The Contribution of Male Peer Support
What is Revenge Pornography? Following Salter and Crofts (2015), Revenge porn images and videos are typically made by men with the consent of the women they were intimately involved with, but then distributed online without their consent typically following women's termination of a relationship or during their attempts to terminate a relationship.
Revenge porn websites and blogs first appeared on the Internet in 2000 and started to gain U.S. national attention in 2010 following the creation of IsAnyoneUp.com .
As Nicola Henry points out, there is a “massive potential audience for revenge porn.” Despite its prevalence (roughly 3,000 sites and more created each week), few studies today have measured the extent and distribution of revenge porn. Still, we know that the bulk of the perpetrators are male ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, and ex-lovers.
McAffee Security’s survey uncovered 1 in 10 ex-partners threatened to post sexually explicit pictures of their former partners online and 60% of these threats were carried out.
Powell and Henry Study Surveyed 3,000 Australians aged 18 to 54 and found that 1 in 10 stated that someone had posted online or sent to others nude or semi-nude pictures of them without their permission and 9.6% reported that someone threatened to post such images or to send them to others.
Still, Motives and relationship status are unknown. Nevertheless, it is, to the best of my knowledge, the only national representative sample survey completed so far.
Data Are Important, But We Need Theory At least in the North American Context, there is a conspicuous absence of social scientific theoretical work on revenge porn. I contend that good starting point is to examine the role of male peer support.
Definition of Male Peer Support Male peer support is a concept I developed. I define it as the attachments to male peers and the resources that these men provide which encourage and legitimate woman abuse.
One of the Most Powerful Determinants of VAW Since 1988, Martin Schwartz and I have consistently found that male peer support is one of the most robust predictors of woman abuse in universities/colleges, public housing estates, rural communities, and in other contexts.
What Do The Data Say? Data generated since 1967 support what Lee Bowker (1983) said close to 30 years ago about all-male subcultures of violence: “This is not a subculture that is confine to a single class, religion, occupational grouping, or race. It is spread throughout all parts of society. Men are socialized by other subculture members to accept common definitions of the situation, norms, values, and beliefs about male dominance and the necessity of keeping their wives in line. These violence-supporting social relations may occur at any time and in any place.”
A Feminist/Mal e Peer Support Model of Revenge Pornography This theory is influenced by a feminist/male peer support model of porn consumption and VAW
Social Patriarchy Pornography Industry and Pornography Consumption Male Proprietariness Exiting the Relationship Threats to Masculinity and On- and Off-Line Male Patriarchal Peer Support Control Revenge Pornography
Obviously, There Are Other Factors That Contribute to Revenge Porn Neverthless, a growing body of research shows that porn use and distribution is predominantly social behavior among men. And, there is growing evidence that numerous revenge porn perpetrators are embedded in a network of male peers with similar attitudes, beliefs, and values.
The Next Step is to Answer the Question “What Is to be Done?
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