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Online/Offline Continuities: Exploring Misogyny and Hate in Online Abuse of Feminists
Abstract
Using data from a national UK study about experiences of online abuse amongst women who discuss feminist politics, we use debates about Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) and hate crime to consider the continuities and breaks between online and offline victimisation. Online abuse can be considered to be a form of VAWG and a hate crime, although these categories are problematic because they reflect inappropriate distinctions between private and public offences, because ‘hate’ is a clumsy description of the complex emotional context when perpetrators are known to the victims, and because ‘hate crime’ has not reflected the intersectional nature of some offences which target victims’ identities. A victim-centred approach helps deepen our understanding of the experiences of and continuities between on and offline abuse.
... Estas investigaciones sitúan la violencia como un intento de silenciar a las activistas y a sus reivindicaciones, expulsándolas del espacio de debate digital a través de un proceso de disciplinamiento violento. Los impactos específicos responden a un continuum en función de la gravedad y frecuencia de los ataques, si bien es común la normalización reticente (Lewis et al, 2019: 130), así como la que se quite importancia a la violencia experimentada (Lewis et al, 2019; Ananías y Vergara, 2019). Específicamente, en el informe de Hybridas y Komons (2020) las encuestadas señalaron que el 40,76% experimentaron ansiedad como consecuencia de los ataques sufridos; el 35,87%, tristeza y depresión; y miedo en el 30,43% de los casos. ...
... Así, las reacciones de las activistas van desde el "yo me río más que otra cosa" hasta el llegar a temer por su vida (Entrevista, PI1). En cualquier caso, se evidencia la existencia de una normalización reticente (Lewis et al, 2019), en primer lugar porque todas las entrevistadas asumen que la violencia es inevitable -O sea, que como que hay un nivel de violencia que sabemos que siempre va a existir o va a suceder" ...
... A nivel personal, "los afectos diarios y repetitivos producidos por las experiencias cotidianas de racismo y misoginia online y offline se inscriben en el cuerpo y se mantienen dentro hasta el punto de que pueden doler físicamente"(Kuo, en Ging y Siapera: 174). Además, se da un continuum de impactos, en función de la gravedad de las violencias recibidas, desde la normalización reticente(Lewis et al, 2019) hasta la ansiedad y depresión (Hybridas y Komons, 2020), si bien cuando se habla de estos impactos es importante dejar espacio para la agencia de quienes reciben la violencia y su capacidad de sobreponerse a la misma o, incluso, que no les afecte como esperaríamos desde fuera, sin que ello quite gravedad a la situación violenta. A nivel colectivo, "la violencia contra las mujeres en la esfera digital refuerza los roles de género" (Lumsden y Morgan, 2017: 6), haciendo así peligrar el derecho de las mujeres a participar plenamente y en igualdad en los espacios digitales(Barker y Jurasz, 2019). ...
Este trabajo de fin de máster busca estudiar cuál es el papel, dentro de la reacción patriarcal, de la violencia digital contra activistas y colectivos feministas. A través de una etnografía digital que incluye observación no participante en redes sociales y entrevistas semiestructuradas en profundidad a activistas, se ha buscado comprender específicamente qué prácticas violentas se dan en los espacios digitales que habitan las activistas; cuáles son sus impactos; cómo resisten y responden las activistas a estas violencias; y cómo intervienen las mediaciones digitales en su (re)producción. Los resultados apuntan a un amplio repertorio de prácticas violentas que están altamente normalizadas por las activistas, así como a un continuum de impactos que se mueve entre la ausencia de efecto hasta la desmovilización o la autocensura. Se identifica también un diverso conjunto de estrategias de respuesta, especialmente para las violencias basadas en lo discursivo, si bien faltan recursos y conocimiento para hacer frente a las que presentan un mayor componente tecnológico. De esta forma, la violencia digital contra activistas feministas se evidencia como una práctica habitual y con numerosos impactos tanto individuales como colectivos, que es necesario comprender en el marco de la reacción patriarcal y del capitalismo en la era digital para poder abordar de forma compleja y efectiva.
... A rise in hate speech on a mainstream social media platform such as X is troubling for a number of reasons. The prevalence of online hate is linked to offline hate crimes [15], and victims of hate often report decreased psychological well-being [16][17][18]. Additionally, exposure to hate ideologies can increase prejudice [19] and decrease empathy towards outgroups [20]. ...
Numerous studies have reported an increase in hate speech on X (formerly Twitter) in the months immediately following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform on October 27th, 2022; relatedly, despite Musk’s pledge to “defeat the spam bots,” a recent study reported no substantial change in the concentration of inauthentic accounts. However, it is not known whether any of these trends endured. We address this by examining material posted on X from the beginning of 2022 through June 2023, the period that includes Musk’s full tenure as CEO. We find that the increase in hate speech just before Musk bought X persisted until at least May of 2023, with the weekly rate of hate speech being approximately 50% higher than the months preceding his purchase, although this increase cannot be directly attributed to any policy at X. The increase is seen across multiple dimensions of hate, including racism, homophobia, and transphobia. Moreover, there is a doubling of hate post “likes,” indicating increased engagement with hate posts. In addition to measuring hate speech, we also measure the presence of inauthentic accounts on the platform; these accounts are often used in spam and malicious information campaigns. We find no reduction (and a possible increase) in activity by these users after Musk purchased X, which could point to further negative outcomes, such as the potential for scams, interference in elections, or harm to public health campaigns. Overall, the long-term increase in hate speech, and the prevalence of potentially inauthentic accounts, are concerning, as these factors can undermine safe and democratic online environments, and increase the risk of offline harms.
... Hate groups have been shown to cause harm in online environments (Chan, Ghose, and Seamans 2016), and online hate can influence offline events (Lewis, Rowe, and Wiper 2019). With the rapid growth of the internet, social media platforms make it easier than ever for users who subscribe to hate-based ideologies to find like-minded others (Caiani and Copyright © 2024, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). ...
Counterspeech -- speech that opposes hate speech -- has gained significant attention recently as a strategy to reduce hate on social media. While previous studies suggest that counterspeech can somewhat reduce hate speech, little is known about its effects on participation in online hate communities, nor which counterspeech tactics reduce harmful behavior. We begin to address these gaps by identifying 25 large hate communities ("subreddits") within Reddit and analyzing the effect of counterspeech on newcomers within these communities. We first construct a new public dataset of carefully annotated counterspeech and non-counterspeech comments within these subreddits. We use this dataset to train a state-of-the-art counterspeech detection model. Next, we use matching to evaluate the causal effects of hostile and non-hostile counterspeech on the engagement of newcomers in hate subreddits. We find that, while non-hostile counterspeech is ineffective at keeping users from fully disengaging from these hate subreddits, a single hostile counterspeech comment substantially reduces both future likelihood of engagement. While offering nuance to the understanding of counterspeech efficacy, these results a) leave unanswered the question of whether hostile counterspeech dissuades newcomers from participation in online hate writ large, or merely drives them into less-moderated and more extreme hate communities, and b) raises ethical considerations about hostile counterspeech, which is both comparatively common and might exacerbate rather than mitigate the net level of antagonism in society. These findings underscore the importance of future work to improve counterspeech tactics and minimize unintended harm.
... For example, Awan and Zempi (2016) found that the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and Tunisia and the activities of Islamic State militants triggered a significant increase in anti-Muslim attacks both online and offline, and victims feared that online hatred would materializing in actual violence against them in the offline world (Awan & Zempi, 2016;Zempi, 2014). Similarly, misogyny and online abuse of women and girls often spills over to the traditional, offline environments and exist in continuity rather than isolated offenses (Lewis et al., 2019). ...
... Both analyses we performed show large increases in hate speech following Musk's purchase, with no sign of hate speech returning to previously typical levels. Prior research highlights the consequences of online hate speech, including increased anxiety in users (Saha, Chandrasekharan, and De Choudhury 2019) and offline victimization of targeted groups (Lewis, Rowe, and Wiper 2019). The effects of Twitter's moderation policies are thus likely far-reaching and will lead to negative consequences if left unchecked. ...
On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, becoming its new CEO and firing many top executives in the process. Musk listed fewer restrictions on content moderation and removal of spam bots among his goals for the platform. Given findings of prior research on moderation and hate speech in online communities, the promise of less strict content moderation poses the concern that hate will rise on Twitter. We examine the levels of hate speech and prevalence of bots before and after Musk's acquisition of the platform. We find that hate speech rose dramatically upon Musk purchasing Twitter and the prevalence of most types of bots increased, while the prevalence of astroturf bots decreased.
... Hate groups have been shown to cause harm in online environments 1 , and hate that is spread online can influence offline events 2,3 . With the rapid growth of the internet, social media platforms such as Reddit 1 make it easier than ever for hateful individuals to congregate 4 . ...
While online hate groups pose significant risks to the health of online platforms and safety of marginalized groups, little is known about what causes users to become active in hate groups and the effect of social interactions on furthering their engagement. We address this gap by first developing tools to find hate communities within Reddit, and then augment 11 subreddits extracted with 14 known hateful subreddits (25 in total). Using causal inference methods, we evaluate the effect of replies on engagement in hateful subreddits by comparing users who receive replies to their first comment (the treatment) to equivalent control users who do not. We find users who receive replies are less likely to become engaged in hateful subreddits than users who do not, while the opposite effect is observed for a matched sample of similar-sized non-hateful subreddits. Using the Google Perspective API and VADER, we discover that hateful community first-repliers are more toxic, negative, and attack the posters more often than non-hateful first-repliers. In addition, we uncover a negative correlation between engagement and attacks or toxicity of first-repliers. We simulate the cumulative engagement of hateful and non-hateful subreddits under the contra-positive scenario of friendly first-replies, finding that attacks dramatically reduce engagement in hateful subreddits. These results counter-intuitively imply that, although under-moderated communities allow hate to fester, the resulting environment is such that direct social interaction does not encourage further participation, thus endogenously constraining the harmful role that these communities could play as recruitment venues for antisocial beliefs.
... The relative ease of perpetrating abusive and threatening behaviour online is problematic in terms of investigating offences and the impact on victims. The application of technology into the domestic environment, particularly where that is connected to the web, has provided much in the way of fertile opportunities for offending and though there may be considerable crossover between online and offline environments with regard to misogynist abuse and threats (Rowe et al. 2019) the additional modus operandi present challenges in respect of legislation, evidence gathering and thus for crime prevention and community safety. ...
This article considers how far multi-agency policing has travelled in England and Wales. As we move into the fourth decade of investment in the multi-agency approach to policing a plethora of crime and victimisation problems, it is appropriate for us to reflect on progress. Drawing on the broader literature, state strategies promoting multi-agency and partnership working and reflecting on research and evaluations of multi-agency partnerships to tackle domestic abuse, the article raises some prickly questions about our continued faith in the multi-agency approach to reduce domestic abuse, protect and support survivors and hold perpetrators to account. The paper begins by offering an outline of the significant shift in policing that ushered in an era of crime prevention and community safety. A critical review then unfolds drilling into progress and prospects in the context of multi-agency policing of domestic abuse contemporarily. The article closes by posing further questions about the present climate and the longer-term direction for multi-agency and partnership working in the context of policing domestic abuse.
... For example, Awan and Zempi (2016) found that the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and Tunisia and the activities of Islamic State militants triggered a significant increase in anti-Muslim attacks both online and offline, and victims feared that online hatred would materializing in actual violence against them in the offline world (Awan & Zempi, 2016;Zempi, 2014). Similarly, misogyny and online abuse of women and girls often spills over to the traditional, offline environments and exist in continuity rather than isolated offenses (Lewis et al., 2019). ...
Criminal offending and victimization often overlap in both the virtual and offline worlds. However, scholars are still unsure how the offending victimization relationship plays out between the online and offline worlds. Using a sample of 2,491 adults, four clusters are discovered: 1) those unlikely to have offended or been victimized, 2) those who had online victimization and offending experiences, 3) Those who have been victimized offline and online, but who are unlikely to have offended, and 4) individuals who were victims both online and offline and offended online. Thus, the offending-victimization overlap may be common, but it is certainly not exclusive.
... One important situational factor that influences rape cognitions is exposure to sexualized or sexist media content (e.g., jokes, films, adverts, music videos; LaCroix et al., 2018;Mallett et al., 2016;Ward, 2016), possibly via the activation of harassment-related social norms (Galdi et al., 2014). Sexual violence toward women is a common feature in a variety of media contexts, including online social media (Lewis et al., 2019;Mantilla, 2013;Tileagă, 2019). Social media platforms such as Twitter distribute almost half a million tweets containing sexist slurs on a daily basis (Felmlee et al., 2019) and women are often subjected to campaigns of "gendertrolling" (i.e., insulting women in ways that are specific to their gender) involving credible death and rape threats, gender-based insults, and vicious language (Mantilla, 2013). ...
Previous research has established the importance of socially aversive personality traits (i.e., the Dark Triad) in rape cognitions (operationalized here as rape-supportive attitudes, rape victim empathy, and hostile masculinity). However, less is known about how sexist social media content influences attitudes toward rape cognitions depending on the personality of the individual. In an online experiment, after completing the Short Dark Triad-3 questionnaire, participants (N = 180) were primed with either sexist or neutral tweets, rating them for acceptability, humor, rudeness, and ignorance. Participants then completed scales for rape-supportive attitudes, victim empathy, and hostile masculinity. Sexist tweets were rated as significantly less acceptable and humorous, and more rude and ignorant than neutral tweets. However, those high in the Dark Triad found the sexist tweets as funny and acceptable. Overall, exposure to the sexist tweets did not increase rape cognitions. Moreover, the Dark Triad traits had similar significant, positive correlations with rape-supportive attitudes, victim blame, and hostile masculinity in both sexist and neutral tweet conditions. Multiple regression analyses (controlling for gender) revealed that psychopathy was the strongest positive predictor for increased rape cognitions. Findings suggest that short exposure to sexist social media content may not influence rape cognitions, but that dispositional factors such as psychopathy are more important.
... For example, Raya Sarkar received death and rape threats after posting their list (FirstPost, 2017), and women who have made allegations of sexual violence by well-known people such as national sportsmen, have been subjected to campaigns of online hatred and threats which also expose their identity (Pelling, 2016). As well as harming the individual women targeted for such abuse, these actions also have exclusionary intent, acting as a warning to other women of the price they would pay if they too chose to speak out (Lewis et al, 2019). ...
... At present, few studies illustrate the empirical experiences of either gender or sexuality-based harassment in the digital world. Some scholars have discussed the nature and potential impacts of gender and/or sexuality-based harassment in online spaces (Lewis, Rowe, & Wiper, 2019;Powell & Henry, 2019), noting the likely effect of creating hostile and exclusionary spaces for women, as well as for gender and sexuality-diverse groups. Oksanen et al. (2014) discovered that of 723 Finnish Facebook users, 67% had been disparaged online, most of which (68%) was focused on the individual's sexual orientation. ...
This thesis explores the online ‘manosphere’ subculture of Involuntary Celibates (Incels). Incels have been widely discussed in contemporary media in recent years and have been cited as harmful after several mass-murders and attacks have taken place offline. Previous academic research has largely focused on individual-level explanations for Incel mass-murderers, with few studies seeking to uncover the structural determinants of the rise of Incels. This thesis attempts to fill this gap, exploring the subculture’s negotiation with the changing features of contemporary society. The study utilised internet-based qualitative research methods over a period of three-months to collect data on two Incel forums: r/Braincels and Incels.co. The data was then interpreted through thematic analysis within a constructivist grounded theory approach. The research found that Incels negotiate their anxieties of a rapidly changing globalised world with a sense of victimisation and ‘aggrieved entitlement’ through a worldview that understands society as set up to economically, socially, and sexually favour women. It was also found that through such a sense of entitlement, Incels conceive of a hetero-patriarchal racial caste-system that relies on uncritical readings of selected biological and evolutionary psychological studies. This worldview is known as the ‘Black Pill’ and is employed to ideologically condition Incels against out-groups. Through a shared mythology of victimisation, the Incel ideology of the Black Pill functions to produce a form of ‘stochastic terrorism’ in which individual users interpret the spectrum of beliefs from enacting online gender-based hate-speech to mass violence in the terrestrial world. This thesis presents understandings that could inform future educational programs in critical literacy skills that aim to dismantle the conceptual apparatus that feeds the ideologically charged hatred of groups like Incels.
... For example, Raya Sarkar received death and rape threats after posting their list (FirstPost, 2017), and women who have made allegations of sexual violence by well-known people such as national sportsmen, have been subjected to campaigns of online hatred and threats which also expose their identity (Pelling, 2016). As well as harming the individual women targeted for such abuse, these actions also have exclusionary intent, acting as a warning to other women of the price they would pay if they too chose to speak out (Lewis et al, 2019). ...
This paper takes as its starting point the compilation and circulation online of a list naming alleged sexual harassers in Indian academia in order to examine broader questions about the nature of online activism to address gender-based violence. Set against the historical silencing of women who speak about violence as well as institutional mechanisms to address this issue through due process, we examine the meaning, impact and limitations of this list, which generated considerable discord and debate within feminists in India. In doing so, we consider the place of these new forms of collective actions and expressions of solidarity within the broader feminist campaigns to resist violence.
key messages
This paper offers reflections on the role of online feminist activism against sexual violence.
It explores the limits of institutional mechanisms in responding to sexual violence in the academe.
It considers the challenges and possibilities of alternative forms of feminist activism to prevailing responses to gender-based violence.
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Both federal government and civil society organization data point to consistently rising incidents of antisemitic narratives and acts across Canada. In spite of this, antisemitic hate crime has not been the focus of any academic research here, some would argue because Jews are not typically thought to be an at-risk community. Rather, the Jewish community is thought to occupy a relatively privileged place in society which shields them from bias motivated attacks. Countering this narrative, our study, based in Ontario and Quebec, reveals that Jewish individuals and institutions are highly vulnerable to discursive, physical, and property violations. Many of those we spoke with felt embattled by the narrative attacks that rendered the community vulnerable to corollary physical attacks. Of particular significance are the enabling images of Jews that equate “Jewish privilege” with excessive power and control. We explore these themes, concluding with calls for strategies intended to counter hateful narratives.
This chapter examines what law enforcement can learn and potentially apply from this research. This chapter also addressed future avenues for cryptomarket research. In general, it is discussed how interventions in cryptomarkets by law enforcement might borrow from this book’s findings. Previous chapters are drawn upon to detail past missteps and suggest improvements based on an evidence-based approach that incorporates agent-based modelling. It is concluded that law enforcement need not opt for market takedowns or the wholesale removal of vast numbers of vendors or buyers but instead pursue a calibrated approach targeting a small number of influential vendors. Law enforcement agencies might additionally consider employing a metagame approach by removing several smaller actors to make room to remove larger players. This chapter also examines the potential positives offered by cryptomarket ecosystems compared to illicit terrestrial networks. In short, the risk mitigation and violence reduction mechanisms of cryptomarkets render them a viable alternative to more dangerous offline markets characterised by the acceptance of violence and the sale of untested and hazardous narcotics (e.g. fentanyl). Finally, this chapter discussed some of the key avenues that future research might pursue to help law enforcement curtail the influence of cryptomarkets, focusing on the need for randomised control trails.
On October 27th, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter, becoming its new CEO and firing many top executives in the process. Musk listed fewer restrictions on content moderation and removal of spam bots among his goals for the platform. Given findings of prior research on moderation and hate speech in online communities, the promise of less strict content moderation poses the concern that hate will rise on Twitter. We examine the levels of hate speech and prevalence of bots before and after Musk's acquisition of the platform. We find that hate speech rose dramatically upon Musk purchasing Twitter and the prevalence of most types of bots increased, while the prevalence of astroturf bots decreased.
This chapter sets out the hate crime literature, describing the development of the hate crime theoretical lens and the developments around concepts such as intersectionality and ‘perceived vulnerability’. We chart how the theoretical academic literature has contested definitions around who are hate crime groups, characteristics and identities. Within this contested space we discuss the relevance to sex workers and their experiences of targeted hostility. We do this in the context of evaluating the legal appropriateness in the UK and any possible changes that may happen in the future in terms of law reform and opening out of the current legal definitions.
Book 5 in a series of 10 books discussing internet issues.
Until recently, higher education in the United Kingdom has largely failed to recognise gender based violence (GBV) on campus, but following the UK government task force set up in 2015, universities are becoming more aware of the issue. And recent cases in the media about the sexualised abuse of power in institutions such as universities, Parliament and Hollywood highlight the prevalence and damaging impact of GBV. This book provides the first in-depth overview of research and practice in GBV in universities. The book sets out the international context of ideologies, politics and institutional structures that underlie responses to GBV and sexual violence elsewhere in Europe, in the United States, and in Australia, and considers the implications of implementing related policy and practice. Presenting examples of innovative British approaches to engagement with the issue, the book also considers UK, EU and UN legislation to give an international perspective, making it of direct use to discussions of ‘what works’ in preventing GBV.
Misogyny Online explores the worldwide phenomenon of gendered cyberhate as a significant discourse which has been overlooked and marginalised. The rapid growth of the internet has led to numerous opportunities and benefits; however, the architecture of the cybersphere offers users unprecedented opportunities to engage in hate speech. This book weaves together data and theory from multiple disciplines. Its data sources include a meticulously archived collection of cyberhate that I received over the course of two decades working as a journalist – has already been recognised by scholars and public figures as providing a powerful, original, and timely statement about the rapidly escalating international gendered cyberhate problem and its harms. It has also been commended for offering a major contribution to the interdisciplinary study of emerging communication technologies, contemporary manifestations of hate speech, digital citizenship, internet governance, and digital divides.
Coercive control has emerged as a key focus for researchers and activists working in the field of intimate partner abuse. In England and Wales, the issue has taken on a new urgency. On 29 December 2015, s. 76, Serious Crime Act made ‘coercive or controlling behaviour’ a criminal offence. Implementation of the new offence has been slow. The analysis of data generated by empirical work with police and survivors suggests that police need to understand a working model of coercive control in order to adopt what could be a transformative approach to policing intimate partner abuse.
Facilitated by developments in technologies, the non-consensual posting of sexually explicit images of someone else for revenge, entertainment or political motive – so called ‘revenge porn’ – has become a global phenomenon. This ground breaking book argues that these fundamental and recurring issues about how victims are violated can be understood in terms of gender and sexual dynamics and constructions, binary gender and sexual positioning and logics, and the use of sexual meanings.
Using a discourse analytical approach the authors examine revenge pornography through the words of the perpetrators themselves, and study the complex ways in which they invoke, and deploy, gender and sexuality-based discourses to blame the victim. They explore strategies to curb the phenomenon of revenge porn, and by placing their research in a broader social and political context, the authors are able to examine the effectiveness of current legislative frameworks, education and awareness raising, victim support, perpetrator re-education programmes, along with wider political considerations.
This enhanced understanding of the perpetrator mind set provides important insights into the use of social media to facilitate gender violence, and holds the promise of more effective interventions in future. This is a unique resource for students, academics, researchers, and professionals interested in revenge pornography and related issues.
Introduction to Special Issue of Journal of Gender Studies entitled Rape culture, lad culture and everyday sexism: Researching, conceptualizing and politicizing new mediations of gender and sexual violence.
Advances in technology have transformed and expanded the ways in which sexual violence can be perpetrated. One new manifestation of such violence is the non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images: what we conceptualise as ‘image-based sexual abuse’. This article delineates the scope of this new concept and identifies the individual and collective harms it engenders. We argue that the individual harms of physical and mental illness, together with the loss of dignity, privacy and sexual autonomy, combine to constitute a form of cultural harm, impacting directly on individuals, as well as on society as a whole. While recognizing the limits of law, we conclude by considering the options for redress and the role of law, seeking to justify the deployment of the expressive and coercive powers of the criminal and civil law as a means of encouraging cultural change. https://academic.oup.com/ojls/article/doi/10.1093/ojls/gqw033/2965256/ImageBased-Sexual-Abuse?guestAccessKey=349e7a45-7633-4b34-8e69-9d39aef546ab
Abuse directed at visible and audible women demonstrates that cyberspace, once heralded as a new, democratic, public sphere, suffers similar gender inequalities as the offline world. This paper reports findings from a national UK study about experiences of online abuse among women who debate feminist politics. It argues that online abuse is most usefully conceived as a form of abuse or violence against women and girls, rather than as a form of communication. It examines the experiences of those receiving online abuse, thereby making a valuable contribution to existing research which tends to focus on analysis of the communications themselves.
The fall in the rate of violent crime has stopped. This is a finding of an investigation using the Crime Survey for England
and Wales, 1994–2014, and an improved methodology to include the experiences of high-frequency victims. The cap on the number
of crimes included has been removed. We prevent overall volatility from rising by using three-year moving averages and regression
techniques that take account of all the data points rather than point to point analysis. The difference between our findings
and official statistics is driven by violent crime committed against women and by domestic perpetrators. The timing of the
turning point in the trajectory of violent crime corresponds with the economic crisis in 2008/09.
The gendered nature of safety has been explored empirically and theoretically as awareness has grown of the pervasive challenges to women’s safety. Notions of ‘safe space’ are frequently invoked in wider feminist environments (particularly, recently, in relation to debates about trans people’s access to women’s spaces), but are relatively neglected in academia. Indeed, despite a body of scholarship which looks at questions of gender, safety and space, relatively little attention has been paid to exploring the meaning of ‘safety’ for women and, particularly, the meaning and experience of spaces they consider to be ‘safe.’ Drawing on focus group data with 30 women who attended a two-day, women-only feminist gathering in the UK, this paper analyses experiences of what they describe as ‘safe space’ to explore the significance and meaning of ‘safety’ in their lives. Using their accounts, we distinguish between safe from and safe to, demonstrating that once women are safe from harassment, abuse and misogyny, they feel safe to be cognitively, intellectually and emotionally expressive. We argue that this sense of being ‘safe to’ denotes fundamental aspects of civic engagement, personhood and freedom.
Currently, hate crimes and hate crime policy are receiving increased public and scholarly attention. Much of the attention has been focused on crimes committed out of bias toward a victim's membership in a group based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin. However, more recently, gender has been included as a status category, often causing heated debate. This article looks at the history of the initial exclusion, then inclusion, of gender in the hate crime domain. The reasons for the uneasy fit of gender as a status category are recounted, as well as arguments both for and against inclusion of gender within the hate crime model. The problem of gender essentialism is examined, which results in the marginalization of the multiple category statuses of many women. The article concludes with implications for research, policy, and practice.
This article links HE neoliberalisation and ‘lad cultures’, drawing on interviews and focus groups with women students. We argue that retro-sexist ‘laddish’ forms of masculine competitiveness and misogyny have been reshaped by neoliberal rationalities to become modes of consumerist sexualised audit. We also suggest that neoliberal frameworks scaffold an individualistic and adversarial culture amongst young people that interacts with perceived threats to men’s privilege and intensifies attempts to put women in their place through misogyny and sexual harassment. Furthermore, ‘lad cultures’, sexism and sexual harassment in higher education may be rendered invisible by institutions to preserve marketability in a neoliberal context. In response, we ask if we might foster dialogue and partnership between feminist and anti-marketisation politics.
Despite high rates of gendered violence among youth, very few young women report these
incidents to authority figures. This study moves the discussion from the question of why
young women do not report them toward how violence is produced, maintained, and normalized
among youth. The girls in this study often did not name what law, researchers, and
educators commonly identify as sexual harassment and abuse. How then, do girls name
and make sense of victimization? Exploring violence via the lens of compulsory heterosexuality
highlights the relational dynamics at play in this naming process. Forensic
interviews with youth revealed patterns of heteronormative scripts appropriated to make
sense of everyday harassment, violence, coercion, and consent. Findings inform discussions
about the links between dominant discourses and sexual subjectivities as we try to
better understand why many regard violence a normal part of life.
This article examines whether crimes motivated by, or which demonstrate, gender ‘hostility’ should be included within the current framework of hate crime legislation in England and Wales. The article uses the example of rape to explore the parallels (both conceptual and evidential) between gender-motivated violence and other ‘archetypal’ forms of hate crime. It is asserted that where there is clear evidence of gender hostility during the commission of an offence, a defendant should be pursued in law additionally as a hate crime offender. In particular it is argued that by focusing on the hate-motivation of many sexual violence offenders, the criminal justice system can begin to move away from its current focus on the ‘sexual’ motivations of offenders and begin to more effectively challenge the gendered prejudices that are frequently causal to such crimes.
Can the law be usefully employed to help women who experience domestic violence achieve 'justice'? This question has been at the heart of debates about domestic violence over the last few decades. In this paper, we review the positions of those who cautiously welcome engagement with the law - 'feminist realists', arrest studies researchers, 'sceptical reformers' and rehabilitation proponents - and those who see no value in legal intervention - 'abstentionists' and 'community justice' proponents. We argue that such pessimism is both theoretically misguided and empirically unsubstantiated and reflects the lack of cross-fertilization amongst writers from these various positions. In contrast to traditional research in this area, we argue that effective contributions to debates should address both women's and men's experiences of the justice system, should examine the process as well as outcome of legal intervention and should recognise women as survivors engaged in a process of 'active negotiation and strategic resistance' rather than as passive victim's of men's violence. These elements will enable research which better reveals the experiences of engaging with the justice system and which can make more useful contributions to a programme of social and legal change.
The authors seek to contribute to a fuller understanding of men's violence against women in intimate relationships by comparing men's and women's accounts of the violence, injuries, and controlling behavior used by men against women partners. Although men and women inhabit a shared physical and social space within the home, their lived experiences and perceptions of such relationships often differ. Despite this, many studies do not consider what effect such gender differences might have on accounts of violence against women and, instead, assume that men's and women's accounts are basically unproblematic. The authors ask whether this is so. Based on findings from an in-depth interview study of 122 men who had perpetrated violence against a woman partner and 144 women who had been the victims of such violence, the results show that women and men provide significantly different accounts of men's violence, controlling behavior, and injuries. These results make problematic the assumption that men's accounts of their own violent behavior can be used uncritically and without reference to women's accounts of men's violence.
Much of the current global debate around 'hate crimes' legislation is focused on the pragmatic and logistical difficulties of winning support for, and enacting, legislation. This paper takes a step back from the day-to-day issues of hate crimes and begins to unpack some of the philosophical underpinnings of the hate crime category. This is undertaken through an investigation of the coherence of hate crimes definitions and their policy implications. The paper's initial definition of hate crimes is tested for its appropriateness as applied to racist attacks and to attacks on gays and lesbians. From this, an analogy is drawn with crimes against women. The bulk of the paper is concerned with problematising the intellectual justifications for the inclusion or exclusion of gender in the hate crimes category. The extension of the hate crime category to include gender-related crimes raises particular public policy challenges.
In this article, we argue that much racist violence can be understood in terms of unacknowledged shame and its transformation into fury. We use studies by Scheff and Retzinger as a framework for understanding transcripts of interviews with racist offenders from Greater Manchester, UK. We argue that much of the interview data support the claim that unacknowledged shame can be transformed into rage against those who are seen as the sources of shame. We argue that offenders' shame is rooted in multiple disadvantages and that rage is directed against south Asians who are perceived as more successful, but illegitimately so, within a cultural context in which violence and racism are taken for granted. The article is intended to contribute both to greater understanding of the complex motivation of racist violence and to current moves to redress the cognitive bias of much contemporary social science and reassess the role of emotion in human behaviour.
Using a detailed case study of an area of East London, this book documents the everyday abuse, assault and intimidation that is suffered by ethnic minorities in Great Britain. The author explains and analyses the process through which violence is targeted at these minorities, along with the role that the ideas and language of racial exclusion take in this process. The apparent failure of the police and "multi-agency initiatives" to respond effectively to this problem is then looked at in depth. This book is based on detailed analysis of official documents, a victimisation survey, interviews and direct observation, seen in the overall context of the history of race relations in Britain. It describes some of the many thousands of racist attacks that have occurred in recent years and the events in the last two decades that have shaped English racism and the political and policy responses to it.
Until recently, higher education in the UK has largely failed to recognise gender-based violence (GBV) on campus, but following the UK government task force set up in 2015, universities are becoming more aware of the issue. And recent cases in the media about the sexualised abuse of power in institutions such as universities, Parliament and Hollywood highlight the prevalence and damaging impact of GBV. In this book, academics and practitioners provide the first in-depth overview of research and practice in GBV in universities. They set out the international context of ideologies, politics and institutional structures that underlie responses to GBV in elsewhere in Europe, in the US, and in Australia, and consider the implications of implementing related policy and practice. Presenting examples of innovative British approaches to engagement with the issue, the book also considers UK, EU and UN legislation to give an international perspective, making it of direct use to discussions of ‘what works’ in preventing GBV.
Research on violence against women tends to focus on topics such as sexual assault and intimate partner violence, arguably to the detriment of investigating men’s violence and intrusion in women’s everyday lives. The reality and possibility of the routine intrusions women experience from men in public space – from unwanted comments, to flashing, following and frottage – are frequently unaddressed in research, as well as in theoretical and policy-based responses to violence against women. Often at their height during women’s adolescence, such practices are commonly dismissed as trivial, relatively harmless expressions of free speech too subjective to be legislated against.
Based on original empirical research, this book is the first of its kind to conduct a feminist phenomenological analysis of the experience for women of men’s stranger intrusions in public spaces. It suggests that intrusion from unknown men is a fundamental factor in how women understand and enact their embodied selfhood.
This book is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of violence against women, feminist philosophy, applied sociology, feminist criminology and gender studies.
Following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Tunisia in 2015, and in Woolwich, south-east London where British Army soldier Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered in 2013, there has seen a significant increase in anti-Muslim attacks. These incidents have occurred offline where mosques have been vandalized, Muslim women have had their hijab (headscarf) or niqab (face veil) pulled off, Muslim men have been attacked, and racist graffiti has been scrawled against Muslim properties. Concurrently, there has been a spike in anti-Muslim hostility online, where Muslims have been targeted by campaigns of cyber bullying, cyber harassment, cyber incitement and threats of offline violence. Against this background, we examine the nature and impacts of online and offline anti-Muslim hate crime. We draw on our different experiences of conducting research on anti-Muslim hate crime, using two independent research projects in order to consider the affinity between online and offline anti-Muslim hate crime. We argue that, in reality, online/offline boundaries may be more blurred than the terms imply. For victims, it is often difficult to isolate the online threats from the intimidation, violence and abuse that they suffer offline. Moreover, victims often live in fear because of the possibility of online threats materialising in the ‘real world’. We conclude that there is a continuity of anti-Muslim hostility in both the virtual and the physical world, especially in the globalized world.
In this paper we draw on data from in-depth interviews with men who have used violence and abuse within intimate partner relationships to provide a new lens through which to view the conceptual debates on naming, defining and understanding 'domestic violence', as well as the policy and practice implications that flow from them. We argue that the reduction of domestic violence to discrete 'incidents' supports and maintains how men themselves talk about their use of violence, and that this in turn overlaps with contentions about the appropriate interventions and responses to domestic violence perpetrators. We revisit Hearn's 1998 work The Violences of Men, connecting it to Stark's later concept of coercive control, in order to develop and extend understandings of violence through analysis of the words of those who use it. We conclude by exploring the implications of these findings for recent legal reform in England and Wales and for policies on how we deal with perpetrators.
This engaging and thought-provoking text provides an accessible introduction to the subject of hate crime. In a world where issues of hatred and prejudice are creating complex challenges for society and for governments, this book provides an articulate and insightful overview of how such issues relate to crime and criminal justice. It offers comprehensive coverage, including topics such as: Racist hate crime; Religiously motivated hate crime; Homophobic crime; Gender and violence; Disablist hate crime The book considers the challenges involved in policing hate crime, as well as exploring the role of the media. Legislative developments are discussed throughout. Chapter summaries, case studies, a glossary, and advice on further reading all help to equip the reader with a clear understanding of this nuanced and controversial subject. Hate Crime is essential reading for students and academics in criminology and criminal justice.
This article, first published in the London Review of Books on 20 March 2013, takes the long view on the subject of women's public voice. From antiquity to the present day there are countless examples of women either excluded from speaking out in public life or ridiculed for doing so. This essay examines the nature and experience of oratory in Western culture and the ways in which public speaking has become gendered and how issues of voice and gender continue to span the public spheres from traditional politics to modern forms of social media.
This paper remaps the geographies of terrorism. Everyday terrorism (domestic violence) and global terrorism are related attempts to exert political control through fear. Geographical research on violence neatly reflects the disproportionate recognition and resourcing that global terrorism receives from the state. The paper explores the parallels, shared foundations and direct points of connection between everyday and global terrorisms. It does so across four interrelated themes: multiscalar politics and securities, fear and trauma, public recognition and recovery, and the inequitable nature of counter-terrorisms. It concludes with implications for addressing terrorisms and for future research.
During the last several decades, research concerning the developmental trajectories, experiences, and behaviors of college men as "gendered" persons has emerged. In this article, we first critically review literature on Black men's gender development and expressions within college contexts to highlight certain knowledge gaps. We then conceptualize and discuss progressive Black masculinities by relying on Mutua's germinal work on the subject. Further, we engage Black feminist scholarship, both to firmly situate our more pressing argument for conceptual innovation and to address knowledge gaps in the literature on Black men's gender experiences. It is our belief that scholars who study gender development and expressions of masculinities among Black undergraduate men could benefit from employing autocritography, and its built-in assumptions, to inform several aspects of their research designs. Autocritography is a critical autobiography that some Black profeminist men engage to invite readers into their gendered lifeworlds.
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
This article explores the signal characteristics of gendered vitriol on the Internet – a type of discourse marked by graphic threats of sexual violence, explicit ad hominem invective and unapologetic misogyny. Such ‘e-bile’ is proliferating in the cybersphere and is currently the subject of widespread international media coverage. Yet it receives little attention in scholarship. This is likely related to the fact that discourse of this type is metaphorically ‘unspeakable’, in that its hyperbolic profanity locates it well outside the norms of what is regarded as ‘civil’ discourse. My case, however, is that – despite the risk of causing offence – this discourse must not only be spoken of, but must be spoken of in its unexpurgated entirety. There is, I argue, no other way to adequately assay the nature of a communication mode whose misogynistic hostility has serious ethical and material implications, not least because it has become a lingua franca in many sectors of the cybersphere. Proceeding via unexpurgated ostension is also the best – arguably the only – way to begin mapping the blurry parameters of the discursive field of e-bile, and from there to conduct further inquiry into the ethical appraisal of putative online hostility, and the consideration of possible remedies.
In 1998, the Labour government introduced legislation broadening British sentencing powers in relation to crimes aggravated by the offender’s hostility towards the victim’s actual or perceived race, religion, sexual orientation or disability. Gender is a notable omission from this list. Through a survey of eighty-eight stakeholders working in the violence against women (VAW) sector, this paper explores both the potential benefits and possible disadvantages of adding a gender-based category concerned with VAW to British hate crime legislation. The majority of participants believed that a hate crime approach would offer significant benefits, especially in terms of the symbolic power of the law to send a message to society that VAW is unacceptable. However, most also recognised that the addition of a VAW category to current legislation would involve major practical and conceptual difficulties, not least those resulting from problematic assumptions about the nature of hate crimes versus VAW, and a general unwillingness on the part of policy-makers to address the socio-cultural inequalities that underpin VAW. Overall, the fact that the majority of participants favoured inclusion, on the basis that the possible symbolic benefits were likely to outweigh the potential practical disadvantages, is significant: it speaks to the power of hate crime legislation to challenge many forms of inequality and discrimination still endemic in British society.
In this paper the concept of 'signal crimes' is proposed to capture the social semiotic processes by which particular types of criminal and disorderly conduct have a disproportionate impact upon fear of crime. Drawing upon the wider social scientific literature on risk perception, a sense of how and why different crime types might be possessed of different signal values is provided and some of the implications for current police practice outlined.
David Cameron criticised for ‘calm down
- Bbc News
Abuse victims failed by police and courts over online harassment. The Guardian
- A Travis
Changing the Culture: Report of the Universities UK Taskforce Examining Violence Against Women
- U K Universites
Hate crime or mate crime? Disablist hostility, contempt and ridicule
- P Thomas
Everyone’s Business: Improving the Police Response to Domestic Abuse
- Hmic
Increasingly Everyone’s Business: Improving the Police Response to Domestic Abuse
- Hmic