I don't like what these hackers have done , I don't really understand their motivation. Anyone who's been cheated on will understand why sites like Ashley Madison upset people but meddling in other people's affairs rarely ends well.
There is also a very serious issue re. the naming of people who live in countries where sexual impropriety , or difference, carries harsh penalties.
This is basically further proof that there is no such thing as privacy anymore.
I remember as a teenager in the seventies reading 1984 and having the usual earnest conversations about state surveillance etc . , but I don't think it crossed anyone's mind that within a couple of decades we'd have a situation where people fell over themselves to broadcast every detail of their lives , from their breakfast to their genitals
I feel really sorry for young people today , especially girls . It might seem like they've got endless opportunities but in reality they're like sacrificial lambs teetering on a tightrope , where one poor choice of boyfriend or a misjudged joke can ruin their life.
As for Mr. Tortoise - fuck him. His denial doesn't sound plausible to me , and even in the unlikely event that he has been set up , he espouses a repressive doctrine that would deny sexual freedom to women and gays , so there's a poetic justice to his getting caught up in this . He's actually given me an idea , I've been trying to think up business ideas , I'm going to set up a "Halal Ho's " dating site
A few things.
1) Yes, it is true that some of the 30-odd million people who have been identified by this leak will face serious, real life repercussions as a result. However, this website is not a free chat. Anyone who is using it has paid money to use it. From wikipedia's description of their business model: "For a conversation between two members, one of the members—almost always the man—must pay five credits to initiate the conversation. Any follow-up messages between the two members are free after the communication has been initiated. Ashley Madison also has a real-time chat feature that is metered. Credits are utilised to pay for a certain time allotment of chat. Women can send messages to men for free, but the men must pay to read them. Men must always pay to send messages to women."
In Hamza Tzortzis' case,
according to his own admission he paid 15 pounds a month, as listed on his bank statements:
https://twitter.com/bluefingerbox/status/635708424437665792Now, in this situation, one may have a hard time figuring out who is the victim here. In the case of cheating, the victim is the person who has had their trust betrayed, and the person who is responsible is the person who betrayed their trust. Now, you may say "Hamza Tzortzis and the other people who have been named in the hack of this website have had their trust betrayed." This is true. However, who is the person RESPONSIBLE for betraying that trust? Ultimately, ashley madison's staff and CEO are responsible for not investing in preventing the leak; they may be victims, but if so, they are the victims for trusting society to contain no criminal elements, and the hackers are responsible for exposing the weakness of that business model. It's kind of like if you owned a diamond jewelry store and had no locked cases, no security system, no cameras, no panic button, just diamonds sitting on a counter, where anyone could walk into the store.
But this does not make Hamza Tzortzis and the other people named in the leak the victims in their marriage. The spouse who has been cheated on, and their children, are the victims of the unfaithful partner. It's very important not to lose sight of that. Josh Duggar's wife has already said that she feels partially responsible for her husband's infidelity. This is false. Unless she sat down with him and told him she wants to be in an open marriage, it was his decision to cheat on her, to lie to her, to spend money on having sex with women who are not her. He is responsible for his own actions. It does not matter what she did. It doesn't matter if she told him "no" to sex and he felt his libido was just too high to take no for an answer. It doesn't matter if she was too busy caring of their kids to watch his every move. It doesn't matter what she did or didn't do. It was still HIS decision to be unfaithful.
Hamza Tzortzis says to please respect the privacy of his family.
I am not being disrespectful of his family.
The hackers have not disrespected his family.
He is the person who has disrespected his family.
He is the one who made the decision to register for the website, to give them his bank card details, to pay them money for nine months, to talk to women using the site, and to lie about it.
That is disrespectful to his family. Saying that what he did is disrespectful to his family is NOT disrespectful to his family.
2) "I feel really sorry for young people today , especially girls . It might seem like they've got endless opportunities but in reality they're like sacrificial lambs teetering on a tightrope , where one poor choice of boyfriend or a misjudged joke can ruin their life." -- This is tacit participation in the social policing of women's sexuality while allowing men to get away with whatever they want. This may have made sense on the level of society in the bronze age, in an era where child and infant mortality was so high that every girl who reached the age of fourteen needed to have an average of five live births by the time she died to keep the human population from going into a tailspin and effectively ending human civilization. That doesn't mean it was right then, tho; just that it may have been necessary. It is no longer necessary. It isn't right. Women should have the right to own their body and their sexuality, just like men. If women want to make poor choices in sexual partners, they should have that right. If men want to make poor choices in sexual partners, they should have that right. I'm not in control of your sex life. Don't try to control mine.
However, not controlling someone else's sex life is not the same as having them take responsibility for their actions when they break rules that they have agreed to. If two people have decided to pledge monogamy or sexual fidelity to each other (inside or outside of marriage), then it is up to each of them to keep the promise. Keeping promises is important for social cohesion. If someone breaks important promises that they have made, especially when it is a mutual promise made in good faith, we as a society hold them accountable. That is why it is a crime to lie in a court of law. In the court, the judge has promised to find the truth and deliver a just verdict. If you lie, you have destroyed his ability to do that, and therefore the ability of the entire system of finding justice. You have broken a mutual promise, made in good faith, between you and society, that you will help keep society functioning smoothly. You may feel you never made that promise; in that case, you shouldn't live in society, because it is an agreement we all make to our society to keep society running smoothly.
Topic: Ashley Madison FUN PIT!