What SHOULD You Say When Someone Shows You a Naked Photo That Isn't Yours to See?

Engaging with the Indefensible

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I wrote on Saturday about why Congressman Matt Gaetz, and so many men like him, feel compelled to share pictures that are not theirs to share.  Today, I want to look at how we ought to respond when someone we know does as Gaetz did on the House floor.

In the Washington Post yesterday, the humorist Alexandra Petri (I’d call her incomparable, but she merits comparison to Finley Peter Dunne and Will Rogers) writes of what she’d like to have happen when someone like the Dimwit from Destin shows off the private photos on his phone:

Ideally it happens only once. It happens only once, because the moment you do it, the person you show it to responds the way a person should respond. You produce your photograph to your colleague, and your colleague looks at you and says, “Never show that to anyone, ever again. Go home and rethink your life. I do not feel closer to you. If anything, I want to have you removed forcibly from my presence by strong gentlemen whose biceps are tattooed with ‘MOM.’ The fact that you thought this would make us closer makes me question every decision in my life that has led me to this point. Leave now and never come back.”

Petri is deft at finding humor in a serious matter, and there’s something wonderfully satisfying about imagining Matt Gaetz’s face if he heard a colleague say those words to him. 

Most of us aren’t ready with quips when put on the spot.  Many of us aren’t ready to automatically sever relationships with a friend or a colleague who might do as Gaetz did.  And perhaps most importantly, we know – or we should know – that “leave now and never come back” not only doesn’t produce repentance, it almost always encourages the offending person to dismiss whatever we have to say.  The Gaetzes of the world will walk away, shrugging their shoulders, perhaps muttering “Fuckin’ prude” under their breath.

If the goal of setting boundaries is to demonstrate to the world your own enviably high morality then by all means, flatter yourself that a witty put-down – dressed up in outrage and anger – will produce change in anyone else.  Congratulations, you’ve brought the dubious operating principle of Twitter into your real-life relationships!  You’ve made your point quickly and devastatingly, you heir to Dorothy Parker’s crown!  You deserve a whole week of moral satisfaction, wriggling in your clever righteousness like a ranch dog wriggling in a fresh cow patty.

Let me be clear: it is a grave violation of trust to show photos or videos to someone else that were intended for you alone.   What we want, though, is to find a way to stop the violations in a way that gets through to the violator.  You want what works, not necessarily what makes you sound righteous.  What works is conversation.  What works is ongoing relationship, not the end of one.  I’ve done a lot of men’s work, and I can assure you, turning away in disgust with contempt on your lips is the least effective tool you’ve got.

A few years ago, not long after I had started at Trader Joe’s, a young co-worker approached me in the break room.  “Check out this girl I’m seeing,” he said, and showed me a photo of a very young woman, naked in front of a mirror, iPhone in her hand, face in de rigueur duck-lipped pout. 

I looked away from the picture, and up at my friend.  What I hope were the right words came quickly. 

It was not always so.

This was not the first time this had happened to me.  In the summer of 1989, just before starting grad school at UCLA, I spent two months working as a file clerk for a lawyer in Century City.  Mr. Grantham was about the age I am now, in his stout mid-50s. His second wife, Stephanie, was about 28, only six years my senior.

One afternoon, Mr. Grantham called me into his office.  “I’m a very lucky man, Hugo,” he said.  “Let me show you how lucky.”

He reached into his desk and pulled out half a dozen Polaroids of Stephanie, and handed them to me.  I gazed at the pictures of Mrs. Grantham naked in various poses on the bed.  She was breathtaking.  I handed them back to Mr. Grantham, and feeling I had to say something, offered “Wow.”

“She’d kill me if she knew I showed them to you.  But I know I can trust ya,” my boss said with a grin. 

It was a two-fer.  Mr. Grantham was showing off, and he was testing me.  I knew the bro-code by heart, and, besides, I needed the job.  “My lips are sealed,” I said.  I added, because I knew I had to, that I agreed that he was very lucky.

Mrs. Grantham came into the office at least once a week, often dropping in unannounced, perhaps because she worried about what her husband was up to.  She was always very kind to me; she’d been a history major as well as a gymnast in college, and often mentioned that she still had thoughts of teaching.  Once, Mrs. G and I had a long conversation about her hero, Abigail Adams. 

The first time Mrs. G came in to the office after I had seen the photos, she arrived with deli sandwiches for her husband and me. 

She beamed as she dropped a bag on my desk.  “I remembered,” she cried happily, as she handed me a large diet Coke.  “Extra pickles and no mayo, right?”

“Right,” I said. “Thank you, Mrs. G!”

She gave me a friendly, utterly non-flirtatious wink, and bounced into her husband’s office. 

I felt sick inside.  Mrs. G fretted about her much-older husband on a number of counts; she worried about his workaholism, his heart problems, and his fidelity.  She treated me as an ally in watching over this man she did genuinely seem to love, enlisting me as friend and aide-de-camp.  Years earlier, as a teen, Mrs. G had babysat my fiancée – which was how I had gotten this job in the first place.  I couldn’t stop thinking about the photo I’d seen of the kind, vivacious Stephanie, starkers on her marriage bed, ankles tucked behind her neck.

I thought she might die a little inside if she knew I had seen it.  The sweet pickles I loved so much, and which she had remembered, tasted like rebuke.

I didn’t tell anyone what her husband had shown me. I despised him, and I despised myself more for having played his game.

This sort of violation happened again and again over the years, and eventually, I did find my voice.  By 2018, when that young crew member showed me the photo, the speech was practiced.

“She’s gorgeous.  But I don’t think she’d want me to see that, right?”  I tried to make my voice both kind and clear.

My co-worker stared at me, and then shrugged.  “Yeah, probably not,” he said.

I pressed home, as I had learned to do through so much trial and error.  “She gave you a gift, man.  It’s a lot of trust.  She seems really great.”  I didn’t add anything more.  The rebuke needs to be clearly implied, but not oversold.

The co-worker put away his phone and sighed. 

I followed up.  “I want to hear more about her.  Where you’d meet?”

He sat down, and began to talk.  He and the young gal ended up dating for several months.  He never showed me another photo, and I like to think he rethought showing them to anyone else.

I do not claim to be an expert on anything.   In the end, I am a grocery clerk and nothing more.  I am the furthest thing from a role model, as anyone who knows my life knows perfectly well.  I have, however, spent more than 30 years working with young men and women around issues of sex and relationships.  I have seen the harm and the hurt we inflict on each other through recklessness, unresolved trauma, and the toxic craving for others’ approval.  I know that otherwise good people do stupid, indefensible things.  And I am convinced that the way we get them to rethink and even cease the indefensible is through engagement rather than condemnation.

Sending a naked photo is an expression of trust. It is to make a brave (some would say foolhardy) claim about hope and human nature.   Counseling young women never to send naked photos may seem wise, but it also the equivalent of self-defense courses as the best way to approach the problem of rape.  At some point, we have to do more than teach young women to be cautious; at some point, we have to expect more from young men.  (Or, remembering Mr. Grantham, men of any age.)  Men can be trustworthy, and that trustworthiness will only grow if they know that betrayals of trust will not be sanctioned by other guys.

At the beginning of this post, I called Matt Gaetz a dimwit.  He’s an easy target, a seemingly dreadful person devoid of any apparent redeeming qualities.  In all seriousness, decades of working with men has shown me that even the Matt Gaetzes of the world can be reached, they can be engaged, and they can be changed through engagement.   What won’t work is a flounce of disgust, or curt condemnation.  That makes it too easy for them to dismiss you.  You have to earn the right to challenge someone to change, and you earn that right through relationship.

Even now, I can still remember those photos I saw of young Mrs. G.  I remember my arousal -- and I remember my concomitant shame at the thought of how hurt she’d be at the way I participated in her husband’s casual betrayal. I remember my silence, and I remember the extra sweet pickles that she remembered for me.

I remember I want better for all of us, and I know how we get there.

(Matt Gaetz is Matt Gaetz, but Stephanie Grantham is, of course, a pseudonym.)