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

Digitized narratives of sexual violence: Making sexual violence felt and known through digital disclosures

“…Using the closeted metaphor so common in challenging injustice for sexual minorities (Halberstam, 2018), this form of "coming out" makes experiences of sexual violence legible. In this way digital platform's offer the affordance of visibility (boyd, 2010) disrupting normative rape scripts (see also Loney-Howes, 2018).…”

“…For several decades, feminist scholars have been interested in the narrative accounts of sexual violence in court cases, media, autobiographical accounts, and interviews (see Doherty and Anderson, 1998; Gunnarsson, 2018; Karlsson, 2019; Loney-Howes, 2018; O’Neil, 2018; Spry, 1995; Wood and Rennie, 1994). According to Young and McGuire (2003), the way people discuss sexually violent experiences is important because it shapes how they make sense of their assault.…”

“…In particular, digital campaigns have emerged to not only challenge sexual violence, but give victims a voice and provide them alternative forms of justice (see Drueke and Zobl, 2016; Fileborn, 2017; Loney-Howes, 2018; Olson, 2016; Powell, 2015; Salter, 2013; Wånggren, 2016; Wood et al, 2018). Many of these initiatives rely on sharing personal testimonials of violence, and scholars have begun to study the ways disclosures of violence are shared in digital spaces using digital devices and apps (see Bivens and Hasinoff, 2018; Dodge, 2016; Fileborn, 2019; Loney-Howes, 2015, 2018; Mendes et al, 2019; O’Neil, 2018). Bianca Fileborn (2019) argues that disclosure of sexual violence must be understood as a “curated” process in which careful decisions are made about whom to disclose, which experiences to share, and how narratives should be shaped.…”

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

“…The CEO suggested "survivors need to find support offline", and strongly encouraged survivors to report to police rather than take matters into their own hands. Research predating the #MeToo movement indicates that digital communications technologies are important tools for survivors of sexual violence and domestic and family violence, helping to create and sustain supportive communities that are often not available offline (Fileborn, 2014;Harris, 2018;Loney-Howes, 2018;Mendes et al, 2019;O'Neill, 2018;Powell, 2015;Salter, 2013). However, in sharing experiences online survivors also risk being identified by others in their communities, which may have negative consequences.…”

Sites of Exception: Gender Violence, Digital Activism, and Nirbhaya’s Zone of Anomie in India

“…In 1988, feminist scholar Liz Kelly (1988) proposed her thesis on the “continuum of sexual violence,” suggesting that women’s experiences of sexual violence and harm are interrelated and could not be contained within legal parameters that defined sexual offenses. Hence, according to Loney-Howes (2018), “by coming out and claiming an experience that may not fit within the parameters of legal definitions of rape, victim-survivors also challenge the permissibility of labelling one’s experience without calling on ‘expert’ knowledge to validate their claims” (p. 38), also giving rise to alternate forms of justice and healing. Powell (2015) supports this view and states that some online spaces have the potential to foster informal justice for victim-survivors of rape who have been denied recognition, support, and justice by formal mechanisms, including criminal justice processes and restorative justice initiatives.…”