Julian Castro Staffer Slams Katie Hill Coverage in Op-Ed: Women Are ‘Holding Themselves Back’ From Fear of Revenge Porn
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Ashley Fairbanks, the creative director for 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro, called out the media coverage of Rep. Katie Hill’s (D-CA) relationship with a staffer, Thursday, in an op-ed for The Guardian.
In the article, titled, “I work in politics. I refuse to let a nude video stop me from running for office,” Fairbanks said she felt “a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach” when she saw Hill’s private, intimate photographs displayed in the news and on social media.
“I watched many people, mostly men, repeatedly blame women for sharing nudes, instead of blaming the people who leaked them,” Fairbanks declared, before revealing that she was also the victim of revenge porn from her ex-boyfriend, who allegedly recorded her without consent and threatened to send the video to her parents.
“I’ve run dozens of people for office. But I never let myself consider running for a seat of my own,” Fairbanks explained. “All I could imagine was the humiliation I would feel if this man used that opportunity to finally release my secret to the world.”
She added, “As the jobs I’ve gotten have become higher profile, I had near-constant anxiety that today, tomorrow, next Tuesday might be the day I lost everything again.”
“This really isn’t about Katie Hill. It’s about the long fight women have had to have agency over our own bodies,” she proclaimed. “It is not enough to tell women in their 20s and 30s that they just shouldn’t send nudes. A great number of us already have. We shouldn’t have to feel shame that we trusted someone, that we wanted to feel closer to them. Or that we weren’t given a choice.”
“Sharing someone’s private photos without their consent is a violation of their privacy and their trust. It’s wrong, and the people who do it should be held accountable for their actions,” Fairbanks concluded.
A private photo of Hill, which showed her relationship with a staffer, was released by conservative website RedState this month and blasted even further by the controversial Daily Mail newspaper.
Following its release, Hill announced her resignation from Congress, and declared, “Having private moments of personal photos weaponized against me has been an appalling invasion of my privacy. It’s also illegal, and we are currently pursuing all of our available legal options.”
“I am leaving now because of a double standard. I’m leaving because I no longer want to be used as a bargaining chip,” she added on Thursday. “I’m leaving because I didn’t want to be peddled by papers and blogs and websites used by shameless operatives for the dirtiest gutter politics that I’ve ever seen… I’m leaving because of a misogynistic culture that gleefully consumed my naked pictures, capitalized on my sexuality and enabled my abusive ex to continue that abuse.”
