If you want to know why Rob Kardashian would post naked pictures of Blac Chyna, I can explain

'You will be naked on my terms, not your own'

Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna have a daughter, Dream, together (Getty Images)

Rob Kardashian, probably best known for being brother of the more famous Kim, has had his Instagram account suspended after posting explicit pictures of his ex-fiancée, Blac Chyna (alongside a host of other messages accusing her of cheating on him and claiming that he paid thousands of dollars for her to have plastic surgery after the birth of the couple’s daughter Dream). Chyna is now reported to be considering legal action, as in California, revenge porn is a criminal offence.

One might say that the motives behind revenge porn are obvious. The key is in the name: revenge. But the act of posting explicit images of another person is often part of a much more nuanced power play than simply “getting your own back”.

The photos posted by Kardashian were accompanied by vitriolic captions, and subsequently tweets. "Today Chyna sent me a video after I just bought her 250K of jewellery. She sends me this video... of another man in our bed,” he wrote and then followed it up with: “When ur girl leaves u after u spent 100K on her body to get done”.

Kardashian’s palpable sexual jealousy is unsurprising, and makes for a direct and obvious motive for revenge porn. Posting images like the ones he did of Chyna is a way of attempting to reclaim a sexual intimacy which you no longer have, and reasserting ownership over a woman’s body.

The act also shows the discomfort that so often surrounds a women being in control of her own sexuality. While it has become a social norm for naked women to be plastered across newspapers for scrutiny by male eyes, a woman lying topless in a park during this heatwave for her own pleasure would be sure to prompt mass offence. This social hypocrisy is the root from which Kardashian’s anger stems. His act says: “You will be naked on my terms, not your own.”

But the expectation of ownership appears to be twofold: Kardashian seems to believe that he has the right to punish and expose his ex-wife not only because he feels that he should be able to control her sexuality but because he has financially supported her.

While anyone in their right mind would argue that buying someone jewellery, or funding their plastic surgery does not mean that you therefore have the right to control what they do, I am continually surprised by the large number of people who don’t fully accept it. Women are incredibly used to the assumption being made that if they are bought a drink, or dinner, that they are totally beholden to their temporary benefactor, that they end up somehow “owing them sex” and should pay the money back if they don’t deliver the services.

In attempting to persuade me that this whole “patriarchy” thing was all in my head, a man once argued: “But women always get bought things by men – if anything men have it harder.” I sighed and gave him my most piteous, exasperated stare. I told him he had a lot to learn (always the most efficient way of pissing off a men’s rights activist).

Because of course, this inequality, whereby men are expected to foot the bill, is often not to do with chivalry, but rather with the assumption that women are purchasable. When, as Rob Kardashian has learnt, they realise this isn’t the case, this can result in the self-righteous, indignant outrage that prompts acts like revenge porn.

You’d have thought that the Beatles would have dispelled the rumour by now, but there still seems to be the lingering belief, particularly amongst celebrities, that money in fact can buy you love. And by “love”, obviously, I mean sexual ownership over women. But that wouldn’t have made such a catchy lyric.