How are artificial intelligence and other technologies exacerbating misogyny and undermining women’s rights and safety? What are the emerging forms of violence against women and girls being facilitated by AI, such as deepfakes and nudify apps? What is driving so many men to view and create such material, and how is it shaping their sexual attitudes and behaviours? What actions are needed to address these harms, and by whom? For many years, Prof Clare McGlynn has been at the forefront of efforts to tackle the devastating impacts of online violence against women and to establish stronger forms of regulation. Central to her work on sexual violence are the perspectives of victims and survivors, particularly their understandings of what justice means to them.
In this episode, we explore her approach to these issues and some of the challenges involved, including the masculinist dynamics of the highly profitable tech and porn companies, and obstacles in attempting to regulate the transformation of these industries in recent years.
Clare also talks about recent aspects of her influential advocacy work. For example, she provided legal expertise to the successful campaign to persuade the UK Government to adopt a law criminalising the creation and solicitation of sexually explicit ‘deepfakes’. We explore too her work to reduce the easy and growing availability, and adverse impacts, of extreme and abusive pornography (including ‘strangulation porn’ and ‘incest porn’). She outlines her involvement in the campaign to tackle the harms of strangulation in mainstream pornography.
We conclude by discussing with Clare what led her to focus increasingly on online and tech-facilitated harms in her work, and how her sense of responsibility and justice sustains her in continuing to research such distressing issues.
