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< | Little Dark Age | >
> | Little Dark Age (still) | | | -- By MarianaFranceseCoutinho - 10 Oct 2019 | |
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< | In 2019, online harassment is not a new phenomenon: it has reached a status so commonplace that there are even online harassment glossaries available. There are reports of bloggers being systematically harassed as early as 2007 due to their online presence, and that has continued to happen – if anything, such systematical abuse seems to have increased with the popularization of access to the internet and the rise of social media. Both male and female people who have an online social media presence are victims of harassment and threats, but women who dare step foot in traditionally male-dominated fields such as gaming or sports journalism are almost certain to face some type of persecution. This is only amplified by the fact that the role of women in Westernized society has been confined to human chattel, homemakers and caretakers until fairly recently in history, leaving us with a small number of areas that are considered “typically feminine” – and with leadership and positions of power in general not being considered feminine at all. | >
> | I feel somewhat conflicted about the time we are living in. It is arguably the best time ever to exist as a woman – at least in the countries I have lived in so far – but, at the same time, it is not really such a great time being a woman. We can vote, yes; and own properties and work (supposedly) wherever we want, among other basic things that men have been allowed to do for centuries. Gender equality is a well-known, legally guaranteed concept. Still, it would be nice to be able to walk down the street without feeling the need to hear loud music to muffle catcalls, or without feeling uncomfortable when walking past a bar full of leering men. Even if on a certain bar there are men of the non-leering variety, that feeling of unsafety is still there, going down the street with you. | | | | |
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< | Revealingly, men do not suffer such rampant attacks when they decide to work on a field that is traditionally or mostly female: male nurses, primary school teachers or psychologists are not commonly harassed, online or otherwise, due to their gender. On the other hand, a 2014 survey about scientific fieldworkers reveals that 71% of women field researchers have received inappropriate sexual remarks. Furthermore, the content of online attacks for men and women are usually different: while a male journalist may be criticized over an article he wrote for his ideas and suffer personal attacks based on his individual beliefs, female journalists tend to suffer attacks based on gender, including misogynistic insults and humiliation due to their physical appearance. Anyone can be an idiot, or stupid, or an absolute moron. Only women are called every imaginable slur for “prostitute”, and only for women is it run-of-the-mill to receive violent, graphic threats about what unknown, anonymous internet dwellers intend to do with their bodies. A survey by the International Federation of Journalists reports that nearly two-thirds of women journalists suffer gender-based attacks online. Furthermore, more than half the women reported they had been threatened or abused in a face-to-face encounter in the course of their work, with over a quarter saying they had been physically attacked. According to Amnesty International, a female journalist or politician is harassed on Twitter every 30 seconds; and those statistics are even worse for black women and women belonging to ethnic minorities. These online attacks may easily translate to physical attacks: in Ukraine, for instance, physical assaults on female journalists increased by 50% in 2018. | >
> | That feeling follows us in every aspect of our life: let’s not ask questions in class so as not to be bothersome; let’s not answer them so as not to appear too full of ourselves; let’s turn down these guys with a smile so as not to anger them, no matter their approach. We are vulnerable and fragile creatures, indecisive and nice, because those are the restraints we were put in. Despite the legal acknowledgement that we do not belong in an inferior, limited place, the societal struggle to keep us there (undoubtedly for our own benefit and protection) continues. Enter: the internet. | | | | |
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< | The chilling effect provoked by online abuse against female journalists is not to be ignored. 38% of women journalists who were subject to online harassment admitted to self-censorship.
According to the International Women’s Media Foundation, nearly one-third of female journalists considered leaving the profession due to online attacks and threats. Female journalists are routinely forced to close their social media accounts due to threats and intimidation. The victims are not the only ones affected by the consequences of this campaign of online violence: when female voices are self-modulated and smothered due to fear, the public debate suffers. The democratic environment misses out on different female perspectives. The public debate itself, by consequence, becomes a lot less democratic, pluralist and representative. The fundamental right to freedom of expression is heavily threatened, and this presents an issue for the whole of society. It is time to take action against this phenomenon, and to demand action from those who avowed to protect the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and freedom of information. | >
> | Our tools for communication are increasingly being concentrated online. The internet now contains our news sources, ways of studying and working, methods of socializing. Everything that happens off-line bleeds onto the online environment, with the added bonus that the internet allows people to express themselves freely, without tangible borders, and often with anonymity. This little bonus is a double-edged sword: it can allow you to find and interact with your brothers and sisters-in-arms in subjects that matter to you, but it also enables people to externalize all the prejudicial manure originally confined to their brains with virtual impunity. This means it is not a great time for being a woman on the internet as well. | | | | |
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< | Broad statements for the protection of these rights will not have the desired effect. Positive measures must be drafted and undertaken, be it by member states of the European Union – who must uphold the European Convention on Human Rights – and signatories of international treaties such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, be it through Recommendations by the Council of Europe and Resolutions of the United Nations or other applicable means. Express channels should be made available for women so that they may report threats and harassment; swift legal and police action should be taken against perpetrators; and states should demand a stronger level of cooperation from social media channels in the face of such menacing criminal activity if the rights to freedom of expression and to freedom of information are to be upheld. | >
> | A 2017 study revealed that almost half of Americans have been personally subjected to harassing behavior online. Women, however, are about twice as likely as men to have been targeted as a result of their gender; encounter sexualized forms of abuse at much higher rates than men; and over half of them have received explicit images they did not ask for. More tellingly, men and women have very diverging views on how important online harassment is as an issue: women want people to feel welcome and safe in online spaces, while men value speaking their mind freely. Half of women think offensive online content is too often excused as not being a big deal, while many men think people take it too seriously. A vast percentage of women view online harassment as a major problem, but only half of men do. In short, while everyone can be a victim of online harassment, women receive a different kind of abuse. We value feeling safe and not being attacked in the virtual portion of our lives. Apparently, a good amount of men think women are just making a fuss. | | | | |
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< | Furthermore, governmental bodies for monitoring the implementation of recommended measures should be created; with permanent monitoring systems arranged. Actual policy changes in order to improve the social media environment for female journalists and women in general should take place. Law enforcement should receive training in order to provide effective responses for online harassment victims, and change the way they address cybercrime and online threats to women. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram should suffer heavy external pressure, if need be, in order to cooperate with the crackdown on abusers – after all, they are the ones most equipped to deal with the problem of online harassment against female journalists on its very root. Even if they consider themselves unable to provide identification of online users due to privacy norms, they should have internal rules in place enabling them to evict specific users or network connections from accessing their services, or pre-emptively monitoring such users’ outgoing messages and interactions for forbidden content. | >
> | When researching ways for making the internet a safer space for women, I came upon a number of different suggestions. Some of those were borderline misogynistic in nature, while many others seemed to mimic recommendations for not attracting attention off-line: be discrete; do not give people a reason to talk; if possible, do not even let people know you are a girl. Self-censorship, however effective, is not the answer I want to give. It works against personal freedom. The root of the problem is not our existence or actions. I do not want to stay safe, I want to be safe. | | | | |
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< | The number of female voices in the public sphere is already seriously lacking. Female journalists cannot continue to be coerced into silence through online persecution, or this will have serious costs for freedom of expression and gender equity, both online and offline. Seeing as social media has an increasingly greater role as a space for disseminating information, it is of paramount importance that freedom of expression of all journalists – but especially women – can be effectively protected in this new plane, so that we are all able to listen to the voices that have been silenced for so long. | >
> | Truth is, I do believe that we need pretty fundamental changes in society to achieve fairness to women off-line and online. The men that do not care about making the internet a safe place most likely do not care about women’s safety on the streets either; after all, their notion of unsafety is being robbed at gunpoint, not being coerced into dressing or behaving a certain way just to avoid attracting some kind of attention when you want to just be. And, unfortunately for me, I still have no idea how to go about advocating something that should be so obvious. I am lucky enough to live in a bubble of reasonable people; the men in my life are actually terrified by the notion of me becoming a traditional housewife. I do not have anyone to lecture. I do not even have enough of an online presence to be harassed anymore. I could call out the catcallers, but I have yet to encounter one in the Netherlands (and back home I would be scared to pick a fight). | | | | |
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> | Fundamental changes to the online environment, though, are a different story. A major portion of online harassment occurs where we interact with each other: social media. The good part about the internet being borderless is that you get to impose measures all over – it is not illegal for Facebook or Instagram to delete people’s posts or profiles if they do not comply with their guidelines. The bad part is that social media companies would have to draft and apply serious guidelines against harassment and, most importantly, decide to punish the very users who make them money, which is highly unlikely. Still, having social media platforms nip violence against women in the bud – of even developing dedicated teams to deal with internet safety issues and demonstrating their willingness to actually take harassment accusations seriously – would go a very long way towards making women feel safer online. | | | | |
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> | Educating women on how to protect their privacy online and how to engage with local policy makers and activists might also aid in the development of new policies to protect women’s safety online. That could be done through online campaigns by governmental bodies, NGOs or even social media companies. A tangible measure that would help with online insecurity is the creation of dedicated channels for reporting women’s online safety issues, offering guidance on what to do in case it occurs – even better if it belongs to trained law enforcement officers. | | | | |
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< | I think this draft assumes that the reader needs to be convinced
about the existence of misogyny. This causes you to spend much of
your space upon what you (and I) know is the most basic of human
realities about injustice. Let's, in the next draft, assume instead
what we know: that the ideology of all patriarchal societies begins
with an "understanding" of women that justifies their constant
mistreatment and brutalization. Therefore, as the Net is becoming
the external nervous system of humankind, it absorbs, embeds,
reflects, and ultimately reinforces misogyny. | >
> | Just being listened to and being taken seriously could already have a great impact in making women feel safer online. | | | | |
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< | If what needs doing can be done with the European human rights
administrative framework, then let's use your space in the next
draft to say how. If, as I suspect, you don't believe any more
than I do that equality for women can be achieved through such small
adjustments in such localized places; if you believe, as I believe,
that we need more fundamental changes in society, across humankind,
to achieve even basic fairness to women, maybe the next draft could
reflect that. Perhaps you could put forward some ideas about how
the Net could be changed to work for women's safety, equality and
freedom, instead of against them.
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