Rob Kardashian appears to have posted revenge porn of his ex, Blac Chyna, on Instagram. The action was definitely a violation of Instagram’s community guidelines, and it may be illegal. And after Instagram appears to have deleted his account, Kardashian moved all of posts in question to Twitter.
Rob Kardashian appears to have posted revenge porn of his ex, Blac Chyna, on Instagram
Photo by Greg Doherty/Getty Images
Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.
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On Wednesday morning, Kardashian posted what appears to be video of Chyna in bed with another man, images of Chyna’s nude breasts and genitalia, and video of her undergoing a medical procedure. (He has since deleted the nudes.) He has also posted multiple text posts in which he alleges that Chyna cheated on him and outlines all of the money he claims to have spent on her.
For her part, Chyna posted a response on Snapchat in which she alleged that Kardashian beat her.
California has long been ahead of the curve in legislating against “revenge porn,” or the practice of sharing nude or sexually explicit images of another person without their permission. That means Kardashian’s actions may have been illegal.
Kardashian and Chyna’s relationship has always been troubled. Famously, the extended Kardashian clan was against the pairing from the beginning, in part because Chyna has a child with the rapper Tyga, who is dating Kardashian’s little sister Kylie Jenner.
Undeterred, the pair announced their engagement in April of 2016 and had a child, Dream, in November. Rumors of a breakup swirled around the two every few months. In December, hackers leaked what appeared to be texts from Chyna’s phone disparaging Kardashian as “lazy and fat” and declaring her intention to leave Kardashian with Dream. Hours later, Kardashian took to Snapchat and Instagram with photos and videos of his empty house, claiming that Chyna left him and took Dream with her. Chyna denied it, and a few days later they were once again posting happy family pictures on social media.
This February, multiple sources reported that Kardashian and Chyna had separated for good, and that they were enmeshed in an “ugly” custody battle. They continued to post amicably on their social media accounts and denied rumors that they were with other people, but on July 2, Chyna wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post, “Single. I’m happy.”
In his Wednesday Instagram spree, Kardashian claimed that Chyna sexted him a picture of her genitalia, and then later the same day sent him a video that showed her in bed with another man. “I’m a savage I always have been and I always will be and I don’t give a fuck,” he posted.
“Rob u did all this but u beat me up and try act it never happen!!!!!” Chyna responded on Snapchat.
The whole thing might seem unbearably frivolous and unimportant, revolving as it does around Kardashians, a scorned celebrity lover, and social media. But revenge porn is an increasingly common crime (Facebook reported 51,000 claims of revenge porn this January alone), and it deserves to be taken seriously. It’s a way of humiliating women for the crime of having bodies that are sometimes naked, and since the internet is forever, it can destroy lives permanently. “Every time I met with a client,” says one revenge porn victim, “I wondered if they had seen me naked.”
And while a number of states have legislated against revenge porn, the laws are patchy and often inconsistently enforced. “This is a case they put at the bottom of the stack,” said one lawyer of police officers faced with revenge porn cases. “They think that the victim was asking for it because they created the content that got them into the situation. They think they’re not as deserving of police hours as someone who was the victim of a physical assault.”
Chyna has a history of showing off her body on the internet, but she’s always done it on her own terms. By posting what appear to be Chyna’s nudes on his Instagram without her permission, Kardashian is taking away her control over her body and whom she chooses to show it to. That’s a serious crime, and it deserves to be treated as such.
Updated to note that Kardashian’s Instagram account has been deleted and that he moved all of the posts in question to Twitter.
