Data privacy is important for everyone. But for some marginalized groups, data privacy is absolutely indispensable to stay safe while staying connected with online communities and resources.
For Pride month this year,
we are happy to present you with our series of content discussing topics at the intersection of privacy and LGBTQ+ experiences.
Stay safe.
Stay connected.
And Happy Pride 
Protection cannot be only an individual responsibility. Protecting vulnerable and marginalized populations is a societal responsibility that concerns everyone. (emphasis in the article)
Thank you for the article. To me it highlights the need for a wide range of marginalized people and their communities to protect themselves and the people around them. In most parts of the article, āqueerā and āLGBTQ+ā could be replaced with any other category of marginalized people.
I donāt use social media at all but, because of how people around me behave, I am threatened and oppressed by its existence. Unless those people change how they behave, towards better security practices, etiquette and better social media platforms (these which this article advocates for), I would need to cut ties with most family and friends and avoid most social situations if I want to safely be my true self.
It is an act of violence to out someone against their consent, even when performed by the intermediary of an algorithm or a neglectful data leak.
While non-consensually outing someone may lead to violence, the act itself is not violence. 100% it is abuse, but not violence. Violence is the threatened or actual use of physical force with the intention of causing harm: pain, injury, death, destruction, psychological harm, deprivation, etc. Using āviolenceā to describe acts that are not physical is overloading the word. I myself used to say āsurveillance is violenceā but I now say āsurveillance is a form of abuseā or similar phrases. Similarly, I avoid terms like ā{financial,emotional} violenceā in favor of ā{financial,emotional} abuseā unless actual violence is involved.
As much as I want data hoarders to be accountable for failing to protect sensitive data, intentions matter too. The word āviolenceā doesnāt fit for an unintentional data leak. Someone accidentally running over a pedestrian with their car is not being violent, while someone sexually touching another person without consent is being violent.
Exactly. I emphatically agree with your comments, as well as Emās quote, that we have a collective responsibility to protect the vulnerable.
I say this because in the last couple of months I have been reading and learning a lot from the disability community, which of course intersects with the queer community, and encompasses not just the physically disabled, but the chronically ill.
MOST PEOPLE DONāT CARE ABOUT PROTECTING THE MARGINALIZED
What I have realized is that the same way queer people are being failed with regard to privacy and LGBT+ issues, the disabled are being failed with regard to public health because many people, perhaps even most, donāt believe in collective responsibility.
They donāt believe in protecting marginalized groups to the extent that they are not willing to change their behavior to do so. It is hurtful enough when they own up to it, but the betrayal can cut deeper when people claim they care but in practice donāt.
In my opinion, if you deliberately share pictures of your friends on social media when they asked you not to, you canāt claim to care about collective responsibility.
I respectfully disagree.
Violence extends beyond the realm of physical harm. Certain dictionaries and laws may restrict it to physical harm; I have no idea, but even if true, that definition is incomplete and needs to change.
TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL ABUSE
In recent years, many countries have proposed to change the legal definition of rape because it is exclusively āforce basedā and does not include consent. Some countries have thankfully succeeded in changing those laws, but in others it has yet to happen.
Many women report not reacting when being sexually assaulted, for fear that it might be worse if they do. Many victims are also assaulted while being sedated. Various studies also reveal that disabled people are far more likely to be victims of violence (including rape) than abled people. Disable people are also less likely to be believed.
A lot of the times, the oppressors of all these different types of victims Iāve described can get away with sexual assault because their defense is that there was āno forceā, which is a requirement to make a legal case for rape in some countries.
Would you say that they were not subject to violence? I donāt think so.
I would also argue that simply witnessing violence can be violent. People who work as moderators for Big Tech companies have to witness horrible violence and get PTSD. They are subject to psychological violence, which is a type of violence.
Thank you PurpleDime, I agree entirely 
@PurpleDime has addressed the issue with this statement very well, but I should also add -
As of today, there are over 60 countries where homosexuality is illegal by law. This is an infringement on a human right to freedom of sexuality, and outing someone living in these countries can lead them to face public violence, jail time, and in some cases even execution.
In many parts of the world, exposing private parts of someoneās life that seem benign in other countries may well provide tyrants with the fodder to crush them with more ease and with public support.
I do agree with the sentiment on being careful when potentially charging data hoarders with wrong allegations over leaked data, but it is still important to be extremely careful with information like this.
Finally, thank you to the staff for this article. In a time when the few protections that historyās most marginalized and dehumanized folks finally got are starting to get rolled back, it pays greatly to be vigilant, and this site is doing a good job of spreading caution and informing queer people of the importance of digital vigilance and how to practice it.
It is good to see an organization that uses a pride month to put out valuable change, and this guide will be very handy to many.
Thank you for your response.
I suspect the extent of our disagreement is just what āviolenceā means. I agree with most of your response, and I fail to see how it challenges my post.
Your point of emphasis āViolence extends beyond the realm of physical harm.ā I 100% agree with. Like other forms of abuse, violence (physical force) causes not only physical harm but also psychological and other forms of harm.
The Healthline source describes various forms of abuse but uses the word āviolenceā to describe them when āabuseā would have worked just fine. In fact āabuseā also appears in the same article, seemingly interchangeably. To me ānon-physical violenceā is an oxymoron.
I have noticed a worldwide trend to criminalize non-consensual sex beyond rape. I welcome the stigmatization of non-consensual sex that until recently has long gone unrecognized. In this trend, some jurisdictions are moving away from words like āforceā and ārapeā (which often implies violence, and sometimes implies by a male against a female) and towards terms like ānon-consensualā and ācoercedā so as to include lack of consent, lack of violence and gender neutrality.
I donāt think so either. What you described is sexual violence, I never said otherwise.
The issue is that in these cases the law fails to recognize non-consensual sex and only recognizes rape, which falls too far short of what the law ought to recognize.
I disagree with the use of the word āviolenceā here but these people are exposed to traumatically violent material and do suffer for it, though.
Thanks for replying back.
In your first comment you said the following:
In the scenarios that I described, the victims did not react, either because they were afraid, or they couldnāt because they are disabled or unconscious. By your definition, and the laws of many countries, there was no physical force involved because there was no resistance, hence there was no violence.
If you lookup violence on Wikipedia, they cite the World Health Organizationā s definition which is: the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.
Did you notice the mention of power?
If you have tremendous power over somebody, you have the ability to subject them to violence, physical or otherwise.
For example, if the head of an authoritarian state starves an entire population to death simply by cutting them off from all resources, they have commmited violence. It doesnāt matter that the head of state never physically harmed them or didnāt order physical harm upon them.
Itās the same if a parent decides not to feed their infant child, someone they have tremendous power over, for days and weeks, resulting in that child becoming ill or dying. Itās violence. Same logic with an owner and their pet. It doesnāt matter than physical force wasnāt used. Itās still violence.
Lastly, I would personally argue that violence doesnāt have to be intentional. If a plane crashes into a residential area because of a storm, itās still violent, even if it wasnāt anyoneās intention.
I see a distinction that needs addressing. Thereās the coercion (drugging, psychological abuse, violence, etc.) before sexual activity, and thereās the sexual act itself. IIRC I meant the sexual act itself is violence because it is physical force against someone who has not consented to the sexual act. In your example, those who get away with rape cited āno forceā in reference to the coercion part.
I apologize for not addressing the part of your post about power and how it relates to violence. As yet I havenāt thought about it enough and have mixed feelings about it. Iāll address the last part of your post that I believe is 100% false.
I believe intent is a key element of, in addition to presence of physical force, whether an act constitutes violence or not. If there is no intent to cause harm behind an act, the act is not violence even if it causes harm.
In the case of sex, someone who holds a good-faith belief that they are having consensual sex with another person, whether or not the other person actually consented, is not being sexually violent; they may genuinely be trying to do good (by loving the other person and making them feel pleasure) and feel good themselves. The belief doesnāt make the act right, but the act doesnāt amount to violence. Conversely, someone who drugs, physically forces, psychologically pressures or otherwise coerces another person into having sex and then has sex with them is committing a violent act. I would assume you believe people having consensual sex are not being violent towards each other.
I donāt know if this will help, but I explain further what I mean with this pair of similar but different examples.
One self-defense instructor I met claimed they are pacifist and said defending oneself or others using physical force is not violence. I disagree with that view. Strikes and joint locks to cause pain or injury to an attacker are acts of violence. I suspect the instructor was trying to remove stigma from self-defense by categorizing it as ānot violence,ā but there is no need for this. Violence is not inherently evil, it is a necessary part of life and survival.
In the end, what I have confirmed is people have differing views on what āviolenceā means. Thatās the situation between you and me, and Iām ok with that.