Rape Voyerism 2.0: The Impact and Consequences of Digital Victimization Records

• In Event: Framing Victimization in a Digital Age

Abstract

Offline experiences of sexual violence may now include a digital victimization record. Multiple cases of non-consensually recorded and digitally distributed images/videos have emerged in the last decade, bringing new consequences and burdens for survivors of sexual violence. These digital victimization records are easier to spread, publicly consume and profit from than ever before; they also reach a global audience, allow for stranger commentary, and serve as permanent, living artifacts of abuse.

In the U.S., digital victimization records are nearly impossible to remove. Tech companies profit from rape-voyeurism, and are thus motivated to both host and spread victimization content. Section 230 largely protects tech companies and individual platform holders, indicating the country's continued choice to prioritize "free speech" over user safety. With the new political party shifting what little regulatory reform, moderation requirements, and safety and trust measures were beginning to be implemented, the consequences, impacts, burdens and accountability-labor will once again, be placed onto survivors. This choice, to protect company profit and perpetrators, lies in contrast to several European countries, which have centered victim/survivor's rights and created mechanisms for survivors to control their digital body, victimization experiences, and online identity.

This paper draws from forty media-reported cases of digitially distributed sexual violence (DDSV) and forty qualitative interviews with survivors and subject matter experts. Findings illustrate that this seemingly "new" form of sexual violence is actually, just old gendered inequalities that have been updated to fit the new digital world. Technological advancements and emerging digital socialcultural behaviors, however, have amplified and accelerated the harms of sexual violence, changing the experience of sexual violence in ways that are important to understand. Findings show an increase in the risk (offline) re-victimization, and financial, educational, legal, housing, and professional penalties. Digital victimization records also extend survivor's trauma into perpetuity. In their words, DDSV is forever.

Author

• Katherine Bright, University of Colorado Colorado Springs