Abstract
In this chapter, we explore how young people use social media to challenge what they position as rape culture in schools and online. In the first part of the chapter we draw on our research with a feminist group in a London secondary school to explore how young people navigate sexual harassment, victim blaming, slut-shaming, rape jokes, cyberflashing, and other forms of masculine sexual entitlement online and in school. Next we outline through discussion of research in two further schools how we have used these research findings to build pedagogical interventions in the form of school guidance and lesson plans on digital defence and feminist activism with the charity School of Sexuality Education.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
We gained consent to use anonymized screen shots during the informed consent process of the data collection.
References
Alcoff, L. M. (2018). Rape and resistance. London: Polity Press.
Banet-Weiser, S. (2018). Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Duke: University Press.
Buchwald, E., Fletcher, P. R., & Roth, M. (2005). Transforming a rape culture (2nd ed.). Milkweed Editions.
Cockerill, M. (2019). Convergence on common ground: MRAs, memes, and transcultural contexts of digital misogyny. In D. Ging & E. Siapera (Eds.), Gender hate online: Understanding the new anti-feminism. Palgrave.
Crown Prosecution Service. (2013). Charging perverting the course of justice and wasting police time in cases involving allegedly false rape and domestic violence accusations, Crown Prosecution Service.
Department for Education. (2018). Sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sexual-violence-and-sexual-harassment-between-children-in-schools-and-colleges
Dobson, A., & Ringrose, J. (2015). Sext education: Sex, gender and shame in the schoolyards of Tagged and Exposed, Sex Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2015.1050486
Egan, D. (2013). Becoming sexual: A critical appraisal of the sexualization of girls. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Gavey, N. (2005). Just sex? The cultural scaffolding of rape. London/New York: Routledge.
Gavey, N., & Senn, C. Y. (2014). Sexuality and sexual violence. APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology, 1, 339–382.
Gillborn, D. (2008). Racism and education coincidence or conspiracy? Routledge.
Ging, D. (2017). Alphas, betas, and Incels: Theorizing the masculinities of the Manosphere. Men and Masculinities, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X17706401
Ging, D. (2017). Alphas. Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere Men and Masculinities 1–20.http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1097184X17706401
Ging, D., & Siapera, E. (2019). Gender hate online: Understanding the new anti-feminism. Palgrave.
Jackson, S. (2018). Young feminists, feminism and digital media. Feminism and Psychology, 28(1), 32–49.
Jaynes, V. (2020). The social life of screenshots: The power of visibility in teen friendship groups. New Media & Society, 22(8), 1378–1393. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819878806
Kimmel, M. (2015). Angry white men: American masculinity at the end of an Era. New York: Nation Books.
Kim, C., & Ringrose, J. (2018). “Stumbling upon feminism”: Teenage girls’ forays into digital and school-based feminisms. Girlhood Studies, 11(2), 46–62. https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2018.110205
Lingard, B. (2003). Where to in gender policy in education after recuperative masculinity politics? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 7(1), 33–56.
Mantilla, K. (2013). Gendertrolling: Misogyny adapts to new media. Feminist Studies, 39(2), 563–570. Retrieved February 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23719068
McGlynn, C., & Rackley, E. (2017). Image-based sexual abuse. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 37(3), 534–561.
McGlynn, C. et al. (2019) Shattering lives and myths: A report on image-based sexual abuse. 2019.
Mendes, K., Ringrose, J., & Keller, J. (2019). Digital feminist activism: Women and girls fight back against rape culture. Oxford University Press.
Phipps, A., Ringrose, J., Renold, E., & Jackson, C. (2017). Rape culture, lad culture and everyday sexism. Journal of Gender Studies.
Powell, A. (2015). Seeking rape justice: Formal and informal responses to sexual violence through technosocial counter-publics. Theoretical Criminology, 19(4), 571–588. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480615576271
Renold, E. (2019). Ruler-skirt risings: Becoming crafty with how gender and sexuality education research-activisms can come to matter. In: Jones, T., Coll, L., & Taylor, Y. (Eds.), Up-lifting gender & sexuality study in education and research (pp. 1–26). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rentschler, C. (2014). Rape culture and the feminist politics of social media. Girlhood Studies, 7(1), 65–82. https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2014.070106
Retallack, H., Ringrose, J., & Lawrence, E. (2016). ‘Fuck your body image’: Teen girls’ Twitter and Instagram feminism in and around school. In J. C. S. Budgeon & H. Cahill (Eds.), Learning bodies: The body in youth and childhood studies (pp. 85–103). Springer.
Ringrose, J., & Renold, E. (2014). “F**k rape!”: Mapping affective intensities in a feminist research assemblage, Qualitative Inquiry, Special Issue: Analysis after Coding in Qualitative Inquiry 20(6): 772–780.
Ringrose, J., & Renold, E. (2016). Cows, cabins and tweets: Posthuman intra-acting affect and feminist fires in secondary School. In C. Taylor & C. Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in education. Palgrave.
Ringrose, J. Tolman, D., & Ragonese, M. (2018). Hot right now: Diverse girls’ navigating technologies of racialised sexy femininity. Feminism and Psychology, 29(1), 76–95.
Ringrose, J., Mendes, K., & Horeck, T. (2020). Online sexual harassment comprehensive guidance for schools.School of sexuality education. Available at:https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57dbe276f7e0abec416bc9bb/t/5f86b37c409ee95b26cf27e6/1602663308003/School+of+Sex+Ed+OSH+Comprehensive
Salter, M. (2016). Crime, justice and social media. Routledge.
Sills, S., Pickens, C., Beach, K., Jones, L., Calder-Dawe, O., Benton-Greig, P., & Gavey, N. (2016). Rape culture and social media: Young critics and a feminist counterpublic. Feminist Media Studies, 16(6), 2–38.
Vickery, J R. and Everback, T. (2018) Mediating misogyny: Gender, Technology, and Harassment. : Palgrave.
Weiser, D. A. (2017). Confronting myths about sexual assault: A feminist analysis of the false report literature. Family Relations, 66, 46–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12235
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ringrose, J., Mendes, K., Whitehead, S., Jenkinson, A. (2021). Resisting Rape Culture Online and at School: The Pedagogy of Digital Defence and Feminist Activism Lessons. In: Odenbring, Y., Johansson, T. (eds) Violence, Victimisation and Young People. Young People and Learning Processes in School and Everyday Life, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75319-1_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75319-1_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-75318-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-75319-1
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)