The transnationalisation of online sexual violation: the case of ‘revenge pornography’ as a theoretical and political problematic

The growth, and popularity, of the Internet is unprecedented. Internet World Stats (2020) reports that more than 59 percent of the world's population has access to the World Wide Web, and the Real Time Statistics Project (2020) live Internet statistics shows there are now nearly 1.8 billion websites worldwide. According to the Internet safety website, Enough is Enough (2019), around 30 percent of Internet content is pornography, and around 88 percent of that contains violence against women. Whilst such numbers might be contestable, there is no doubt that online pornography has mushroomed and online violence against women is endemic (Kyriak et al. 2018, Mihajlov and Vejmelka 2017).

Online sexual abuse and violation concern matters of sexuality and violence, through the medium of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). In this chapter, we approach this nexus through attending to the phenomenon of what has come to be called ‘revenge pornography’, which, as we shall shortly discuss, is better conceptualised in rather different terms. Indeed, one of the more recent consequences of the relationship between pornography and the development of Internet and mobile technologies has been the borderless spread of various forms of online harassment, humiliation, abuse and violation, along with invasion of privacy and loss of reputation.

In this chapter we examine online sexual abuse and violation, and specifically so-called ‘revenge porn’, in relation to its transnational production, consumption, interventions to counter it, and its very existence as a new online-offline configuration. We consider the transnational dispersions of sexualities, sexual abuse and sexual violations, and how global and transnational approaches can inform analysis, theorizing, and politics related to these phenomena. In turn, critical attention to ‘revenge porn’ as a theoretical and political problematic can assist rethinking transnational processes more broadly.