Trolls turn to violent imageries; Maneka Gandhi lock horns with Cyber Bullies

New Delhi, July 7: Though it comes bringing a smile, it is often a tight slap on the face of the victim. From popular politicians to social activists, to journalists, the trolls have not spared any women from being virtually ‘raped’.

Exceeding the tender line of ‘Freedom of Speech’, people have started exploiting the online anonymity to visibly shame women in the internet platform.

The online trolling, degrading and frightening abuse that has now become part of a world where ‘viral’ is a favoured disease, are not stray instances of sexual harassment and abuse faced by women in the virtual world. They are in fact, part, and a continuation, of a much viler power play and power structures that operate in society.

And this notorious trend of cyber bullying has prompted Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi to take those trolling and posting abusive remarks online against women to task.

Having taken the initiative, the Minister has decided to take up the matter with Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of Information Technology to come up with a mechanism to tackle and punish such miscreants.

The minister has also called upon officials of Facebook and Twitter to seek their assistance in tackling the menace of online trolling. Highly placed sources in the ministry told that a team from Twitter have been called to discuss the matter on Friday.

Launching the initiative, Manekal tweeted on Tuesday asking all aggrieved women to send their complaints to  her email address- [email protected]. She has also asked the women and children victim to use ‘#IamTrollerHelp’ to raise alarm if being bullied, stalked or abused online.

The minister received more than hundreds of letters complaining about being abused in the social media platform.

One of the complainants has emailed alleging that a person has opened a fake twitter account under Arvind Kejriwal’s name and has posted obscene remarks against her.

Another complainant, a Chennai-based IT professional has alleged that her sister-in-law has been posting objectionable comments against her on social networking sites. “This is the worst kind of violence against women where they feel hapless with  the barrage of obscene messages/ posts.

The ministry has decided to bring such complaints to the notice of National Commission for Women. The initiative was taken by Maneka after she was apprised of vulgar posts against Bollywood singer Sona Mohapatra and obscene posts by singer Abhijeet against a woman journalist.

The ministry has also written to the Commissioner of Police, Delhi and Mumbai asking them to look into the journalist’s complaint and take appropriate action against Abhijeet.

Meanwhile, National Commission for Women (NCW) slammed Maneka Gandhi’s anti-trolling move.  It said that Maneka Gandhi can’t police the internet, as it is an open space.

“Ridden with guilt, unable to shake off the feeling of being dirty and trapped in a sink of fear, I finally told my mother that something terrible had happened…. As I grew older, what stayed with me, strangely enough, was the rancid smell of hair-oil; even years later, anything that smelt faintly similar made me nauseous.” (Livemint, April 23, 2016) — noted journalist Barkha Dutt spoke powerfully and honestly at the ‘Women in the World Summit’ last month in New York.

It was not the first time that a woman had spoken about her experience of child sexual abuse in public. The bigger, and more worrying question is, why was Dutt attacked and trolled for speaking about an act and experience of violence in her life? Kavita Krishnan, activist and Secretary All India Progressive Women’s Association has repeatedly spoken of rape and sexual assault threats that she faces through social media.

Women’s bodies have traditionally been the playgrounds for conflict and violence. The most common swear words in a majority of Indian languages are aimed at the women; so are the character assassinations that come with it. With dialogue shifting substantially from the public space, virtual spaces are new battleground where women’s presence, independence and articulation are targeted and attacked. In a globalised and highly connected world Internet provides both a space for women to speak out and newer arenas to negotiate and experience sexual violence. In the case of Umar Khalid, following the Times Now discussion on the February 9 event at JNU which forced Umar Khalid and Anirban to go underground, Umar sisters received repeated threats of rape and acid attack both in the real as well the virtual world

Tackling trolls

While you can’t control whether you will become a troll’s target, you can decide if you will make yourself a troll’s victim. Knowing that the troll’s goal is to embarrass, humiliate, ridicule, demean and shame you, you have a choice about how you are going to react.

You can either be devastated, angry, or whatever emotion they want you to feel, or you can look at the attack for what it is – a mean person being mean. It isn’t personal if you refuse to take it personally. Recognize that the troll is the one with the problem. If the attack is directed at you exclusively, via email or as a comment on your site, document it so you can report the abuse, then delete and forget it.

If the attack is directed at you on a public site, understand that the troll’s “audience” – other participants in the conversation such as forum members, social network contacts or other gamers – can see the troll’s behavior as the vicious attack it is.  We all learned at an early age how to identify mean, nasty people.

Call out their behavior. Many people recommend you simply ignore trolls and don’t respond in any way, but this gives the trolls even more power as it gives them the power to silence you. Instead, ignore the troll but address the problem with the “audience” in a matter of fact way. Do NOT respond in a manner that stoops to the troll’s level or you risk two outcomes: 1) Feeding the troll and engaging in an unwinnable argument that will escalate, or 2) having the “audience” see you as another irritant/troll rather than as the balanced, decent and aggrieved party.

Frame your comment to the group along the lines of “Wow. Looks like we’ve got a troll trying to attack people on this site, derail meaningful dialog and control our conversation. I suggest that this forum doesn’t give them that power by ignoring their unproductive comments and continuing our discussion, or even take a moment to create a guideline for how we want to deal with trolls.”

Understand that where there’s one troll, there may be many more waiting to pounce once the first troll has started. All too frequently, you see cases where others pile on with additional nasty comments. This just means there may be more than one troll that needs ignoring.

Alert the site moderator if there is one, but even on unmediated sites there is usually a “report abuse” feature. Sometimes this is found directly on the discussion page, other times – like with Facebook – you first go to the help center using the help link at the bottom of the page, then select “report abuse,” and file a bullying report.