Hardly a crime or bad men? Discourse on sexual assault and monsterization in media and commenting systems

Abstract

This article looks to identify discourses about sexual violence and perpetrators as they appear in discussions about the revocation of an alleged perpetrator’s previously announced recruitment to an Icelandic university. Foucaultian discourse analysis was applied to data from media discussions, opinion pieces, blogs and comment sections. Content analysis was used to find the gender composition of commenters. The majority of commenters were male, they commented the most and their views were more often recounted in the media. The main findings of the research indicate that discourse about sexual violence relies upon a hierarchy where physical sexual violence is used as a norm against which other sexual violations are subordinated and excluded, and therefore not worth speaking about. Nor are they thought to warrant any feeling of violation. Just as violation is clearly separated from non-violation so is violator from non-violator. Persuasions about perpetrators generally fall on either side of the clear cut, where, in accordance with monsterification, the perpetrator is seen as a foul monster or, because of the inability to reconcile his amiable qualities with the monstrous image, he is seen as an immaculate hero.