Sharing Experiences: Interacting with LGBTQ+ Sexual Violence on TikTok

According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, every 68 seconds an American is sexually assaulted;on average there are 463,634 survivors (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United State. That being said, these statistics do not account for or mention LGBTQ+ peoples or communities experiencing sexual violence and rape. With the emergence of TikTok as a outlet youth use to access information and community, this project asks: 1) How do LGBTQ+ teens utilize of TikTok to share their stories of sexual sexual violence and rape; and, 2) How do the comment sections of these videos build community amongst LGBTQ+ survivors through the concept of “ambient affiliation” (Avdeeff). To answer these questions, TikToks centered the topics and hashtags, “#LGBT Assault”, “#gay”, and “#Sexualassault” to name a few. Findings highlight that TikTok is an effective platform for sexual violence survivors to use as one way to highlight queer representation, create community, and share their stories to raise awareness