Online feminists are taking on the trolls (For RedQueen)

[ismnotwasm]

There are corners of the internet that are shady and mysterious - you never go there for fear of what you might find.

It is worse if you dare to be noticeably female while exploring them. Your user name, your avatar, anything could lead to unwanted advances, or unwarranted abuse.

A recent survey by Girlguiding, a charity for girls and young women, found that 54 percent of girls aged 11-21 had received some form of electronic harassment, whether receiving sexist comments or having embarrassing photographs of them distributed online.

But online feminist movements are fighting back.

When FemSoc at Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Services heard about a campaign called Who needs feminism, in which people from all sections of society hold up cards reading "I need feminism because…" they decided it would be a good way to spread their message.

FemSoc general secretary DurreSameen Mirza said the group decided to take part in the campaign despite knowing they would receive some negative responses. "We realised that by going public we would open ourselves up to harassment and abuse," she told Al Jazeera "We also realised that this was why the project was important. There are so many misconceptions of feminism and women in Pakistan; we felt it was important to get this discussion started."


http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/12/online-feminists-are-taking-trolls-20131217143852329370.html

[redqueen]

1. Thanks, ism.

It's disappointing to see so many people on DU try to "otherize" misogyny, e.g. acting as if that PSA was only a relevant topic for women in India (um, hello? men all over the world are like this, that's why the everyday sexism project exploded the way it did).