Sexual Assault and Intimate Violence: Issues and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

Technology-facilitated sexual violence is a modern form of an old behavior in which strangers send unsolicited sexual images and comments to another person online or through smartphones. This may include unsolicited text messages, pornographic images, images of the sender’s genitalia, sexually degrading comments on social media posts, cyberstalking, and image-based abuse. Prior research has shown that such actions are typically unwelcome and cause negative emotional reactions and self-monitoring. Such actions are ususally performed out of a misdirected attempt at flirtation, with a subset of senders acting out of aggression and abuse. The present research seeks to expand our knowledge of this behaviour, including the misogyny underlying such actions when committed by men toward women. This may include research identifying sender motivations, emotional and behavioral effects on women, and how such harassment perpetuates existing dynamics of power and privilege. Relevant research may look at the public harassment and derogation of women who are professional, accomplished, feminist, or famous. It may also look at the harassment of women who enter so-called “men’s spaces” or spaces that centre men and men’s experiences, such as online gaming, sports centres, reddit threads, incel forums, or right-wing political spaces. This may also include the sexualization and objectification of women based on their other social identities (e.g., race, religion, sexual orientation), fetishizing or seeking to exploit these women and reducing them to gender and sexual objects for male satisfaction.

Dr. Caroline Erentzen
Dr. Alisha Salerno
Guest Editors

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