Description
Gendered and racialised oppression is exercised online but has not been taken seriously as an act of violence in instances of international politics. The effects of online racist and gender-based violence are often downplayed due to the emotional effects for the victims: abuse that happens online is not considered as ‘real’ as offline ‘physical’ violence. However, critically investigating online violence necessarily makes us interrogate how different sets of binaries, such as the online/offline and emotional/physical, work to enable certain forms of violence. Analysing online violence vis-a-vis offline violence may directly challenge our binary understanding of the ‘online/offline-divide’. Furthermore, the analysis of this binary and the ways in which the making of legitimate responses to violence are produced reveal how certain responses can be used to oppress and suppress victims’ experiences, based on how their emotional responses have been gendered and racialised – and to the following extent socially accepted or unaccepted. This paper uses interview data with experts and victims of online abuse, and ethnographic data from an incel forum, to show the effects of online violence and interrogate what is being done to combat this violence. Consequently, this paper explores the role of online violence in international politics as well as ways to tackle online violence.
