Aditi Sharif:

A few months ago, I noticed that Bangladeshi renowned actress Rafiath Rashid Mithila posted a romantic couple picture with her present spouse. Usually, I don’t follow the daily activities of any celebrity regularly but I somehow saw that specific post as some of my Facebook friends commented on that. After that, I checked some other comments on that and felt disgusted because most of the comments were abusive and to some extent violent. While some tried to shame some of her physical features, others expressed their desire(s) to go to bed with her. Most of them posted offensive remarks about their conjugal relationships indicating their sexualities and Mithila’s ex-life partner. However, I wasn’t surprised for this reason as I knew that a significant number of women in our county have to receive these types of vulgar messages/comments on social media platforms regularly. Female celebrities like Mithila have to bear the burn to a large extent due to their increasing fame.

One year ago, I had an opportunity to read a report based on empirical research about the nature, intensity, and consequences of online violence against women. According to the study,  a majority of women participants (73.78%) have faced violence on online platforms in their lifetime (Rahman, Karim, & Naser, 2021). As expected, young women belonging to the age group of 18-34 are mostly exposed to such abusive behavior. Facebook is the most prominent site where such nasty things happen (Rahman, Karim, & Naser, 2021). The study has also found that the apparent reasons behind these types of gender-based harassment are: raising voices against patriarchal oppression, not responding to spam messages, not accepting unwanted friend requests, posting pictures on online platforms, wearing western dresses, working for media, staying active on social media at late night, expressing political opinions, whereas the main causes are: malpractices arising from patriarchal society, misogyny, gender biases of technology, gender inequality, and lack of accountability (Rahman, Karim, & Naser, 2021). In this regard, What can be a reliable social analysis of such heinous activities? Let’s start with women’s subordination and patriarchy which is the roots of misogyny, and all sorts of gender discrimination.  

Women’s subordination is not a recent phenomenon. Though some consider a patriarchal social structure as a universal arrangement, I love to think of it as a product of historical development. However, the question is: how can we define patriarchy? Many feminist theorists and scholars try to conceptualize patriarchy by adopting different types of perspectives but I find Kamla Bhasin’s definition easy-going. 

According to Kamla Bhasin (1993),  “It is used more generally to refer to male domination, to the power relationships by which men dominate women, and to characterize a system whereby women are kept subordinate in a number of ways. The subordination that we experience at a daily level, regardless of the class we might belong to, takes various forms -discrimination, disregard, insult, control, exploitation, oppression, violence- within the family, at the place of work, in society (Bhasin, 1993 ).” 

In some aspects, the definition of Patriarchy is quite oversimplified as she denies the fact that patriarchy is harmful to both men and women. She doesn’t acknowledge the fact that intersectionality affects the intensity of abusive behavior.  Nevertheless. the definition is appealing to me because she doesn’t have to use complex jargon to define the very system.

Bhasin (1993) considers abusive and violent behaviors to assert societal domination over women (Bhasin, 1993 ). Radical feminists also agree with her in this regard. They also think of aggression and violence as weapons of power practices (Thompson, 2015 ). Interestingly, this globalized world has added another dimension to it. Perhaps, this can be understood by the concept of ‘Mediascapes’ (Appadurai, 1990). 

Arjun Appadurai (1990) introduced the ‘Scape Theory’ to describe the global cultural flow in this contemporary world. By ‘Mediascapes’, he meant “both the distribution of electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (newspapers, magazines, television stations, film production studios, etc), which are now available to a growing number of public and private interests throughout the world; and the images created by those media (Appadurai, 1990).”  

Social media platforms can be the most appropriate examples of such Mediascapes. One of the fundamental characteristics of these Mediascapes is: that they create a complex web of images and narratives that can blur reality and fiction.  

 In a patriarchal setting like Bangladesh, the presence of women in the public sector (though increasing rapidly) is not as significant as men. From my experience, I can confidently tell that most women tend to maintain the patriarchal discourses to avoid abuses but I doubt about its success! However, thanks to the ‘Mediascapes’ (Appadurai, 1990), the virtual presence of women is even stronger than our real-life presence that can threaten the patriarchal system, or attract the male gaze. Moreover, the perpetrators can also get some conveniences from these platforms as they don’t have to be present in real for this and they can easily escape. Shockingly, the impacts of such violent behavior on victims can be severe. Even some women tend to carry their trauma in their whole life. 

 So, I think that rather than being a 5-G nation, securing women’s rights in cyberspace is necessary as they constitute half of the population in our country even if they are not often considered human!    

References

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in The Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture, and Society, 7(2-3).

Bhasin, K. (1993 ). What is Patriarchy? New Delhi : Kali for Women .

Rahman, D. D., Karim, F., & Naser, S. (2021). Online Violence Against Women in Bangladesh. Dhaka : ActionAid.

Thompson, K. (2015 , May 7). The radical feminist perspective on power and control in relationships. Retrieved from Revise Sociology: https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/07/radical-feminism-power-control-relationships/

Image credit: the image is AI- generated, powered by DALL·E 3

About the writer:

Aditi Sharif is an Anthropologist, currently working as a Research Assistant at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), Dhaka. She also works a volunteer writer in Women Chapter International.