Over the weekend, the Internet almost imploded with a vast number of leaked nudes from Jennifer Lawrence, Victoria Justice, Kate Upton and other A-list celebrities.

Just looking up “nude leak celebrities” yields dozens of sketchy websites “reporting” on the scandal. Some even go so far as to linking the actual pictures.

This is not a tabloid scandal nor an unexpected show-all – this is more akin to sexual harassment and a sex crime. Regardless of your personal opinion on these actresses, they are the victims.

Those pictures, for whatever purpose, were private and not intended for people behind a screen to ogle at.

In the midst of feverish speculation as to why these pictures exist, (Hint: They exist because celebrities are like us, and they can also do whatever they want with their lives) people have forgotten that these celebrities are the ones that will have to deal with this.

These “holier than thou” arguments of “Well, maybe they shouldn’t have taken those photos to begin with” are quite frankly stupid. Maybe someone shouldn’t have hacked into iCloud to begin with; how about that?

To believe this claim is to take the blame away from someone who did something illegal and to place it solely on the people who have been wronged.

This opinion is a lot more common in the media than you would think. It might not be so overt as to say “Why would these celebrities do that?” But the media does indeed use words in their headlines such as “scandal.”

There is nothing scandalous about taking pictures of yourself for your own personal use, and there shouldn’t be any guilt if you do. This should also apply to celebrities.

Being celebrities, they might feel the need to apologize for their pictures – and let’s hope they don’t because that would validate the opinion that they did something wrong.

These arguments show that the ever present paradigm of “blame the woman” are just as prevalent now than in the past, despite the rise of stronger women’s rights advocacy.

People tend to forget that celebrities are people and not objects and are just as prone to the mistakes of a high school senior who put her trust in the wrong guy.

Whether it was a woman or a man, this was a gross violation of privacy. It could be anything from nudes to a weird Doctor Who or Sherlock crossover fan-fiction – if it is floating around without your consent, then your rights have been violated.

Privacy is a strange thing in the time of social media, seeing as it’s so easy to subvert. The reason why, for the most part, is that the fault has been pinned on these actresses who quite simply have lives that aren’t very private.

As a society, we need to look back at who we pass judgment on. This recent act of violation has highlighted certain aspects and ideas that need changing.