This is not revenge pornography: violence against girls and women from the explanation of intimate content on the internet

Abstract

Among issues that are elaborated in the public and private dimensions on the internet, from the accessibility of smartphones and the configuration of platforms that are discursive and technologically organized so that users are online and active on the networks, non-consensual exposure of intimate content of girls and women is an increasing problem. In this sense, the article deals with the unauthorized exposure of intimate materials, called in the field of ‘explanation’, presenting ethnographic data from a Facebook group that develops practices to help girls, usually minors, to protect themselves and fight cases of explanation. We perceive the exercise of an updated form of power over the body and sexuality that is dissociated from the pattern of what is understood as revenge pornography. In this direction, the digital universe works as an extension of everyday life, producing and extending violence against girls and women.