Crossing the Line: Online Violence

WANDA TEAYS

Abstract

The Internet has a dark side that disproportionately affects women. In this chapter I will look at
three forms of online abuse: (1) Posting non-consensual nude photographs or videos, (2)
Cyberstalking, and (3) Doxing—publishing private information that could lead to identity
theft. The result can be loss of jobs, electronic surveillance, threatened rape or murder, scare
tactics and being targeted for unwanted attention. I discuss the sorts of problems—and
harms—of each of these and note some of the steps that have been taken to address online
violence.

A true warrior carries himself with a sense of decency and compassion…

Those who hide in the dark corners of the Internet with a shield of
anonymity and purport to be warriors are nothing of the sort — they are
nothing more than cowards.
—Major Clark Carpenter, Marine Corps

It would be nice to think that communications technology has not become an instrument of

violence, but that is not the case. Yes, it is true that there are many benefits of computers. They

have increased productivity and transformed research and data collection in ways we could but

imagine a few decades ago. However, the Internet has a dark side that has unleashed misery

and turned lives upside down. For some, the result is a living nightmare from which they

struggle to escape. Such escape can take years. For the unlucky ones, it is nearly impossible.

Take the case of “Amy Unknown,” a victim of child pornography and subject of a legal

battle that went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court. The sexual assaults by her uncle

became the fodder for pornography that has been viewed and distributed in staggering

numbers. Those images are said to be “among the most widely viewed child pornography in the

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world,” and have figured in thousands of criminal cases, notes Adam Liptak for The New York

Times (2013). Now an adult, Amy has yet to get appropriate compensation, much less peace of

mind, given the photos are still a pornographic staple (Liptak 2013).

As Amy discovered, the Internet is a most effective tool of abuse. There are three forms

that I will discuss in this chapter. These are: (1) Posting non-consensual nude photographs or

videos, (2) Cyberstalking, and (3) Doxing—the posting of private or personal information that

may lead to identity theft. All of these entail malevolent intent, expressed in such forms as an

onslaught of emails, misogynistic hate speech, or descriptions of lewd or vicious acts aimed at

the victim. The consequences may include loss of jobs, violation of privacy, electronic

surveillance, identity theft, threatened rape or murder, scare tactics, and the like. It is no

laughing matter for its victims. In addition, the uncertainty of who to turn to for assistance adds

to the victim’s confusion and distress.

Each of the three kinds of Internet violence involves a violation of trust. This is not a

minor matter. Philosopher Carolyn McLeod (2006) points out that trust allows us to form

relationships and depend on others for love, companionship, advice, and help. Trust, asserts

McLeod, requires that we can, (1) be vulnerable to others (and, thus, to betrayal); (2) think well

of others; and (3) be optimistic that they are, or will be, competent in certain respects.

But, “Trust is also dangerous. What we risk while trusting is the loss of the things that

we entrust to others, including our self-respect, perhaps, which can be shattered by the

betrayal of our trust” (McLeod 2006). The loss of trust, as happens with online violence, can be

devastating. Once broken, trust can be exceedingly difficult to repair.

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 The betrayal of trust hurts both victims and abusers. Each one is scarred—damaged—by

this moral failure. Destroying trust can also ripple out, opening a wider circle of harm.

Acquaintances of either the victim or the perpetrator may keep their distance from the abuser,

lest they become the next target. They may also feel reluctant to trust others, fearful that they

may suffer more harm.

As for the abuser: If you betray one person’s trust, why should I assume you won’t do

so with others? Once that line of decency has been crossed, will the ethical barriers fall by the

wayside again in the future? That concern can’t be quickly dismissed.

With the betrayal of trust comes a loss of humanity that affects both victim and

victimizer. The former is objectified, disrespected, and deprived of their privacy and autonomy.

For the latter, their act of cruelty diminishes their moral standing and, depending on the

context, can incur long-term social or legal repercussions.

It is fundamentally unjust and callous to use the Internet to harm another. Those who

violate that ethical boundary face a steep uphill battle to restore their moral character. The

damage inflicted should be regarded as seriously as physical harm to the victim—with

appropriate penalties to punish and deter the offender. With this in mind, let’s turn to the

three forms of online violence that women may confront.

1. Posting Nonconsensual Nude Photos

In the old days women taking a shower might worry about a Peeping Tom looking in their

bathroom window. Such a violation of privacy is both offensive and frightening. That it takes

place while you are naked—and vulnerable—can set anxiety and fear in motion. And simmering

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in the back of your mind is this: Would he go beyond looking?

With the advent of smartphones, sharing photos became vastly easier than what the

Peeping Tom could accomplish. The voyeur can now snap a photo and, with the flick of a finger,

share it with all of his contacts, potentially reaching many others. And if the images/videos go

viral, the audience multiplies; there can be thousands of viewers on a global scale.

The result is that the Internet has taken the sharing of nudity to another level, one with

potentially much more damaging consequences than could be done by the neighborhood

Peeping Tom. It’s now like the Wild West—or, should we say, now like a computer under attack

from a virus—in terms of the difficulty in controlling and regulating this medium. Once the

posting of nude photos is set in motion it can be virtually impossible to prevent them from

perpetual accessibility. In that sense, it really is a world-wide web.

In addition to the humiliation and embarrassment of having one’s nude photos on the

Internet for all to see, there are human rights concerns. With this violation the subject—the

woman or girl—is degraded, dehumanized, and more vulnerable to being targeted for further

violence. It is not a trivial issue to shrug off like a bad joke. What's happening here is much

more serious and ominous.

The victim is now objectified in a way that makes her more susceptible to harm. This

bears some resemblance to those detainees who were subjected to forced nudity and whose

nude photos became a source of entertainment born of hatred, to be shared widely. This was

seen in Iraq and Afghanistan; for example with the Abu Ghraib scandal. Many who endured

nude photographs ended up sexually victimized as well. As Fionnuala Ni Aolain (2016) reports,

The revelation that such photographs exist … [highlights] the depravity and
inhumanity of detention practices …. The existence of such photographs

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 underscores the ways in which pornographic vignettes continue to be revealed in
the detention regime, and provokes deep unease about the motivations, rewards,
and culture that pervaded the detention system.

Once objectification and dehumanization are put into effect, the walls of restraint begin

to crumble. This was seen, as Ni Aolain observes, in the “war on terror” where the nudity

opened the door to further abuse. So, too, with the posting of nude photographs on the

Internet. Both are acts of “depravity and inhumanity.”

And with the mob mentality that can kick into place, proscriptions against harm are

shattered. The values and moral standards of the community can fall by the wayside in such

circumstances. That should concern us all—and merits much more attention than has been

given.

That said, public reaction to the Internet posts of nude photos has been mixed. Some

people see it as the violation that it is. Others wonder how and why the victim found herself in

the predicament in the first place. Moreover, when the photography was consensual, surely she

knew when she took her clothes off and let herself be photographed that others would be

looking at her body.

She trusted the recipient of the photograph. That trust was unwarranted. And the harm

that came when that trust was violated is a wrong that we need to recognize and not blame the

victim. Why is she responsible for the damages she suffered? Perhaps her mistrust was

foolhardy, but having one's nude photograph shared online is hardly a just punishment.

Moreover, many nude photographs that end up on the Internet are obtained

surreptitiously via hidden cameras or WebCams. In this case, the subject of the photograph

may have had no idea whatsoever that she is being videotaped or photographed when

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undressing or having intimate contact. On the other hand, there are also women like actor

Jennifer Lawrence, whose nude photographs in her own personal folder were hacked into and

then placed online. That exposure was certainly nonconsensual and caused her considerable

distress. The consequence for the hacker was an 8-month prison sentence (Delbyck 2018).

Another type of nonconsensual posting that has brought outrage and suffering is known

as “revenge porn.” In this case, nude photos or Photoshop photos are placed on the Internet,

often accompanied by degrading comments, threats, or invitations to rape or otherwise inflict

harm upon the victim. Many times personal information such as a home or email address is

included, putting the victim in an even more difficult situation. It is hard to imagine the human

cost of this form of online violence—yet another instance of “depravity and inhumanity.”

Let’s look at a few examples. A 2017 case that became a national scandal involved a

group called “Marines United.” This invitation-only all-male group of active Marines and vets is

said to have more than 30,000 members. According to The New York Times, some of those

members built online dossiers on Marine women without their knowledge or consent, listing

dozens of women’s names, ranks, social media handles and where they were stationed (Phillips,

2017).

Whistleblower Marine Corp veteran Thomas Brennan cited a variety of comments

posted on the photos, such as “Take her out back and pound her out.” Another post

recommended sex acts involving the “butthole”, throat, and ears. “Video it though… for

science.” In addition, folders on Google Drive contained information on many of the women in

the photos. The post linking to the folders reportedly said, “Here you go, you thirsty fucks …this

is just the tip of the iceberg. There is more coming” (Cauterucci, 2017).

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 The folders were removed after Brennan alerted military officials. Unfortunately,

Brennan paid a price for reporting the abuse, by becoming the recipient of death threats. One

reportedly suggested that he should be waterboarded. Brennan told the Marine Corps Times

that users had placed a ‘bounty’ on pictures of his daughter. “It has been suggested that my

wife should be raped as a result of this, and people are openly suggesting I should be killed,” he

said (Alexander, 2017).

We might ask why Google Drive allowed them on their site in the first place.

Accountability stretches farther than the individual level. There is an institutional aspect that

needs to be looked at—and put on notice. In this case, the Marine Corps condemned Marines

United, saying their conduct “destroys morale, erodes and degrades the individual.” They also

said that any Marine who directly participates in, encourages, or condones illicit activity could

face court-martial (Phillips, 2017).

A year later here’s what we find, as The Washington Post reports:

More than a year after a nude-photo-sharing scandal rocked the Marine

Corps, the service has investigated about 130 individuals for online
misconduct, ranging from sexual harassment and bullying to revenge
porn. Nearly 60 faced some type of punishment.

Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller told reporters Wednesday that

he’s trying to create a cultural change in the Corps, but he acknowledged
the challenge. “Are we where we want to be? No,” Neller said. “It’s been
a year. We’re trying to change a culture that didn’t start a year ago”
(Baldor 2018).

The Marines are but one example of an institution facing this problem. Facebook has

also had to deal with similar cases. Given the ubiquity of Facebook, it’s not surprising it should

encounter members who abuse social media.

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 A 2010 case involved a 12 year-old girl, Amanda Todd, who exposed her breasts while

chatting online with a man pretending to be a boy. Here’s what this unleashed:

For the next two years, Amanda and her mother, Carol Todd, were unable to stop
anonymous users from posting that image on sexually explicit pages. A Facebook page,
labeled “Controversial Humor,” used Amanda’s name and image—and the names and
images of other girls—without consent. In October 2012, Amanda committed suicide…

While she appreciates the many online tributes honoring her daughter, Carol Todd is
haunted by “suicide humor” and pornographic content now forever linked to her
daughter’s image. There are web pages dedicated to what is now called “Todding.”
(Buni and Chemaly, 2014).

Consider also the 2014 case of Meryem Ali, whose photos of her face were

photoshopped over the image of a nude body and posted on Facebook. She did not think the

company responded quickly enough to her request to remove the image from the site and

placed a $123 million lawsuit against Facebook. She was asking $.10 for each of Facebook’s

1.23 billion users, reports Lauren Phillips of The Dallas News (2014). The case is being treated as

an instance of revenge porn.

Cyber Civil Rights (2017) contends that, the term ‘revenge porn’ is a bit misleading:

“Many perpetrators are not motivated by revenge or by any personal feelings toward the

victim. A more accurate term is nonconsensual pornography (NCP), defined as the distribution

of sexually graphic images of individuals without their consent.” Maybe so. But perhaps one

reason to prefer the term ‘revenge porn’ is to underscore the viciousness on the part of the

perpetrator. We might think of nonconsensual posts of nude photos as the larger category and

revenge porn as one manifestation, where personal feelings do play a part.

However we label it, revenge porn is an act of abuse that is ethically despicable. It is also

illegal in the majority of states. As of June, 2017, thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia

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have laws against it (Cyber Civil Rights Initiative 2018). As of April 18, 2018, seven states have

bills pending in legislation (Goldberg 2018). Clearly all states should make revenge porn illegal.

Evidently the first conviction involving revenge porn was in 2015, reports the Associated

Press (2015). Kevin Bollaert, a San Diego, California man, was accused of running a revenge

porn website where people posted nude pictures of their ex-lovers, and then charging the

victims to remove the images. Bollaert was convicted of 27 felony charges, including identity

theft and extortion.

Furthermore, in 2012 and 2013, he purportedly allowed people to anonymously post

more than 10,000 images, mostly of women, without their knowledge. “The victims’ names,

cities where they lived and other information such as links to their Facebook profiles also were

posted, authorities alleged” (Associated Press 2015).

Bollaert was sentenced to eight years in prison, followed by 10 years of mandatory

supervision (Winkley and Littlefield 2015). Presumably his conviction and lengthy

sentence will act as a deterrent to others who commit revenge porn. The fact that most

states are now taking this seriously will hopefully help decrease the instances of this crime.

A further hope is that all states will soon take steps to prohibit nonconsensual

pornography.

2. Cyberstalking

Let’s now turn to a second form of online violence. This is cyberstalking. With cyberstalking the

victim can never trust that she is safe, even in her own home. This form of online harassment

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may not entail a physical threat, although that may be implied. Rather, it is a way to monitor,

control, and terrorize another.

“To be considered cyberstalking, the behavior must pose a credible threat of harm

to the victim” (Privacy Rights). And given that the stalker is usually obsessed with his victim,

she is in a dangerous situation. A 2016 report of the US Attorney’s Office stated that:

[Cyberstalking] includes any course of conduct or series of acts taken by the perpetrator
on the Internet that place the victim in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury,
or causes, attempts to cause, or would be reasonably expected to cause substantial
emotional distress to the victim or the victim’s immediate family (Paganini 2017).

The Department of Justice’s Office of Victims of Crime cites the following actions that

cyberstalkers may exhibit (Paganini 2017):

• Repeated, unwanted, intrusive, and frightening communications by phone, mail,

and/or email
• Making direct or indirect threats to harm the victim, the victim’s children, relatives,
friends, or pets
• Harassing the victim through the Internet
• Posting information or spreading rumors about the victim on the Internet
• Obtaining personal information about the victim by accessing public records, using
Internet search services, searching through the victim’s garbage, contacting the
victim’s friends, etc.

This is compounded by the uncertainty as to the abuser’s location and, in many cases,

anonymity. “Cyberstalking is difficult to combat because the stalker could be in another

state or sitting three cubicles away from the victim” (Privacy Rights). This creates its own set

of problems—and fears— compared to (non-cyber) stalking.

Tormenting another via cyberstalking has been simplified, thanks to smartphones and

WebCams. In 2014, National Public Radio (NPR) did a study of women's shelters to see how

smartphones played a role in tracking their movements and stalking their victims. They

surveyed more than 70 shelters across the country. What they found is certainly disturbing:

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 85 percent of the shelters we surveyed say they're working directly with victims whose
abusers tracked them using GPS. Seventy-five percent say they're working with victims
whose abusers eavesdropped on their conversation remotely—using hidden mobile
apps. And nearly half the shelters we surveyed have a policy against using Facebook on
premises, because they are concerned a stalker can pinpoint location (Shahani 2014).

To get a sense of how serious is being susceptible to tracking, we need only look at the

array of digital tools to make that happen. As Jennifer Valentino-DeVries (2018) reports,

More than 200 apps and services offer would-be stalkers a variety of capabilities, from
basic location tracking to harvesting texts and even secretly recording video, according
to a new academic study. More than two dozen services were promoted as surveillance
tools for spying on romantic partners, according to the researchers and reporting by The
New York Times. Most of the spying services required access to victims’ phones or
knowledge of their passwords — both common in domestic relationships.

It is frightening to think your movements can be so easily tracked. This is an exercise in

power. “The strategy of offenders is to have complete and utter domination and control of

their victims,” asserts Cindy Southworth, an advocate with the National Network to End

Domestic Violence (Shahani 2014). She contends that, “it's not enough that they just monitor

the victim. They will then taunt them or challenge them.” Whereas many people raise privacy

concerns about surveillance, for Southworth it's more about power (Shahani 2014).

Surveillance is a key aspect of cyberstalking. “Back in the day, abusive partners would

have you followed around or wouldn't let you leave the house,” says Aarti Shahani of NPR.

“Now, from work or from the bar, they can just watch you on a laptop,” she notes. This relative

ease of committing online stalking raises serious concerns and should be a catalyst for law

enforcement to address cyberstalking and better protect its victims. That seems to be a major

challenge.

Digital monitoring of a spouse or partner can constitute illegal stalking, wiretapping or

hacking. But laws and law enforcement have struggled to keep up with technological

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 changes, even though stalking is a top warning sign for attempted homicide in domestic
violence cases.

“We misunderstand and minimize this abuse,” said Erica Olsen, director of the Safety
Net Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence. “People think that if
there’s not an immediate physical proximity to the victim, there might not be as much
danger” (Valentino-DeVries 2018).

Let us look at two cases. First, consider Anthony Elonis, who threatened on Facebook to

kill his wife. He faced five charges of sexual harassment. Elonis argued that the posts were not

real threats but were protected speech. As reported by Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly

(2014), his wife Tara Elonis said she found her husband’s Facebook posts to be threatening and

they forced her to take necessary, costly precautions. One such post stated, “If I only knew then

what I know now, I would have smothered your ass with a pillow, dumped your body in the

back seat, dropped you off in Toad Creek, and made it look like a rape and murder” (Buni and

Chemaly 2014).

Posts like that lead to troubling questions about the limits of free speech. Clearly, the

issue needs to be settled. We need to figure out where freedom of speech ends and

harassment begins. A crucial issue is whether the expression of ideas or narratives setting out

or prescribing acts of violence against a real person as opposed to a fictional character should

be legally permissible. It's one thing to describe in explicit detail acts of cruelty against another

as, for example, in a TV show like Game of Thrones or a movie like 12 Years a Slave. It's another

thing to describe acts of violence against an ex-lover or estranged wife. We should err on the

side of protecting a potential victim and, thus, take apparent threats seriously.

“Although threats are traditional categories of excluded speech,” explains First

Amendment legal scholar Susan Williams, “there is very little take on actually defining
what a true threat is in constitutional terms.” This lack of definition is what plagues
social media companies seeking scalable solutions for moderating content and keeping

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 users safe.

Following legal precedent they, too, avoid defining what makes a comment a threat and
instead home in on whether or not there’s one specific target. However, as Williams
explains, “threats can be one of those environmental factors that reduce the autonomy
of whole classes of persons” (Buni and Chemaly 2014).

With our second example we move to the global scale and how international stalking

creates difficulty for enforcement. This is shown with the case of opera singer Leandra Ramm,

who was tormented for years by a cyberstalker from Singapore, where there are no laws

prohibiting this form of online violence. Given it was a case of international stalking, there was

no obvious channel to protect Ramm. Fortunately, her legal battle eventually prevailed and

resulted in the first successful conviction for international cyberstalking. According to Katharine

Quarmby (2014).

Leandra Ramm… spent most of her 20s trying to escape from the clutches of a
cyberstalker thousands of kilometres away in Singapore. Posing as a director of a music
festival, Colin Mak Yew Loong first contacted Ramm in the United States in 2005 and
promised to help further her music career. Initially, she was grateful, but when she
stopped replying to his messages, ...Mak resorted to threatening e-mails and phone
calls. He sent her around 5,000 emails. He also created hate groups on Facebook and
Twitter about her, created a blog about her and made rape and physical threats against
her and her family members, along with bomb threats against opera companies that
engaged her. …

Ramm went to the FBI, the New York Police Department and other government
agencies. All of them said they could do nothing, as the crimes were committed in
Singapore… Mak continued to destroy not only Ms. Ramm’s career, but also started to
stalk other women.

In 2011, Ramm hired a cybercrime expert with links to the U.S. Secret Service and finally

brought her abuser to justice. In 2013, Mak pleaded guilty to sending Ramm 31 threatening

emails and admitted to 11 other offenses. He was jailed for three years. District Judge Mathew

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Joseph told Mak, “The virtual Internet in your criminal hands …was used as a weapon of

massive personal destruction in the real world of your hapless victims” (Quarmby 2014).

3. Doxing

The third major kind of online abuse is doxing. "Doxing" (aka “doxxing”) is the nonconsensual

online posting and distribution of personal information about a person or group. The objective

may be to shame, scare, blackmail, defame, bully or endanger the target, as Pierluigi Paganini

(2017) explains. Or it may simply be born of a desire to make someone’s life miserable; for

example as a form of payback for a real or imagined offense. As Paganini points out,

The motives may include revenge, extortion, or embarrassment. But, publicly posting an
individual’s personal details is often done with the knowledge that it could potentially
put the targeted individual in danger, particularly if the person is a law enforcement
officer, an undercover agent or a high profile individual.

Victims of doxing range from ex/spouses, co-workers, and acquaintances to public

figures and celebrities. No one seems beyond the range of this form of abuse, unless

considerable steps have been taken to maintain their privacy. Such walls are very difficult to

erect.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama was one target; evidently her social security number

was posted online. Other targets include high profile politicians, such as Joe Biden, Donald

Trump, Hillary Clinton, and ex-Attorney General Eric Holder, singers Beyoncé and Britney

Spears, actor Mel Gibson and even law enforcement officials. All have become victims of doxing

(Pelisek 2013). Many more have joined their ranks.

Not only is doxing an inconvenience for the victim; it can be disastrous in terms of the

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time and effort required to prevent identity theft. In addition, the steps taken may alleviate the

problem for only a short while before the perpetrator discloses more documents online. The

cycle of misery can easily continue—and lead to further harms. Stuart Blessman (2016) points

out the sorts of difficulties a victim may face:

Doxing can be more than just releasing someone’s private information online. It can
directly involve law enforcement punishing someone the doxer wants targeted, which
could lead to “swatting”—pranking 911 with reports of violence or bomb threats,
sending police and SWAT officers to a location the caller indicated. The officers, doing
their duty, break in and often arrest the person indicated in the call as being a threat;
many are later released after being deemed innocent and victim of a prank.

Not all doxing victims take it laying down. Zoe Quinn is an example of a doxing victim

who fought back. She launched an online "anti-harassment task force" to assist victims of

doxing or swatting with free services (Machkovech 2015).

Finding ways to take action and work with others to respond to Internet abuse is

commendable and will hopefully be productive in confronting such harms. Note also that

doxing can result in heavy penalties:

Penalties for doxing and swatting are often severe. Sentences can range from 18 months
in prison and a $10,000 fine for a fourth-degree charge to ten years in prison and a
$150,000 fine for a second-degree charge.

One 15-year-old in Louisiana swatted a fellow gamer by calling 911 and claiming on the
call that he—impersonating his target—had just “shot and killed four people,” according
to National Report. Adding, “If any police enter my home I will kill them too.” The young
suspect was sentenced to 25 years to life in federal prison (Blessman 2016).

Europe has just put a law going into effect on May 25, 2018 to better protect online

privacy and this will have benefits in the U.S. too. The New York Times (2018) reports that, “The

law strengthens individual privacy rights and, more important, it has teeth. Companies can

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be fined up to 4 percent of global revenue — equivalent to about $1.6 billion for Facebook.”

The new law provides key privacy rights:

For instance, you can ask companies what information they hold about you, and
then request that it be deleted. This applies not just to tech companies, but also to
banks, retailers, grocery stores or any other organization storing your information.
You can even ask your employer. And if you suspect your information is being
misused or collected unnecessarily, you can complain to your national data
protection regulator, which must investigate (The New York Times 2018).

This new law also recognizes the value of individuals collaborating, as did Zoe Quinn

when she called for an anti-harassment task force. Regarding Europe’s new law,

… [T]he new rules allow people to band together and file class-action style
complaints, … [And so] privacy groups are planning to file cases on behalf of groups
of individuals. The hope is that a few successful lawsuits will have a ripple effect and
lead companies to tighten up how they handle personal data (The New York Times
2018).

The Victim Profile

In terms of the victim profile, we may want to know how many women—and men—face online

violence. The answer seems to be, “Many.” Evidence indicates that a lot of people have been

victimized. For some, it is relatively minor—a disruption of the status quo. For others, it is an

ordeal without an apparent end. It is noteworthy to consider the role of gender in all this.

Consider the following specifics:

A [2014] Pew research study found that 40 percent of all Internet users
have experienced some harassment online, and 73 percent have witnessed others being
harassed. But even though online harassment has become a ubiquitous experience, the
way it is experienced differs radically between men and women (Pullen 2014).

Note also that,

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 Women – and particularly young women – are more likely to experience certain
types of “more severe” harassment, such as stalking and sexual harassment. Among
female internet users 18-24, 26% say they have been stalked online and 25% have
been sexually harassed. This is significant not only to their male counterparts of the
same age, but also to women just a few years older, 25-29. In addition, young
women do not escape the heightened rates of physical threats and sustained
harassment common to their male peers and young people in general (Duggan
2014).

Looking over the cases of online harassment and abuse, we see that men are also

targets for being victimized. Online harassment is not just against women, as the Pew research

study shows. However, what has been reported—as by The Washington Post (2017)—is that

women are subjected to more severe forms of online abuse, such as harassment and stalking

(Pullen 2014).

Both revenge porn and nonconsensual postings of nude photographs are much more

likely to affect women than men. This is also true of cyberstalking. Doxing, however, appears to

be more of an equal opportunity form of abuse, with men and women both suffering this type

of violation.

More women have been sexually harassed online and experienced stalking. In contrast,

men face lesser types of abuse, such as name-calling (Pullen 2014). Consequently, the victim’s

gender should be a factor when examining online abuse. In any case, these three forms are all

problematic in terms of the effect on the victim.

Conclusion

It is important to look at online violence and see what can be done to minimize the harms and

address the damages victims suffer and guide the way to policies and laws that strengthen

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victims’ rights.

There are egregious moral shortcomings in anyone who harms another by means of

online violence. As with the European Union’s new law affecting privacy rights, we should

construct a wall of resistance with laws and court rulings that protect the victims and send a

signal to perpetrators that their behavior is simply unacceptable.

When assessing violence against women and surveying the many ways it reaches

expression, the widespread use of the Internet has to be put under the spotlight. Its relative

ease of operation and ability to cause harm needs our attention. We need to make sure strict

laws are in place—and taken seriously. As with the laws against revenge porn, significant

penalties need to be in place, along with a commitment to enforcement. We need to support

those working with anti-harassment groups and legal remedies to do what we can to protect

women from harm. Our commitment to caring for victims of online violence sends a

message—and our action to support that message is a key step forward.

Works Cited

Alexander, Harriet. 2017, March 11. “Marines Commander Appeals For Victims Of Nude Photo
Sharing Scandal To Come Forward, Saying: 'Trust Us',” The Telegraph (UK).
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