Abstract
In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘revenge porn’. While new laws criminalising this practice represent a positive step forwards, the legislative response has been piecemeal and typically focuses only on the practices of vengeful ex-partners. Drawing on Liz Kelly’s (Surviving sexual violence. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988) pioneering work, we suggest that ‘revenge porn’ should be understood as just one form of a range of gendered, sexualised forms of abuse which have common characteristics, forming what we are conceptualising as the ‘continuum of image-based sexual abuse’. Further, we argue that image-based sexual abuse is on a continuum with other forms of sexual violence. We suggest that this twin approach may enable a more comprehensive legislative and policy response that, in turn, will better reflect the harms to victim-survivors and lead to more appropriate and effective educative and preventative strategies.
Highlights
In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘revenge porn’, with many more debating possible reform.1 ‘Revenge porn’ is typically understood as the non-consensual distribution of private, sexual images by a malicious ex-partner
We consider the extent to which this conceptualisation reflects the reality of sexual offending and the experiences of victim-survivors, including the varied nature of the harms suffered by differently situated victim-survivors which are more than the physical harms commonly associated with the criminal law: we argue that image-based sexual abuse forms part of the continuum of sexual violence
We are making two arguments: first, that there is a continuum of practices which together form our concept of image-based sexual abuse; and, secondly, that image-based sexual abuse is on a continuum with other forms of sexual violence
Summary
In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘revenge porn’, with many more debating possible reform.1 ‘Revenge porn’ is typically understood as the non-consensual distribution of private, sexual images by a malicious ex-partner. By focussing only, or mainly, on the paradigmatic case of the vengeful ex-partner, legislatures have failed to consider the range of abusive practices resulting from the non-consensual distribution and/or creation of private sexual images. In this light, we propose that ‘revenge porn’ should be understood as just one form of a range of gendered, sexualised forms of abuse which have common characteristics forming what we have conceptualised as the ‘continuum of imagebased sexual abuse’.2. We conclude by suggesting that this twin approach may enable a more comprehensive legislative and policy response that, in turn, better reflects the harms to victim-survivors and lead to more effective educative and preventative strategies (McGlynn and Rackley 2017; Salter and Crofts 2015; Hampton 1998)
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