Reporting on sexual violence ‘inside the closet’: Masculinity, homosexuality and #MeToo

Abstract

Media representation of sexual violence and sexual consent communication in cases involving queer people is an area that has been overwhelmingly overlooked by research thus far. Research looking at heterosexual instances of sexual violence has given us valuable insights into how (hetero)normative gender roles are constructed in news media, and how these work to excuse and minimise the actions of heterosexual men. But how does this change when at least one of the men involved is queer or homosexual and does not fit into the (hetero)normative gender role paradigm which is commonly used to excuse men’s sexually violent behaviours? This research examined three celebrity cases of alleged sexual violence from the #MeToo movement where the communication of sexual consent (or lack thereof) played a primary role in media reporting. This includes the heteronormative case of Aziz Ansari, and two cases involving homosexual men including Kevin Spacey and Tom Ballard. Our research found that with an absence of cultural intelligibility around queer sex and queer negotiations of consent, problematic and damaging stereotypes about homosexual ‘deviancy’ were instead used by news media in attempts to make sense of these cases. It ultimately found that in both the heterosexual and homosexual cases that news media reporting was overwhelmingly protecting and perpetuating norms of hegemonic masculinity, namely through legitimising any homosexual advance on a heterosexual man as violence, and any heterosexual male advance on a woman as non-violence.