Abstract
Even if they have not themselves been subjected to it, most internet users are aware of technologically-facilitated violence, especially in its gendered forms: revenge pornography, ‘dick pics’, upskirting, online sexual harassment and cyberhate have become well-known phenomena in the technophilic Western world. For those researching it, there is an overwhelming and disheartening amount of data available, particularly in the form of threatening and abusive tweets, and accounts of technologically-facilitated gendered violence in articles or opinion pieces on news sites. Many women, myself included, adhere to the popular 21st century adage of ‘never read below the line’, find ourselves furious to discover that upskirting is not a criminal offence and nod knowingly when we read the Instagram feed ‘Bye Felipe’. However, to present an uncompromisingly bleak picture of technology as a site of gendered violence is to overlook the ways in which technology can also be a tool for resistance and empowerment. The introduction of Gender, Technology and Violence acknowledges as much:
In some ways, the collection is disheartening as it reveals the persistence of gendered violence … however the chapters also provide critiques that serve as a counterpoint to the dominant narratives and … offer a critical feminist account of how we can move forward. (p. 11)
Gender, Technology and Violence is an edited collection in Routledge’s excellent ‘Studies in Crime and Society’ series. At its heart, Gender, Technology and Violence sets out to examine the intersections and tensions between gendered violence and technology. Editors Marie Segrave and Laura Vitis draw together six engaging theoretical and empirical papers sharing themes of facilitation, resistance and responsibility. The chapters are clearly carefully selected, making for a collection that is as interesting, complex and diverse as it is succinct; the editors have wisely resisted the temptation to pad with material that is tangential or covered in depth elsewhere.
Whilst earlier works have brought technologically-facilitated gendered violence to academic attention, this text stands out for several reasons. Firstly, the role of technology is central to each of the chapters of this collection. Departing from previous literature – where the nature, extent and situation of gendered violence within feminist frameworks have been the focus – Gender, Technology and Violence incorporates these issues but instead emphasises the intersections between gendered violence and technology in a way novel to the field.
Secondly, the text defines the term technology widely, to include both the tools which can facilitate violence and the cyberspaces where violence occurs. Technologies are understood as ‘commodified entities’, and the use of technology is acknowledged as being politicised (p. 3). Thus, this collection delves deep into the structures and contexts of the technologies associated with gendered violence, broadening our understanding of how the two are intertwined. This is particularly apparent in Elena Pavan’s chapter, ‘Internet intermediaries and online gender-based violence’. Finally, the editors of this book invite us to consider not merely gendered crimes, but those behaviours which are beyond the criminal law but which are still harmful.
Like any good edited collection, the introduction provides the reader with an overview of the themes of the collection and highlights how the different chapters are situated within those themes: Gender, Technology and Violence does a good job of this. Three of the papers stand out for me in grappling with particularly pertinent issues.
The theme of ‘technology as facilitator’ (p. 5) is explored in a particularly interesting way in JaneMaree Maher, Jude McCulloch and Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s chapter, ‘New forms of gendered surveillance? Intersections of technology and family violence’. In this paper, the authors explore the expanded opportunities for surveillance and harassment afforded by new technologies. Although acknowledging that technology can empower women by enabling them to access the information they need to escape abusive relationships, the authors’ attention is more focused on how digital technologies can provide the means to monitor women, how legitimate social media practices are normalising the monitoring of individuals and recognition of the way that women are expected to bear responsibility for avoiding male violence. In highlighting this imposition of responsibility on women, the authors guide our thoughts towards those things we are often conscious of in offline violence against women but which are perhaps more insidious in technological contexts – victim blaming and the privatizing of violence against women. This situates digital violence as part of a continuum of violence, noted in both the introduction and the preface to this book.
Elena Pavan’s chapter also provides novel insight into the idea of ‘technology as facilitator’ in its examination of the interactions between intermediaries (companies through whom we access the internet, such as internet service providers, search engines or social media sites) and gender-based violence. She pertinently notes that their influence is often hidden, obscured by ill-defined terms of service, blurred lines between free speech and hate speech and unclear approaches to privacy. Complicating these actions further is the power of intermediaries to be ‘free agents’, unbounded by formalized social responsibility or legal frameworks. One of the real strengths of this chapter is Elena Pavan’s conclusions as to what steps could and should be taken – helpful to practitioners and academics alike. Certainly, this chapter has helped to refine some of my thoughts around the issues of reporting online abuse and how we might improve corporate and state responses, as part of my own research.
The role of ‘technology as a site or tool of resistance’ (p. 6) is a clear focus for the chapter by leading online hate scholar Emma A Jane, who examines ‘fight and flight’ responses to gendered cyberhate. Using two case studies, she outlines a range of different resistant practices, finding evidence of both fight and flight in each and highlighting to the reader the dynamic and multifaceted nature of responses. Emma A Jane is critical of the ‘fight’ responses, which she terms ‘feminist digilantism’, although is careful to acknowledge that this can sometimes be a successful approach to cyberhate, and is one which is understandable in light of ‘the surplus of abuse and the deficit of institutional assistance’ (p. 58). Her strongest argument is that digilantism can create the feeling that there is no need for legalistic or regulatory responses, which not only burdens the targets of abuse to respond in this way but suggests that digilantism is possible and the most appropriate response in all cases. This calls to mind JaneMaree Maher, Jude McCulloch and Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s earlier chapter and the idea of imposing responsibility on women: from both of these chapters the reader takes away the idea that making women accountable for the abuse they receive can direct our attentions away from the perpetrators of abuse and the need for appropriate responses to them.
Perhaps the most obvious omissions from Gender, Technology and Violence are papers exploring the intersections of gendered violence and technology with other identities; for example, ethnicity or gender identity. Acknowledging this, and the need for greater exploration of the structural, cultural or disciplinary exclusion of women from technology, are self-critiques made within the conclusions of the book. Here, the editors also ask the reader to reflect on ideas woven throughout the text: of the expectation that women should use technology as a response to gendered violence, that the harms we are thinking about within this text are not merely technological but exist in wider society and how we can articulate these harms.
Sandra Walklate, in her preface to Gender, Technology and Violence, states that ‘this edited collection opens the door for both criminology and victimology to make sense of what is happening in this technologically focused era … it would be foolish to ignore the agenda implied by the collection presented here’ (p. xi). I have to agree with her sentiments. This book gives the reader the chance to understand the ways in which gendered violence and technology intersect, to reflect on what that means for our understanding of technologically-facilitated gendered violence and to think about how we might respond to this, as individuals and as a society.