A post on Facebook talks about women not being able to go to the beauty parlour because of the lockdown. The accompanying photograph is of a woman with a photo-shopped beard.
Another post goes: ‘If I stay at home, there is a wife. If I go outside, there is police. Issued in the male interest.’ There is more: ‘No cure has been found for the coronavirus and for a nagging wife. Beware!’
Such posts and memes, supposedly to be funny demonstrate an entrenched misogyny in Nepali society that has come out of the woodworks because of the prolonged lockdown and the anonymity of the net. Ridiculing women, body shaming and trolling has reached epidemic proportions with traditional derogatory Nepali words commonly used in posts.
“It is an indication that traditional patriarchy in Nepal has found an outlet through social media and it is an example of violence against women,” explains Saru Joshi, a gender activist.
Online violence against women, Sahina Shrestha
Crossborder cybercrime and punishment, Sabina Devkota
Trolls on various social media platforms target and provoke women so as to get an emotional response, and they often escalate into more vicious attacks. “Hurting a woman’s self-esteem, making them feel inferior, and using abusive words against women is psychological and emotional abuse.”
The posts range from jokes at the expense of women, poking fun at their body shapes, right up to obscenity and personal abuse, and are new forms of misogyny in Nepal. Outspoken women, celebrities and female journalists are often targets of mass trolling.
Amnesty International surveyed millions of tweets received by 778 journalists and politicians from the UK and US throughout 2017. The study found that 7.1% of tweets sent to the women in the study were “problematic” or “abusive”. That is 1.1 million tweets mentioning 778 women across the year, or one every 30 seconds.
Another Amnesty survey Troll Patrol India (2018) found up to 13.8% of the tweets mentioning woman politicians were problematic or abusive, with one in every five abusive tweets having a sexist or misogynistic slant.
Online abuse doesn’t stop at trolls and bullying but also manifests in sexual objectification of women and threat of sexual violence. Some posts have gone as far as to encourage and plan rapes and gang rapes against specific women.
Sharing explicit pictures of underage girls and photo-manipulating images of women from private social media accounts in locker room group chat in India, have also got imitation sites in Nepal.
In a subreddit that has now been quarantined, over 4,500 members, shared photographs and videos of women with derogatory captions and comments. Personal information including instagram handles of the girls were also shared. Many of them were taken from private accounts including those of minors’.
When blogger Ishita Giri recited a poem to reply to Nepaliboys on Reddit through her podcast on the BojuBajai site, she used explicit language to give men a taste of their own medicine. However, she faced online criticism, some of them from women themselves, where an Instagram user told her to ‘grow up’.
These not isolated cases, there are Instagram accounts, facebook pages and twitter accounts dedicated to cyber abuse against women. Offenders have also used Discord and Telegram.
“Trolls are just the outer manifestation of a patriarchal structure in society,” says researcher Pranika Koyu, who says women often face a backlash when they call out such online abuse. “We are accused of turning everything into a women’s right issue. It just goes to show you how narrow the confines of our society are.”
If men talk it is assumed to be about politics in teashops, when women talk they are assumed to only backbite and complain, Koyu adds. This in itself is a form of gender-based discrimination.
As the lockdown goes into its seventh week, the trolling of the women on the Internet follows a pattern of the sharp increase in gender-based violence. With the men and children at home all the time, women face an increase in workload, as well as abuse.
In Nepal lockdown, a domestic violence spike, Namrata Sharma
Lockdown and the surge in domestic violence, Suvexa Pradhan Tuladhar
Dhanraj Pandit, head of Padma Kanya Campus, says that it is regrettable that the form of physical and mental abuse has increased on social media but discriminatory issues against women can be controlled even if they cannot be eradicated and this need change in mentality of people.
“It is clear that violence against women has come in a new form by posting derogatory pictures and memes online,” he said, adding that offensive jokes about women should be treated seriously by law.
Jokes, group chats such as the BoysLockerRoom and the NepaliBabes on Reddit, and trolls are part of the online version of a culture of rape, male-dominated society, and overall gender-based violence seen in South Asian countries. These remarks are disguised as jokes, a form of entertainment but often times those who call out the sexism are told to ‘lighten up’, ‘it’s just a joke’, or brushed off with a ‘boys will be boys.’
Sociologist Mina Upreti says trolls make fun of a woman’s past, family situation and can ruin her reputation. Women who dare to take on their abusers are labelled ‘feminists’ as if it is a dirty word.
“Words used to describe women are often derogatory, and they promote emotional violence. People who comment or laugh at such trolls encourage this behaviour.”
The trolling and online bullying also takes a toll on one’s mentality and can lead to loss of morale, doubts about image and identity and perceiving the world as an unsafe place, say experts.
“People who troll others often times suffer from lack of self-esteem themselves and try to gain superiority by bullying others,” says psychologist Muna Lama. “They have been conditioned by the society to do so and some have been rewarded for such act.”
When Nepali actress, Priyanka Karki got romantically involved in a relationship with a fellow celebrity, Ayushman Joshi, a couple of years younger than her she was viciously trolled. However, if the roles were reserved, no one would have commented on the age difference, let alone make fun of it.
Poet Seema Avas says trolls are trying to normalise abuse of women, and if not controlled it could lead to more serious physical attacks on women. “It is insensitive for the new generation to accept the insults. Instead of criticising the trolls, many young people on social media join in the fun and take it as a joke.”
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