“Ukraine’s intelligence service says it thwarted a Russian plot to blackmail a local teenage girl into blowing up a police building by threatening to make public intimate pictures on her phone.”
“Ukraine’s intelligence service says it thwarted a Russian plot to blackmail a local teenage girl into blowing up a police building by threatening to make public intimate pictures on her phone.”
Not the commenter you replied to, but I would say it’s more effective on women due societal biases. Of course men can be extorted with nudes too, but the same tactic will be more effective if used on a female population. There’s still an expectation for women to be modest, or at least more so than men. How often do you see women topless vs men?
In my mind, the most susceptible group for this sort of blackmail would be teenage boys or young men. They are the most likely to impulsively send nudes that get compromised, and they will be terrified at the thought of their actions going public. No one wants to be thought of as a sexual deviant by their parents / friends.
I feel like this would be much easier to attribute to “boys will be boys” than an excuse for women. The odds of being negatively judged for being a slut are significantly higher for women than they are for a man.
I’m not saying men aren’t negatively judged for these things, but if you took 100 people and showed them equally compromising pictures, my money is on more people negatively judging the woman. It’s a deep rooted societal bias.
I think the reason men are more likely to send unsolicited nudes is because there’s not going to be near as much consequence as compared to a woman. Same reason I think blackmail with nudes is likely more effective on women.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2025/02/25/teenage-boys-mental-health-suicide-sextortion-scams/78258882007/
Boys have literally killed themselves over this.
At no point did I say this was ineffective at extorting men. I am saying that due to societal biases women tend to be judged (unfairly, in case that’s not clear) more than men for any given sexual activity. This makes blackmail more effective.
I would argue that women are still less likely to engage in extreme violent crimes like this one than men who are, for example, threatened to be exposed as being queer or having weird kinks. Such profiles are harder to foster but much more effective.