“I lived through the embarrassment and fear, and decided to say who cares, do better, move on,” Kim Kardashian wrote about her leaked sex tape in 2016.
“I shouldn’t have to constantly be on the defence, listing off my accomplishments just to prove that I am more than something that happened 13 years ago… Let’s move on, already. I have.”
The essay, titled ‘Happy International Women’s Day‘, was published on the 37-year-old’s subscription website.
Kardashian continued: “I hope that through this platform I have been given, I can encourage the same empowerment for girls and women all over the world.
“… The body-shaming and slut-shaming — it’s like, enough is enough.”
From all accounts, the entrepreneur and reality television personality was taking a stand for the many women who have fallen victim to revenge porn. In speaking openly about her experience, Kardashian was voicing a commonly shared experience; an encounter riddled with misogyny and a repulsion of female sexuality.
Kim Kardashian was loud and angry and bold and defiant.
Until the perpetrator was her brother, that is.
A year and a half after Kardashian’s essay was published, her only brother Robert Kardashian shared a photo of his ex-fiancée Blac Chyna’s vagina with millions.
“I just bought her 250K of jewellery yesterday,” he wrote. “This woman is so disrespectful and I don’t care.”
He posted an image of her breasts, writing: “And for all u wondering why her damn nipples are so damn big that’s cuz she had surgery after the baby was born on our anniversary January 25th that I paid 100K for and they really messed up on her nipples. Them s**ts used to be so cute and now they so damn big!”
Jessie Stephens explains the spat between Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian, on Mamamia Out Loud.
After having his Instagram account deleted – the 30-year-old jumped on Twitter to share more pornographic images of the mother of his only child, daughter Dream. Chyna was unfaithful, Kardashian said. This apparently warranted him defiling her to the masses.
Revenge porn – also known as cyber exploitation – is a criminal offence in Kardashian and Chyna’s home of California, and has been since 2013. Immediately after the incident Chyna hired a legal team.
And yet, in the months after their reclusive brother humiliated a woman in front of the world, when a judge granted Chyna a restraining order from the sock designer and she claimed he had “beat me up” in a series of Snapchats, Kim Kardashian and her sisters were reticent. The slut shaming and abuse of their niece’s mother was, it seemed, nothing that warranted public condemnation. Protecting their brother with a blanket of silence was more important.
They carried on spruiking their many makeup products, TV shows, books and hair vitamins.
The real villain here is, of course, Rob Kardashian. It wasn’t Kim or Kourtney or Khloe who pressed ‘publish’ on those images. But when you hold one of the most powerful positions in shaping public discourse, you will be assessed on what stance you take; particularly when the story at hand concerns your own flesh and blood and his betrayal of the values you purport to hold.
The only time the Kardashians have addressed their brother's cruel depravity was six months later, in a scene of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which was heavily used as a promotional tool for their upcoming season and provided absolutely nothing of substance.
“Listen, there’s a plus and a minus. One of the plus of all this there’s no way Rob and Chyna could get back together after this, right? Let’s focus on the positive," youngest sister Khloe said.
Albeit better, Kim's response was milky in light of her impassioned op-ed: “The negative is just that like as Rob having sisters, he should just know better. He should have just controlled himself."
“But it just sucks, like he’s made out to this bad guy when she’s taunting him," Khloe replied. "Like love makes you do f****d up things. You think anyone’s proud of that? No. You don’t f**k with someone’s heart and emotions.”
In the last week, yet another pornographic video of Blac Chyna has been leaked via an anonymous Twitter account without her consent. Her lawyer Lisa Bloom tweeted:
Whether Rob Kardashian had any involvement in the attack remains unclear.
What is clear is the Kardashians' concern of their brother being seen as a "bad guy" far outweighs the likelihood of him actually being a bad guy.
And while they're happy to talk the talk of female empowerment, they're not happy to walk the walk when it concerns their family's very lucrative reputation.
And that really "just sucks", doesn't it?