‘The Price of Admission’: On Notions of Risk and Responsibility in Women’s Sexting Practices
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This chapter explores how women make sense of the risk of having their private sexual images (PSIs) shared without their consent. In doing so, its focus is on the ways in which a postfeminist sensibility marked by an emphasis on individualism, free choice, and female empowerment influences women’s accounts of this particular sexting related risk. It finds that their emphasis on making the right choices in terms of whom to trust with their PSIs results in accounts where women effectively render themselves primarily responsible for their own risk mitigation, and where (would-be) victims of such non-consensual sharing receive little empathy due to their perceived inability to protect themselves from risk by exercising their free choices in the ‘correct’ way.