nonconsensual pornography" a federal crime.
