Twice Shamed: the Use of Uganda’s Anti-pornography Act to Turn Revenge Pornography Non-consensual Image Distribution Victims into Villains

TWICE SHAMED: THE USE OF UGANDA’S ANTI-

PORNOGRAPHY ACT TO TURN REVENGE PORNOGRAPHY NON-

CONSENSUAL IMAGE DISTRIBUTION VICTIMS INTO VILLAINS

TWASIIMA PATRICIA BIGIRWA*

INTRODUCTION .............................................. 566

I. NON-CONSENSUAL INTIMATE IMAGE DISTRIBUTION AS SEXUAL VIOLENCE 567

A. DEFINING AND UNDERSTANDING THE CONTINUUM OF SEXUAL

VIOLENCE ......................................... 568

B. NIID AS A FORM OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE .................... 571

1. Def‌initions of NIID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571

2. How We Got Here and Why It Matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573

3. Consequences of the “Culture of Purity” as Emphasized

World Over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573

4. Non-Consensual Intimate Image Distribution as Sexual

Violence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575

II. THE DISTRIBUTION OF NON-CONSENSUAL IMAGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576

A. THE INTERNET AS AN AMPLIFIER OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN . . 576

B. THE EASE OF QUICK SHARING OF NIID ONLINE .............. 578

III. CULTURE, TRADITION AND RELIGION VS. WOMEN’S SEXUAL AND BODILY

AUTONOMY............................................ 581

A. THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION AND CULTURE IN UGANDA’S LAWS . . 581

IV. THE RISE OF NON-CONSENSUAL INTIMATE IMAGE DISTRIBUTION AS A

FORM OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN UGANDA .......... 583

A. UGANDAN LAWS’ DEFINITIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE .......... 584

B. AN INTRODUCTION TO NON-CONSENSUAL IMAGE DISTRIBUTION IN

UGANDA .......................................... 586

V. THE ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY ACT: A THORN IN WOMEN’S RIGHTS

STRUGGLES IN UGANDA ................................... 589

A. THE HISTORY OF THE ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY ACT .............. 589

B. THE HISTORY OF THE ANTI-PORNOGRAPHY ACT AND COMMITTEE IN

UGANDA .......................................... 591

1. The New “Moral” Code; Passage of the Anti-Pornography

Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591

2. The Gendered Implementation of the Anti-Pornography

Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592

*© 2021, Twasiima Patricia Bigirwa.

565

C. THE EFFECTS OF VICTIMS BEING PROSECUTED UNDER THE ANTI-

PORNOGRAPHY ACT .................................. 594

VI. SHIFTING THE FOCUS TO PROTECTING VICTIMS OF NON-CONSENSUAL

INTIMATE IMAGE DISTRIBUTION .............................. 595

1. Elements of a Possible Good Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595

2. Strengthening Sexual Harassment Laws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595

A. LIMITATIONS TO USING LEGAL REFORM TO CHANGE CULTURAL AND

SOCIETAL ATTITUDES ................................. 596

B. CRAFTING FEMINIST POLICIES AND IMPLEMENTING STRATEGIES TO

PROTECT VICTIMS ................................... 597

1. Going Beyond the Law. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597

2. The Media’s Role in Changing the Narrative . . . . . . . . . . 598

C. CONCLUSION ....................................... 599

INTRODUCTION

“Why is it that women in Uganda are being punished for everything,

instead of the government punishing the people who are damaging us?”

Judith Heard—one of the victims of Non-Consensual Intimate Image

Distribution (NIID) in Uganda.

1

The internet is currently f‌looded with pictures of naked women, many shared

without the woman’s consent, with the intention of inf‌licting harm on her.

Uganda is not exempt from this phenomenon. The distribution of these non-

consensual intimate images, commonly known as “revenge porn,”

2

is on the rise.

There are increasing reports of young women, celebrities and non-celebrities

alike, who have been targeted, harassed, or blackmailed by past lovers that have

shared intimate pictures of them online. The victims have been humiliated into

isolation, and, within Uganda’s current legal framework, some have even been

detained or arrested. This shaming and criminalizing treatment is enabled by

existing attitudes and laws about women’s bodies, sexuality, and agency.

The Anti-Pornography Act (“APA” or “the Act”)

3

is one of many tools used to

discriminate against women in Uganda. First drafted in 2005, the APA has been

used to intimidate and harass women who are perceived as violating cultural

1. Alice McCool, When Her Naked Self‌ies Were Posted Online, She Thought Life Couldn’t Get

Worse. Then She Was Arrested, CNN (Nov. 11, 2018), https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/10/africa/uganda-

pornography-revenge-porn-asequals-africa-intl/index.html.

2. While this is the commonly used term colloquially, it has been critiqued as misleading and as a

distortion of the level of violence inherent to non-consensual intimate image distribution. See Sophie

Maddocks, “Revenge Porn”: 5 Important Reasons Why We Should Not Call It By That Name, GENDERIT

(Jan. 16, 2019), https://www.genderit.org/articles/5-important-reasons-why-we-should-not-call-it-revenge-

porn.

3. Anti-Pornography Act, (2014) (Uganda).

566 THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF GENDER AND THE LAW [Vol. XXII:565

standards of decency.

4

Although the bill itself left decency vaguely def‌ined, both

public off‌icials and private citizens have used it as a pretext to impose their own

standards on women, leading to everything from legal harassment to violent

attacks. These abuses were most commonly directed at women based upon their

clothing choices (inspiring the bill’s popular nickname, the ‘Mini-Skirt Bill’).

The Act has created an ever-present target on the backs of women, who have

been increasingly targeted for other supposed violations, including being the sub-

ject of widely-distributed nude images.

The Pornography Control Committee, which was established to enforce the

Act, has primarily detained and arrested women whose intimate pictures have

been shared without their consent. The victims are punished for engaging in types

of sexual expression of which the Committee does not approve, while the perpe-

trators who distribute the pictures remain free from consequences. This focus on

the subjects of the abuse adds another layer to the violations: on top of the distri-

bution of images, which is a total violation of privacy, it lays down a public trail

for which the subjects are pre-judged as guilty—a further injustice to the women,

who are already victimized.

This Article argues that, in order to protect victims of non-consensual intimate

image distribution (NIID), the Ugandan government should interpret and enforce

the APA to hold perpetrators accountable. Additionally, the APA and other exist-

ing policies should be revised, and the government should support social change

that makes it easier for victims to seek justice. Part I begins by def‌ining and intro-

ducing NIID. It situates NIID on the continuum of sexual violence that is targeted

towards women as a result of gendered power dynamics. Part II discusses the

channels used to distribute NIID, highlighting the particular role played by the

internet. Part III examines the use of culture, tradition, and religion to justify the

regulation of women’s sexuality in Uganda, laying the foundation of the history

and justif‌ications that led to the enactment of the Anti-Pornography Act.

Following the contextualization of the problem by examining its deep entrench-

ment and origin, Part IV discusses the rise of NIID in Uganda and introduces the

concept of re-criminalization of survivors of NIID in Uganda. Part V then ana-

lyzes the Anti-Pornography Act, explaining the history of the Act and its imple-

mentation. Part VI proposes different legal, political, and social strategies that

shift the focus to protecting victims and not perpetrators of NIID.

I. NON-CONSENSUAL INTIMATE IMAGE DISTRIBUTION AS SEXUAL VIOLENCE

This section positions NIID as a form of sexual violence. It begins by def‌ining

sexual violence as broader than physical violence, and then it locates NIID within

that def‌inition. By drawing on examples from Uganda and other societies where

women have been victimized by the dissemination of NIID, this section

4. Ann Amito & Innocent Anguyo, Vague Description of Porn Fueling Attacks on Women, NEW

VISION (Mar. 11, 2015), https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1338547/vague-description-

porn-fueling-attacks-women (quoting Regina Bafaki, Executive Director of Action for Development).

2021] TWICE SHAMED 567