The Shrinking Spaces

Misogyny is not something alien to Indian women or women anywhere. We grow up with it, it crawls under our skin and becomes a part of it even before we learn the right term for it. It isn’t new or a western import like many would allege. But the way misogyny continues to affect women in their public and private lives has changed its course in the past decade.

The public spaces are arguably being sensitised to accommodate women and although there is a lot of debate on it, it may be concluded that today more women go out than they did ten years back. Are the spaces safer? Not really, but there has been a general awareness with more women coming into prominence. But there are some other public and personal spaces which seem to be shrinking for women, namely the internet.

Online trolling is a regular feature for users of the internet and social media. Neither is it funny anymore because now online trolling is not about being witty and sarcastic, neither is it about being an annoying pest eager to start a fight, online trolling also stands for hateful comments with racist and sexist speech, rape and death threats. It is just another form of bullying and sexism. Anybody who has ever read the comments section of an online article would have seen vitriolic and provocative comments bordering on or implying racism, communalism and misogyny. While many newspapers moderate their comments sections, the lack of any effort is visible in plenty of websites, both Indian and foreign. The one reason cited for not adopting a stricter moderation policy is freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is perhaps the most abused phrase in a democracy and it is reserved for privileged individuals like ministers, members of assemblies, spiritual leaders and online abusers. Plenty of women have had the experience of being personally attacked on the internet and social media with abusive comments and rape/death threats. A woman who comments on a piece of news related to politics, any article reporting rape, sexual assault, and has a different view from the masses would be targetted by online misogynists with taunts, abuses and patronising statements telling her to 'go back to the kitchen' etc. Women are sometimes forced to hide their identity online, adopting male or gender neutral names in order to avoid direct personal attack. But of course, then there are attacks on religious minorities and homosexuals. The greater internet world and our lawmakers don’t seem to be particularly concerned about the freedom of speech of these women who have been abused and shamed for expressing their opinions. Phrases like ‘feminist whore’, ‘dumb bitch’, ‘stupid slut’ are extremely common and freely used on facebook and Youtube. Even well moderated forums would have comments like ‘Jogi Loew and her team... she’ll never learn...’ in an attempt to insult the German national football coach by referring to him as a woman!

These days there is a general tendency to brand women as liars and conspirators every time there is a news item on sexual harassment. There is a chronic hate campaign against every woman who seem to fall short of the moral standards set by the self-appointed internet society of greater good. Preity Zinta, Sania Mirza, Maria Sharapova, Alia Bhatt or a lesser known woman- all have one thing in common. They were all bullied by these online haters. Preity Zinta’s mistake was that she is famous, an actress who chose to remain single while buying a cricket team and lodged a complaint against her ex-boyfriend, Sania Mirza committed the ‘treacherous’ act of marrying a Pakistani, Maria Sharapova was guilty of admitting that she did not know the Indian cricketing god while Alia Bhatt could not name the president of India on a high profile chat show. The internet was flooded with ‘Dumb Alia’ memes and ‘Alia Bhatt jokes’ pages while Maria Sharapova’s official facebook page was completely vandalised by cricket fanatics for weeks. Preity Zinta and Sania Mirza both experienced public shaming on the internet almost similar to lynching. Most of the comments repeated questions like why did Sania not find an Indian Muslim man and stated that it's not an offence if committed by a boyfriend (in Priety's case) because apparently a woman is obliged to yield to a man's sexual desires if they are in a relationship! Well, this alongside filthy language used for both women. These comments only echo the patriarchal notion of women as sex slaves and how they are commodities owned by their respective partners. Many female journalists receive abusive tweets and rape threats on twitter. Another is the disturbing problem of the rape gifs, abundantly shared on social networking sites as a response to something a woman has posted.

A typical response would be, these are people seeking attention and the best way to deal with them is by not paying any attention. It is this attitude of not paying attention, of brushing it aside, that encourages sexual offenders. Or maybe one can just deactivate facebook, delete their twitter, why even have a voice in social media. It’s more like saying why go out in the dark. Stay at home.

We can safely assume that they are just ‘trolling’ and don’t mean any harm, but there are several other internet users, young, confused and gullible who would be affected by these free-flowing internet hate speeches. One Youtube user even confessed on the site that he deliberately makes racist comments against South Indians flaunting his ‘North Indian white skin’ because it gives him a sense of supremacy! While foreign humour websites like Fark, Cracked, the likes of Jezebel and the gaming community are beginning to address this as a serious issue, the Indian websites are just not bothered, even though the number of racist, misogynist, sexist and casteist comments on these websites are extremely high.

For how long would we continue to ignore a severe problem that is plaguing the internet and stripping it of its potential good? It is resulting in women turning away from the internet and gradually withdrawing from active participation. All the more significantly, it is breeding a collective hatred against minorities and oppressed sections of the society by giving such hatred a platform.

It also makes one wonder if our society is changing its attitude towards women in actuality? After all, these 'trolls' who call women vile abusive names, make sexual suggestions and rape threats on the internet, are a part of this very society, sitting behind a computer comfortably wearing a mask of anonymity. The role of the websites where such comments are allowed is also questionable. It is made clear that these websites- news, entertainment or social media, do not consider women as a significant membership and are only interested in keeping the male users happy by not moderating and thus encouraging sexist/abusive hate speech although they all claim to have a strict moderation policy.