Stephanie is currently a Research Assistant on the Bluestone Soteria project with fellow SCCJR colleagues and is also a PhD student at the University of Glasgow.
Working title of PhD: Women’s experience of online dating: examining men’s intrusions in online dating contexts
Institution: University of Glasgow
Year commenced: 2024
Full or part-time: Full-time
Funding source: SGSSS
Supervisors: Kelly Johnson, Tilman Schwarze and Michele Burman
Synopsis:
My project aims to explore the ways in which gender hierarchies and inequalities manifest in online dating contexts. Specifically, by examining women’s experiences and understanding of what feminist scholars interchangeably refer to as men’s ‘intrusions’. Within online dating, intrusions range from ‘seemingly’ flirtatious messages to rape threats and in-person violence.
The project will explore the similarities and differences of intrusions across and within dating apps. Thus, allowing for consideration of the impact of specific app affordances and culture on intrusions. By utilising Gavey’s (2018) ‘cultural scaffolding of rape’ as a conceptual framework the project examines how intrusions can be understood as a reflection of gendered sexuality that is skewed in ways that can accommodate intrusive and abusive behaviour as unremarkable or even normal.
A feminist participatory approach will be used to gain women’s first-hand experiences of men’s intrusions. Lived experiences will be captured via female only focus-groups with optional sessions provided for women to walkthrough their dating profile, activity and experiences using their phone as a reference point. The latter providing a novel narrated photovoice approach to the literature.
Initial overarching research questions include:
Keywords: gender, violence, technology-facilitated sexual violence
Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice
