Scattered Searches, Broken Apps, Quiet Repairs: A Feminist Autoethnographic Critique of Technology and Research on Gender-Based Violence

This paper presents a feminist autoethnographic critique of technology and research on gender-based violence, grounded in my lived experience and current work as an HCI researcher engaged in community-led design on forced marriage and broader gender-based violence. Through chronological narratives, I recount encounters with digital technologies during help-seeking, from early online searches to the quiet work of rebuilding life, alongside reflections from my position as a researcher embedded in my own community and observing how HCI engages with it. These accounts reveal how digital interventions often fail to align with the realities of those affected, whether by prematurely pushing legal solutions, vanishing after research funding, or reinforcing harmful labels such as “victim.” I argue for HCI approaches that sustain tools beyond prototypes, translate research into practice, and attend to language and power, calling for research and design that begins with those most impacted: not spoken for, but speaking.