Neo-liberal Subjectivity,Self-branding and ‘My Rape Story’ YouTube Videos

Abstract

This article considers the YouTube ‘My Rape Story’ genre in light of critical feminist analyses of rape survivor stories. The feminist mobilization that developed out of the political ferment of 1968 told a ‘rape story’ of male power and women’s oppression. However, as first-hand rape stories proliferated in late 20th-century popular media, psychological experts typically framed them with therapeutic narratives of individual self-efficacy and self-transformation. Critical feminist analyses of such rape ‘survivor discourse’ called for new discursive spaces that would allow survivors to eschew therapeutic accounts. A new generation of women have spoken out on a variety of digital platforms, confronting established limits on talking about rape. Considering YouTube ‘My Rape Story’ videos as one manifestation of this new wave of speaking out, my analysis shows that examples of such videos evidence the impact of incitements to self-disclosure through self-branding built into much social media. I argue that these videos exemplify how first-hand rape stories can provide a site for the construction of neo-liberal subjectivity by positioning rape trauma as something survivors must work on in order to achieve self-efficacy. Nevertheless, these accounts also show resistance to victim-blaming rape myths.

Keywords

Rape confession social media self-branding neo-liberal subject neo-liberalism feminism sociology

Introduction

Publicly told first-hand stories of sexual violence have proliferated in the context of a more general trend for personal disclosures on public digital platforms (Misoch, 2015). Rape survivors have told their stories on a variety of digital platforms both in writing and on video. This article considers the YouTube genre ‘my rape story’ as a window on common understandings of rape. I analyse these stories as accounts: narratives that seek to explain unusual or distressing happenings by assigning reasons, responsibility and meaning to events, actors and outcomes (Davis, 2005: 152; Orbuch, 1997: 455). Accounts help define situations and convey messages about proper and improper conduct, emotional responses, causality, and desirable outcomes. By analysing YouTube accounts of rape we can gain some insight into everyday ways of understanding the causes, consequences and meanings of sexual violence for social media users.

Much of the feminist literature that considers online stories of sexual violence has focused optimistically on a new generation of feminist political activism, for example how the ‘feminist blogosphere’ and feminist use of platforms such as Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook have popularized the concept of ‘rape culture’ (Keller et al., 2018). According to Carrie Rentschler, digital media have allowed young feminists to create spaces to discuss sexual violence and harassment that combine ‘testimonial, advice giving, and cultures of support’ (Rentschler, 2014: 68). Both Rentschler and Anastacia Powell discuss the widely reported Steubenville, Ohio case in which a blogger compiled screen shots of social media posts by two high school football players boasting about an assault on an unconscious young woman at a party (Powell, 2015; Rentschler, 2014). The subsequent publicity contributed to criminal charges brought in a case that authorities had originally seemed reluctant to pursue (Rentschler, 2014: 65). Powell (2015: 11) argues that this and other cases where survivors have named perpetrators online shows how digital media can provide victims with a way to seek ‘rape justice,’ defined as affording victims ‘participation, voice, validation and vindication’ in the face of a criminal justice system that has largely failed sexual violence victims.

This article extends such literature by considering the YouTube ‘My Rape Story’ genre. I build on Linda Alcoff and Laura Gray’s (1993: 275) argument that not all forms of speaking out about sexual violence challenge ‘dominant patriarchal discourses’ and that we should interrogate incitements to speak out. When considering this new wave of speaking out about sexual violence and harassment on digital media platforms I suggest that we should be mindful of how social media incites self-branding through self-disclosure. The article begins by considering feminist practices of speaking out about sexual violence and their spread to popular culture. I then discuss practices of speaking out about sexual violence on social media as part of a broader Web 2.0 trend of self-branding through self-disclosure. Following this, I introduce the YouTube ‘my rape story’ genre. My analysis shows how social media incitements to self-brand through self-disclosure shape the sorts of rape stories told on YouTube. These accounts exemplify how speaking out about sexual violence can serve in the construction of a neo-liberal subjectivity for women. Nevertheless, they also evidence resistance to misogynistic victim-blaming discourse.

The politics of sexual violence stories

While past generations of activists have politicized sexual violence, for example in the anti-slavery, anti-trafficking and US civil rights movements, the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s gave more frank first-hand accounts than their predecessors and put great emphasis on ‘speaking out’ about sexual violence as a political act (Harrington, 2010; McGuire, 2007). The political strategy of ‘speaking out’ about sexual violence emerged from US feminist practices of ‘consciousness raising’ whereby groups of women met to analyse commonalities in their personal lives and formulate political responses. According to Carol Hanisch (2010), author of the seminal article ‘the personal is political,’ organizers envisaged that shared analysis of personal experience would inform the elaboration of feminist theory as the knowledge base for a mass women’s movement, while consciousness-raising groups would also provide a ‘broad, grassroots base’ for such a mass movement (Hanisch, 2010).

The feminist mobilization that developed in the United States following the political ferment of 1968 told a ‘rape story’ of male power and women’s oppression (Plummer, 1995). US feminist theorists drew on women’s sexual violence stories to politicize sexual violence as embedded in everyday power relations of gender, race and class. For example Susan Brownmiller (1975) drew on anonymized testimonies from feminist ‘speak outs’ on sexual violence for her seminal history of rape. She theorized rape as a ‘conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear’ and defined all rape as a political crime because it sustained women’s social oppression (Brownmiller, 1975: 15, 211). Diana Russell’s (2003) The Politics of Rape, also first published in 1975, presented stories from anonymous interviews with rape survivors, theorizing that rape should be understood as an expression of normative masculinity rather than as deviant. Also in 1975, Angela Davis (2002) reflected on the case of Joan Little, a Black woman on trial for murdering a prison guard who raped her. Davis (2002) complicated the story of male power and women’s oppression, writing that ‘rape is not one-dimensional and homogenous– but one feature that does remain constant is the overt and flagrant treatment of women, through rape, as property. Particular rape cases will then express different modes in which women are handled as property.’ In the US context she observed that rape functions as ‘a means of terrorizing the entire black community’ (Davis, 2002). In the United States and internationally later generations of feminist scholars and activists both critiqued and built upon such observations (e.g. Galbraith, 2000; Gavey, 2005; Moorti, 2002; Phipps, 2009).

While publicly telling a personal story of sexual violence may have been a radical act in the early 1970s, by the 1980s such stories were ubiquitous in popular culture (Davis, 2005: 27). For example, first-hand sexual violence stories have become a staple of talk shows. However, as Alcoff and Gray (1993) argue, the effect of such shows usually undermines the transgressive potential of ‘speaking out’ about sexual violence. Talk shows typically focus on the tearful face of the survivor as she gives her account before turning to psychological experts to interpret it (Alcoff and Gray, 1993: 277). Such speaking arrangements ‘recuperate dominant patriarchal discourses’ by sensationalizing the survivor’s story for public consumption and framing it in terms of rape myths, for example scrutinizing the survivor’s conduct and positioning her as in need of expert psychological help (Alcoff and Gray, 1993: 275).

By the 1990s pioneers of feminist anti-sexual violence activism argued that, in the words of Kiss Daddy Goodnight author Louise Armstrong (1994), the problem of sexual violence had ‘been coopted and re-formulated by the therapeutic ideology, … [as] not social, but medical. The response is not a call for change, but a call for “treatment”.’ Armstrong (1994) notes that psychological professionals have gained recognition as experts with authority to speak about sexual violence. Davis’ (2005: 165–215) analysis of 19 influential therapeutic manuals on treatment of child sex-abuse victims shows how experts agree that recovery requires victims to produce an account of their abuse that assigns responsibility to the perpetrator and to narrate their recovery as a ‘survivor’ and then a ‘thriver.’ Therapeutic advice to adult victims follows the same model, based on a conception of sexual violence as a cause of post-traumatic stress disorder (Harrington, 2010: 115). Such therapeutic models assume that victims need expert intervention in order to transform into ‘thrivers.’

Therapeutic accounts of sexual violence focus upon a guided narration of self-transformation in keeping with Michel Foucault’s (1979: 58–73) definition of confessional speech. In confessional speech the speaker tells a story about the self to another who may or may not be present and who is imagined as judging the story. Indeed, confessions may be made in relation to authoritative social norms rather than to a specific person (Fejes, 2011: 807). The goal of confession is to work upon the self through examining and narrating the self. Andreas Fejes and Magnus Dahlstedt (2013: 2) argue that contemporary confessional practices operate within a therapeutic logic that constructs subjects as needing ‘support to handle their emotions.’ Such a therapeutic logic links social problems to emotional problems and makes a virtue of emotional self-disclosure (Fejes and Dahlstedt, 2013: 5).

Trauma and suffering have a prominent place in neo-liberal stories of self-transformation. Lauren Berlant (2001: 42) argues that since the late 20th century ‘proximity to trauma’ has become a ubiquitous trope in narratives of self-transformation. She argues that this testimonial genre whereby victims tell a story of trauma, suffering and recovery is bound up with governmental modalities of ‘cleaning up subjects and the social that mark a certain modern faith in the intentional self and its visible effects’ (Berlant, 2001: 49). Therapeutic treatment for trauma calls for self-scrutiny to uncover and transform aspects of habits and functioning affected by the trauma, for example addictions, sleeping patterns, sexual conduct and employment prospects (Davis, 2005; Harrington, 2005, 2010: 117). Rape, sexual violence and harassment have gained significant recognition as questions of trauma within neo-liberal political discourse (Harrington, 2010). Stories of rape trauma and recovery can provide terrain for the construction of resilient neo-liberal subjects who ‘take back control’ of their lives.

Policy attention to sexual violence against women and girls has formed part of a broader neo-liberal interest in gender equity policies since the late 20th century. Following World War Two, many welfare states supported male breadwinner/female homemaker families to varying degrees. States would even pay a meagre income to mothers in the absence of a male breadwinner without the ‘work requirements’ common today (Lewis, 2001). However, following the late 20th-century neo-liberal turn, ‘activation’ polices have aimed to draw women, mothers in particular, into paid work. The OECD and development organizations represent maternal income as a solution to poverty (Eisenstein, 2017). Many states now promote the dual earner family model as best suited to weather the insecure, ‘flexible’ employment markets favoured by free-market champions (Daly, 2011). Meanwhile, discourse on corporate responsibility puts forth a ‘business case’ for promoting gender equality as a profitable investment (Calkin, 2017).

In the context of neo-liberal efforts to engage women with income generation, treatment for sexual violence trauma can provide a site for the construction of economically self-reliant, resilient female subjects. In both a domestic and international development context, programmes for victims of sexual and gender-based violence typically fit broader governmental agendas to produce such neo-liberal female subjects by problematizing victims’ trauma rather than gendered social patterns that foster sexual violence. Research on programmes to assist victims of trafficking for prostitution in South-Eastern Europe, for example, shows how psychological assessments represented women’s decisions to migrate and do sex work as evidence of disordered thinking attributable to trauma rather than their economic circumstances (Brunovskis and Surtees, 2008; Harrington, 2005). In British Columbia, Canada, the ‘Bridges’ programme for battered women offered counselling and other forms of support embedded in a programme that aimed to ‘persuade battered women to “reframe their life views and predicaments, and to appreciate that they have choices and that they must accept responsibility for their lives rather than blaming others”’ (Silverstein and Spark, 2007: 332). In the absence of adequate support and opportunities, such programmes downplay social factors and construct women as able to change their circumstances through reframing how they narrate their lives. Thus in the case of speaking out about rape, as Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacy (Ahmed and Stacey, 2001: 4) note: ‘the desire to tell one’s own story can easily support particular neo-liberal or even conservative agendas based on a heroic construction of the individual and of the individuated self.’

Acknowledging the dangers of the confessional speech for anti-sexual violence politics, Alcoff and Gray (1993: 287) argue that ‘what we need to do is not retreat – as Foucault might suggest – from bringing sexual violence into discourse but, rather, to create new discursive forms and spaces in which to gain autonomy within this process.’ They give the example of lists naming rapists that appeared on Brown College’s bathroom walls in 1990. They argue that ‘the bathroom list represents an interesting and innovative attempt to make survivor discourse public in such a way as to minimize the dangers of speaking out for survivors yet maximize the disruptive potential of survivor outrage’ (Alcoff and Gray, 1993: 286). According to Alcoff and Gray (1993: 287) the anonymity and seclusion of the bathroom allowed the list makers to achieve autonomy within the conditions of their discourse by creating their own discursive space to challenge authorities who refused to acknowledge their claims of sexual violence or punish the perpetrators. They suggest that rather than celebrate all forms of ‘speaking out’ about sexual violence we need to pay attention to who incites stories of sexual violence and the role of experts in reinterpreting such stories (Alcoff and Gray, 1993). Building on Alcoff and Gray’s arguments, Nancy Naples (2003) argues that survivor support networks have the capacity to produce their own political analyses of sexual abuse when they consciously eschew the limits of therapeutic accounts and take an intersectional approach that is mindful of the material conditions shaping experience and speech.

Digital media, self-disclosure and opposition to rape culture

Arguably, digital media provide survivors with the capacity to carve out more accessible discursive spaces than campus bathroom walls. Scholars have documented how digital platforms have enabled feminists to respond to instances of sexual violence and harassment by forming networks of support based on opposition to sexual violence (Keller et al., 2018; Rentschler, 2014; Sills et al., 2016). Rentschler (2014: 66) treats young feminists’ ‘production of testimonials about rape culture via social media as an activist media practice that extends beyond the representation of rape culture to constitute a capacity to respond to the cultural supports for sexual violence.’ Such responses go beyond inward-looking therapeutic support networks, for example Hollaback! encourages women and LBGTQI people to share their stories of street sexual harassment via the Hollaback! website and apps that allow for local mapping of street harassment. They also provide guides for organizing local meetings to combat street harassment in specific geographic communities (Hollaback, 2016). Powell (2015) discusses cases where victims and activists have used social media to name perpetrators of sexual violence. Thus, digital media have sustained anti-sexual violence networks that not only avoid subjecting survivors to expert therapeutic scrutiny but also drive community level change and the search for justice.

Digital platforms allow multiple survivor accounts to proliferate without expert therapeutic interpretation or sensational voyeuristic framing by talk show hosts. Furthermore, such platforms allow for tagging to link endless individual accounts, a feature with great potential to reveal social patterns. Projects such as the Tumblr site ‘Project Unbreakable’ link isolated individual moments into a clear pattern. ‘Project Unbreakable,’ founded by photographer Grace Brown, displays photographs of survivors holding up cards with a quotation from their rapist or from someone they told about their rape, for example: ‘don’t be such a little tease’; or ‘you really shouldn’t have slept in the room with him’ (Project Unbreakable, 2014, 2015). The repeated themes in the quotations link individual stories, thus constructing a critical commentary on common minimizations and rationalizations of sexual violence. Twitter hashtags have similar potential to amplify critical commentary, for example #whatwereyouwearing invited survivors to describe their clothing when they were raped. Famously, #metoo asked people to simply identify that they had experienced sexual harassment or violence.

This article focuses upon the YouTube ‘my rape story’ genre. These videos allow for fuller narration than tweets. In ‘my story’ videos people narrate something remarkable, funny or dramatic that happened to them. Some of YouTube’s ‘my story-tellers’ regularly post personal stories to their channel alongside other videos where they may promote fashion or lifestyle advice, review products and urge viewers to ‘like, comment and subscribe.’ Thus the proliferation of YouTube ‘my rape story’ videos should be understood as part of a broader trend in which people mobilize their personal stories to build an online persona and cultivate a following. Self-disclosure is built into the logic of much digital social media that requires users to construct an online profile using photographs, videos, information and stories about themselves. People disclose mundane and major events from their everyday lives publicly through digital platforms, posting pictures of their meals, commentary on their moods, or video of themselves proposing marriage or taking a pregnancy test (Talvitie-Lamberg, 2014).

The rise of digital social media, often called Web 2.0, has facilitated and normalized self-branding. As Alison Hearn puts it, ‘these sites produce inventories of branded selves’ (Hearn, 2008: 211). Self-branding practices draw on therapeutic and self-help discourse that inform efforts to discover an authentic self that can be presented others in a sympathetic way (Lair et al., 2005: 308). Self-branding thus demands self-disclosure to communicate ‘who I am’ to the target audience in a manner that will elicit the desired sense of emotional connection (Banet-Weiser, 2012: 81). Promoters of self-branding present it as a strategy for an uncertain economy where people must be constantly prepared to market themselves (Lair et al., 2005: 315–318). Indeed, the Northern Californian ‘technology scene’ occupied by the professionals who designed significant Web 2.0 platforms requires them to market their ‘self-consciously constructed personae … like brands or celebrities, to an audience or fan base’ so as to advance their status in that milieu (Marwick, 2010: 5). Therefore, these professionals built self-branding practices into the design of social media applications, reflecting ‘the values of a network dominated by commercial interest’ (Marwick, 2010: 5).

Social media thus includes an incitement to self-disclosure and self-branding that may explain the sorts of rape stories people tell on YouTube. YouTube ‘my rape story’ video creators may not intentionally set out to self-brand; however, the logic of YouTube’s incitement to ‘broadcast yourself’ invites strategic self-disclosure in the service of building an online personae (Banet-Weiser, 2012: 57). In what follows, I discuss some examples of ‘my rape story’ YouTube videos created by women and girls. Men, boys and non-binary identifying people also post ‘my rape story’ videos worthy of analysis. However, since gender structures the sorts of rape stories people tell, here I confine myself to videos whose creators present as women/girls. Following Alcoff and Gray (1993), I ask what incitements to speak seem apparent in these videos, and what sort of accounts they give.

Accounts of sexual violence in ‘my rape story’ videos

I searched YouTube for ‘my rape story’ videos that presented as a narrative of personal experience by the person who posted the video. Different search terms would have returned different results, but here I discuss ‘my rape story’ videos as a particular genre. I excluded the parodies, Ted talks, and apparently fictional accounts that searches for ‘my rape story’ also returned. I began my analysis with a good preliminary ‘soak’ in the data, watching numerous YouTube ‘my rape story’ videos to gain a general sense of their typical structure and themes (Hall, 1975: 15). To develop a qualitative analysis of a range of videos I filtered by ‘most viewed’ and upload date. ‘Most viewed’ videos tended to be by commercial ‘YouTubers,’ as they call themselves, with large followings and hundreds of thousands of views. Filtering by upload date allowed me to view videos with much lower viewer numbers, some by people who appeared to have commercial aspirations for their channel and some not. I selected videos by diverse creators in terms of apparent race and ethnicity but only watched videos in English.

I captured 56 videos by 48 individual creators (five made more than one rape-story video) in NVivo and wrote an analytical description of the accounts of rape they offered. I also analysed the YouTube channels and linked social media of the video creators to get a sense of how their rape story video fit within their broader social media activity. After several months I noticed that eight videos had been removed, suggesting the video creators may have regretted their post. Thus, my final collection included 48 videos by 40 individual creators. Ethical dilemmas arise from citing videos that have been removed and, indeed, any video of first-hand disclosures of sexual violence. People who post their rape stories on YouTube may not anticipate becoming subject to critical academic analysis (Morrow et al., 2015: 537). Thus, in the following discussion I do not provide direct citations to the videos but use pseudonyms and anonymize examples.

‘My rape story’ videos usually employ one of two formats: cue cards or speaking to the camera. In both types the creators mostly show their face and film themselves in their home environment, often a messy bedroom. Scholars have noted that the ‘DIY’ aesthetic of apparently non-professional YouTube videos made at home with a simple digital camera lends them an ‘authenticity effect’ (Tolson, 2010: 286). In the case of the ‘my rape story’ genre this effect bolsters the truth claims made by the video-creator. In cue card videos the creator films themselves holding a series of handwritten messages. Their story unfolds a few words at a time with each card removed to reveal the one beneath. Often a musical soundtrack contributes to the narrative mood. In her analysis of the cue card genre, Kimberley Hall (2016) argues that this gradual unfolding of the cards and use of handwriting creates the sense of a glimpse into someone else’s inner life by aesthetically invoking diary and letter writing. The video creators who tell their story by speaking directly to the camera achieve a similar effect by appearing to confide a personal story in the viewer. Whether deploying handwriting or not, such videos exemplify a form of self-writing whereby video creators seek to align ‘the gaze of the other and that gaze which one aims at oneself’ regarding their story (Foucault, 1997: 221; Hall, 2016: 6).

These accounts explain what happened before, during and after the rape. The story-teller describes events leading up to the rape, and her relationship with the perpetrator. More than half told of rape by someone they had previously cared about: a boyfriend or close male friend. Around quarter told of rape on a first date or by someone they had recently met; only two told of a stranger rape. Another quarter told of rape by an older family member or family friend when they were young. Some describe their rape in detail; others simply say ‘he raped me.’ ‘Rape’ in these stories referred to vaginal, anal and oral penetration by a penis and vaginal penetration by fingers. Most story-tellers narrate their changing reaction to their rape over time. Before considering these accounts in more detail, I will describe the sorts of YouTube channels they appeared on and how some creators deployed them to self-brand.

YouTubers and personal sharing

The majority of ‘My Rape Story’ video creators maintained YouTube channels where they promoted themselves, encouraging viewers to ‘click, comment, subscribe.’ Only nine of the 40 video creators appeared uninterested in promoting products or themselves as YouTubers. Three of these posted under a pseudonym, hid their face and used cue cards. The other six posted few videos; those they did post appeared designed for friends rather than accumulating views and subscribers. The remaining 31 creators mostly posted videos on topics popular with female YouTubers, for example make-up tutorials, ‘mall-haul’ and ‘what’s in my bag?’ While some videoed themselves singing or acting, their videos mostly concerned feminine topics such as fashion, shopping, relationships and mothering.

Thus these creators evidence what Brook Duffy and Emily Hund (2015: 1) describe as ‘a proliferation of socially mediated cultures of creative production located in the traditionally feminine domains of fashion, beauty, parenting, and craft.’ They understand these ‘modes of creative self-enterprise’ as a symptom of post-Fordist labour, characterized by unstable, casual and contract-based employment (Duffy and Hund, 2015: 1). Ideals of entrepreneurialism, self-reliance and work as a passion flourish in such conditions and aspiring creative workers are advised to develop an ‘authentic’ self-brand (Duffy and Hund, 2015: 2). Duffy and Hund’s (2015: 7) research about female fashion bloggers argued that they deployed ‘carefully curated personal sharing’ as a way of appearing ‘authentic,’ for example by posting about family birthdays.

For both established and aspiring You Tubers, posting their rape story can function as such ‘carefully curated personal sharing.’ Seventeen of the 40 creators studied here had clearly commercial aspirations. They provided a business address, endorsed products and promoted their books or art. Some embedded self-promotion and product promotion within their rape story videos. For example, Esther begins by promoting one of her other videos before telling her audience that today they will hear a story she does not usually tell; she asks them to share it so that her channel can grow. She concludes by reminding viewers that she posts new videos every day. Her channel provides a link to her beauty website that promotes various products. Many of Esther’s videos review cosmetics while others tell stories in her signature vivacious style. In another example, Amber ends her rape story on a cliff-hanger, telling viewers they should buy her book to read what happened next and her steps for recovery.

Fourteen less clearly commercial video creators apparently aspired to become YouTube personalities. Their channels looked similar to those of commercial YouTubers, with story-times, make-up tutorials, pet-names for the audience and calls to ‘click, comment, subscribe.’ Some post regularly and usually gain a few hundred views. Others apparently lost interest after posting only a few videos. In one case, Alyssa’s first video introduced her channel as focused on diet, fitness and self-empowerment but her three subsequent videos concerned her rape; she no longer posts. In another, Peaches posted just 10 videos on popular YouTuber topics such as ‘back to school haul’ as well as her rape story.

Rape story videos attracted many views. None of Peaches’ videos got more than 10 views except her rape story that got over 350. An aspiring pop singer’s videos usually gained two hundred or so views whereas her rape story video received more than six thousand. After Destiny’s video earned more than three-hundred thousand views she made a follow-up video expressing excitement at her suddenly increased viewership and asking for feedback on other topics she should cover. The success of such videos may incite YouTubers to tell their stories.

Arguably, YouTube has turned sexual violence stories into a commodity that creators may use to self-brand and emotionally connect with a following. A rape story may contribute to diverse personal brands by fostering particular kinds of emotional connection. For example, Destiny used YouTube to market herself as a weight-loss and lifestyle coach. Her rape story video contributes to her personal brand based in self-transformation. One of the few creators who did not cry while telling her story, her account emphasizes the strength and wisdom she gained from the experience. She says she wants to share her story so her followers can know her better and learn from her experience. Thus, she positions herself as a mentor, even calling herself a ‘guru.’ Her channel links to her website where she sells her self-published book and describes her ‘weight-loss journey.’ Her videos concern weight-loss and more general advice about positive thinking and self-branding for success in life.

Emogirl’s first YouTube video told of her rape with cue cards. Pale with heavy black eyeliner, in her 24 subsequent videos she speaks to the camera of surviving indifferent parents, bullying at school and suicide attempts. She addresses her viewers affectionately, saying that their support helps her. Emogirl won thousands of subscribers and views. Her final video says ‘my life is on Instagram now’ and encourages people to follow her there, where she posts her art. Emogirl’s personal brand on YouTube emotionally engaged followers with her feelings of worthlessness and her resilience; her silent cue card rape story lay at the heart of this emotional experience.

Krystal presents as bubbly and conventionally feminine, she films herself in full make-up and revealing clothing alongside accoutrements of femininity such as cosmetics. Her videos tell both light-hearted and serious personal stories; her channel promotes her self-published autobiographical book. An expressive and engaging story-teller, Krystal made two videos about her rape as a teenager and a third about a separate sexual assault. In the third video she mentions that she had already told the story on her Patreon channel soon after the incident because she feels most comfortable sharing intimate stories there, seamlessly weaving a marketing pitch into sharing her story. On Patreon followers can subscribe to exclusive content for a monthly fee; Krystal implies this fee also buys a higher level of intimacy. She cries while telling her story and thanks her viewers for her feeling of ‘a weight off her chest,’ positioning them as intimate friends in whom she confides and who nurture her.

By introducing their rape story as a rarely talked about secret, YouTubers can further the sense of emotional engagement on which their channels depend. Thus in the blurb for her first rape story video Krystal says, ‘I have always been open and transparent with you guys.’ Destiny says she feels a responsibility to share her story with her followers as part of her mission to ‘help people be a better them.’ Esther says she does not usually tell people about her rape story but, ‘this channel is for you to know me better.’ Penny introduces her video as an ‘honest heart-to-heart’ with her viewers. All express affection for their viewers, usually by saying ‘I love you guys’ sometimes blowing kisses to the camera.

Few of these You Tubers evidenced any interest in feminism. Krystal used the feminist #metoo when it was trending; Bonnie tweeted support for the women’s march; Toni vlogs about social justice issues, feminism, fat politics and ‘random stuff’; Keira speaks of her anger at US college athlete Brock Turner’s light rape sentence. However, most told stories of rape as a personal trauma without explicit reference to feminist politics.

‘My rape story’ accounts: Causes and responsibility

For the most part, these video creators did not tell a rape story of male power and female oppression or link their rape to broader power relations. Only 14 accounts explicitly pointed to social or cultural causes of sexual violence. Of these three used the term ‘rape culture,’ these women had all reported their rape and been disappointed with the outcome. They used the term rape culture to analyse why authorities had not responded appropriately, thus linking their experience with a wider social pattern. Twelve urged viewers to acknowledge rape as a social problem and oppose it, for example Lynne says ‘communities have to stop supporting rapists’; Alyssa calls rape a ‘problem in our community.’ Seven creators provided statistics about sexual violence against women, framing their story as a gendered social problem.

Nevertheless, all spoke against victim-blaming rape myths. By aligning the imagined social gaze through YouTube with this telling of their rape story they pushed back against accounts that would blame them for the rape or deny that it really was rape. Video creators often wore sexualized clothing and spoke openly about their sexual desires and activities in an implicit rejection of discourse that judges victims according to what they were wearing and their sexual past (Loughnan et al., 2013). For example, Bonnie tells of rape by a former ‘fuck-buddy’ after she tried to end their sexual relationship. Alyssa describes becoming ‘hyper-sexual’ after her rape because she wanted to develop ‘positive sexual experiences.’ Several told of rape after excessive drinking or rule breaking, such as sneaking out to see a boy. Lena told other survivors, ‘you are not to blame, it doesn’t matter what you drank or smoked … it doesn’t matter if a woman is snorting coke in a mini skirt with no undies on.’ Similarly Krystal said ‘no means no’ regardless of how a woman dressed.

Most story-tellers individualized causes of rape to their attackers’ sexual motivations. Several reflected on how their attacker manipulated them or drugged their drink. Some blamed a former partner’s sense of sexual entitlement. For example, Alyssa tells of drunkenly desiring vaginal intercourse with her close male friend but saying no when it hurt. Despite her yelling she was in pain he refused to stop. Her video berates him for pursuing his orgasm in spite of her pain. Stella tells of a months-long relationship with a boyfriend who cried and complained when she did not want sex. Out of guilt she sometimes gave in. On the last occasion she says: ‘I didn’t resist but I didn’t say yes.’ She ended the relationship, describing the former boyfriend as ‘denying her right to consent.’ Thus, creators represented rape as a problem of, in Krystal’s words, ‘shitty people.’

My rape story accounts: Consequences and meaning

Most creators told a story of rape as an individual trauma and recovery as personal work to ‘take back control.’ All described emotional pain, psychological symptoms and a changed perspective on people following their rape. Many wept while telling their story. Around half spoke of mental health problems: post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Creators represented the rapist as denying them bodily control during the rape and psychological control in the aftermath. For example, Bonnie describes feeling detached from her body while her former friend raped her. She tells of a subsequent long period of nightmares, anxiety and social withdrawal. She describes making her video as ‘getting it off her chest’ and part of her resolution to ‘make myself better.’ She tells viewers, ‘I’ve decided that I’m taking my life back.’ Other creators commonly used this phrase, linking ‘taking back my life’ with pursuing career or educational goals that their rape had derailed, in Bonnie’s case becoming a dancer.

Thus these videos offer accounts that construct recovery from rape in terms of regaining what Berlant (2001: 49) calls a liberal ‘intentional self,’ a self that reflexively constructs its own well-being and success. For example, Krystal tells of rape several years ago after she got drunk at a teenage party. She describes feeling disgusting afterwards and plagued by her inability to remember all the details. She concludes, ‘I can’t control the bad people in this world but I can control how I let bad situations and bad people affect me.’ She also says, ‘I think that this experience has made me a stronger person has made me a smarter person and has made me a more compassionate person.’ Krystal thus narrates her rape as requiring her to assert control over her emotional reactions and become stronger. Similarly, both Lena and Destiny represent their recovery from rape as one part of their journey to wisdom and self-reliance as successful YouTubers who can now pass on their insights. In another example Katy, still struggling to recover from her rape by a colleague and the fall-out for her career plans, shares her new educational and career goals with viewers, inviting them to regularly follow her journey of self-transformation. Many videos ended by telling other victims ‘you are not alone’ and urging them to tell their story as a first step in recovery.

Some creators addressed a specifically female audience, urging them to learn from their story and speak out themselves. Krystal expresses solidarity with other ‘girls’ who have had similar experiences and urges ‘girls’ to exercise careful character judgement and avoid excessive drinking. The moral of her story thus places the onus on ‘girls’ to be vigilant and alert to the risk of rape at all times. Fifteen other video creators gave similar warnings. For example, Izzy says: ‘there are men out there that’s like that, they do whatever they can do to get you. Be careful, know your limit, always keep your eye on your drink.’ Blaze says: ‘Don’t be stupid don’t trust these little boys they only want one thing.’

Few story-tellers spoke of any expectation that reporting their rape would have consequences for the perpetrator. Ten reported to police or other authorities (university or military). Of these, authorities only upheld four complaints. Two reports of child rape had satisfactory outcomes for the story-teller although only one went through the courts; in the other the child was able to move in with family she felt safe with. One of the cases of stranger rape of an adult led to charges and deportation for the perpetrator. One case of date-rape resulted in community service for the perpetrator, to the disgust of the story-teller.

Several story-tellers explained why they did not want to report: they did not expect to be believed but rather shamed and blamed if others found out. Brianna says she was starting a new school and did not want to be known as the girl Jack did that to; similarly Beverley did not want to be known as ‘the girl that got raped.’ Raped by an abusive boyfriend, Jenni said she did not want to be labelled the ‘psycho ex-girlfriend.’ Roberta says her reputation would have been damaged and she would have been called a slut if she had reported. Izzy and Jada had similar experiences of rape after passing out on a date, both said that it took time before they processed what happened as rape. Taylor said she did not report a male friend who raped her in her apartment because she blamed herself for a long time. Toni reported to her manager after a workplace rape, but her complaint was not upheld so she did not expect any better from police. More than half of the creators did not discuss reporting as a possibility.

Conclusion

YouTube ‘my rape story’ videos intertwine resistance to victim-blaming rape myths with the commodification of personal experience fostered by social media and neo-liberal therapeutic projects of self-efficacy. You Tubers deploy their rape stories to self-brand and cultivate a following by making a particular kind of emotional connection, be that with Emogirl’s fragile resilience, Destiny’s wisdom or Krystal’s girliness. Their rape stories function as ‘carefully curated personal sharing’ meant to intensify their emotional connection with viewers (Duffy and Hund, 2015: 7). The deeply self-revealing nature of these videos amplifies the impact of such personal sharing.

For the most part, these accounts did not tell a feminist story of male power and female oppression but a neo-liberal story of trauma, resilience and regaining control. Creators’ accounts represented rape as a devastating loss of control over one’s body during the rape, and over one’s thoughts and emotions in the aftermath. Thus, they spoke of rape as requiring extraordinary emotional strength and self-work to overcome. Such an account provided an opportunity for some to brand themselves as remarkably self-motivated, self-aware and resilient. Others presented themselves as still in a process of self-transformation but as ready to engage in self-improvement projects of education, employment-seeking or entrepreneurship. Those who used their channels and linked websites to promote artwork, products or services displayed their entrepreneurship.

While most creators expressed no identification with feminism, their accounts show that feminist critique of victim-blaming rape myths has gained popular currency. All creators seemed keenly aware that they could be blamed and shamed for their rape, yet they chose to speak out. They told nuanced stories of everyday sexual violation by entitled boyfriends, predatory relatives, colleagues, friends and acquaintances. They asserted their right to refuse sex regardless of their prior sexual interest in the perpetrator, sexual history, drunkenness or rule breaking. They pushed back against misogynist victim-blaming, in some cases by authorities who failed to recognize their rape. By repeating the ‘my rape story’ tag they linked their narratives to others, thus highlighting wider social patterns of shared experience. The typical call for other victims to tell their story at the end of such videos invites viewers to likewise identify their story with that of the video-creator and with other ‘my rape story’ videos. The proliferation of such videos testifies to the commonality of rape, underlined by the repeated refrain of ‘you are not alone’ that typically accompanies the call for other victims to share their stories.

These accounts illuminate some aspects of the state of discursive struggle over what counts as rape and its significance for individuals and for power relations. However, they only provide one window on an outpouring of stories of sexual violence on social media. Further research could also investigate the sorts of rape stories told in other places, for example self-identified feminist spaces. Do rape stories told in feminist spaces also evidence the sorts of neo-liberal themes evidenced in these videos? More broadly, has this outpouring of everyday stories of sexual violence contributed to a shift in everyday understandings of the meaning of rape?

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

ORCID iD

Carol Harrington

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