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Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter

“Rough sex” can be considered an act of sexual violence that is consensual or non-consensual, often resulting in bodily harm and in rare cases, fatalities. The rough sex defense is typically advanced by male perpetrators in an effort to portray a sexual encounter as consensual, to avoid criminal san...

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Autores principales: Sowersby, Chelsea-Jade, Erskine-Shaw, Marianne, Willmott, Dominic
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9260389/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35814150
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.867991
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author Sowersby, Chelsea-Jade
Erskine-Shaw, Marianne
Willmott, Dominic
author_facet Sowersby, Chelsea-Jade
Erskine-Shaw, Marianne
Willmott, Dominic
author_sort Sowersby, Chelsea-Jade
collection PubMed
description “Rough sex” can be considered an act of sexual violence that is consensual or non-consensual, often resulting in bodily harm and in rare cases, fatalities. The rough sex defense is typically advanced by male perpetrators in an effort to portray a sexual encounter as consensual, to avoid criminal sanctions for causing injury or death. Public attitudes toward this defense are often reflected on social media following high profile cases and appear to echo dominant discourses that reinforce widely held sexual violence stereotypes. Therefore, this study aims to deconstruct public attitudes surrounding the rough sex defense. Namely, how female victims/survivors and male perpetrators of sexual violence are constructed online, whilst exploring the wider implications upon society. NVivo12 NCapture software was used to collect a sample of 1000 tweets mentioning the terms “rough sex” or “rough sex defense.” Data were examined using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), underpinned by a social constructionist perspective, to elicit emergent discourses. Findings indicate that Twitter allowed women to resist harmful victim-blaming discourses and constrained binary identities. Opposingly, men were constructed as sexually entitled predators, yet resisted these subject positions by advocating support for male victims/survivors. Additional analyses examine account holders’ constructions of British Parliamentarians (MP’s) and their campaigns against the rough sex defense. These constructions demonstrated a cultural, heteronormative and victim-blaming understanding of sexual violence, which calls for legislative clarity.
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spelling pubmed-92603892022-07-08 Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter Sowersby, Chelsea-Jade Erskine-Shaw, Marianne Willmott, Dominic Front Psychol Psychology “Rough sex” can be considered an act of sexual violence that is consensual or non-consensual, often resulting in bodily harm and in rare cases, fatalities. The rough sex defense is typically advanced by male perpetrators in an effort to portray a sexual encounter as consensual, to avoid criminal sanctions for causing injury or death. Public attitudes toward this defense are often reflected on social media following high profile cases and appear to echo dominant discourses that reinforce widely held sexual violence stereotypes. Therefore, this study aims to deconstruct public attitudes surrounding the rough sex defense. Namely, how female victims/survivors and male perpetrators of sexual violence are constructed online, whilst exploring the wider implications upon society. NVivo12 NCapture software was used to collect a sample of 1000 tweets mentioning the terms “rough sex” or “rough sex defense.” Data were examined using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), underpinned by a social constructionist perspective, to elicit emergent discourses. Findings indicate that Twitter allowed women to resist harmful victim-blaming discourses and constrained binary identities. Opposingly, men were constructed as sexually entitled predators, yet resisted these subject positions by advocating support for male victims/survivors. Additional analyses examine account holders’ constructions of British Parliamentarians (MP’s) and their campaigns against the rough sex defense. These constructions demonstrated a cultural, heteronormative and victim-blaming understanding of sexual violence, which calls for legislative clarity. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-06-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9260389/ /pubmed/35814150 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.867991 Text en Copyright © 2022 Sowersby, Erskine-Shaw and Willmott. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Sowersby, Chelsea-Jade
Erskine-Shaw, Marianne
Willmott, Dominic
Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter
title Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter
title_full Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter
title_fullStr Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter
title_full_unstemmed Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter
title_short Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter
title_sort masochist or murderer? a discourse analytic study exploring social constructions of sexually violent male perpetrators, female victims-survivors and the rough sex defense on twitter
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9260389/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35814150
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.867991
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