“Bi**hes. Wh*res. Retards. Disgusting. Easy. Sexualised creatures.”
A video uploaded on YouTube last week posed a simple question – Do Indian women masturbate?
The responses of the women were candid.
Yes, they said.
It was amazing, they said.
They do it whenever the mood strikes, they said.
But their honesty and liberal expression was thrammed by misogynistic responses. The trolls accused the girls of ‘ shouting for rape’.
The video, that was uploaded on March 17 on a YouTube Channel, Nisheeth TV, has now been blocked from public viewing. But the trolls remain.
What’s with these trolls?
The Internet Democracy Project’s findings suggest that abusing women online may be linked to the way society perceives women in public spaces. Just like in a real street, the main reason for gender based abuse on the Internet is just that: gender.
Shut Up. Period.
Mrs Funnybones, Twinkle Khanna wrote in TOI last week about menstruation. The response – both welcoming and vitriolic. A reader commented that she should be serving food to her family than indulge in such ‘irrelevance’. Another said no one was interested in menstruation, and that talking about menstruation openly is attention-seeking behaviour.
About a fortnight ago, the girls at Jamia University started a #padsagainstsexism campaign, sticking gender rights messages onto sanitary pads. Security officials and college authorities reduced it to a whisper. The internet trolls had lashed at that too, terming it disgusting.
Even the Twitterverse is full of troll sharks who can identify women targets from miles away. India has an estimated 25 million active Twitter users, three-fourths of them male. That means women are easily outnumbered.
A Sunday Guardian report, The Grievous Threat to Women Online, states,
Speaking about overtly ‘feminist topics’, gender issues or sexuality may be perceived as a threat to existing power equations, and act as triggers for abuse.
- Richa Kaul Padte, Co-author of study, Don’t Let It Stand
Who are these people?
Research papers such as Trolls Just Like to have Fun state that those who post such comments online have narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic, misogynic and sadistic personalities.
Who attracts the abuse?
Is it a certain ‘type’ of woman? Some women seem to face more abuse than others. Actresses, celebrities, proclaimed feminists, liberals, journalists have to battle vitriol daily.
The primary reason for this abuse is to silence women. Abuse on the Internet — like abuse on the street — is to make women back off, to tell them that the space they are occupying is not theirs; that they should leave. A website, Everyday Feminism calls it, Cyber Sexism.
A Twitter hashtag aims to report, if not solve this problem of abuse online. Misogyny Alert #MisognyAlert allows Twitter users to report sexism and misogyny wherever they see it, alerting others to the situation.
It’s the truth – the Internet is not an agreeable place. It is a place of strong dissent, which gives trolls endless scope for thrills. When it comes to trolls, you see – it is easier to toe the line. It is more difficult to say the difficult things.
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