What the Law Can (and Can't) Do About Online Harassment
It was late summer when we met, on a patio jutting out onto the Pacific. The night was still warm as I sipped my Gewürztraminer and asked him about his exciting career. His articulate responses drew me in, and I breathed back nerves and adrenaline with the ocean air as we continued this perfect first date.
As busy professionals, our schedules rarely overlapped so the digital flirtation commenced. It didn’t take him long to ask me to send him a “saucy photo” (his words) and it didn’t take long for me to tell him that just wasn’t my thing. At least not until the third date, I joked.
Days later, Jennifer Lawrence and over 100 other women were exposed across the internet. I sent him a “you see” message. He sent me an almost full frontal—via Snapchat—back. He was sexually liberal. I’m basically a Victorian, but I thought we might be able to find a happy medium in the modern era. I agreed to a second date.
Two minutes in, or perhaps when he asked me if I wanted to leave the restaurant and go take a bath together, I realized we were looking for different things. I turned my cheek when he went to kiss me goodbye, and was pleased there would be no more penis pictures in my life. After ignoring a couple text messages from him, I told him I was busy, but kept it polite. A few days later, he sent me a Snapchat video. It was a close-up shot of him masturbating for 10 seconds.
It wasn’t a “let’s fuck.” It was
