place on the Internet. It is, then, a subversive proposal which aims to enquire into the reproduction of inequality in a world which was predicted would be infinite for seeking identities and legitimising horizontal relationships.

2. (Cyber)violence among adolescents

Violence carried out by peers finds new stage settings such as Internet. This is how several sources centre their efforts to understand and analyse what for some time now has been referred to as cyberbullying (Bartrina, 2014; Buelga & Pons, 2011:92; Buelga, Cava & Musitu, 2010; Delegación del Gobierno para la Violencia de Género, 2014:25-26; Del Rey, Felipe y Ortega-Ruiz, 2012: 17; Mitchell et al., 2016). This exercise in violence is produced particularly among school children, and although there are similarities with harassment and traditional bullying –especially with regard to its origins and causes– it displays features which increase the assault even more, if that’s possible, both that received and that perceived. The nature of these can be summarised in three main strands: 1) the anonymity of the abuser, which permits greater impunity and, of course, more damage and a higher level of defencelessness; 2) the attacks or insults can take place permanently, very quickly and can be made by many people at the same time and instantaneously, and 3) the abuse has a large “audience” and spreads far and wide.

Among the studies on cyberbullying there are those which claim that there are no relevant differences relating to gender (although they do not include an in-depth analysis from this perspective) (Buelga & Pons, 2011:92; Buelga, Cava & Musitu, 2010; Del Rey, Felipe & Ortega-Ruiz, 2012; Mitchell et al., 2016). There are also those which conclude that while both girls and boys suffer cyberbullying, the former are subject to specific forms of domination, related to attacks on their corporality and sexuality (Bartrina, 2014; Gobierno Vasco, 2013; Delegación del Gobierno para la Violencia de Género, 2014; Lenhart, 2009; Powell & Henry, 2014; Strassberg et al., 2012; UNESCO, 2017; Navarro, 2016; EIGE, 2018).

Given the features of cyberbullying, different studies started to investigate, analyse and use a new term to refer to the sending of pictures and videos with sexual and erotic content: sexting (Lenhart 2009; Strassberg et al., 2012; Delegación del Gobierno para la Violencia de Género, 2014; Powell & Henry, 2014). However, while for some sources sexting refers to the action of sending erotic messages which contain photos and /or videos – an erotic game; for others the term refers to sending photos and/or videos of a girl with the intention of domination or extortion. This divergence of terms generates a conceptual and legal problem and makes it difficult to decide whether abuse has taken place or not.

As a result, Powell & Henry (2014) propose a conceptual distinction between this type of act, between abuse or assault (a criminal act with intention to intimidate), which they call sextortion, and experimentation (a sexual game between different people), which they call sexting. This differentiation helps to pin down the meaning of sexting, which would be the authorised sending of pictures and /or photos.

In spite of these efforts to define these forms of attack, and of the empirical data that proves it is the girls who suffer disproportionately, the studies mentioned do not go into a qualitative and in-depth analysis of the structures and mechanisms underlying this reality. To understand it, the gender perspective needs to be mainstreamed, for, as claimed by different sources (Egan & Hawkes, 2012; Martino & Pallota-Chiarolli, 2005: 99; Renold, 2002, 2007; Ringrose & Renold, 2010),