The child sexual abuse material survivor as homo sacer: bare life under cyber-libertarianism

Abstract

This article applies Agamben’s formulation of political abandonment to theorise the political status of survivors of child sexual abuse material under the internet’s cyber-libertarian regime. While the production, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material is illegal in most jurisdictions, it is functionally permitted by the current legal and administrative structures that govern the internet, as evident in annual increases in child sexual abuse material availability for over two decades. The article collates distribution data for three female survivors subject to extensive online distribution of recordings of their abuse, as well as online offender discourse about the three survivors, to highlight the ease with which online networks of child sex abusers can predate on victims depicted in child sexual abuse material. The article analyses the extraordinary sociolegal position occupied by child sexual abuse material victims who can be subject to serious ongoing harm with little risk of consequences for the majority of offenders, while legislative efforts to afford them relief and protection continue to be obstructed by a cyber-libertarian coalition of actors in the technology sector, civil society and politics. By exploring how child sexual abuse material survivors are denied their rights to freedom, justice and privacy in the name of those very same rights, we demonstrate how Agamben’s notion of the ‘homo sacer’ makes visible the abject plight of those survivors and the hypocrisy of the internet’s juridical order.