Outlook: Girlhood, Agency, and Embodied Space for Action

Vera-Gray, Fiona

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-65118-7_7

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Hierarchies of worth situate women and girls in relation to each other, as well as in relation to men and boys' (Vera-Gray 2017b). Further, we need to be attentive to how these 'hierarchical structures interact and intersect with gender inequality, and how its manifestation differs according to other markers of a woman's or a girl's social location ' (Vera-Gray 2017b). This is vital not just in the development of conceptual analyses relating to violence against women (Choudhry 2016), but also for subsequent policy development (Strid et al 2013).…”

Section: The Continuum Of Image-based Sexual Abusementioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond ‘Revenge Porn’: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

2017

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In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as 'revenge porn'. While new laws criminalising this practice represent a positive step forwards, the legislative response has been piecemeal and typically focuses only on the practices of vengeful ex-partners. Drawing on Liz Kelly's (Surviving sexual violence. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988) pioneering work, we suggest that 'revenge porn' should be understood as just one form of a range of gendered, sexualised forms of abuse which have common characteristics, forming what we are conceptualising as the 'continuum of imagebased sexual abuse'. Further, we argue that image-based sexual abuse is on a continuum with other forms of sexual violence. We suggest that this twin approach may enable a more comprehensive legislative and policy response that, in turn, will better reflect the harms to victim-survivors and lead to more appropriate and effective educative and preventative strategies.Keywords Revenge porn Á Image-based sexual abuse Á Continuum of sexual violence Á Non-consensual pornography Á Online abuse

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Section: The Continuum Of Image-based Sexual Abusementioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond ‘Revenge Porn’: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

2017

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“…Kelly (2003: 143) explains that agency ‘is exercised in context, and contexts are always more or less constrained by material and other factors’. By theorising agency as ‘embodied and relational (McNay, 2004); as a model of girls as subjects acting on, in, and through the body that is located in different and similar ways along a hierarchy of worth’ (Vera‐Gray, 2017: 6) we can better work with/for spaces for action for young people.…”

Section: Theoretical/conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some of the limits to their space for action and reaction can be explained by positioning their agency as situated. Vera‐Gray's (2017: 4) research into women's safety work frames this as an expression of ‘the way women are both acted on, by, and capable of choosing to act within, the patriarchal gender order’. The concept of situated agency enables us to better understand the complexity, ambiguity and tension in young people's experiences and the ways in which this interacts with space for action and reaction.…”

Section: Theoretical/conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our research explored the ways in which spaces are/are not being created, how young people live within and navigate these and the tensions within this. Expanding Beauvoir, Vera‐Gray (2017: 6) explains that ‘agency is situated by, and exercised in, material and structural locations that both widen and narrow our space for action’. The spaces that young people occupy are often overlooked or prescribed by adults, in particular schools.…”

Section: Theoretical/conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Understanding gender and sexuality: The hidden curriculum in English schools

Donovan,

Gangoli,

King

et al. 2023

Review of Education

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Schools continue to produce regimes of gender and sexuality, including overt and covert curricula based on assumed essentialist differences between girls and boys, reinforced and regulated through uniform, sport and peer pressure. The recent focus on the experiences of trans and non‐binary children in schools makes visible the ways in which all children are subject to heteronormatively gendered regulatory and disciplinary techniques in everyday school life. This article discusses the findings from a pilot study drawing on participatory action research techniques with 42 young people in six workshops in north‐east England. Recruitment methods were required to be flexible given the context within which the study was conducted, which was with Covid‐19 mitigations in place. This meant that we were not able to be fully inclusive of young people from local youth groups as they were either not meeting or only meeting online. We thus had to mainly recruit from university student societies and student residences from which we organised three workshops; sports organisations from which we organised one workshop, and a local youth group with which we ran one workshop. The final workshop was conducted with young people who had attended one of the previous five workshops, to enable feedback on our analysis. All participants were over 16 years of age. The majority of participants were women (25) with 16 men, including one transman, and one non‐binary person. Most identified as white (31) with the rest identifying as Black, East Asian and British ‘Other’ (11). The focus of the workshops was to explore with young people their memories about where and how they first encountered being ‘gendered’ and/or having a sexuality. The data has been collected, recorded and transcribed within strict ethical guidelines. The workshop data has been analysed using a grounded theory approach, where we developed the theoretical models from the data. This article focuses on those key moments when their behaviours, presentation and/or ideas were subject to facilitators and/or regulators of their gender and/or sexuality. We draw out the contradictions inherent in, on the one hand, the essentialist rationales for difference and inequalities between genders and sexualities in schools and, on the other hand, the apparent need to enforce these ‘natural’ differences and inequalities. Participatory creative approaches were adopted in each workshop to promote conversations and drawings about who regulated/facilitated their gender and/or sexuality and how they did so. Each workshop cumulatively informed the next, leading to a sixth synthesising workshop that collectively analysed young people's reflections. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of epistemic injustice (M. Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Oxford University Press, 2007) and ‘space for action’ we conclude that young people want and need brave active spaces to discuss and ‘do’ gender and sexuality, and to resist essentialism and social control. Schools can be both places where control is created and entrenched and where it can also be resisted. Our research suggests that better whole school responses to dismantle regimes of gender and sexuality can be created by and for young people.

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“…Even so, in digital dating contexts where the women often expected intimate intrusions, they shared the safety strategies they employed to protect themselves (see also Gillett, 2021). These practices included drawing on Tinder’s safety features – such as the unmatch mechanism, which prevents communication between users – however, participants also relied on their own ‘safety work’ (Vera-Gray, 2016) strategies including using platforms’ technological features, turning off their mobile phones’ geolocative capabilities and sharing their physical location with friends when they met with Tinder users on dates (see also Gillett, 2021). Participants also described the lengths they took to investigate their matches, such as by viewing their profiles on other platforms and asking them questions designed to interrogate their beliefs.…”

Section: User Experiences Of Safety and Harm In Digital Dating Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surveillance does not equal safety: Police, data and consent on dating apps

Stardust

Gillett

Albury

2022

Crime, Media, Culture

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As dating apps continue to receive pressure from civil society, media and governments to address a range of safety concerns, technology companies have developed and deployed a spate of new safety features. Taken together, these features rely upon increased surveillance and partnerships with both technology start-up companies and law enforcement agencies proposed as responses to sexual harassment and abuse. In this article, we draw on empirical accounts of app use – and popular media reporting – to problematise commonsense assumptions about dating apps, safety, technology, policing and surveillance. Where so-called safety features involve increased surveillance and techno-carceral solutionism, there is potential to make users less safe – particularly for app users who are marginalised or stigmatised on the basis of their race, sexuality, gender, health status, employment or disability. Instead of the impetus to ‘datafy’ consent by documenting evidence of sexual transactions, or to monitor users by sharing data with police, we argue that a more effective approach to safety must extend the notion of ‘consent culture’ to encompass a consent-based approach to collecting, storing, and sharing user data – including seeking consent from users about how and whether their data is sold, monetised or shared with third parties or law enforcement.

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Outlook: Girlhood, Agency, and Embodied Space for Action

Cited by 11 publications

References 14 publications

Beyond ‘Revenge Porn’: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

Beyond ‘Revenge Porn’: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

Understanding gender and sexuality: The hidden curriculum in English schools

Surveillance does not equal safety: Police, data and consent on dating apps

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