Digital Sexual Violence and the Gendered Constraints of Consent in Youth Image Sharing

Young Love “Locked Down”: Adolescent and Young Adult Perspectives on Sexting During the Covid-19 Pandemic in England

“…Perspectives and experiences of sexting shared by adolescents and young adults in the focus groups and interviews were shaped by both the respective methodological stances and age ranges of the participants. Notably, adolescent participants co-constructed social and cultural norms and meanings about sexting in ways that reflected what has been found in previous research; adolescent girls perceived and described a gender inequitable landscape of risk and reward in peer sexting cultures that, they believed, operate to the detriment of girls while enabling boys to accrue value through engaging in sexting (e.g., Ringrose et al, 2021 ; Setty et al, 2022 ). The young adults, meanwhile, articulated (inter)personal perspectives on and experiences of sexting that both reproduced and transcended these sociocultural constraints.…”

“…From this perspective, sexting may, at best, only be experienced positively by girls in the “short-term” amid self-responsibilization for managing the risks of non-consensual and abusive sexting in a landscape of uncertainty and precarious trust (see Doyle et al, 2021 ). There is little space within this gendered landscape of risk for girls to identify or articulate any benefits from sexting (Setty et al, 2022 ).…”

“…This was not the case, however, if unwanted by one person within the interaction or when involving non-consensual practices. Non-consensual sexting affecting both adolescents and young adults includes unwanted solicitation for images and pressure to produce images, sending unwanted images (“cyber-flashing” or “dick pics”), non-consensual further distribution of images, and faked or non-consensually recorded or produced images (e.g., “up-skirting” or “down-blousing”) (Ringrose et al, 2021 ; Setty et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Both girls and young women also experience being sent unwanted and unsolicited images from boys and men. While Hayes and Dragiewicz ( 2018 ) conceptualize it as a form of gendered sexual aggression, girls and young women often trivialize it as merely “annoying” or “irritating” rather than as a form of abuse (Bonilla et al, 2021 ; Setty et al, 2022 ; Thorburn et al, 2021 ). These studies find that refusing to reciprocate is often met with further abuse and girls and women typically manage the risk by blocking the sender.…”

Victim Blaming bei nicht-konsensueller Weitergabe intimer Bilder: Ergebnisse einer Befragung von Schüler*innen und Lehrer*innen

“…B. Bonilla et al 2021;Setty et al 2022). Jungen hingegen werden durch die Kommunikation mit sexuell expliziten Bildern eher als männlich wahrgenommen und können Aufwertung erfahren -unabhängig davon, ob sie eigene Bilder verschicken oder Bilder anderer weiterleiten (z.…”