A szexuális erőszak és zaklatás diskurzusai a nyilvánosságban két esettanulmányon keresztül

Abstract

My dissertation examines public discourses on rape and sexual harassment. Sexual violence and harassment have long been considered a taboo subject. Recently, however, there has been a steady emergence of public revelations and media scandals surrounding the issue, with media-induced moral judgments, so-called ’trial by media.’ The alleged perpetrator is then convicted and punished by a ’court of public opinion.’ Trial by media is a problematic phenomenon from many aspects, however it also has emancipatory potential and can facilitate an alternative informal justice. On the other hand, the discourses of trial by media are also embedded in a socio-cultural context that is fundamentally determined by the specific hierarchies between men and women, masculinities and femininities within a given society. The main question of my dissertation is: to what extent does trial by media fulfill emancipatory potential in cases of sexual violence and harassment, and on what does that fulfillment depend? How and when can trial by media triumph and as a part of that achieve that the victim is positioned as the ’unimpeachable victim’. Additionally, I examine the extent discourses reproduce or attempt to dismantle the stereotypes and gender hierarchies surrounding sexual violence and abuse. I will try to answer the above questions through a comparative analysis of two case studies on two selected cases: the László Kiss case and the László Marton case. First, the László Kiss case is certainly outstanding in that it was the first time that a rape victim came forward, identified herself and spoke out, and the perpetrator publicly apologized. The second case, the László Marton case is a flagship case of #metoo in Hungary. The two offenses, rape and sexual harassment, significantly differ in gravity. Yet, at the same time, they are both considered abuses of power in the sexual terrain and are thus likely to set in motion similar discursive patterns embedded in unequal gender relations. The two cases also differ in terms of fade-out and closure, which provides an opportunity to explore possible causes through examples of a successful and a less successful trial by media.