BOOK REVIEW: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN THE 21ST CENTURY. RIGHTS, CULTURE AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, BY LAURA NUÑO GOMEZ AND LIDIA FERNÁNDEZ MONTES (DIRS.)

Abstract

The collective work entitled: “Violence against women in the 21st century. Rights, culture and artificial intelligence”, directed by Laura Nuño Gómez and Lidia Fernández Montes, published in 2024 in the Redes Feministas collection of the Granada-based publishing house Comares, delves, throughout the ten chapters that comprise it, into the study of the different forms and expressions in which gender violence manifests and reproduces itself, both in real space, and now, also, in the digital environment, the new public forum of the 21st century.

We are faced with a work whose reading offers us the necessary keys to better understand “general and all-encompassing” concepts such as patriarchy, and its performative capacity to reinvent itself, rebuild itself, adapt, and branch out through the arteries of the virtual world. An area where, until now, public authorities have proven incapable of democratic governance, with significant regulatory gaps persisting, and where the vulnerabilities of women, minors and young people are increasing in environments such as social networks or the metaverse. At the same time, spaces for the promotion of hatred such as the manosphere emerge with practically no punishment, or explicitly violent pornography circulates without major obstacles, among other violations of the most basic human rights. We find ourselves in a time of enormous “optimism” for the overcoming of the human thanks to technology, genetic engineering, AI, but which systematically entails the denial and contempt for the feminine, as Aizpún Bobadilla tells us.