Law and Gender Commons^™

Honest Victim Scripting In The Twitterverse, Francine Banner

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article critically analyzes Tweets regarding recent allegations of interpersonal violence against celebrities in order to explore societal perceptions of, and expectations about, alleged victims. The Article concludes that Twitter may be viewed as a micro-courtroom in which victims’ veracity and perpetrators’ responses are evaluated, interrogated, and assessed. A key, feminist critique of rape law is that the determination of the perpetrator’s guilt or innocence too often hinges on an assessment of the victim’s character. This is borne out on social networking sites, where terms such as “gold digger,” “slut,” and “ho” are engaged with regularity to describe those who …