Exclusive definitions in legislation create a ‘hierarchy of justice’ whereby marginalised women and people are prevented from accessing justice through certain offences due to the language adopted (Dhir, 2026).
Imagine you have developed a relationship with someone, you trust them and share a lot of your life with them. Whilst spending time together you take photos. After some time, the relationship breaks down and the person you trusted begins to threaten to share those pictures. You panic because you were wearing a vest top in certain photos. Fearing for your safety, you seek help from the police, only to learn that these images are not of any concern to them. However, you know your ex-partner sharing these photos will have a huge impact on you, your wellbeing, family, life, friendships and community.
Experiences like this are not uncommon. Many women, particularly those most marginalised, who experience threats to, or the sharing of non-consensual content, find themselves unprotected by UK legislation as the context of their abuse falls outside the particularly narrow confines used in the law (Dhir, 2026). Exclusive definitions in legislation create a ‘hierarchy of justice’ whereby marginalised women and people are prevented from accessing justice through certain offences due to the language adopted (Dhir, 2026).
Section 66B of the Sexual Offences Act (2003) (amended by the Online Safety Act 2023) describes the guidelines for criminalising certain offences captured under what we now define as image-based sexual abuse. This is defined in legislation as ‘sharing or threatening to share intimate photograph or film’. Intimate is further defined in the act (66D (5)) as:
- the person participating or engaging in an act which a reasonable person would consider to be a sexual act,
- the person doing a thing which a reasonable person would consider to be sexual,
- all or part of the person’s exposed genitals, buttocks or breasts,
- the person in an act of urination or defecation, or
- the person carrying out an act of personal care associated with the person’s urination, defecation or genital or anal discharge.
Legal definitions developed from Western heteronormative standards fall short of what many women and people experience as intimacy. Intimacy can mean multiple things and is not wholly tied to sexual acts or nudity. Leading researchers in the field have argued that these definitions actively exclude material that can cause significant harm, for instance images of women without a hijab, or as a form of outing (Rackley, et al. 2021). Organisations such as Amina – The Muslim Women’s Resource Centre and Chayn have stressed more broadly the importance of expanding definitions of intimacy, describing how current standards sideline women.
At the Centre for Protecting Women Online we are actively working on legal reform to ensure that marginalised women’s experiences of technology-facilitated harm are also recognised in the law. We are pushing back against a ‘hierarchy of justice’ (Dhir, 2026), that has been fashioned with only some women in mind.
