Need to develop strategies to prevent unwanted sexual attention and sexual violence in licensed venues - young adults' insights into potential strategies - safety and crime prevention in the ...night-time economy - few prevention efforts in response to sexual harm in the night-time economy - educational approaches - bystander responses.
In an era of datafication, data visualisation is playing an increasing role in civic meaning-making processes. However, the conventions of data visualisation have been criticised for their ...reductiveness and rhetoric of neutrality and there have been recent efforts to develop feminist principles for designing data visualisations that are compatible with feminist epistemologies. In this article, we aim to examine how data visualisation is used in feminist activism and by feminist activists. Drawing on the example of digital street harassment activism, we analyse how street harassment is visualised in and through a selection of prominent activist social media accounts. We consider the platform affordances utilised by activists, and how these are harnessed in making street harassment ‘knowable'. Moreover, we critically interrogate which and whose experiences are ‘knowable’ via digital techniques, and what remains obscured and silenced. In analysing digital feminist activists’ practices, we argue that what constitutes ‘data visualisation’ itself must be situated within feminist epistemologies and praxis that centre lived experience as the starting point for knowledge production. Such an approach challenges and disrupts normative constructions of what constitutes data visualisation. Our findings demonstrate how feminist activists are adopting ‘traditional’ practices of speaking out and consciousness-raising to the digital sphere in the creation of a range of visualisations that represent the issue of street harassment. We consider the efficacy of these visualisations for achieving their intended purpose and how they might translate to policy and government responses, if this is indeed their goal. Further, we document a tension between feminist epistemologies and the prevailing logic of datafication or dataism and note how in an attempt to unite the two, some digital feminist activism has contributed to reproducing existing power structures, raising concerning implications at the policy level.
In 2015, the Pahela Baishakh (Bengali New Year) celebrations in Bangladesh were marred by incidents of mass sexual assaults. This incident generated widespread public discussion, and many survivors ...took to the digital realm to disclose their own experiences. Break the Silence Bangladesh was a Facebook page established to provide a space for shared disclosure, support and consciousness-raising. In this paper, we analyse 61 submissions made to the page, which provide vital insights into experiences of sexual violence in Bangladesh outside of the dominant frame of domestic and intimate partner violence. Findings point to the diverse range of contexts in which sexual violence occurs, the roles of class and space in shaping this violence, and the ongoing impact of cultures of shame and stigma in preventing disclosure and bystander intervention. This work highlights the need to expand the scope of contemporary research and policy responses to sexual violence in Bangladesh.
•Examines “everyday” experiences of sexual violence in Bangladesh, using innovative online methods.•Participants experienced sexual violence across diverse spatial and relationship contexts.•Findings highlight the centrality of class in shaping experiences and contexts of sexual violence.•Responses of bystanders and disclosure recipients was typically poor, and suggests a need for widespread educational efforts.
Despite the well-documented under-reporting of sexual violence, to date, no research has considered reporting practices within the specific context of music festivals. Drawing on 16 in-depth ...interviews with victim-survivors, this article examines survivors' experiences of (non) reporting sexual violence in festival settings. We argue that while some barriers to reporting are shared across contexts, others play out in context-specific ways. Our research argues that the liberal, often transgressive culture of music festivals, combined with site-specific policing practices and spatial context, creates unique impediments to reporting with particular implications in responding to, and aiming to prevent, sexual violence at music festivals.
In 2015, the Pahela Baishakh (Bengali New Year) celebrations in Bangladesh were marred by incidents of mass sexual assaults. This incident generated widespread public discussion, and many survivors ...took to the digital realm to disclose their own experiences. Break the Silence Bangladesh was a Facebook page established to provide a space for shared disclosure, support and consciousness-raising. In this paper, we analyse 61 submissions made to the page, which provide vital insights into experiences of sexual violence in Bangladesh outside of the dominant frame of domestic and intimate partner violence. Findings point to the diverse range of contexts in which sexual violence occurs, the roles of class and space in shaping this violence, and the ongoing impact of cultures of shame and stigma in preventing disclosure and bystander intervention. This work highlights the need to expand the scope of contemporary research and policy responses to sexual violence in Bangladesh.
This article considers the role of space, place and identity in influencing gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ) young adults’ experiences of unwanted sexual ...attention in licensed venues. It is argued in this article that the roles of space, place and identity are largely absent from theoretical understandings of sexual violence. Gender-based accounts of sexual violence, while important, are unable to fully account for sexual violence that is perpetrated within and against GLBTIQ communities. Drawing on data obtained through a mixed-methods study, in the first half of the article I establish the manner in which GLBTIQ young adults’ unique relationship with licensed venues appears to mediate the ways in which unwanted sexual attention occurring in these spaces is experienced and understood. The second half of this article is concerned with exploring the intersections between unwanted sexual attention and heterosexist violence and abuse in clubs and pubs. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings for theoretical understandings of sexual violence and unwanted sexual attention.
Proposed changes to rape law in Victoria – research into whether a proposed change to the definition of rape would result in clarification and simplification of the law – interviews with stakeholders ...with expertise in criminal justice processing of rape cases – perceptions and interpretations of proposed changes – potential impacts and limits of reform – findings suggest that this reform may not achieve its policy objectives.
This article explores the limitations of criminal legal responses to gender-based violence in Australia, specifically sexual assault law reforms and the criminalisation of coercive control. We ...demonstrate that carceral horizons deployed to address gender-based violence cause further harm to survivors and overshadow diverse perceptions and practices of justice. We suggest that such an approach is inappropriate and dangerous in the Australian context, given the historical and enduring harms of colonisation and the extent to which the actors within and the structure of the criminal legal system perpetrate violence towards Indigenous survivors of gender-based violence. Drawing on insights from research on survivors’ justice needs, survivors’ experiences in the criminal legal system, and abolitionist, transformative, and Indigenous scholarship, we discuss the potential for alternative ways of conceptualising justice responses in the Australian context that move beyond and avoid further perpetuating the harms arising from criminal legal responses to gender-based violence.
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