Paper short abstract:

Criminal justice systems around the world are struggling to keep pace with new forms of sexual violence enabled by the internet and mobile digital devices. Image-based sexual abuse, like "revenge pornography”, has proven to be particularly challenging. Where and how might feminists intervene?

Paper long abstract:

Criminal justice systems around the world are struggling to keep pace with new forms of sexual violence enabled by the internet and mobile digital devices. Image-based sexual abuse, commonly called “revenge pornography” (because perpetrators are often jilted ex-lovers), has proven to be one of the most challenging. This paper will scrutinize trials from Canada to compare three different forms of legal recourse for victims: 1) “Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act”, which criminalized the non-consensual distribution of intimate images 2) Provincial torts that permit victims to sue perpetrators 3) Copyright Acts, which offer legal grounds to issue take-down notices to website hosts. While victims are threatened, harassed, and stalked online and off and experience high rates of agoraphobia, anxiety, and depression, none of these legal strategies frame “revenge pornography” as sexual violence. Instead, victims, most of whom are women, are required to stage the evidence of their case as a violation of personal privacy or as prohibited use of copyrighted property. Another problem is that the technological networks through which such crimes operate are supranational, exceeding the juridical reach of police and criminal justice systems. Social media and pornography websites are able to evade liability for third person content, yet these companies have the power to act as de facto arbiters of justice through terms of service, community guidelines, and algorithms. This paper addresses how these issues pose challenges and opportunities for feminist theory and practice. Where and how might feminists intervene in diffuse assemblages of humans, technologies, and jurisprudence?