Online Anti-Rape Activism

Online Anti-Rape Activism examines the nature, use and scope of online spaces for anti-rape activism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with activists from around the world, survey data from participants in these spaces, and a content analysis of social media pages, weblogs and websites, this book explores the complexities, contradictions, possibilities and politics that underscore the ways these online spaces are engaged with, regulated and their potential to contribute to social change. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, this book offers a critical commentary on the limitations and potentials of online anti-rape campaigning. It provides a foundation for understanding the emergence of #MeToo and sheds light on the complex history associated with keeping rape on the public agenda and the enduring tension between the personal and the political within feminist activism. The interdisciplinary and international approach makes this book suitable for a broad audience, including academics, students and activists working in the fields of gender and women’s studies, media studies, politics, sociology and criminology worldwide

#MeToo in regional, rural and remote Australia: An analysis of regional newspapers reports profiling the movement

The #MeToo movement sparked a global conversation and moment of reckoning in relation to sexual violence. The hashtag campaign, developed from a tweet sent by actress Alyssa Milano (though the phrase was originally coined by African American activist Tarana Burke some decade earlier), provided a moment for survivors to share their experiences in a context in which they were perhaps more likely to be supported and believed. The #MeToo movement also created an opportunity to engage in a more productive dialogue about the causes and the challenges underpinning the prevention of gender-based violence. Yet, #MeToo has been subject to substantive critique, particularly in relation to modes of representation within media reporting. In addition, there is also little is known about how the #MeToo movement was impactful beyond major urban centres and resonated in regional, rural, and remote (RRR) locations. This article addresses both these issues drawing on a thematic analysis of 70 newspaper articles from RRR newspapers in Australia reporting on or responding to the #MeToo movement. While the data reveals some progressive approaches to documenting how the #MeToo movement impacted some RRR communities, as well as profiling some of the key challenges facing RRR communities in addressing gender-based violence, the specific voices represented in newspaper reporting, continues to reflect the perspectives of white, heterosexual women. We conclude by suggesting further research exploring the nature of reporting on #MeToo in other RRR spaces is needed to understand the full extent to which sexual violence is understood and represented. In addition, more specific work with survivors in RRR Australia and globally is vital to understand the dynamics and complexities of responding to and preventing sexual violence and the challenges associated with the geographies of speaking out

Overwhelmed and Frustrated: Experiences of workplace sexual harassment and discrimination; the barriers faced with the legal system

With the high volume of sexual harassment and discrimination calls to the JobWatch Telephone Information Service, JobWatch was interested in understanding the gap in justice system data about the non-legal and legal actions that are taken by workers after being provided with information about their issue. To address this information gap, JobWatch undertook a survey of these TIS callers. 227 people responded to the JobWatch 2022 Workplace Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Survey and 202 people consented to share their response in this research report

Beyond the spectacle of suffering: Representations of rape in online anti-rape activism

From vigilante street politics, to consciousness raising, speak outs, and now online spaces, the mediums through which representations of rape are transmitted by anti-rape activists have transformed over time. Although activists have made concerted efforts to broaden the representation of rape, narratives about women\u27s sexual suffering and vulnerability continue to dominate popular assumptions about rape. The internet purportedly offers a more complex and networked platform for activists to engage with and challenge these representations propagated by a culture which condones sexual violence, due to a proliferation of fluid public and counter-public spaces. By examining the ways in which rape is depicted on three online anti-rape campaigns: Stop Rape Now, This is Not an Invitation to Rape Me, and Project Unbreakable, I demonstrate that online spaces do provide a viable forum for feminist anti-rape activists to contest normative depictions of rape and sexual victimisation. However, these norms are not always effectively challenged. Because of this, I argue that it is necessary to persist in questioning the modes of representation in these online anti-rape campaigns, as well as find ways to make victim-survivors theorists of their own experiences to move beyond the spectacle of sexual suffering. Otherwise, social justice struggles will continue to be beset by misrepresentation and misframing

Online Anti-Rape Activism

Online Anti-Rape Activism examines the nature, use and scope of online spaces for anti-rape activism. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with activists from around the world, survey data from participants in these spaces, and a content analysis of social media pages, weblogs and websites, this book explores the complexities, contradictions, possibilities and politics that underscore the ways these online spaces are engaged with, regulated and their potential to contribute to social change. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, this book offers a critical commentary on the limitations and potentials of online anti-rape campaigning. It provides a foundation for understanding the emergence of #MeToo and sheds light on the complex history associated with keeping rape on the public agenda and the enduring tension between the personal and the political within feminist activism. The interdisciplinary and international approach makes this book suitable for a broad audience, including academics, students and activists working in the fields of gender and women’s studies, media studies, politics, sociology and criminology worldwide

Shifting the Rape Script: Coming Out Online as a Rape Victim

The experience of being raped and the associated trauma is often conceptualized as unspeakable in that it cannot be put into a comprehensible language.1 Yet the very notion that rape is something unspeakable serves to normalize rules governing the permissibility of speaking about rape, tacitly enforcing the shame that surrounds sexual violence and maintaining victim-survivors\u27 silence. The unspeakability of rape is also perpetuated by the criminal justice system through its power to define what is and is not rape, thereby denying those whose experience falls outside legal definitions the recognition and permission to claim their experience as rape

#MeToo has changed the media landscape, but in Australia there is still much to be done

Emerging in October 2017 in response to allegations of sexual assault perpetrated by Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, #MeToo highlighted the potential for traditional and social media to work together to generate global interest in gender-based violence. Within 24 hours, survivors around the world had used the hashtag 12 million times

Introduction: mapping the emergence of #MeToo

Sexual violence is an incredibly polarizing subject. On the one hand, sexual violence can incite outrage and moral indignation from the public and politicians alike. On the other hand, survivors who speak out about sexual violence routinely face scrutiny from their friends, family, police and the public. Many are accused of lying about their experiences, and others for not being \u27authentic\u27 victims or traumatized enough. Some are blamed for being assaulted: that they were \u27asking for it\u27. At the same time, feminist activists have long sought to challenge these views, along with the assumption that rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are the products of the random acts of individual men who are regarded as \u27sick\u27 or \u27social deviants\u27 and unknown to their victims. Instead, many feminists argue that these acts are a reflection of a \u27rape culture\u27, a highly contested term that refers to the social, cultural and political processes that condone violence against women but also blame women (and all other victim-survivors) if and when violence is perpetrated against them (Buchwald, Fletcher, & Roth, 1993). The flood of participation in #MeToo reaffirmed publicly just how widespread sexual assault and harassment actually are; that most victim-survivors know the offender; and, significantly, that these experiences are routine and normalized, in short, confirming many feminist arguments about \u27rape culture\u27

Conclusion: \u27A new day is on the horizon\u27?

In this concluding chapter, we critically reflect on the future of #MeToo. We position #MeToo as a rupture in public discussions about what constitutes sexual harassment and violence, as well as who is afforded recognition. However, we are cautious about the ways in which the interventions following this rupture may be problematic and reinforce the same structural conditions and interpersonal relationships the #MeToo movement is seeking to critique. Rather than aiming to reach some kind of consensus as to the impact, influence, and shortcomings of the movement, this chapter restates the (perhaps uncomfortable, messy and less satisfying) position of resisting \u27easy\u27 answers and neat, fully resolved conclusions about #MeToo. Indeed, if there is a key \u27take-away\u27 point from the contributions to this book, it is that the #MeToo movement is a deeply complex and multi-faceted one, brimming with points of tension, contradiction, and polarization. Drawing on the key arguments presented by the contributors in this collection, the chapter articulates ongoing challenges that need addressing

Gender-Based Violence and Carceral Feminism in Australia: Towards Decarceral Approaches

This article explores the limitations of criminal legal responses to gender-based violence in Australia, specifically sexual assault law reforms and the criminalisation of coercive control. We demonstrate that carceral horizons deployed to address gender-based violence cause further harm to survivors and overshadow diverse perceptions and practices of justice. We suggest that such an approach is inappropriate and dangerous in the Australian context, given the historical and enduring harms of colonisation and the extent to which the actors within and the structure of the criminal legal system perpetrate violence towards Indigenous survivors of gender-based violence. Drawing on insights from research on survivors’ justice needs, survivors’ experiences in the criminal legal system, and abolitionist, transformative, and Indigenous scholarship, we discuss the potential for alternative ways of conceptualising justice responses in the Australian context that move beyond and avoid further perpetuating the harms arising from criminal legal responses to gender-based violence