Activists and lawyers in Africa are calling for urgent action to protect women, girls and boys as digital violence surges across the continent.
Digital violence sounds infinitely better than the usual sort...
A massive rise in internet users, coupled with huge numbers of people aged under 30, has fuelled an increase in gendered online violence across the continent, according to experts, by giving perpetrators new tools to control and silence women and girls, and influence boys.
Technology is amazing, isn't it?
A UN Women report in Kenya found that name-calling, blackmail using negative images of women in politics, and other messages were posted online with the aim of spreading fear, and undermining women’s credibility to participate in elections.
Toughen up, sisters!
The African Union Convention on Ending Violence against Women and Girls was introduced in 2024 and includes digital violence, but according to Sibongile Ndashe, executive director of the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa, it is “regressive”.She said: “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to push back on it because we feel that the convention is not doing what it’s supposed to do in terms of setting out rights, required state obligations and providing clarity [around technology-facilitated gender based violence].”
A charity in Africa fails? Surely it ain't so? I wonder how much British taxpayers money went into it...
13 comments:
It's really odd that I refer to male politicians that I hate as simply 'c*nts' with the prefixes 'stupid' or 'evil' - often both - whereas I often refer to female politicians that I hate as 'ugly bitches'. I find that with women politicians there is a general correlation between ugliness and evilness and/or stupidity, whereas with men you can't always tell (well, you can in many cases). Not that all ugly women are bad, and occasionally some good-lookers are horrible, but the problem with stereotypes is that they are usually, but not always, true.
Sorry, but this is sexist. I suspect that we have evolved as a species to see this. Women, on the other hand, have evolved to have a preference for violent men, probably so that they and their offspring could get a first go at the mammoth steak, even if they had to do so covered in bruises. In present society, tattoos seem to have taken over from bruises as the outward display that a woman has secured the interests of a truly awful male partner!
Been there. The first thing any Charridee working in Africa buys are top of the range Toyota Landcruisers. White. Cos everybody knows that Africa has no proper roads. Then all family get on pay roll. Then they start greeting the visiting European do-gooding pollies.
I don't suppose the violence, both physical and digital, against women, has any connection with the rising prevalence of a particular social and religious demographic, added to the tribal culture? Unless evidence to the opposite becomes available, I'm blaming the Greens.
Penseivat
Violence: behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
By using the term "violence" for something that clearly is not violence in the accepted sense of the word, they trivialise actual real violence.
Yes, the concept of 'digital violence' is ludicrous, isn't it?
Earlier today I came across a news item in the Graun from about a week ago. It was about a German TV star who had had AI-generated nude images of her made by her ex-husband.
The news story included the phrase 'explicitly sexual and physical violence against women in the digital world'. How on earth can you commit 'physical violence in the digital world'? If you create a digital fake image of someone, where does physical violence come into it? It's a ludicrous notion.
So. Africa has discovered activism and the third sector. It will be a rich, prosperous continent in no time
I tried to come up with a pithy aphorism to cover all similar misuse of words.
How about, "Those that seek to make the trivial important, trivialise that which is important."
I am open to better versions. Or is there already something apposite out there?
John Tee
"Violence". A noun. "Action likely to, or intended to, cause harm to another".
It does not necessarily have to be a physical attack on someone. A deliberate action to publicly humiliate someone, ruin their reputation, their job, or their personal self esteem, can be classed as violence. Quite a few years of my Police service was spent on Domestic Violence or Child Protection departments, and not all victims had bruised or broken limbs. And, before you ask, it wasn't only females who were victims.
Penseivat
Well, Sabreman, the great thing about AI nudes is that a woman whose ex posts genuine nude photos of her can always complain that they are fake, can't she?
@Penseivat
The definition obviously varies depending on where you look. I maintain that most people assume physical violence is meant when the word violence is used on its own, without a qualifier. Non physical violence requires a qualifier, and qualifiers usually seem to sucks much of the meaning out of the substantive word.
John Tee
That’s very true!
we’ll know if the African women grow bigger tits perhaps
I suspect that that’s the real goal
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