Engl. transl.: Defying shame: shame-relations in digital sexual assault

This article gives voice to Mathilde, Karen and Amalie: Three young women who had intimate images of themselves shared non-consensually online. Their experi- ences help build a framework for categorising digital sexual assault (DSA), as well as giving insight into how shame, in cases of DSA, connects to social media affordances. The empirical data was produced during four creative writing work- shops. The participants described their experiences during these workshops and they collectively developed strategies for defying shame. This article analyses their experiences of shame, their shame-defying strategies, and the role that social media played in forming types of aggressors and assault experiences. I present what I call the onlooker as a digitally augmented aggressor and I show how this aggressor inflicts shame through the look, as described by Sartre. This results in a discussion of imaginary, progressive contra-shaming, which is one of the four coping strategies that showed empowering potential in relation to DSA

"this is a relevant contribution to a field in which the in-depth, nuanced perspectives of victim-survivors are rarely represented." "The article has presented two typologies: one for different kinds of assault based on levels of consent; and one for different kinds of aggressors based on their relation to the victims. One kind of aggressor in particular—the onlooker—was central in the analysis, which showed how shame in relation to DSA is often connected to the look. This article has brought Sartre’s concept of the look into the digital arena and connected it to the spreadability, anonymity and endless audiences that social media make possible" "Out of five documented coping strategies, one in particular—imaginary, progressive contra-shaming—seemed to have empowering potentials. With this strategy, the participants turned the shaming look around and directed it at the aggressors. I have argued that this kind of contra-shaming has political and personal potential because it helps the participants to cope with feelings of shame, fear and expo-sure; and because by turning shame around, it seeks to establish a new discursive order in which shame in digital sexual assault is moved from the victims to the aggressors."