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Talking Bodies pp 137–161Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

No Body, No Crime? (Representations of) Sexual Violence Online

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Abstract

Sexual violence is an ever-increasing feature of online culture, with rape the central aim of ‘stalking simulators’ and violence directed towards avatar sex workers in the Grand Theft Auto franchise (Martinez and Manolovitz 2010, p. 68). Using discourse analysis, this chapter examines discussions from online forums about the use of the word ‘rape’ to refer to instances of sexual violence in online spaces. It interrogates the debate around whether these occurrences are forms of sexual violence, or representations of sexual violence based on the presence/absence of an embodied material experience. This chapter argues that while such developments should not be ignored, they are not new (e.g. Mystique 1982) and the novelty of the technology can detract attention from long-standing issues of gender and sexual inequality.

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Acknowledgements

This chapter is from my doctoral dissertation submitted to Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. The author would like to thank Professor Erica Burman, Dr Geoff Bunn and Dr Asiya Siddiquee for their helpful feedback on an earlier version of this chapter.

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  1. Chartered Academic Psychologist, The Psygentra Institute, Vancouver, Canada

    Jemma Tosh

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Correspondence to Jemma Tosh .

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  1. Institute of Gender Studies, University of Chester, Chester, United Kingdom

    Emma Rees

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Tosh, J. (2017). No Body, No Crime? (Representations of) Sexual Violence Online. In: Rees, E. (eds) Talking Bodies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63778-5_8

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