‘The culture is disgusting’: analysing continuities and differences in experiences and perceptions of youth rape culture through cross-generational testimonies online

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper draws on anonymous survivor testimonies shared on the Everyone’s Invited platform to analyse continuities and differences in experiences and perceptions of youth rape culture across generations. Findings suggest that while there are stubbornly consistent patterns of harm in experiences of rape culture over decades, there is hope to be found in distinct perceptions of rape culture between survivors of different ages. This occurs specifically in the way young people wield the discourses and conceptual resources of society’s reckoning with sexual violence to situate their experiences in a broader structural and cultural landscape, in spite of ongoing and entrenched institutional failings. While the experience of rape culture as a phenomenon continues much as it did decades ago, the mobilization of ‘rape culture’ as a conceptual resource amongst young people is increasingly visible at our current conjuncture, and this visibility is facilitated partly via digital connectivity and the expansion of personal testimony campaigns.