Interesting to Aussies at least was that this week, William
Yeates, who attended Mercedes College (Adelaide, South Australia which charges
fees of up to $20,000 a year!) entered guilty pleas to four counts of the new
offences - creation and distribution of deepfake images. He didn't need to
touch her. That's the part they'll keep circling.
As if the absence of hands makes it cleaner. Smaller. Easier
to file away.
He didn't need to touch her because someone, somewhere,
decided to build a world where that step was no longer necessary. All he needed
was a face. And the quiet confidence that nothing would really happen to him.
After all, he went to a good school!
He has admitted to creating sexually explicit deepfakes. You
can already hear the cushioning. Former. Student. Admitted. No mention yet of
the girl. There rarely is.
She's not the story.
He is.
His future. His mistake. His momentary lapse in judgment.
Private school matters. Let's not pretend it doesn't. It means resources.
Access. Polished corridors and carefully worded emails to parents when things
go wrong.
It means boys who grow up understanding systems very well -
or at least how to work them, how to bend them, how to step just close enough
to the line without feeling the drop.
This wasn't curiosity. It wasn't experimentation. It was
control. A person reduced to pixels and arranged into something she never
chose. Not because he couldn't have her - but because he didn't need to ask.
That's the shift. Not desire. Entitlement.
We've spent centuries teaching boys how to succeed. How to
lead. How to compete. How to dominate a room, a market, a conversation. Less
time on what happens when they're alone, unobserved, and handed tools that can
erase another person's autonomy in under five minutes. And now they graduate,
and not just with qualifications. But with capability. This story will move
quickly. It always does. There will be concern. Statements. Perhaps even
consequences carefully calibrated not to ruin a promising life. Because that's
the real fear, isn't it?
Not what he did. But what it might cost him.
Meanwhile, she inherits something permanent. A version of
herself that can be copied, shared, reshaped. Again, and again. Endlessly
available. This is what we've built. Not monsters. Something much more
functional. Boys who don't need to cross a physical line anymore - because the
line has been quietly removed for them.
And it sucks. Personally, I hope they throw the book at him.
But they won't...
There are thousands of deepfakes out there.
This is just the first one someone admitted to.
Just like my ex-father in law... When my drunken pig of an ex-husband cheated on me and was leaving. And here I was, with a 2 year old and 4
months pregnant with the next...
`Boys will be Boys!` that was what he said...
It's why Secretwomen.org will come about eventually! I wrote that website 30 years ago and it's still
relevant!!!!
Kill them all I say! Well at least 70% of them! :)