In the fall of 2014, Jian Ghomeshi, host of CBC’s Q, was accused of sexual assault and harassment by a number of women. The women who came forward were criticized for the delay in reporting the incidents. As a response, two female Canadian journalists started the hashtag #beenrapedneverreported as a way of using networked media to foster alternative dialogue about sexual assault, ostensibly so women who have experienced rape could control the conversation and say how they understood their own experiences. The literature on sexual assault suggests that discussions of rape involving members of the general public are shaped by myths that foster victim blame and lead to survivors being silenced about the assault. I decided to look at whether or not posters created an alternative discourse around rape by comparing constructions of rape on the hashtag with the common rape myths present in mainstream conversations. I employed a social constructionist lens to approach the data to allow for multiple interpretations of these myths and to explore the way posters discussed sexual assault. In particular, I conducted a qualitative content analysis of 8250 tweets that were posted to the hashtag between October 30, 2014 and June 26, 2016. The findings indicate that each myth identified in the literature was reproduced in the discussion, suggesting that they continue to have salience in the ways that all people, including victims, understand rape as a crime. A number of posters accepted the myths and used them to construct their own understanding of why their rape was not reportable because they felt that it was their fault. This suggests that there is still a long way to go to challenge these myths as they are internalized by some survivors. However, most posters reproduced the myths to explain how the attitudes were mobilized against them by others, in effect, silencing them. This created an alternative discussion of how social assumptions work against female victims of rape at a variety of levels. These assumptions occur not only within policing agencies and the criminal justice system but also within family and friend support networks. A smaller proportion of posters actively contested the myths primarily through discussions surrounding consent. In particular, sexual assault was construed as denying women their agency to choose what happens to their body and rape was constructed as a loss of agency/autonomy. Posters put forward that women have a right to control their own body and that choice/control is taken away by the rapist. From this perspective, rape is not a sexual crime but a violent crime that denies human agency/personhood of the victim. This suggests that the consent debate is a key moment of feminist politics and this transgressive construction of rape upends the social assumptions about female and male sexuality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/38613 |
| Date | 21 December 2018 |
| Creators | Willows, Erika |
| Contributors | Steeves, Valerie |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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