On Monday, reality-TV star Blac Chyna became a victim of revenge porn, as a minute-long video of her performing oral sex on an unidentified man spread across the internet. The incident came less than a year after she was subjected to a similar ordeal by her ex, Rob Kardashian.
The “Kardashian Curse” has long been jokingly used to describe ex-husbands and NBA players that have been churned out by the Kardashian empire but few Kardashian-adjacents have had worse luck than Blac Chyna, who has weathered humiliation after legal battle after humiliation.
Of course, it wasn’t always this way. When Chyna, an adhesive eyelash entrepreneur and model and former stripper, got herself impregnated by the family’s token boy, it was seen as a real coup. Given her beef with the Kardashians—particularly Kylie Jenner—Chyna’s move to infiltrate the Kardashians was unexpected and pretty genius. Instead of hating on the unfathomably famous crew, she could steal their headlines, co-opt their platform, and, one would imagine, really piss them off in the process. But while Chyna’s child with Rob may have landed her reality TV fame and sock dividends, her time in the Kardashian limelight has been characterized by real misfortune and constant controversy.
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Last July, Chyna and Kardashian’s endless, messy split culminated in a social media tirade in which Kardashian shared explicit images of his ex. Beginning on Instagram and then moving to Twitter when he was kicked off the social media platform, Kardashian shared a video of Chyna kissing another man, and then proceeded to post an explicit picture that he had urged Blac Chyna to send to him.
Reacting to Rob’s rambling revenge, Chyna told Good Morning America that she was “devastated,” continuing, “This is a person that I trusted. I confided. I felt comfortable, you know, with even sending these pictures and even talking to him about certain things, you know… I just felt … betrayed.” In a statement Chyna’s attorney, Lisa Bloom, categorized Kardashian’s social media rampage as revenge porn, writing, “Chyna and I both believe that this is an important women’s rights issue, as too many women and girls have been slut-shamed by exes. It stops now. Your attempts to shame and control her are hereby rejected.”
Regarding the latest incident Chyna’s other attorney, Walter Mosley, told People that, “There’s not enough information right now to even know what happened,” adding, “An anonymous source posted a tape—could be from an ex-boyfriend, or stolen, someone texting it to someone else. It’s upsetting and troubling. After that Rob thing, she’s become a big target. It’s a sad time.”
While Chyna was the one who had intimate pictures of her body posted by the father of her child on Instagram, the Kardashians have a huge fan base and powerful platform, which they’ve since used to paint Rob in a sympathetic light. Last October, Chyna filed a lawsuit against Rob Kardashian as well as Kris Jenner, Kim, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie, deeming the Kardashian-Jenner family “media predators,” claiming, “Rob Kardashian and his powerful, vindictive family have done enough damage to Ms. White’s career and professional reputation, which she singlehandedly built from scratch—without the help of a famous last name. This lawsuit seeks to hold them accountable.” The suit is still ongoing.
Though lines have clearly been drawn between Blac Chyna and her would-be in-laws, Chyna and Kim Kardashian are both victims of a unique brand of slut-shaming. Under other circumstances, they probably would have bonded over the surreal experience of being mercilessly attacked for having the audacity to be sexual beings. Kim with her sex tape and Blac Chyna with her stripping past are overwhelmingly treated as though they have sacrificed their right to autonomy and respect. Every time Kardashian tries to assert her feminism, celebrate her body or even just offer an opinion, internet trolls and Piers Morgan are quick to remind her that she made a sex tape, or to argue that showing too much skin is somehow invalidating. Similarly, Chyna seems to be marked by her past, as well as by her race—inarguably, a white celebrity who didn’t come up in strip clubs would receive sympathy in a revenge porn situation, not ridicule.
More concerning than the mocking of Blac Chyna is the fact that this very real, very traumatic incident is seen as an acceptable subject for social media commentary at all. While A-list revenge porn and celebrity hacks are certainly news, Monday’s bulletin was treated less like a disturbing update and more like a jumping-off point for jokes, personal attacks, and even lectures on proper blowjob technique.
Trending just a day after Fergie’s disastrous rendition of the National Anthem at the NBA All-Star Game, the leaked video of Chyna performing oral sex on an unidentified man was likewise treated as an opportunity for some pretty cruel critiques. An aggregation of tweets titled “Twitter Isn’t Impressed With Blac Chyna’s Sex Tape” sums up the general reaction. One Twitter user posited that, “Blac Chyna head game is the worst thing in the history of dick sucking and she just completely ruined black history month.” Another wrote, “I’m not trying to sound gay or anything but I’m pretty sure I could suck dick better than Blac Chyna.” The account Shady Music Facts asked, “Who had the worst performance last night? RT: Blac Chyna FAV: Fergie.”
Apparently, the fact that Chyna and her attorneys are responding to the clip as “a criminal matter” and asking the police for an investigation hasn’t stopped people from treating Chyna as the butt of a joke instead of a victim.
Again, if a Twitter user reacted to the hacking of a white female celebrity by sharing opinions on her selfie angles or laughing at her misfortune, they would be dismissed as a fringe misogynist and (hopefully) shamed into silence. It all comes back to Chyna’s perceived innocence or lack thereof—as a black woman, a former stripper and a reality TV star. One unintended consequence of offering up people’s “real lives” as entertainment is that anything that happens to them, even incidents that they have no control over, is perceived as fair game for our amusement or mockery. Distanced first by our TVs and then by our laptops, we’re twice removed from any real reckoning with these women’s humanity, perceiving them as characters we can opine on instead of people experiencing pains that are compounded by public derision and scrutiny. Unlike, say, Fergie, Blac Chyna didn’t choose any of this—she’s powerless to stop both the cruel attacks and the waves of social media humiliation that follow.
