Resisting rape culture in digital society

Abstract

In October 2017, hundreds of thousands of survivors took to social media to share their experiences using the hashtag #MeToo. Social commentators, activists, and academics alike appear replete with an optimism that this new wave of feminist activism has already changed the public conversation about sexual violence in ways that are influencing real, structural change. It is unclear as yet whether #MeToo will result in more than a mere flashpoint of digital feminist activism. However, its origins did not occur in a contemporary vacuum. This chapter examines the promise and potential of such activism, focusing foremost on sexual violence and rape culture, in order to contribute to feminist criminological accounts of feminism and anti-rape activism in the context of an increasingly digital society. Here we use digital society not merely as a marker of the digital or 'information age' (Castells, 1996; Webster, 2002), but rather as a conceptual term that refers to the mutual shaping of technology and society such that, in much of contemporary life, it is increasingly difficult to examine social, cultural, or political issues associated with civil society outside the technologies within which they are enmeshed and co-produced (Powell, Stratton, & Cameron, 2018). Drawing on emerging technofeminist (Wajcman, 2004; see also Powell & Henry, 2017) and digital criminologies (Powell et al., 2018; Stratton, Powell, & Cameron, 2017), the chapter considers the features characteristic of contemporary social justice activism, which is always simultaneously online and offline.