Despite apparent political concern and action—often fuelled by high-profile cases and campaigns—legislative and institutional responses to image-based sexual abuse in the UK have been ad hoc, piecemeal and inconsistent. In practice, victim-survivors are being consistently failed: by the law, by the police and criminal justice system, by traditional and social media, website operators, and by their employers, universities and schools. Drawing on data from the first multi-jurisdictional study of the nature and harms of, and legal/policy responses to, image-based sexual abuse, (...) this article argues for a new joined-up approach that supports victim-survivors of image-based sexual abuse to ‘reclaim control’. It argues for a comprehensive, multi-layered, multi-institutional and multi-agency response, led by a government- and industry-funded online or e-safety organisation, which not only recognises the diversity of victim-survivor experiences and the intersection of image-based sexual abuse with other forms of sexual and gender-based violence and discrimination, but which also enables victim-survivors to reclaim control within and beyond the criminal justice system. (shrink)

In this article, we investigate the state’s role in the reproduction of relations of male dominance between separated parents through custody law. We argue that three “logics” shape the current operation of family law—durability, gender neutrality and present/future temporality—such that custody law is not simply a mechanism of dispute resolution between parents; it is also a vehicle for the differential production, positioning, and regulation of mothers and fathers as postseparation parents. Drawing on interviews with 21 mothers, we show that the (...) outcome of the state’s governance of gender through custody law for women in dispute over care and contact arrangements is that nonresident fathers are able to engage in nonreciprocal exercises of power over resident mothers. The consequence for resident mothers is that nonresident fathers are able to legitimately use the law to threaten and coerce mothers, and to protect their interests and rights at the expense of mothers’ needs for and rights to security and autonomy. (shrink)

Safer sex campaigns for heterosexuals have sometimes targeted women in particular to take responsibility for condom use. In this article, the authors question some of the assumptions underlying this strategy, for instance, the assumptions of women's relatively unproblematic relationship with condoms and women's control over condom use. The authors interviewed 14 women about their experiences and views of condoms and of heterosexual relationships more broadly. Using a feminist poststructuralist form of discourse analysis, they examine their accounts in relation to gendered (...) discourses of desire and a coital imperative. They argue that an appreciation of these kinds of discursive influences is important for understanding the complex ways in which women are constrained and enabled to employ condoms for safer heterosex. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has critiqued the tendency for separated mothers in custody disputes to be defined as hostile and alienating. Through the presentation of three case studies, drawn from an interview-based study with 21 women, we show how such pejorative constructions only arise when the conflicting gendered moral accountabilities of contemporary motherhood are overlooked. We found that mothers tend to believe that contact with non-resident fathers is generally in a child’s best interests. However, as a result of balancing complex moral obligations (...) for the care of their children, they may raise questions about particular kinds of arrangements for contact with particular fathers. We argue, therefore, that family law practice will lead to better outcomes for children when professionals listen to the history of, and reasons for, mothers’ positions. To enable family law professionals to undertake this task, we offer an alternative interpretive framework for making sense of women’s stories. Should family law professionals make use of this framework, it is likely that they will understand that the positions mothers adopt are often the outcome of the difficult moral dilemmas they encounter in caring for their children, and that the reductive rubric of the ‘hostile mother’ needs to be treated with scepticism. (shrink)