Law Professor. Advisor. Commentator.
Expert on Violence Against Women & Girls
Online Safety
My work emphasises the prevalence and devastating impacts of online and tech-facilitated violence against women and girls and identifies the necessary legislative measures to better regulate the online world.
In the UK, my focus has been the Online Safety Act 2023, working collaboratively with policy-makers, victims, and civil society to strengthen its provisions on women and girls. During the legislative process, I gave expert evidence to various Parliamentary Committees, recommending legislative reforms, working with a coalition of experts to develop a Code of Practice on Violence Against Women and Girls, making the case for a consent-based cyberflashing law and guidance on how best to regulate pornography.
Internationally, I’ve collaborated European organisations to strengthen the EU Directive on gender-based violence, supported a coalition of European activist organisations and feminists calling for a European policy against image based abuse, and worked with German organisation Hate Aid on the EU’s Digital Services Act, co-authoring an expert opinion justifying enhanced obligations on porn websites. I co-authored the preparatory work for the first Thematic Paper on the Digital Dimension of Violence Against Women adopted by UN, Council of Europe and other violence against women human rights bodies.
I have also worked with many of the major social media platforms to review their practices and policies regarding online abuse against women and girls, as well as working with dating app Bumble to recommend laws covering cyberflashing and intimate image abuse in both the UK and EU.
Definition
Online violence against women and girls infringes our human rights and liberty. Stronger regulation is urgently required.
UK Online Safety Act 2023
The UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 provides a real opportunity to reduce online and tech-facilitated violence against women and girls. Together with a coalition of experts - NSPCC, Refuge, 5Rights, Carnegie, Glitch, EVAW and Lorna Woods – we secured a change to the Act requiring binding Guidance to be introduced ensuring platforms take VAWG seriously. This followed our drafting of a Code of Practice on VAWG, many dialogues with Government Ministers and letters in the press. The campaign gained considerable momentum with a front page article in the Telegraph calling for the Code to be included in the Bill.
Professor McGlynn giving evidence to Parliament on the Online Safety Bill
I also worked on other parts of the legislation, giving expert oral evidence and written evidence to the Parliamentary Committee reviewing the legislation, focusing on cyberflashing, pornography regulation and the need for a stronger regulator. You can watch a clip of my exchange with an MP on the nature and harms of cyberflashing on X/Twitter.
I also gave expert oral evidence in 2022 to another Parliamentary committee reviewing the legislation, with MPs particularly struck by my evidence on the easy availability of rape porn, child sexual abuse cartoon images and other sexually violent porn on X/Twitter and Google.
Compilation of Clare McGlynn, Vanessa Morse of Cease, Gabriela de Oliveira of Glitch and Hannah Ruschen of NSPCC giving evidence to Parliamentary inquiry into Pornography, May 2022
At the same time, Parliament’s Women & Equalities Committee launched an inquiry into pornography and the impact on VAW, inviting me to share my particular expertise – on the sexually violent content of online porn and how best to regulate it. I gave oral evidence, arguing that “the prevalence of harmful violent pornography online… normalises sexual violence”, that pornography is the ‘cultural wallpaper in all our lives’, and therefore stronger regulation is essential. Reports of the session include a video montage of the evidence I gave together with the NSPCC, Refuge and Cease.
International & EU Regulation
European and International Human Rights and Online Abuse
I am a member of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Experts on Tech-Facilitated Violence against Women and Girls, working to prepare a new Recommendation that will guide the actions of all 47 member states. This builds on my human rights expertise including the first Thematic Paper on the Digital Dimension of Violence Against Women which I prepared together with Dr Carlotta Rigotti and the Council of Europe for EDVAW, the human rights organisation that brings together the UN Special Rapporteur on VAW, the Committee to end discrimination against women (CEDAW) and other international human rights monitoring bodies. The Thematic Paper forms the foundation for future monitoring of how states are implementing human rights in the online context.
European Union Digital Services Act
I worked closely with Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and civil society organisations such as Hate Aid to strengthen the new EU Directive on Violence Against Women and Girls, particularly to ensure cyberflashing was included. I am now supporting action across the EU to strengthen the implementation of the Directive in the member states. For background on the Directive, read this article.
In relation to internet regulation, the EU recently adopted landmark legislation the Digital Services Act. However, this legislation failed to address the easy availability of non-consensual pornography on mainstream porn websites. During the legislative process, MEPs and online abuse charity HateAid developed proposals to hold large porn companies accountable for the non-consensual sexual imagery on their websites, as reported widely across Europe. Together with Prof Lorna Woods, we produced an expert opinion justifying these provisions which were taken up by the European Parliament. Unfortunately, the measures did not make it into the final law adopted. My comment that ‘as ever, online abuse against women and girls gets marginalized and minimized’ was reported when it became clear that protections for women were ‘traded away’.
Supporting Social Media Platforms
I have worked with a range of social media organisations to help improve their understanding of victims’ experiences of online abuse and support their policy development. This has included closed consultations, debates and presentations on my research including with Facebook, Google and TikTok.
In 2018 I addressed Facebook’s Global Safety Team at their HQ in Silicon Valley, together with Kelly Johnson, where we presented our research on the harms of image based sexual abuse. We subsequently participated in a number of consultations on the development of their policies on non-consensual intimate imagery, resulting in some policy changes.
Clare McGlynn and Kelly Johnson, Facebook HQ 2018
My Research
Pornography, the Online Safety Act 2023 and the need for further reform
Clare McGlynn, Lorna Woods, Alex Antoniou (2024) Journal of Media Law
The UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 regulates pornography in a range of new ways which could radically alter both how pornography is accessed and the nature of the content available. However, while the Act ostensibly represents a new form of regulation focusing on the systems and processes of online platforms, in practice it is content-based. Our analysis reveals that the Act generates eight new classifications of pornography, each associated with a distinct legal framework, thereby creating a confusing and unnecessarily complex regulatory regime. Accordingly, we recommend further reforms to fortify and clarify the regulatory regime, as well as a more comprehensive review of pornography regulation in general, with the overall aim of reducing the harms of pornography.
Cyberflashing: Recognising Harms, Reforming Laws
Clare McGlynn & Kelly Johnson (2021), Bristol University Press
Cyberflashing has been on the rise since the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, despite its prevalence and significant harms, cyberflashing is not a criminal offence in England and Wales. This crucial book provides new in-depth analysis, understanding and insight into the nature and harms of cyberflashing. The authors consider recently adopted laws in the US, Singapore and Scotland, and set out proposals to criminalise cyberflashing as a sexual offence in English law. This unique and timely study presents the first comprehensive examination of cyberflashing and the need to reform the criminal law.
For a policy briefing, see here. To read more about this research, click here.
Image-based sexual abuse: a study on the causes and consequences of non-consensual nude or sexual imagery
Nicola Henry, Clare McGlynn, A Flynn, K Johnson, A Powell and A Scott, 2021, Routledge
This book investigates the causes and consequences of image-based sexual abuse in a digital era. Image-based sexual abuse refers to the taking or sharing of nude or sexual photographs or videos of another person without their consent. This book investigates the pervasiveness and experiences of these harms, as well as the raft of legal and non-legal measures that have been introduced to better respond to and prevent image-based sexual abuse. The book draws on ground-breaking empirical research, including surveys in three countries with over 6,000 respondents and over 100 victim-survivor and stakeholder interviews.
Towards an EU criminal law on violence against women: The ambitions and limitations of the Commission’s proposal to criminalise image-based sexual abuse
Carlotta Rigotti & Clare McGlynn (2022), New Journal of European Criminal Law 13(4), 452-477
In March 2022, the European Commission proposed a new landmark Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence which includes measures on the non-consensual distribution of intimate and manipulated images. We refer to this form of violence against women as ‘image-based sexual abuse’, a term that encompasses all forms of the non-consensual creating, taking or sharing of intimate images or videos, including threats to share such material and altered material. In this article, we provide a new analysis of current Member State laws covering all forms of image-based sexual abuse, as well as the first detailed examination of the Commission’s proposals to tackle this form of violence against women. We suggest that the Commission’s proposal is characterised by both its ambition and limitations. It is ambitious in its attempts to set minimum rules in challenging areas of criminal law and, in doing so, recognises the serious harms of image-based sexual abuse. At the same time, by seeking to expand the reach of EU criminal law, inevitably requiring compromise, the scope of the proposed measures is somewhat limited. Such compromises and limitations risk entrenching hierarchies between different forms of abuse and, ultimately, the proposal fails to provide a comprehensive response reflective of victims’ experiences.
Read the Policy Briefing on this research here.
‘Devastating, like it broke me’ Responding to image-based sexual abuse in Aotearoa New Zealand
Nicola Henry, Nicola Gavey, Clare McGlynn, & Erika Rackley, 2022, Criminology & Criminal Justice
The non-consensual taking or sharing of intimate images, also known as ‘image-based sexual abuse’, has become a widespread problem. While there has been growing attention to this phenomenon, little empirical research has investigated victim-survivor experiences. Drawing on interviews with 25 victim-survivors, this article focusses on the different responses to image-based sexual abuse in Aotearoa New Zealand. We found that victim-survivors had diverse and often multiple experiences of image-based sexual abuse, perpetrated for a variety of reasons, which extended beyond the paradigm of malicious ex-partners seeking revenge. Some participants described the harms experienced as ‘devastating’: a form of ‘social rupture’. Few had formally reported to police or pursued other justice options. While participants held different justice ideals, all sought recognition of the harms perpetrated against them. Yet they faced multiple obstacles when navigating justice, redress and support options. The authors conclude that far-reaching change is needed to improve legislative, policy and prevention responses to image-based sexual abuse.
Cyberflashing: Consent, Reform and the Criminal Law
Professor Clare McGlynn, 2022, The Journal of Criminal Law 86(5), 336–352
In the context of growing calls for a new law criminalising cyberflashing – the digital distribution of penis images to another without consent – this article makes the case for a comprehensive, ‘consent-based’ criminal offence specifically targeting cyberflashing. It justifies this approach by examining the core wrongs of cyberflashing and suggests draft legislative text for such an offence. In making this case, the article analyses and rejects the Law Commission’s recent proposal for a ‘motive-based’ cyberflashing law. Ultimately, it is argued that while the Law Commission's proposal is a welcome recognition of the harms of cyberflashing and need for reform, it does not go far enough to offer the redress victim-survivors are seeking, nor does it provide an appropriate normative foundation for education and preventative initiatives.
Read a policy briefing here on why a consent-based law should be introduced
‘It’s torture for the soul’ The Harms of Image-Based Sexual Abuse
Clare McGlynn, K Johnson, E Rackley, N Henry, N Gavey, A Flynn, A Powell (2021). Social and Legal Studies 30(4), 541–562
Beyond ‘scandals’ and the public testimonies of victim-survivors, surprisingly little is known about the nature and extent of the harms of ‘image-based sexual abuse’, a term that includes all non-consensual taking and/or sharing of nude or sexual images. Accordingly, this article examines the findings from the first cross-national qualitative study on this issue, drawing on interviews with 75 victim-survivors of image-based sexual abuse in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We adopt a feminist phenomenological approach that permits more nuanced and holistic understandings of victim-survivors’ experiences, moving beyond medicalised, trauma-based accounts of harm. Our analysis develops five interconnected accounts of the harms experienced, that we have termed social rupture, constancy, existential threat, isolation and constrained liberty. Our findings shed new light on the nature and significance of the harms of image-based sexual abuse that emphasises the need for more comprehensive and effective responses to these abuses.
The psychology of non-consensual porn: Understanding and addressing a growing form of sexual violence
Asia Eaton and Clare McGlynn (2020). Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7(2), 190–197
Abstract: As of 2020, legal protections for victims of image-based sexual abuse in the U.S. remain inadequate. For example, no federal law yet criminalizes the sharing of sexually-intimate material without a person’s consent (i.e., nonconsensual porn), and existing state laws are patchy and problematic. Part of the reason for this problem may be that U.S. lawmakers and the general public have yet to grasp that nonconsensual porn is a form of sexual abuse, with many of the same devastating, recurring, and lifelong consequences for victims. This review of psychological research on nonconsensual porn includes frameworks for understating this image-based sexual abuse, correlates and consequences of victimization, victim blame, and the nature of perpetration. Then, we analyze U.S. laws on nonconsensual porn in light of this review, and argue for comprehensive legislative solutions.
Image-Based Sexual Abuse
Clare McGlynn and Erika Rackley (2017). Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 37(3): 534-561
Advances in technology have transformed and expanded the ways in which sexual violence can be perpetrated. One new manifestation of such violence is the non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images: what we conceptualise as ‘image-based sexual abuse’. This article delineates the scope of this new concept and identifies the individual and collective harms it engenders. We argue that the individual harms of physical and mental illness, together with the loss of dignity, privacy and sexual autonomy, combine to constitute a form of cultural harm that impacts directly on individuals, as well as on society as a whole. While recognising the limits of law, we conclude by considering the options for redress and the role of law, seeking to justify the deployment of the expressive and coercive powers of criminal and civil law as a means of encouraging cultural change.
Beyond ‘Revenge Porn’: The Continuum of Image-Based Sexual Abuse
Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley and Ruth Houghton (2017). Feminist legal studies 25(1): 25-46
In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘revenge porn’. While new laws criminalising this practice represent a positive step forwards, the legislative response has been piecemeal and typically focuses only on the practices of vengeful ex-partners. Drawing on Liz Kelly’s (1988) pioneering work, we suggest that ‘revenge porn’ should be understood as just one form of a range of gendered, sexualised forms of abuse which have common characteristics, forming what we are conceptualising as the ‘continuum of image-based sexual abuse’. Further, we argue that image-based sexual abuse is on a continuum with other forms of sexual violence. We suggest that this twin approach may enable a more comprehensive legislative and policy response that, in turn, will better reflect the harms to victim-survivors and lead to more appropriate and effective educative and preventative strategies.