The phenomenon of "slutpages," tied to high schools, fraternities, and the military, used to post, share, and comment on nude and semi-nude images of women, has emerged in mass media. To our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically investigate slutpage use behaviors including: visiting slutpages, posting nude images/videos online without consent, and using a vault app to store/share nude images. We conducted a survey of undergraduate college students attending a large Midwestern university in the U.S., with 1867 respondents (36.4% cis/transgender men, 63.6% cisgender women; 18-24 years old M = 20.39) to determine who is engaging in slutpage use behaviors. Our results showed that younger participants and men were more likely to engage in slutpage use behaviors than older participants and women, especially if they participated in Greek Life or played a team sport for their university. Men in a fraternity or on a team sport visited slutpages and posted nude images/video online without consent more frequently than men outside these groups, or women in general. Drinking alcohol and using pornography more frequently were also associated with slutpage use behaviors. This study provides a new understanding of slutpages as a social form of image-based sexual abuse and informs researchers, educators, and policy makers to expand their inquiry into online sexual experiences and exploitation to include this phenomenon.
Men’s experiences with sexual violence (SV) remain underrecognized in advocacy work, public discourse, academic research, and clinical practice, largely because SV is gendered as a feminine experience. To increase our understanding of this topic, the present thematic synthesis of qualitative studies sought to explore how socially constructed tenets of hegemonic masculinity contextualize men’s experiences with SV in adulthood. Relevant materials for the thematic synthesis were identified via a search of literature published in nine databases up to August 2021 following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Of the 2,815 works identified, 41 studies were analyzed based on our inclusion criteria (i.e., empirical study using qualitative methods, examining men’s first-person experiences with SV in adulthood, references masculinity, based on Westernized countries). Four overarching themes were identified which help capture the influence of masculinity on men’s gendered experiences with SV: (a) sexual victimization tactics used against men, (b) men’s cognitive and emotional processing of SV experiences, (c) men’s behavioral responses after SV, and (d) influence of masculinity constructs on help-seeking. Codes were stratified by gender of perpetrator (man or woman) and sample population (military, college, men who have sex with men, and general population) to better understand unique experiences of survivors in different contexts. Our findings are discussed using the gender role strain paradigm to situate men’s experiences with SV within conceptual frameworks used in the broader field of masculinity studies.
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