The recent leak of nude celebrity photos has garnered various reactions from a cesspool of highly intelligent Internet warriors on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. Some call it a scandal, some call it “The Fappening” and everybody cares about the fact that (gasp!) women sometimes do private things that, by the nature of being private, aren’t your business.

The overall public reaction to the leak is wholly disgusting and entirely unsurprising. Nearly 200 images were rapidly distributed across multiple platforms, particularly Reddit, and viewed by millions of people as they looked to the event as some sort of divine porn gift from the Internet gods—the question of consent or privacy, of course, didn’t seem to be much of a concern for most.

While many users spoke out against the dissemination of the images as a violation of privacy, Reddit managed to make enough money from “gold” donations (distinctions of approval that users can purchase for $3.99 in response to posts or comments they deem “valuable” to the community) made in conjunction with posts of the leaks to pay for nearly a month of the website’s server time.

In addition to mass consumption of a blatant privacy violation and apparent numbness to outright exploitation, another common reaction seems to be more puritanical in tone, calling for the proverbial stoning of these jezebels who dared to take nude photos of themselves. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Really, though, for some strange reason, a horde of holier-than-thous have decided in some holy council (i.e., the corner of Facebook where your high school teachers, parents’ friends and that weird kid from your Western Civilization section lurk) that the subjects of these photos are to blame, because why would you take a nude picture of yourself if you didn’t want everybody on the Internet to see it?

What’s next? Are we going to start saying that pretty girls who wear pretty skirts and pretty shirts are asking to be sexually assaulted? (Oh, wait.)

This “argument” is also used by the other camp of people trying to justify the fact that they Googled “nude Kaley Cuoco” 10 times within the past three hours.

This particular leak, by the way, is only one of many examples of this messed-up worldview in which women aren’t allowed to make decisions about their own bodies and who can (and cannot) see them. When nude photographs of Vanessa Hudgens were leaked in 2007, Hudgens had to publicly apologize for a “lapse in judgment” in order to keep her job. Yes, that’s right: Vanessa Hudgens had to issue a public apology because someone posted her private pictures to the Internet without her consent.

We as a society seem to be under the impression that a woman’s body is not her own, especially if the woman happens to be an attractive celebrity. If Jennifer Lawrence walks out in public wearing sweats and a bare face, her picture is everywhere. If Kirsten Dunst gains five pounds and decides to do something drastic like, I don’t know, wear a swimsuit, her picture is everywhere. If Hope Solo takes a private picture of herself meant for the eyes of a specific person, well, you can guess the rest.

The horrifying reaction to this leak—along with many other photo leaks, celebrity or not—is simply representative of a pervasive culture of victim-blaming and social discomfort with women choosing to do what they want with their bodies. The message that is being sent, essentially, is that women need to either maintain an image of consistent prudence and purity both in their private as well as their public lives, or they need to just be super public and super OK with the world laying claim to their bodies.

By constructing a cult of purity around female celebrities (and subsequently tearing it down when the opportunity presents itself), the culture of victim blaming and mass-ownership of female privacy is nurtured like a festering disease. Have some respect—don’t look up the photos (obviously) and, more importantly, don’t paint scarlet letters on women for daring to do something that was never any of your business anyway.