Diane Crocker and Marcus A. Sibley
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190071820
- eISBN:
- 9780190071851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190071820.003.0002
- Subject:
- Social Work, Social Policy
This chapter explores how rape culture, as a concept, is used to mobilize efforts to reduce campus sexual violence. While rape culture is not simple, institutional responses assume it is. This ...
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This chapter explores how rape culture, as a concept, is used to mobilize efforts to reduce campus sexual violence. While rape culture is not simple, institutional responses assume it is. This insight is informed by complexity theory. Rape culture is a complex context that does not respond well to solutions that assume static, cause–effect relationships. The chapter describes a Canadian project that used narrative methods to solicit stories about rape culture from students and invited them to code their own stories and how they would characterize aspects of their experiences. The chapter explores how students make meaning of and understand rape culture in contrast to dominant narratives in research and advocacy. Additionally it explores the students’ stories’ themes to illustrate limitations inherent in current efforts to transform campus rape culture.Less
This chapter explores how rape culture, as a concept, is used to mobilize efforts to reduce campus sexual violence. While rape culture is not simple, institutional responses assume it is. This insight is informed by complexity theory. Rape culture is a complex context that does not respond well to solutions that assume static, cause–effect relationships. The chapter describes a Canadian project that used narrative methods to solicit stories about rape culture from students and invited them to code their own stories and how they would characterize aspects of their experiences. The chapter explores how students make meaning of and understand rape culture in contrast to dominant narratives in research and advocacy. Additionally it explores the students’ stories’ themes to illustrate limitations inherent in current efforts to transform campus rape culture.
Valerie Wieskamp
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781496834645
- eISBN:
- 9781496834690
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496834645.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
Though sexual violence is often cloaked in silence, the “Delhi bus rape” that led to the death of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey in 2012 incited an abundance of public discourse. One ...
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Though sexual violence is often cloaked in silence, the “Delhi bus rape” that led to the death of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey in 2012 incited an abundance of public discourse. One response was Priya’s Shakti, a comic created by Indian American documentarian Ram Devineni and a transnational team of producers and gender-based violence experts to expose and address gender discrimination and violence. Through a rhetorical analysis of Priya’s Shakti, contributor Valerie Wieskamp argues that the comic book models important feminist and postcolonial interventions in rape culture. Even as the international public depicts sexual violence as a consequence of Indian culture, the comic reverses the neocolonial tendency to privilege Western-centered responses by showcasing elements of Indian heritage as a solution to rape culture. Further, Priya’s Shakti begins to address publics excluded from international and Indian discourses by representing rural, lower class, and disadvantaged women.Less
Though sexual violence is often cloaked in silence, the “Delhi bus rape” that led to the death of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey in 2012 incited an abundance of public discourse. One response was Priya’s Shakti, a comic created by Indian American documentarian Ram Devineni and a transnational team of producers and gender-based violence experts to expose and address gender discrimination and violence. Through a rhetorical analysis of Priya’s Shakti, contributor Valerie Wieskamp argues that the comic book models important feminist and postcolonial interventions in rape culture. Even as the international public depicts sexual violence as a consequence of Indian culture, the comic reverses the neocolonial tendency to privilege Western-centered responses by showcasing elements of Indian heritage as a solution to rape culture. Further, Priya’s Shakti begins to address publics excluded from international and Indian discourses by representing rural, lower class, and disadvantaged women.
Carissa M. Harris
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781501755293
- eISBN:
- 9781501730412
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501755293.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter explores how men in same-sex contexts use obscenity to denigrate women and perpetuate rape culture. It argues that this paradigm, sometimes, taught men to have as much sex as possible ...
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This chapter explores how men in same-sex contexts use obscenity to denigrate women and perpetuate rape culture. It argues that this paradigm, sometimes, taught men to have as much sex as possible and to ignore women's nonconsent for the purpose of producing narratives for their peer group, as in the code of “felawe masculinity” embraced by a group of pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's portrayal of the “felawe faction” sheds light on how the telling of violent sexual jokes enacts the violence they ostensibly trivialize, as obscenity creates a gendered social dynamic teaching a set of values and relations among men that results in violence and harm. This brand of masculinity is prominent in Fragment I of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where three men tell fabliaux featuring the obscene verb “swyve.” The chapter then shows how “swyve” creates gendered pedagogical community and teaches men that sexual aggression is both necessary and laudatory. Ultimately, the chapter explores the relationship between masculinity and obscenity that is central to the teaching of “felawe masculinity,” and examines the pedagogical practices of a group of male characters.Less
This chapter explores how men in same-sex contexts use obscenity to denigrate women and perpetuate rape culture. It argues that this paradigm, sometimes, taught men to have as much sex as possible and to ignore women's nonconsent for the purpose of producing narratives for their peer group, as in the code of “felawe masculinity” embraced by a group of pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's portrayal of the “felawe faction” sheds light on how the telling of violent sexual jokes enacts the violence they ostensibly trivialize, as obscenity creates a gendered social dynamic teaching a set of values and relations among men that results in violence and harm. This brand of masculinity is prominent in Fragment I of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where three men tell fabliaux featuring the obscene verb “swyve.” The chapter then shows how “swyve” creates gendered pedagogical community and teaches men that sexual aggression is both necessary and laudatory. Ultimately, the chapter explores the relationship between masculinity and obscenity that is central to the teaching of “felawe masculinity,” and examines the pedagogical practices of a group of male characters.
Roxanne Harde
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781496827135
- eISBN:
- 9781496827180
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496827135.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Following the thematic foundations set out in Laurie Halse Anderson’s germinal YA rape novel, Speak—when, how, and whom to tell about the rape; the ways in which the survivor reacts to the rape, ...
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Following the thematic foundations set out in Laurie Halse Anderson’s germinal YA rape novel, Speak—when, how, and whom to tell about the rape; the ways in which the survivor reacts to the rape, including self-harm; the ways in which the survivor is both shamed and blamed; and ways to understand the rapist—this chapter analyzes a body of recently published novels about acquaintance rape.The scenarios in these novels work to offer readers alternate discourses about culpability and shame, detail options for survivors, and give readers access to voices too often silenced, helping them toward understanding the social codes that lead to and the circumstances that arise from acquaintance rape. At the same time, this chapter make clear, these texts often reify rape culture and undermine the progress they are working toward.Less
Following the thematic foundations set out in Laurie Halse Anderson’s germinal YA rape novel, Speak—when, how, and whom to tell about the rape; the ways in which the survivor reacts to the rape, including self-harm; the ways in which the survivor is both shamed and blamed; and ways to understand the rapist—this chapter analyzes a body of recently published novels about acquaintance rape.The scenarios in these novels work to offer readers alternate discourses about culpability and shame, detail options for survivors, and give readers access to voices too often silenced, helping them toward understanding the social codes that lead to and the circumstances that arise from acquaintance rape. At the same time, this chapter make clear, these texts often reify rape culture and undermine the progress they are working toward.
John Brigham
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198723301
- eISBN:
- 9780191789700
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723301.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology, Legal Profession and Ethics
This chapter examines the ‘rape culture’ paradigm that has become state policy in the United States. For at least the last decade, the idea of a ‘rape culture’ has dominated consideration of sexual ...
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This chapter examines the ‘rape culture’ paradigm that has become state policy in the United States. For at least the last decade, the idea of a ‘rape culture’ has dominated consideration of sexual assault. On college campuses, and in prosecutors’ offices and police departments, the idea that rape is a central feature of male power has become the orthodoxy. The focus here is on how this radical belief has flourished since the passage of the US Violence against Women Act of 1994. It considers the relationship of the belief to larger disciplinary cultures, sexual regimes, due process rights, and perceptions of men. Although especially overt in the United States, there are echoes of such state feminism and the suppression of supposed rape culture in other common law countries.Less
This chapter examines the ‘rape culture’ paradigm that has become state policy in the United States. For at least the last decade, the idea of a ‘rape culture’ has dominated consideration of sexual assault. On college campuses, and in prosecutors’ offices and police departments, the idea that rape is a central feature of male power has become the orthodoxy. The focus here is on how this radical belief has flourished since the passage of the US Violence against Women Act of 1994. It considers the relationship of the belief to larger disciplinary cultures, sexual regimes, due process rights, and perceptions of men. Although especially overt in the United States, there are echoes of such state feminism and the suppression of supposed rape culture in other common law countries.
Júlia Havas and Tanya Horeck
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781474461986
- eISBN:
- 9781399509091
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474461986.003.0017
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores to what extent Netflix’s binge-able programming strategy and its effect on serialised narrative structures open up new avenues for interrogating rape culture in popular ...
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This chapter explores to what extent Netflix’s binge-able programming strategy and its effect on serialised narrative structures open up new avenues for interrogating rape culture in popular storytelling. Taking two Netflix original series – Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Unbelievable – as case studies, Havas and Horeck analyse the binge-able serial format’s engagement with rape narratives, and considers how this thematisation is shaped by factors such as the company’s branding logic, critical discourses around the cultural value of binge-watching, and the current political mainstreaming of feminist concerns around women’s bodily autonomy.Less
This chapter explores to what extent Netflix’s binge-able programming strategy and its effect on serialised narrative structures open up new avenues for interrogating rape culture in popular storytelling. Taking two Netflix original series – Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Unbelievable – as case studies, Havas and Horeck analyse the binge-able serial format’s engagement with rape narratives, and considers how this thematisation is shaped by factors such as the company’s branding logic, critical discourses around the cultural value of binge-watching, and the current political mainstreaming of feminist concerns around women’s bodily autonomy.
Alexandra Fanghanel
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781529202526
- eISBN:
- 9781529202533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529202526.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter builds on themes established in previous chapters by examining these potentialities in relation to the creation of war machines and establishment of a praxis (Freire, 1968). I return to ...
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This chapter builds on themes established in previous chapters by examining these potentialities in relation to the creation of war machines and establishment of a praxis (Freire, 1968). I return to a consideration of how the guerrilla war machine works in relation to State apparatus which produces codes in public space which, for instance, privilege certain types of body over others. I consider how we might create a war machine and imagine how this might foster the sort of molecular revolution which alters what dominant systems of exclusion, marginalization and commodification might do.Mobilising some politics of ‘making the familiar strange’ (Brecht, 1996 [1964/1935]), of critical exteriority (Kristeva, 1981; Lorde, 1984), and of disinvestment from power (Freire, 2017 [1970/1986]), it does offer some ways in which to conceive of different ‘Becomings-’ and alternative imaginations of social, spatial, gendered justice.Less
This chapter builds on themes established in previous chapters by examining these potentialities in relation to the creation of war machines and establishment of a praxis (Freire, 1968). I return to a consideration of how the guerrilla war machine works in relation to State apparatus which produces codes in public space which, for instance, privilege certain types of body over others. I consider how we might create a war machine and imagine how this might foster the sort of molecular revolution which alters what dominant systems of exclusion, marginalization and commodification might do.Mobilising some politics of ‘making the familiar strange’ (Brecht, 1996 [1964/1935]), of critical exteriority (Kristeva, 1981; Lorde, 1984), and of disinvestment from power (Freire, 2017 [1970/1986]), it does offer some ways in which to conceive of different ‘Becomings-’ and alternative imaginations of social, spatial, gendered justice.
Gordon Braxton
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- December 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197571675
- eISBN:
- 9780197571705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197571675.003.0001
- Subject:
- Social Work, Communities and Organizations
There is an epidemic of violence in America, but boys are trained to sit on the sidelines. This chapter introduces the reader to key definitions, such as sexual violence, as well as key concepts, ...
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There is an epidemic of violence in America, but boys are trained to sit on the sidelines. This chapter introduces the reader to key definitions, such as sexual violence, as well as key concepts, such as consent and rape culture. It provides the scope of the identified violence and situates sexual violence as a public health concern. The chapter further explains why boys and men should care about this violence even though they are trained to ignore it. Boys, after all, know survivors and are survivors themselves in many cases. Boys are also positioned to reach other boys who possess problematic attitudes and behaviors. All violent men were once boys learning the ways of the world. Taken altogether, this chapter inspires readers to hold overdue conversations with boys about how they can help.Less
There is an epidemic of violence in America, but boys are trained to sit on the sidelines. This chapter introduces the reader to key definitions, such as sexual violence, as well as key concepts, such as consent and rape culture. It provides the scope of the identified violence and situates sexual violence as a public health concern. The chapter further explains why boys and men should care about this violence even though they are trained to ignore it. Boys, after all, know survivors and are survivors themselves in many cases. Boys are also positioned to reach other boys who possess problematic attitudes and behaviors. All violent men were once boys learning the ways of the world. Taken altogether, this chapter inspires readers to hold overdue conversations with boys about how they can help.
Jane Caputi
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190902704
- eISBN:
- 9780190902742
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190902704.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics, Political Theory
Critical Anthropocene analyses, including those naming the era the Capitalocene and the Plantationocene, neglect to analyze the gendered-sexual domination, or rapism, that founds the era. The origins ...
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Critical Anthropocene analyses, including those naming the era the Capitalocene and the Plantationocene, neglect to analyze the gendered-sexual domination, or rapism, that founds the era. The origins of the Anthropocene extend back some seven thousand years to the establishment of patriarchal systems, based in ruling men establishing control over women’s sexual and reproductive powers. That model of domination then extended into the enslavement of others, ownership of land, and establishment of social hierarchies. These patterns mark the founding of the United States through the European rapist genocide of Indigenous peoples and theft of land, as well as the rapism at the core of chattel slavery. These enactments of motherfucking enabled a world-wide cotton industry, which in turn made possible the global and rapacious capitalist system that is most responsible for the Anthropocene. Gendered sex and violence infuse ecocidal activities, past and present, including plowing, drilling, nuking, and fracking—which all double as slang terms for fucking.Less
Critical Anthropocene analyses, including those naming the era the Capitalocene and the Plantationocene, neglect to analyze the gendered-sexual domination, or rapism, that founds the era. The origins of the Anthropocene extend back some seven thousand years to the establishment of patriarchal systems, based in ruling men establishing control over women’s sexual and reproductive powers. That model of domination then extended into the enslavement of others, ownership of land, and establishment of social hierarchies. These patterns mark the founding of the United States through the European rapist genocide of Indigenous peoples and theft of land, as well as the rapism at the core of chattel slavery. These enactments of motherfucking enabled a world-wide cotton industry, which in turn made possible the global and rapacious capitalist system that is most responsible for the Anthropocene. Gendered sex and violence infuse ecocidal activities, past and present, including plowing, drilling, nuking, and fracking—which all double as slang terms for fucking.
Alexandra Fanghanel
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781529202526
- eISBN:
- 9781529202533
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529202526.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
Issues of social and spatial gendered justice have never been more pertinent in contemporary post-industrialist societies. This book which marks an intervention in contemporary debates about women’s ...
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Issues of social and spatial gendered justice have never been more pertinent in contemporary post-industrialist societies. This book which marks an intervention in contemporary debates about women’s bodies, public space and rape culture, in order to think through ways in which the normalization of violence against women might be contested. It brings together a rich web of thought about politics, embodiment and public space to examine social and spatial justice in the context of the female body in public. Transforming rape culture is not easy; the problems outlined in this book are not things that can be fixed by policy changes or legal reform (alone). They necessitate an overhaul in the ethics of the way in which we think and act in public spaces, including attending to the exclusions that everyone, in part, is complicit in enacting. Through analyses of three provocative case studies (pregnancy in public space, the female body as protest, and BDSM in public spaces), this book opens up generative ideas about transgression and revolt and advances a transformative politics of the possibilities of living without rape culture.Less
Issues of social and spatial gendered justice have never been more pertinent in contemporary post-industrialist societies. This book which marks an intervention in contemporary debates about women’s bodies, public space and rape culture, in order to think through ways in which the normalization of violence against women might be contested. It brings together a rich web of thought about politics, embodiment and public space to examine social and spatial justice in the context of the female body in public. Transforming rape culture is not easy; the problems outlined in this book are not things that can be fixed by policy changes or legal reform (alone). They necessitate an overhaul in the ethics of the way in which we think and act in public spaces, including attending to the exclusions that everyone, in part, is complicit in enacting. Through analyses of three provocative case studies (pregnancy in public space, the female body as protest, and BDSM in public spaces), this book opens up generative ideas about transgression and revolt and advances a transformative politics of the possibilities of living without rape culture.
Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, and Jessalynn Keller
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190697846
- eISBN:
- 9780190697884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190697846.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change, Gender and Sexuality
Chapter 7 explores how teen girls are using social media to engage with institutionalized and systematic forms of sexism, sexual objectification, and harassment constitutive of not only what can be ...
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Chapter 7 explores how teen girls are using social media to engage with institutionalized and systematic forms of sexism, sexual objectification, and harassment constitutive of not only what can be termed rape culture but also lad culture in secondary schools in the UK, US, and Canada. The chapter draws on interview data with 27 teenage girls including individual Skype interviews with 11 teen girls in Canada, US, UK, and Ireland and in-person focus groups with 16 girls from a London secondary school feminist club. We show how platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and group chats provide different affordances and vernaculars for girls to challenge rape culture collectively and individually. We focus on the minutia of moments such as when girls challenge a rape joke on Facebook, collectively operate a feminist Twitter account, or negotiate instances of trolling, offering unique insight into the nuances of using social media as teen feminist activists attending school.Less
Chapter 7 explores how teen girls are using social media to engage with institutionalized and systematic forms of sexism, sexual objectification, and harassment constitutive of not only what can be termed rape culture but also lad culture in secondary schools in the UK, US, and Canada. The chapter draws on interview data with 27 teenage girls including individual Skype interviews with 11 teen girls in Canada, US, UK, and Ireland and in-person focus groups with 16 girls from a London secondary school feminist club. We show how platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and group chats provide different affordances and vernaculars for girls to challenge rape culture collectively and individually. We focus on the minutia of moments such as when girls challenge a rape joke on Facebook, collectively operate a feminist Twitter account, or negotiate instances of trolling, offering unique insight into the nuances of using social media as teen feminist activists attending school.
Alexandra Fanghanel
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781529202526
- eISBN:
- 9781529202533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529202526.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
In recent years, BDSM communities and sexual practices have received increasing attention in academic circles and in popular discourse. Part one explores what happens at the threshold of kinky ...
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In recent years, BDSM communities and sexual practices have received increasing attention in academic circles and in popular discourse. Part one explores what happens at the threshold of kinky subculture and its penetration into the mainstream, within contemporary legal, cultural, and commercial discourses. Part Two explores the penetration of the disobedient body within the kink community and interrogates how ‘the community’ responds to trouble or disruption. In this part, I draw on interview data with men and women in the US and the UK who talked about how for instance, community is forged, consent violations are dealt with, undesirable behaviour of members of the community are negotiated, and how sexualised relations emerge.This chapter explores the ways in which social and spatial (in)justice through disavowal, exclusion, and the promotion of rape culture prevail in these encounters. Yet it is also hopeful and considers how some interventions might become transformative and how molecular revolutions might emerge.Less
In recent years, BDSM communities and sexual practices have received increasing attention in academic circles and in popular discourse. Part one explores what happens at the threshold of kinky subculture and its penetration into the mainstream, within contemporary legal, cultural, and commercial discourses. Part Two explores the penetration of the disobedient body within the kink community and interrogates how ‘the community’ responds to trouble or disruption. In this part, I draw on interview data with men and women in the US and the UK who talked about how for instance, community is forged, consent violations are dealt with, undesirable behaviour of members of the community are negotiated, and how sexualised relations emerge.This chapter explores the ways in which social and spatial (in)justice through disavowal, exclusion, and the promotion of rape culture prevail in these encounters. Yet it is also hopeful and considers how some interventions might become transformative and how molecular revolutions might emerge.
Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, and Jessalynn Keller
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190697846
- eISBN:
- 9780190697884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190697846.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter shows how feminists are using not only Twitter but a diverse interconnected range of social media platforms to engage in their digital activism. Drawing on a survey of 46 self-defined ...
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This chapter shows how feminists are using not only Twitter but a diverse interconnected range of social media platforms to engage in their digital activism. Drawing on a survey of 46 self-defined Twitter feminists, and a subsample of email, Skype, and in-person interviews with 21 of these respondents we explore how participants challenge rape culture and engage in feminist activism creating social media counter-publics. Twitter affords feminists connectivity, speed, immediacy, and global reach to share and debate: important pedagogical processes for raising awareness and visibility around issues such as rape culture. Despite the widely understood benefits of social media, participants recounted challenges of participating in digital activism on Twitter, including instances of hostile anti-feminism and episodes of sexually aggressive trolling. We outline participants’ emergent strategies for coping with technologically mediated misogyny and illuminate the significant role Twitter is playing in activating networked feminism.Less
This chapter shows how feminists are using not only Twitter but a diverse interconnected range of social media platforms to engage in their digital activism. Drawing on a survey of 46 self-defined Twitter feminists, and a subsample of email, Skype, and in-person interviews with 21 of these respondents we explore how participants challenge rape culture and engage in feminist activism creating social media counter-publics. Twitter affords feminists connectivity, speed, immediacy, and global reach to share and debate: important pedagogical processes for raising awareness and visibility around issues such as rape culture. Despite the widely understood benefits of social media, participants recounted challenges of participating in digital activism on Twitter, including instances of hostile anti-feminism and episodes of sexually aggressive trolling. We outline participants’ emergent strategies for coping with technologically mediated misogyny and illuminate the significant role Twitter is playing in activating networked feminism.
Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, and Jessalynn Keller
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190697846
- eISBN:
- 9780190697884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190697846.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter focuses on women’s use of the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported. Using the hashtag, hundreds of girls and women shared the reasons they didn’t report incidents of sexual assault by ...
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This chapter focuses on women’s use of the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported. Using the hashtag, hundreds of girls and women shared the reasons they didn’t report incidents of sexual assault by partners, family members, friends, and acquaintances. We explore how this feminist hashtag developed in response to the public allegations of sexual violence made about then-popular Canadian CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, and ultimately moved across the media landscape, producing a robust public discussion about sexual violence and rape culture. Drawing on thematic analysis of #BeenRapedNeverReported tweets and interviews with eight women who contributed to the hashtag, we analyze the “affective solidarity” produced along this hashtag and the ways it created new lived possibilities for feminist identification, experience, organizing, and resistance. We contextualize this analysis within a larger Canadian media culture to position the hashtag as both a discursive and affective intervention into hegemonic public discourse about rape culture and sexual violence.Less
This chapter focuses on women’s use of the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported. Using the hashtag, hundreds of girls and women shared the reasons they didn’t report incidents of sexual assault by partners, family members, friends, and acquaintances. We explore how this feminist hashtag developed in response to the public allegations of sexual violence made about then-popular Canadian CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi, and ultimately moved across the media landscape, producing a robust public discussion about sexual violence and rape culture. Drawing on thematic analysis of #BeenRapedNeverReported tweets and interviews with eight women who contributed to the hashtag, we analyze the “affective solidarity” produced along this hashtag and the ways it created new lived possibilities for feminist identification, experience, organizing, and resistance. We contextualize this analysis within a larger Canadian media culture to position the hashtag as both a discursive and affective intervention into hegemonic public discourse about rape culture and sexual violence.
Andrew J. Rizzo, L. B. Klein, Zachary Ahmad-Kahloon, Meera Seshadri, LaWanda Swan, and Lee Helmken Cherry
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190071820
- eISBN:
- 9780190071851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190071820.003.0007
- Subject:
- Social Work, Social Policy
Ending gender-based violence (GBV) on campus requires sustained efforts to transform the rape culture that is embedded in college and university systems. While partnership with student activists is ...
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Ending gender-based violence (GBV) on campus requires sustained efforts to transform the rape culture that is embedded in college and university systems. While partnership with student activists is crucial, structural change necessitates partnerships among college and university employees, particularly between staff who direct campus survivor advocacy and GBV prevention programs and their faculty allies. This chapter draws on accounts of members of the Campus Advocacy and Prevention Professionals Association across the United States and Canada about their partnerships with faculty. Key themes emerged: navigating bureaucracy, negotiating roles and responsibilities, destabilizing power and privilege dynamics, confronting institutionalized oppressions, and going beyond programming to catalyze systems change through meaningful (and often uncomfortable) partnership and dialogue. Recommendations to transform rape culture through new and existing partnerships on program evaluation, curriculum infusion, survivor support, and campus-wide task forces are discussed.Less
Ending gender-based violence (GBV) on campus requires sustained efforts to transform the rape culture that is embedded in college and university systems. While partnership with student activists is crucial, structural change necessitates partnerships among college and university employees, particularly between staff who direct campus survivor advocacy and GBV prevention programs and their faculty allies. This chapter draws on accounts of members of the Campus Advocacy and Prevention Professionals Association across the United States and Canada about their partnerships with faculty. Key themes emerged: navigating bureaucracy, negotiating roles and responsibilities, destabilizing power and privilege dynamics, confronting institutionalized oppressions, and going beyond programming to catalyze systems change through meaningful (and often uncomfortable) partnership and dialogue. Recommendations to transform rape culture through new and existing partnerships on program evaluation, curriculum infusion, survivor support, and campus-wide task forces are discussed.
Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, and Jessalynn Keller
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190697846
- eISBN:
- 9780190697884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190697846.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change, Gender and Sexuality
In this chapter, we begin by making a case for the ubiquitous ways rape culture, harassment, and sexual violence continue to be a part of many girls’ and women’s everyday lives, despite the ways in ...
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In this chapter, we begin by making a case for the ubiquitous ways rape culture, harassment, and sexual violence continue to be a part of many girls’ and women’s everyday lives, despite the ways in which feminists have challenged these issues for over half a century. This chapter then goes on to outline the various ways girls and women have begun to harness new technologies to challenge these practices. Importantly, the chapter also introduces the scholarly foundation for this book, focusing specifically on the contemporary social and cultural context in which our case studies operate. The interdisciplinary nature of this study means we engage with key concepts from the fields of digital media studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, sociology, and education studies. The concepts or terms that we explore and define here include rape culture, lad culture, hashtag feminism, and mediated abuse.Less
In this chapter, we begin by making a case for the ubiquitous ways rape culture, harassment, and sexual violence continue to be a part of many girls’ and women’s everyday lives, despite the ways in which feminists have challenged these issues for over half a century. This chapter then goes on to outline the various ways girls and women have begun to harness new technologies to challenge these practices. Importantly, the chapter also introduces the scholarly foundation for this book, focusing specifically on the contemporary social and cultural context in which our case studies operate. The interdisciplinary nature of this study means we engage with key concepts from the fields of digital media studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, sociology, and education studies. The concepts or terms that we explore and define here include rape culture, lad culture, hashtag feminism, and mediated abuse.
Carole Quigley
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781800859470
- eISBN:
- 9781800852617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781800859470.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (2006) is a contemporary Irish play set just on the north side of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It focuses on the performance of gender ...
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Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (2006) is a contemporary Irish play set just on the north side of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It focuses on the performance of gender norms, toxic masculinity, and sexual violence. The phrase “toxic masculinity” has become a buzzword in contemporary Irish and global feminist discourse and can be incorrectly used to berate men for their very existence. Such an application of the phrase is wholly damaging to people of all genders as it ultimately supports and maintains the hetero-normative patriarchal gender binary. The aim of this chapter is to redefine toxic masculinity as an undeniable force in contemporary society that ultimately serves to sustain a crisis of masculinity. This chapter uses the playas a lens to examine and forensically deconstruct toxic masculinities in contemporary Irish society.Less
Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (2006) is a contemporary Irish play set just on the north side of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It focuses on the performance of gender norms, toxic masculinity, and sexual violence. The phrase “toxic masculinity” has become a buzzword in contemporary Irish and global feminist discourse and can be incorrectly used to berate men for their very existence. Such an application of the phrase is wholly damaging to people of all genders as it ultimately supports and maintains the hetero-normative patriarchal gender binary. The aim of this chapter is to redefine toxic masculinity as an undeniable force in contemporary society that ultimately serves to sustain a crisis of masculinity. This chapter uses the playas a lens to examine and forensically deconstruct toxic masculinities in contemporary Irish society.
Rhiannon Graybill
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190082314
- eISBN:
- 9780190082345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190082314.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
The Hebrew Bible contains many accounts of rape and sexual violence. Feminist approaches to these stories remain dominated by Phyllis Trible’s 1984 book Texts of Terror. This chapter and book offer a ...
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The Hebrew Bible contains many accounts of rape and sexual violence. Feminist approaches to these stories remain dominated by Phyllis Trible’s 1984 book Texts of Terror. This chapter and book offer a new approach, drawing on feminist, queer, and affect theory and offering new readings of biblical rape stories, including Dinah (Gen 34), Tamar (2 Sam 13), Lot’s daughters (Gen 19), Bathsheba (2 Sam 11), Hagar (Gen 16 and 21), Daughter Zion (Lam 1 and 2), and the Levite’s concubine (Judg 19). In place of “texts of terror,” this chapter opens the possibility of reading after terror. The approach offered here also engages contemporary activism against sexual violence and rape culture, bringing them to bear on biblical studies.Less
The Hebrew Bible contains many accounts of rape and sexual violence. Feminist approaches to these stories remain dominated by Phyllis Trible’s 1984 book Texts of Terror. This chapter and book offer a new approach, drawing on feminist, queer, and affect theory and offering new readings of biblical rape stories, including Dinah (Gen 34), Tamar (2 Sam 13), Lot’s daughters (Gen 19), Bathsheba (2 Sam 11), Hagar (Gen 16 and 21), Daughter Zion (Lam 1 and 2), and the Levite’s concubine (Judg 19). In place of “texts of terror,” this chapter opens the possibility of reading after terror. The approach offered here also engages contemporary activism against sexual violence and rape culture, bringing them to bear on biblical studies.
Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, and Jessalynn Keller
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190697846
- eISBN:
- 9780190697884
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190697846.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change, Gender and Sexuality
In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of ...
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In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways digital spaces are often highly creative sites where the public can learn about and intervene in rape culture, little research has explored girls’ and women’s experiences of using digital platforms to challenge misogynistic practices. This is therefore the first book-length study to interrogate how girls and women negotiate rape culture through digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps. Through an analysis of high-profile campaigns such as Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and the everyday activism of Twitter feminists, this book presents findings of over 800 pieces of digital content, and semi-structured interviews with 82 girls, women, and some men around the world, including organizers of various feminist campaigns and those who have contributed to them. As our study shows, digital feminist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and a variety of digital platforms are used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes. Furthermore, although it may be technologically easy for many groups to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain emotional, mental, or practical barriers that create different experiences, and legitimate some feminist voices, perspectives, and experiences over others.Less
In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways digital spaces are often highly creative sites where the public can learn about and intervene in rape culture, little research has explored girls’ and women’s experiences of using digital platforms to challenge misogynistic practices. This is therefore the first book-length study to interrogate how girls and women negotiate rape culture through digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps. Through an analysis of high-profile campaigns such as Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and the everyday activism of Twitter feminists, this book presents findings of over 800 pieces of digital content, and semi-structured interviews with 82 girls, women, and some men around the world, including organizers of various feminist campaigns and those who have contributed to them. As our study shows, digital feminist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and a variety of digital platforms are used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes. Furthermore, although it may be technologically easy for many groups to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain emotional, mental, or practical barriers that create different experiences, and legitimate some feminist voices, perspectives, and experiences over others.
Leigh Gilmore
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231177146
- eISBN:
- 9780231543446
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231177146.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
The introduction lays out the framework for why we doubt what women say about their lives; defines the figure of the tainted witness as who a woman can become, not who she is; places the figure of ...
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The introduction lays out the framework for why we doubt what women say about their lives; defines the figure of the tainted witness as who a woman can become, not who she is; places the figure of the woman witness and the practices of testimony (legal and literary) in the context of raced and gendered histories of doubt; theorizes the presence of a testimonial network through which bodies, persons, and words moves as a circulatory system in which histories of slavery and colonialism are lodged and which incubates sexism and racism; analyzes how these pre-existing judgments lay in wait for any particular woman’s testimony in order to smear her; defines scandal as the substitution of the witness’s terms for hostile ones that are then repeated as if truth and are recycled through global media; and defines the “adequate witness” as one who provides a “holding environment” (following Winnicott) for testimony.Less
The introduction lays out the framework for why we doubt what women say about their lives; defines the figure of the tainted witness as who a woman can become, not who she is; places the figure of the woman witness and the practices of testimony (legal and literary) in the context of raced and gendered histories of doubt; theorizes the presence of a testimonial network through which bodies, persons, and words moves as a circulatory system in which histories of slavery and colonialism are lodged and which incubates sexism and racism; analyzes how these pre-existing judgments lay in wait for any particular woman’s testimony in order to smear her; defines scandal as the substitution of the witness’s terms for hostile ones that are then repeated as if truth and are recycled through global media; and defines the “adequate witness” as one who provides a “holding environment” (following Winnicott) for testimony.