In my blog sometimes back I wrote about privacy issues in regard
to sharing selfies in social media @
http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.in/search/label/selfie . I myself am a
selfie fan but as I said in my earlier blog, I am concerned about the privacy
issues and I avoid sharing selfies publicly. I broke this rule when I started
campaigning for a novel cause: for spreading awareness regarding wearing
helmet. I created a hashtag #selfieinhelmet and put my own #selfieinhelmet in
Twitter and Facebook to invite my friends and general public to share theirs.
Till now, I haven’t received much success except a few women friends of mine
who wear helmets despite being conscious about their hairstyle. I shared my concern with almost all the
news media Tweet handles I follow, some
celebrities and my friends. Many of them retweeted, shared #selfieinhelmet. I
am still awaiting for people to share their real #selfieinhelmet. But while
doing this, I came across another novel idea : #selfiewithdaughter to boost the
campaign for raising girl children by families especially in northern Indian
regions where daughters are still considered as ‘burdens’ to the families.
Started by Sunil Jaglan, the sarpanch of Bibipur village in Hariyana to
strengthen the Central government’s save the daughter campaign,
#selfiewithdaughter became immensely trending issue when the Prime Minister
Narendra Modi invited all parents,
especially fathers to share their #selfiewithdaughter . Social media like
Twitter and Facebook was flooded with selfies of proud fathers with their
lovely daughters. Women also started sharing their selfies with daughters and
finally I got to see many #selfiewithduaghter with both the parents lovingly
sharing the space with their daughters. It was a wonderful feeling indeed. But
at the same time, many including I myself felt that the #selfiewithdaughter
‘movement’ must be guarded with a note of caution : we all know the presence of
paedophiles, women abusers and pranksters
in the social media and how they may work to collect images of girls and
women to make illegal and unethical money
from porno industry. I shared my thought by Tweeting “#selfiewithdaughter may not always b safe in#socialmedia” through my tweet handle @DrDebaratiH . Within a few minutes I got
to see the highest trending topic
changed into Kavita Krishnan, and #selfiewithdaughter came down to the second
position. The power of social media is amazing!
Why an individual activist should be pulled up in social media by
hundreds of Tweeteratties amidst this beautiful campaign of save the daughters?
Because Kavita opined her concern about privacy of daughters. But her words
were harsher than anyone else and it directly targeted the Prime Minister
himself. From her Tweet handle @ Kavita_krishnan she Tweeted “careful beforesharing #selfiewithdaughter with #LameduckPM. He has a record of stalkingdaughters”. Nonetheless, many did not like her post. This was nothing to do
with the present #selfiewithdaughter campaign apparently, but it was in relation to (as the news media
tells) an old allegation where controversy brewed up when apparently a
particular political leader was
audiotaped conversing with police officers for tracking a particular woman
under the direction of “saheb” (Narendra Modi, the then chief Minister of
Gujarat). Personally I could not fully agree with Krishnan for
her this particular statement made in relation to #selfiewithdaughter
campaign. She had used her right to speech and expression to opine
her concern from political perspective; but I understand that it may have an underlying concern
regarding breaching of privacy of women and girl children in the social media.
But I felt her concern could have been shown more neutrally keeping the
political issue aside. However, we need to remember that she has every right to
express her thoughts in her own ways. But this very thought of her attracted
trolls to diversify the campaign of #selfiewithdaughter and bring Krishnan in
(dirty) limelight. Several people started speaking about raping her, calling
her names and inviting others to join them in targeting her in their online
trolling. News media immediately started flashing the Tweets targeting Kavita
Krishnan as well. To some, the real purpose for #selfiewithdaughter became
mockery of main issue.
The question
is, how far people can be ‘free’ to express their opinion especially if it is a
death threat or rape threat or calling a woman with derogatory names? The
courts in our country in many landmark judgements have repeatedly said that
political satires, political criticisms etc may not always fall in the
restricted speech category as these are essential to keep a healthy democracy
alive. In this connection, I would very
much look forward to see the court’s reaction if anyone wants to stress upon
the issue that Krishnan herself is also liable to justify her statement of
calling a certain political personality a stalker of girls. But I reiterate,
the underlying holistic concern in her statement which is related to the safety of girls and women and also the
possible online abuse of the girls due to large scale sharing of the
images in the ongoing
#selfiewithdaughter campaigning must not be ignored. Coming to the derogatory
comments targeting women, I would not be surprised if some trolls raise their
voice stating that if Krishnan can call the PM a ‘stalker of girls’ then why
she cannot be targeted with remarks which they feel, may describe her best!
Here comes testing of the level of maturity of a healthy civil society. I would
rather refer to my previous blog post on Elonis Decision by the US Supreme Court, regarding
which scholars and activists like Chemaly and Franks stated that “.......the
ruling suggests that the determination of what constitutes threat rests with
the speaker and not his audience.”(See
See Chemali & Franks, Supreme Court may have online abuse easier,
published on June 3, 2015 @
http://time.com/3903908/supreme-court-elonis-free-speech/?xid=tcoshare). Agreed
that this case was about a man who did not take name of the estranged wife whom
he was actually targeting, and in Krishnan’s case, she had received direct
threatening comments, our courts in
India still needs to take their own decisions on rape threats, derogatory
comments against women in the social media especially when the issue presents
sharing opinion on such issues involving large scale public awareness campaigns
slightly tinged by political propaganda. But when seen from the perspective of
targeting a particular woman (irrespective of who she is and why did she
attract the trolls) with derogatory comments, I must say, I condemn such
abuses. May be the protesters against Krishnan’s comments could have considered
to limit their thoughts to pointing out why she is wrong in this particular
context, or why #selfiewithdaughter should go ahead ignoring her remarks. But
people should restrain from subjecting women to ‘online entertainment’ by
posting rape threats or calling her derogatory names which lowers the morals of
a woman. The same thing continues to happen with many other female activists,
journalists and writers who stand up and express their concerns through their
own ways. But unfortunately the police and the courts remain almost always
silent. Even though our laws (The Indian Penal code, Information Technology
Act, Indecent representation of women (prohibition) Act etc.) do speak about
prohibitory provisions, none of them actually touches cyber bullying or
trolling in the cyber space and in particular, bullying or trolling with death
or rape threats or derogatory comments targeting women. S.509 IPC do condemn
word, gesture etc harming the modesty of women, but it does not cater the need
fully. It is understandable that even if there are laws which broadly or
narrowly touches the issue of abuse of women in the cyber space, there needs to
a positive network to execute the effect of the law; this includes the willing
and trained police officers, the lawyers and courts who would be
compassionate to the cause and the
social media who are willing to pull down direct threat messages once they are
alarmed by the victim as well as the criminal justice machinery. Above all, it
is the victims who should come up to report and cooperate with criminal justice
machinery and face the challenge in proper way by not encouraging others to
indulge in counter trolling or bullying.
Let us hope the civil society wakes up with this
understanding that if freedom of speech and expression comes with a duty to
exercise the same for the benefit of the society and not for causing harm to
others, especially women.
Please Note: Do not violate
copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations provided in this
blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite it as
“Halder D. (2015), #Selfiewithdaughter with
a tinge of misogyny” published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/
