Emma A Jane | The University of New South Wales (original) (raw)

BOOK CHAPTERS by Emma A Jane

The internet’s rapid growth and its uptake in almost every aspect of daily life has delivered cou... more The internet’s rapid growth and its uptake in almost every aspect of daily life has delivered countless social benefits. But the cybersphere’s anonymity and self-publishing opportunities are offering people new opportunities to attack each other with unprecedented venom and impunity. While a number of social groups are particularly vulnerable to and are frequent targets of such abuse, this chapter focuses on cyberhate which is directed at women and which is gendered in nature. It uses feminist theory and legal scholarship, and philosophical considerations of “hard choice” scenarios and coercion to examine the threat posed to online participation and digital citizenship by dramatic increases in harassment, abuse, and threats targeting women on the internet and social media platforms. Its overall conclusion is that the impact of gendered cyberhate on targets is impeding online participation and digital citizenship and therefore constitutes a new dimension of existing, gender-related digital divides.

Children groomed by online predators, revenge porn victims extorted by unscrupulous internet entr... more Children groomed by online predators, revenge porn victims extorted by unscrupulous internet entrepreneurs, Muslim community members targeted for racialised cyberhate… Many of the contributors to this book have painted a grim picture of the various ways victims of cybercrimes are suffering, and the multiple ways law is failing to assist. Clearly something is not right here. However, while it is one thing to identify new problems, it is quite another to figure out what to do. Especially when the domains in which these problems are playing out are novel, complex, and extremely volatile. It could be argued that those victimised online are currently being neglected because insufficient attention is being paid to their plight. Yet the existence of this book is testimony to the fact that – while victims of crime and other problems online may not be receiving as much recognition as they need and deserve – they are not entirely invisible. Continued awareness-raising is essential for bringing attention to the plight of victims in online spaces. This might help address the relative lack of knowledgeability on the part of front-line respondents such as police and prosecutors (Citron, 2014, pp. 83-91), as well as the sorts of victim-blaming outlined in Chapter Three. But sensitisation and education strategies alone will not constitute a remedy.

The last twenty years have seen an explosion in the development of information technology, to the... more The last twenty years have seen an explosion in the development of information technology, to the point that people spend a major portion of waking life in online spaces. While there are enormous benefits associated with this technology, there are also risks that can affect the most vulnerable in our society but also the most confident. Cybercrime and its victims explores the social construction of violence and victimisation in online spaces and brings together scholars from many areas of inquiry, including criminology, sociology, and cultural, media, and gender studies.

The book is organised thematically into five parts. Part one addresses some broad conceptual and theoretical issues. Part two is concerned with issues relating to sexual violence, abuse, and exploitation, as well as to sexual expression online. Part three addresses issues related to race and culture. Part four addresses concerns around cyberbullying and online suicide, grouped together as ‘social violence’. The final part argues that victims of cybercrime are, in general, neglected and not receiving the recognition and support they need and deserve. It concludes that in the volatile and complex world of cyberspace continued awareness-raising is essential for bringing attention to the plight of victims. It also argues that there needs to be more support of all kinds for victims, as well as an increase in the exposure and punishment of perpetrators.

Drawing on a range of pressing contemporary issues such as online grooming, sexting, cyber-hate, cyber-bulling and online radicalization, this book examines how cyberspace makes us more vulnerable to crime and violence, how it gives rise to new forms of surveillance and social control and how cybercrime can be prevented.

Cybercrime and its Victims, 2017

Gendered cyberhate in forms such as explicitly sexualised vitriol, rape threats, and revenge porn... more Gendered cyberhate in forms such as explicitly sexualised vitriol, rape threats, and revenge porn is increasingly common online. Women subjected to these new forms of sexual harassment and violence often experience profound suffering. Some have lost their jobs or have had to flee their homes. Yet the female targets of gendered cyberhate are often blamed, while the male perpetrators are excused. This chapter provides an overview of the common manifestations and significant harms of contemporary misogyny online. It draws attention to the ‘blame women/exculpate men’ dynamic evident not only in media narratives, but in the inadequate responses of police, policy makers, and platform managers. It emphasises the care required around linguistic framings of gendered cyberhate alongside the urgent need for improved regulatory interventions guided by the principles of gender equity.

Chapter in "Violence, Desire, and the Sacred Volume 2: René Girard and Sacrifice in Life, Love, a... more Chapter in "Violence, Desire, and the Sacred Volume 2: René Girard and Sacrifice in Life, Love, and Literature", edited by Joel Hodge, Scott Cowdell, and Chris Fleming

PAPERS (PEER REVIEWED) by Emma A Jane

Feminist campaigns on social media platforms have recently targeted ‘manspreading’ – a portmantea... more Feminist campaigns on social media platforms have recently targeted ‘manspreading’ – a portmanteau word describing men who sit in a way which fills multiple seats on public transport. Feminists claim this form of everyday sexism exemplifies male entitlement and have responded by posting candid online photographs of men caught manspreading. These ‘naming and shaming’ digilante strategies have been met with vitriolic responses from men’s rights activists. This article uses debates around manspreading to explore and appraise some key features of contemporary feminist activism online. Given the heat, amplification, and seemingly intractable nature of the argument, it investigates the usefulness of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism to unpack the conflict. Ultimately, however, agonistic theory is found to have limits – in terms of this case study as well as more broadly. Some final thoughts are offered on how feminists might best navigate the pitfalls of online activism – including the problem of ‘false balance’ – going forward.

Research into the proliferation of abuse and harassment currently being directed towards women on... more Research into the proliferation of abuse and harassment currently being directed towards women online is in its early stages and could arguably benefit from: 1) the provision of more case studies for discussion; and 2) a focus on specific dimensions of the gendered cyberhate problem rather than on the issue as a whole. This article responds to these research gaps by providing 15 new Australian case studies focusing on one particular ramification of cyber abuse and harassment abuse: the adverse impact on women's livelihoods. These show that women workers who receive gendered cyberhate in forms that constitute a form of workplace harassment and/or economic vandalism have few to no means of obtaining support or redress. This is due to a combination of: " precarious " work circumstances; a blurring of personal and professional contexts; and the fact that emerging, electronic iterations of workplace abuse and harassment tend to slip between the cracks of existing laws and policies (which are already barely adequate).

This article examines contemporary feminist 'digilante' responses to the increasing problem of mi... more This article examines contemporary feminist 'digilante' responses to the increasing problem of misogyny online. In particular, it focuses on female gamers and a recent incident in which the Australian gamer Alanah Pearce responded to threats of sexual violence from young male internet users by alerting their mothers. Pearce's move was celebrated in international media commentary as the 'perfect' solution to the problem of online rape threats. This article, however, argues that while 'do-it-yourself' strategies such as Pearce's have some benefits, unsupplemented they do not constitute an adequate solution to the broader problem of gendered vitriol online. Further, they comport with a wider trend which shifts the burden of responsibility for the problem of gendered cyber-hate from perpetrators to targets, and from the public to the private sphere. Over the course of this article, I will show that the contemporary problem of gendered 'e-bile' has parallels with some key social issues addressed by second wave feminism. As such, I argue that a hybrid of feminist activist efforts – including a recalibrated approach to collectivism – is required

Misogyny online in forms such as explicit rape threats has become so prevalent and rhetorically d... more Misogyny online in forms such as explicit rape threats has become so prevalent and rhetorically distinctive it resembles a new dialect or language. Much of this 'Rapeglish' is produced by members of an informal alliance of men's groups online dubbed the 'Manosphere'. As both a cyberhate researcher and cyberhate target, I have studied as well as contributed to feminist responses to Rapeglish. In 2016, for instance, I helped build a Random Rape Threat Generator (RRTG) – a computer program that splices, shuffles around, and re-stitches in novel combinations fragments of real-life Rapeglish to illustrate the formulaic, machine-like, and impersonal nature of misogynist discourse online. This article uses Yuri Lotman's ideas about intra-and inter-cultural conflict involving something akin to the translation of a foreign language to frame the RRTG as one example of the way women are 'talking back' both to and with Rapeglish (the latter involving appropriations and subversions of the original discourse).

This article examines feminist digilantism in response to the “slut-shaming” of an Australian wom... more This article examines feminist digilantism in response to the “slut-shaming” of an Australian woman on Facebook in 2015.
The activism is used to highlight the nature and significance of the feminist pushback against the worsening problem of cyber
violence against women and girls (cyber VAWG). This article builds on my previous research into feminist digilantism and
is part of a much larger, mixed-methods, multi-modal study into gendered cyberhate. It uses approaches from Internet
historiography, ethnography, and netnography, alongside data drawn from qualitative interviews. Sufficient evidence is
available to support the broad argument that the feminist digilantism involved in the case study under analysis was efficacious
as well as ethically justified given the dearth of institutional interventions. That said, I demonstrate that while such activism
has benefits, it also has risks and disadvantages, and raises ethical issues. This critique of digilantism is not intended as yet
another type of victim blaming which suggests the activist responses of cyberhate targets are flawed. Instead, my case is that
appraising the efficacy and ethics of such forms of extrajudicial activism should take place within a framing acknowledging
that these actions are primarily diagnostic of rather than a solution to cyber VAWG. As such, the increasing prevalence and
strength of feminist digilantism lends further support to the case that gendered cyberhate is a problem demanding urgent
and multifaceted intervention.

Gender representation in children's film and television entertainment has long been a source of c... more Gender representation in children's film and television entertainment has long been a source of concern for feminist scholars and media commentators. A common complaint is that many programs continue to depict oppressively narrow versions of normative femininity and masculinity which may contribute to the reproduction of real-life gender-related inequalities. There is, however, far more critique than there is focus on alternative models. This article responds by offering a textual analysis of the American cartoon series Adventure Time as an (unlikely) exemplar of a commercially successful children's television program which depicts gender in a radically subversive and arguably liberatory manner. By identifying and unpacking the way Adventure Time moves beyond the simplistic inversion of existing gender stereotypes, my aim is to provide a concrete example of some of the ways gender can be portrayed more progressively and equitably in children's film and television entertainment.

This article identifies several critical problems with the last 30 years of research into hostile... more This article identifies several critical problems with the last 30 years of research into hostile communication on the internet and offers suggestions about how scholars might address these problems and better respond to an emergent and increasingly dominant form of online discourse which I call ‘e-bile’. Although e-bile is new in terms of its prevalence, rhetorical noxiousness, and stark misogyny, prototypes of this discourse—most commonly referred to as ‘flaming’—have always circulated on the internet, and, as such, have been discussed by scholars from a range of disciplines. Nevertheless, my review of this vast body of literature reveals that online hostility has historically posed a number of conceptual, methodological, and epistemological challenges due to which scholars have typically underplayed, overlooked, ignored, or otherwise marginalised its prevalence and serious ethical and material ramifications. Fortunately, lessons learned from my analysis suggests promising approaches for future research into this challenging form of new media discourse.

This article explores the signal characteristics of gendered vitriol on the Internet – a type of ... more This article explores the signal characteristics of gendered vitriol on the Internet – a type of discourse marked by graphic threats of sexual violence, explicit ad hominem invective and unapologetic misogyny. Such ‘e-bile’ is proliferating in the cybersphere and is currently the subject of widespread international media coverage. Yet it receives little attention in scholarship. This is likely related to the fact that discourse of this type is metaphorically ‘unspeakable’, in that its hyperbolic profanity locates it well outside the norms of what is regarded as ‘civil’ discourse. My case, however, is that – despite
the risk of causing offence – this discourse must not only be spoken of, but must be spoken of in its unexpurgated entirety. There is, I argue, no other way to adequately assay the nature of a communication mode whose misogynistic hostility has serious
ethical and material implications, not least because it has become a lingua franca in many sectors of the cybersphere. Proceeding via unexpurgated ostension is also the
best – arguably the only – way to begin mapping the blurry parameters of the discursive field of e-bile, and from there to conduct further inquiry into the ethical appraisal of putative online hostility, and the consideration of possible remedies.

Drawing on a case study involving mediated vitriol targeting cheerleaders, this article identifie... more Drawing on a case study involving mediated vitriol targeting cheerleaders, this article identifies two potentially problematic aspects of the media studies concept of antifandom. First, it critiques the classification of vitriolic texts produced by antifans as belonging primarily to the field of audiences and reception. It argues that this move risks sidelining the fact that antifan discourse also constitutes a set of influential texts authored by a group of powerful textual producers. Second, it questions the designation of the human targets of antifandom as texts. This risks underplaying the ethical dimensions of the en masse articulation of vitriol towards human targets.

In recent years, the mainstream media has identified on-line vitriol as a worsening problem which... more In recent years, the mainstream media has identified on-line vitriol as a worsening problem which is silencing women in public discourse, and is having a deleterious effect on the civility of the public cybersphere. This article examines the disconnect between representations of “e-bile” in media
texts, and representations of e-bile in academic literature. An exhaustive review of thirty years of academic work on “flaming” shows that many theorists have routinely trivialized the experiences of flame targets, while downplaying, defending, and/or celebrating the discourse circulated by flame
producers. Much contemporary scholarship, meanwhile, ignores e-bile completely. My argument is that this constitutes a form of chauvinism (in that it disregards women’s experiences in on-line
environments) and represents a failure of both theoretical acuity and nerve (given that it evades such a pervasive aspect of contemporary culture). The aim of this paper is not only to help establish the importance of on-line vitriol as a topic for interdisciplinary scholarly research, but to assist in
establishing a theoretical problematic where what is seen is barely regarded as a problem. Overall, my argument is that—far from being a technology-related moral panic—e-bile constitutes a field of inquiry with a pressing need for recalibrated scholarly intervention.

Barbie has long been ascribed potent powers in terms of shaping attitudes towards gender roles. I... more Barbie has long been ascribed potent powers in terms of shaping attitudes towards gender roles. In both scholarly and popular media discourse, she has been linked to—or blamed outright for—a range of social ills including eating disorders, plastic surgery addictions, and the sexualisation of children. This article examines a Barbie merchandise sector that has been largely neglected in scholarship: the 26 animated Barbie feature movies Mattel has released since 2001. These films confound some dominant assumptions about Barbie’s transmission of oppressive ideology, in that many are gynocentric and subvert “traditional” gender stereotypes. It is curious, therefore, that this new Barbie genre has not received more attention in the literature. A possible explanation is that researchers may overlook, ignore, or misread new manifestations of serial commodities because of the
assumption that these new products—and the meanings associated with them—will only ever be “more of the same”. The fact that these Barbie films do have a number of novel aspects underlines the importance of approaching research into new communication modes with fresh eyes; of reassessing—and, if necessary, revising—the received wisdoms that may be associated not only with the object of analysis, but with the theoretical paradigms guiding the analysis itself.

Abstract: Cheerleading is a highly commodified and mass mediated feminised spectacle which attrac... more Abstract: Cheerleading is a highly commodified and mass mediated feminised spectacle which attracts intense vitriol from a range of ostensibly disparate social groups. These include
feminists, social conservatives, cultural elites, sports administrators and fans, mainstream media commentators and members of the general public. Complicating these negative
framings is the fact that cheerleaders are simultaneously sexually fetishised in pornography, pop culture and the news media. That a relatively unremarkable feminine athletic endeavour provokes such intense cultural anxiety and sexual obsession makes cheerleading a singularly revealing object of study. This article uses textual analysis, and fetish, antifandom,
scapegoating and anti-Americanism theory to make sense of the ambivalence, obsession, contradiction, sexualisation and disavowal so often associated with cheerleading. It shows
that cheerleading occupies a provocative and liminal cultural status in so far as it has been both stripped yet also hyper-invested with meaning via a range of fetishistic logics. The news
media’s obsession (and fetishistic disavowals of its obsession) with cheerleaders reveals the oppressive and disempowering ramifications of contemporary cultural responses to young
women whose sexualities are both coveted and despised. It also shows that the critical discourse generated by groups traditionally associated with female oppression and that generated by many feminists can intersect in an ideological pincer movement which leaves young women associated with activities such as cheerleading sidelined and largely without allies.

OTHER WRITING by Emma A Jane

Share this: Rape threats and other sexualized vitriol online feel extremely personal. These are m... more Share this: Rape threats and other sexualized vitriol online feel extremely personal. These are messages that often go into explicit detail about which parts of our bodies will be violated with which instruments. They give the impression that the senders know us, that they are aware of our particular weak spots and of what to say to hurt or frighten us the most. Yet take hundreds of individual rape threats and line them up side by side, and they don't look personal at all. They look like they were generated by a machine. Who we are or what we are supposed to have done wrong turn out to be mostly irrelevant. To illustrate this aspect of the gendered cyberhate problem, my colleague, Nicole A Vincent, and I built a Random Rape Threat Generator (we refer to it fondly as the RRTG) as a companion site for my new book, Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History. My book tracks the evolution of what I call " Rapeglish " from a sub-cultural dialect in the fringes of the early internet, to its current, mainstream status as the go-to response for men who dislike what a woman says, does, or looks like online. Misogyny Online also contains a text version of the RRTG, which has been constructed from hundreds of actual examples of gendered cyberhate I have collected over 18 years of research. The online generator demonstrates the formulaic nature of Rapeglish by slicing up and shuffling around an archive of sexualized vitriol and rape threats received by real-life Type and press enter to search.

What is it that drives artists to invent and re-invent themselves via pseudonyms, stage names, mo... more What is it that drives artists to invent and re-invent themselves via pseudonyms, stage names, mononyms, portmanteaux, sobriquets, alter egos, frankentitles, unchristian names, noms de ‘grrrr’ and the like? Does adopting a new name or persona constitute a performance in and of itself? And how does this fit with the more obvious performativity of those artist personas that — by their very character — are fictionalised?

Cybercrime and its Victims, 2017

Cognitive performance enhancers promise to deliver a better version of ourselves: smarter, more a... more Cognitive performance enhancers promise to deliver a better version of ourselves: smarter, more alert and more mentally agile. But what if such enhancement was no longer a personal
choice but a socially and legally enforced responsibility? This paper explores the risks of normalising this emerging
trend.

While it’s tempting to dismiss conspiracy theorists as nothing more than a loopy minority, on a g... more While it’s tempting to dismiss conspiracy theorists as nothing more than a loopy minority, on a growing range of contemporary issues they in fact make up a loud and vocal majority.
Consider the nearly four in five US citizens who think the government is keeping mum on salacious information about UFOs. Or the quarter of the UK population who believe Princess Diana was assassinated. Then there’s the American political group Reptilian Resistance (RR) Movement United. Alongside its mostly unexceptional conservative social activist agenda is a violent declaration of war against the evil, reptilian-alien hybrids that have supposedly infiltrated the most senior levels of government.

Cheerleading – an activity with origins in the elite, male-dominated domain of the late 19th cent... more Cheerleading – an activity with origins in the elite, male-dominated domain of the late 19th century American university campus – is now a highly commodified and mass mediated feminised spectacle which attracts intense vitriol from a range of ostensibly disparate social groups. These include feminists, social conservatives, cultural elites, sports administrators and fans, mainstream media commentators and members of the general public. Complicating these negative framings is the fact that cheerleaders are simultaneously sexually fetishised in pornography, pop culture and the news media. That a relatively unremarkable feminine athletic endeavour provokes such intense cultural anxiety and sexual obsession makes cheerleading a singularly revealing object of study. Engaging with media, feminist, gender, sporting and cultural studies theory – under what I will unpack as a conceptual framework I nominate as fetish theory – this thesis conducts an extensive analysis of media texts framing cheerleading. It shows that cheerleading animates intense cultural anxieties because it is seen to threaten a broad spectrum of ideologies and ideals, which range across theory, practice and views as diverse as feminism, moral conservatism, sport, and cultural authenticity. As a result, cheerleaders: are the subject of intense desire and loathing; are used as multi-purpose, psycho-social scapegoats; and have come to occupy a provocative liminal space between the sex worker and the athlete (in part because they have been both stripped yet also hyper-invested with meaning via a range of fetishistic logics). This thesis examines the role of feminist discourse (particularly in relation to its convergence with social conservative rhetoric) in censuring young women involved in sexualised performances such as cheerleading. It interrogates the relevance of traditional media studies models such as moral panic; problematises orthodox understandings of the progressive/transgressive politics involved in active audienceship and self-publishing; explicates some of the dangers of celebratory rhetoric framing new media ecosystems; and probes the usefulness of new approaches to explicating power flows in media environments.

Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History, 2017

Misogyny Online explores the worldwide phenomenon of gendered cyberhate as a significant discours... more Misogyny Online explores the worldwide phenomenon of gendered cyberhate as a significant discourse which has been overlooked and marginalised. The rapid growth of the internet has led to numerous opportunities and benefits; however, the architecture of the cybersphere offers users unprecedented opportunities to engage in hate speech. This book weaves together data and theory from multiple disciplines. Its data sources include a meticulously archived collection of cyberhate that I received over the course of two decades working as a journalist – has already been recognised by scholars and public figures as providing a powerful, original, and timely statement about the rapidly escalating international gendered cyberhate problem and its harms. It has also been commended for offering a major contribution to the interdisciplinary study of emerging communication technologies, contemporary manifestations of hate speech, digital citizenship, internet governance, and digital divides.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

We’ve all heard the one about the angry feminist killjoy. But what about the angry feminist killj... more We’ve all heard the one about the angry feminist killjoy. But what about the angry feminist killjoy who also cracks jokes? While a rich vein of enraged feminist humor currently proliferates in popular media, the use of comedy is divisive in feminism. In addition to being framed as potentially diluting righteous feminist anger, such levity could all too easily be dismissed as a surface-level “popular feminism” performance facilitating commodified individualism rather than sufficiently collectivist action. Yet in this essay I show that joking can be shot through with rage. I also argue that it can play a critical role in transmuting harrowing personal experiences into effective activism as well as building the resilience required for sustained activism. Situating debates about activist humor as part of broader intrafeminist dispute and division, I raise the possibility of a type of feminist anger not discussed in the contemporary discourse on women’s rage: namely, feminists’ anger at each other. While tensions between feminists and feminisms are often subterranean, tacit, and difficult to conclusively prove, denying, underplaying, or ignoring these frictions may risk a type of gaslighting—even though this is unintended. Relatedly, my case is that sharp feminist critiques of ideologies and hegemons might inadvertently cause offense to and alienate individual feminists who interpret such critiques as personal attacks. This highlights a broader tension between theory and praxis that, by my account, might be mitigated partly by furnishing a larger number of concrete suggestions about how collectivist action could manifest at the level of individual practice.

Gender, Technology and Violence

Cybercrime and its Victims

Theorizing Digital Divides

International Journal of Cultural Studies

Misogyny online in forms such as explicit rape threats has become so prevalent and rhetorically d... more Misogyny online in forms such as explicit rape threats has become so prevalent and rhetorically distinctive it resembles a new dialect or language. Much of this ‘Rapeglish’ is produced by members of an informal alliance of men’s groups online dubbed the ‘Manosphere’. As both a cyberhate researcher and cyberhate target, I have studied as well as contributed to feminist responses to Rapeglish. In 2016, for instance, I helped build a Random Rape Threat Generator (RRTG) – a computer program that splices, shuffles around, and re-stitches in novel combinations fragments of real-life Rapeglish to illustrate the formulaic, machine-like, and impersonal nature of misogynist discourse online. This article uses Yuri Lotman’s ideas about intra- and inter-cultural conflict involving something akin to the translation of a foreign language to frame the RRTG as one example of the way women are ‘talking back’ both to and with Rapeglish (the latter involving appropriations and subversions of the origi...

Feminist Media Studies

Abstract Research into the proliferation of abuse and harassment currently being directed towards... more Abstract Research into the proliferation of abuse and harassment currently being directed towards women online is in its early stages and could arguably benefit from: (1) the provision of more case studies for discussion; and (2) a focus on specific dimensions of the gendered cyberhate problem rather than on the issue as a whole. This article responds to these research gaps by providing 15 new Australian case studies focusing on one particular ramification of cyber abuse and harassment abuse: the adverse impact on women’s livelihoods. These show that women workers who receive gendered cyberhate in forms that constitute a form of workplace harassment and/or economic vandalism have few to no means of obtaining support or redress. This is due to a combination of: “precarious” work circumstances; a blurring of personal and professional contexts; and the fact that emerging, electronic iterations of workplace abuse and harassment tend to slip between the cracks of existing laws and policies (which are already barely adequate).

Information, Communication & Society

'Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History' looks at how we got from the uto... more 'Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History' looks at how we got from the utopian ideal of an ‘all welcome’ cybersphere, to one that so often shouts: ‘You appear to be using the internet as a vagina lady type person. Now we must threaten chainsaw rape, anal massacre, and ALL CAPS EPIC DEATH LULZ MURDER.’ The tl;dr is #HowComeAllTheRapeThreats. Plus there is quite a bit of WTF-ing, SMDH-ing and icanteven-ing about things like 'Tits or GTFO' and GamerGate.

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2016

Feminist campaigns on social media platforms have recently targeted ‘manspreading’ – a portmantea... more Feminist campaigns on social media platforms have recently targeted ‘manspreading’ – a portmanteau describing men who sit in a way which fills multiple seats on public transport. Feminists claim this form of everyday sexism exemplifies male entitlement and have responded by posting candid online photographs of men caught manspreading. These ‘naming and shaming’ digilante strategies have been met with vitriolic responses from men’s rights activists. This article uses debates around manspreading to explore and appraise some key features of contemporary feminist activism online. Given the heat, amplification, and seemingly intractable nature of the argument, it investigates the usefulness of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism to unpack the conflict. Ultimately, however, agonistic theory is found to have limits – in terms of this case study as well as more broadly. Some final thoughts are offered on how feminists might best navigate the pitfalls of online activism – including the prob...

Continuum, 2016

Abstract This article examines contemporary feminist ‘digilante’ responses to the increasing prob... more Abstract This article examines contemporary feminist ‘digilante’ responses to the increasing problem of misogyny online. In particular, it focuses on female gamers and a recent incident in which the Australian gamer Alanah Pearce responded to threats of sexual violence from young male Internet users by alerting their mothers. Pearce’s move was celebrated in international media commentary as the ‘perfect’ solution to the problem of online rape threats. This article, however, argues that while ‘do-it-yourself’ strategies such as Pearce’s have some benefits, unsupplemented, they do not constitute an adequate solution to the broader problem of gendered vitriol online. Further, they comport with a wider trend which shifts the burden of responsibility for the problem of gendered cyber-hate from perpetrators to targets, and from the public to the private sphere. Over the course of this article, I will show that the contemporary problem of gendered ‘e-bile’ has parallels with some key social issues addressed by second-wave feminism. As such, I argue that a hybrid of feminist activist efforts – including a recalibrated approach to collectivism – is required to achieve the legislative and corporate reforms necessary to address the significant social problem of gendered hate on the Internet.

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2014

Ethics and Information Technology, 2015

Continuum, 2013

This article explores the signal characteristics of gendered vitriol on the Internet – a type of ... more This article explores the signal characteristics of gendered vitriol on the Internet – a type of discourse marked by graphic threats of sexual violence, explicit ad hominem invective and unapologetic misogyny. Such ‘e-bile’ is proliferating in the cybersphere and is currently the subject of widespread international media coverage. Yet it receives little attention in scholarship. This is likely related to the fact that discourse of this type is metaphorically ‘unspeakable’, in that its hyperbolic profanity locates it well outside the norms of what is regarded as ‘civil’ discourse. My case, however, is that – despite the risk of causing offence – this discourse must not only be spoken of, but must be spoken of in its unexpurgated entirety. There is, I argue, no other way to adequately assay the nature of a communication mode whose misogynistic hostility has serious ethical and material implications, not least because it has become a lingua franca in many sectors of the cybersphere. Proceeding via unexpurgated ostension is also the best – arguably the only – way to begin mapping the blurry parameters of the discursive field of e-bile, and from there to conduct further inquiry into the ethical appraisal of putative online hostility, and the consideration of possible remedies.

journals.culture-communication. …

New Perspectives on Technology in Society

Mimetic Theory and Film, 2019