Why do sex scandals wear a woman’s face?

The recent publication of a sex video about a married man and some single woman in Blantyre brings to our attention, yet again, the apparent discrepancy in the way published sex scandals portray men and women.

Perhaps you, like me, have noted that almost every time there is a leaked video clip on a sex escapade between a man and woman, the news story, mostly published online, will go with a picture of the nude woman leaving out her partner.

Of course the man is shown in the video, and I am sure those who have time to watch the clips see them both, but for those that stop at the story, the only picture readily available as they go through the story is that of the woman.

I have never seen such stories accompanied by pictures of the naked man or, better still, both the man and woman, which, in my opinion, is a simple way of balancing the story’s presentation.

All we see is the exposed woman without her male partner who is only identified by name in the text.

In the end, the picture that circulates and sticks to people’s minds is that of the woman in such a compromised state.

And if you take time to read through readers’ comments on the story, they are either attacking the woman’s character or analysing the contours and scars on her body.

Very little is said about the man, who, apart from being identified by name, is hidden in the clip when the woman’s face is splashed all over for the whole world to see and judge.

The style of presentation in sex scandals only reinforces the mass media role as a distributing, facilitating agent that reinforces the image of women as sex objects thereby spreading wrong stereotypes in societies.

The selective images not only portray women as hyper-sexualized—having sex in inappropriate places with inappropriate men—but they also proliferate the thinking that the women folk are commodity that exists to please men.

Many of us might not understand why people choose to film these moments, to the extent that we blame both parties for acting stupid, but that is not the point of this discussion.

We may also don’t understand why someone in their right mind decides to make such private footage public, but again, the question today is: why don’t we see pictures of the naked men on these stories?