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Rape Culture on the Internet is the act of shaming, abusing, sexualising and harassing individuals within the different platforms available online. These platforms include social media (on pictures, videos and text messages), in pornography (rape scenarios and childifying women to make them seem younger), advertising (women being made into sexual objects and sexualising children), and in video games (women characters being hypersexualised and girl gamers being threatened with violent dialogue). The more people deindividualize and dehumanize themselves on the Internet the more they feel like they can hide behind their computer screen and their username to not suffer the consequences of their actions

Roles within Rape Culture
Rape culture in most settings, shows male figures being the ones with power while the female figures are oppressed and submissive. Media gives social norms and gender roles that the population feels they must act as so. Some researchers find the internet to be a male-dominated culture; more feminist approaches find the internet a progressive and liberating platform for women to share and organize information. Sociologist, Saskia Sassen, claims that cybercultures have been formed as masculine which means that women’s political initiatives cannot escape older forms of power and inequality. But it is not just women who suffer from harassment and violence over the Internet; men, homosexuals and even children are exposed too (although to a lesser degree in most cases).

Internet Platforms
Rape Culture on the Internet gives a new platform to violent, sexual and lewd comments, pictures, videos, etc. to people all around the world. People are not just wary about comments being made about them from people around them but also from people all across the world. Social Media platforms, forums, blogs, and chat rooms are new places for sexual harassment and verbal abuse to be conducted even though that is not the main reason for these sites. The emergence of “sexting” (sending and receiving explicit messages and photos) and “viral sexting” (the uncontrolled spreading of sexts via social media platforms and text messages which is accompanied by verbal/written harassment) has also helped in the perpetuation of online abuse. Along with social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, online users are being victims of sexual violence on dating sites, buying and selling sites like Craigslist and even over cell phones and messaging apps.

Social media is being used to create groups to spread hate, slut shaming, images of assault and even the distribution of sexual photos. This hate is being spread at alarming rates since social media platforms allow users to spread and share videos and photos to their “friends” or to the public who are part of their network. Social media bends the boundaries between public and private communication. Private conversations and relationships are now public due to social media platforms which blurs the line between right and wrong when sharing content. This wide spread also allows users to share videos and photos without the permission of the individual in them which can allow more people to view and comment. The images and videos that are widely spread and commented on, in a negative way, are usually of intoxicated individuals or individuals in compromising positions. Since sharing is so easy, content can then be shared widely over multiple online platforms at once to create more hits and backlash against the individual in the material. People are more willing to speak out against sexual harassment online if “rape myths” are exposed and if the individuals have known someone who has been verbally or physically assaulted. Young people in relationships are prone to sexual abuse online since society and the media tend to condone these behaviours. Young people in relationships who are harassed or embarrassed by their partner online tend to not tell an authority figure or friend about the abuse. Research has found that female users experience online sexual harassment more than their male counterparts; and are more likely to be the perpetrator and victim of cyberbullying. Most of the young people being harassed in their relationships are girls since there is little about sexual violence directed towards boys, not that there is no sexual harassment against boys it is just not as prominent.

Pornography
Pornography is generally used as a form of sexual release especially since it is so easily accessible on the internet. We live in a world where rape is pervasive, prevalent, and normalized in society. But violence in pornography is not uncommon and includes acts of sexual and verbal assault, physical and emotional abuse and even escalates to rape. Studies done to see if the occurrence of rape and the attitudes towards rape due to the effects of pornography have produced inconclusive results even though some scholars think that exposure to violent pornography signifies that the viewer is to engage in more aggressive sexual behaviour. Pop culture has become more pornographic which results in porn becoming more hard-core since people are becoming desensitized to the plain and safe depictions of sex that they need to ramp up their content to stay afloat in the porn industry.

Pornography has become inescapable and mainstream that it is now labeled cool and edgy. By being mainstream, the porn industry has had to become more explicit and degrading to keep viewers interested. “Online rape sites”, both depicted as staged and real sexual assaults, have existed before social media. The majority of the time, women are being portrayed as sexual objects, sexual conquests, degraded and systematically targeted for violence, for the pleasure of men and others. Revenge Porn sites are websites where provocative and humiliating photos of ex-partners are posted for others to see. On some sites personal information and even contact information can be found for users to use to shame the individual in the pictures A well known revenge porn site that has since been taken down is Hunter Moore’s Is Anybody Up?. Which he claims that the exposure of naked women on his site is due to their stupidity in taking and allowing others to take naked photos of them. Since photos of individuals being uploaded is not done by themselves the victims of revenge porn generally have to pay to have their photos taken off of sites which can lead to their information being online longer if they do not have the funds to pay off the debt. The publicity around ‘leaked’ photos/videos or revenge porn is being described as violent, damaging, and physically sexually violent since people are still being harmed verbally/written.

Child pornography is also a big part of rape culture. Teenagers are creating provocative images and videos for other teenagers but these images get put online or passed around. One might think their friends will keep their provocative pictures safe but in most cases it is these friends that become foes and circulate them. The impact the porn industry has on kids happens in three direct ways: the explicit sexualisation of children and childhood, children’s exposure and consumption of pornography, and the child sexual abuse that can come along with it. Pornographic sites that use persons over the legal age limit of 18, who represent children is just as dangerous for real children Some viewers use these videos of child pornography to desensitize them from the actual abuse they can/will inflict on someone.

Advertisements
People are exposed to advertisements on a daily basis which influences values, personalities and lifestyles of viewers. Advertisers seem to find that creating a link between their product and sex will make the product sell more since “sex sells.” Advertisements scrutinize the female body to impossible beauty standards that even men change the way they feel about how real women are supposed to look like. Women are sexualized and have impossible body standards that men then judge more harshly. Advertising is made to make people anxious and insecure which is why men are also judged within advertising but they are portrayed as having power and status. Men’s magazines portray women as sexual objects while they are being portrayed as masculine and strong which fights against the feminist movement. Men’s magazines are also harmful to men since they give them a false sense of what their body image should be which is also shaming. The distorted and negative images of women distort the way they see themselves and how men see them while also making men feel differently about everything about them labeled feminine. Western culture and advertising constantly turns women’s bodies into objects (the objects being sold in the advertising). Candie’s a clothing line, has a misogynistic ad campaign with violent ads who are geared towards young people.

Advertisers use words and pose their models in pornographic ways that has become so normalized that people do not even seem to notice the underlying violence within the ads themselves. These are just ways that producers and companies’ amp up the degree to which females are sexualised to get attention. Children and teenagers are often adultified, women childified, and most have sexual gazes, body language and clothing. Fashion and advertising tends to sexualise younger and younger girls to be more pornographic to distinguish themselves from pop culture magazines, television networks, and billboards. Being desensitized to these harmful images allow viewers to see women as (sexual) objects and almost gives them permission to treat women in a demeaning manner.

Video Games
Video games are seen as a masculine pastime with highly sexist principles. Male designers generally develop games that preserve male dominance. Although it might be male dominated pastime, there is a female minority within the community. The games themselves have direct links to the existing male culture with pre-existing cultural competence that female gamers recognise. Girl gamers found there to be a gender hierarchy and existing social dynamics embedded within the community and games. With a large range of games played by females, their experiences outside the context of gaming did not aid in their ability to learn the dynamics of the games that might seem out of their league.

With video games being a male dominated community, more and more female owned and operated game companies have emerged (Her Interactive, Girl Games, ~ Girltech & Purple Moon), along with game designers (Trina Roberts; Lome Lanning), and many more female oriented sites and support systems for girl gamers. Girl gamers negotiate the encoded masculine culture within games since they know the majority of the games and technology are masculine based but they work to be seen as an equal even though they are underrepresented. Female based characters are few and far to come by without them being overtly sexualised or with realistic body types. The majority of female characters portrayed in video games are considered beautiful, busty, scantily clad sex objects with a minority of female protagonists/heroes. With characters like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, Tina from Dead or Alive and Xiaoyu from Tekken 3, female empowerment in video games has given gamer girls strong, powerful, non sexualized female characters. Women are often portrayed as sex objects and erased from the community other than to be represented as sexual commodity. Myths about male dominance and female submission are asserted within modern media that support the patriarchal social structure of video games. The belief that the stereotypes being reflected in the games reflect reality is false and men have a stylized view of masculinity and femininity. These stereotypes the influence the feelings, actions and beliefs of members of the video game culture. The patriarchal structures within video games do support the sexual violence against women within the games and within chat features on online games and at video games conventions.

Within the community and on chat forums within games, women have been harassed and forced to not ‘out’ themselves as female to avoid gendered discourses. They keep the information about their gender to themselves to not bring unwarranted attention, sexist, or harassing comments towards them. Gamers keep their identity anonymous to be able to encourage strong reactions to unprovoked comments to gage a reaction from others. The lack of femininity within these games and technology are associated with masculinity and the invisibility of femininity within the gaming culture. Women are somewhat seen as ‘enemies’ within the gaming community and gender equality is a fine line that some feel compelled to defend. Women in the in-game chat forums and conventions are usually belittled, verbally assaulted and harassed. Female gamers feel ostracized and unwelcome within the boundaries of the gaming domain since their voices are reduced or removed from the creation of teams that oppose female voices. Rape culture is highly prevalent within the video game sphere since jokes about raping, ‘pwning’, and slaying are all used within the games and chat forums. These terms are degrading and violent towards everyone including women by reflecting the stigma around rape culture. In 2010, a gender representation debate within the gaming community occurred when a leading gaming website made rape jokes. These jokes are not only being made by gaming websites but also by users in chat rooms and certain video/online games. Gamers use these words as slang to mean dominating, beating or victory. Most do not mean the word rape as being sexually violent or hostile but to some who have been sexually assaulted having these words thrown around over a leisure platform seems crude. Research has been done and there is no evidence thus far to relate video game violence to sexual harassment and rape supportive attitudes. Rape culture remains prevalent when women are being told to stay offline to remain safe but the harassing and violent dialogue continues on.