Interrogating Words, Concepts, and Meanings in the Field of Digital and Immersive Gender-Sexual Violations: Implications for Law, Communication, and Conceptualization

Words and concepts are not neutral. They convey a variety of meanings depending on their use and configuration. In this chapter, we explore the various ways they are used to refer to and describe digital and immersive gender-sexual violations, largely of women and girls, largely by men. These words and concepts are in both common and more specialist usage by policy organizations, legislators, lawyers, ICT platforms and companies, academics, activists, media outlets, as well as those individuals, groups, and organizations that perpetrate violations, or those who experience their effects directly or indirectly. We emphasize the importance of understanding their use and configuration for criminal law and communication and in society “beyond.” We address these contemporary and urgent issues in four main sections. First, we examine the question of diverse naming, with their different emphases, framings, and sociopolitical orientations, for example, the technological and the abusive, image and visuality, lack of consent, and nature of the relationship. Second, we home in on key elements that make up this field, specifically: “the digital”; “the sexual”; “the violent.” Third, we map connections between these three elements. Fourth, we set out four main legal and policy responses: those that address specific forms of digital and immersive gender-sexual violations; those that link intervention to existing laws and policies; those that link intervention to laws and policies on violence against women; and those that place digital and immersive gender-sexual violations, at least implicitly, within more generic attempts to control media, communication, and digital and related machinic forms, before concluding remarks.