Why does online harassment against women persist?

• In a video posted on her YouTube channel this Sunday, Léna Situations testifies to the harassment of which she is the victim.

• "There are a lot of things I can't share anymore because I'm afraid I'll get killed in the street or worse, something will happen to you", we hear him say, in tears, in a telephone conversation with one of his relatives.

• Despite growing media coverage, the phenomenon of cyberbullying is not going away.

Before starting the sixth season of her famous August vlogs, Léna Situations had to make a point.

In a video posted on her YouTube channel this Sunday, the influencer testified to the slump she experienced for almost a year, the fault of hate messages received en masse on her social networks.

With a subscriber counter that increases, “we come to put a spoke in your wheels and cut your momentum”, she explains facing the camera.

A year ago, “the hate I was experiencing, which was usually only on the internet, was very real and took 100% of my energy.

We [exceeded] the virtual world to go in front of my mother, call on the intercom to harass her again and again, call her on the phone until she cuts her line, ”she testifies.

“The more I am followed, the more I feel alone”

Faced with the fear she feels for her own safety and that of her loved ones, she decides to take a break by climbing Kilimanjaro.

The "sauce", as she calls it, falls on her shoulders as soon as she returns when she tells on her networks that she was invited to the Ballon d'Or ceremony but that she preferred to go on vacation to Los Angeles with her darling.

Some Internet users then treat her as a "bitch", "bitch" or "witch", while wishing her that her boyfriend would cheat on her following such a betrayal.

In a telephone conversation with her best friend Marcus, which she filmed and revealed, Léna is in tears.

“There are a lot of things I can't share anymore because I'm afraid I'll get killed in the street or worse, something will happen to you.

I feel so alone.

The more I am followed, the more I feel alone.

Back in front of her camera and her subscribers, she confides: “I became a black hole of emotions, I couldn't see the end of it.

Fortunately, I was well surrounded, otherwise I don't know what would have happened.

“It is the response to the empowerment of minority groups”

An Ipsos survey, carried out in November 2021, reports that 41% of French people say they have experienced, even once, at least one situation of cyberviolence, whether on a social network, on instant messaging or by SMS.

On the other side of the Atlantic, according to a Pew Research Center survey from last year, 41% of Americans have also experienced some form of online harassment.

The report indicates that women are 2.6 times more attacked on their gender than men: 47% of harassed women have suffered this type of attack, compared to 18% of men.

A “box” ticked by Léna Situations, among several others.

“It can happen to anyone, but there are aggravating factors: when you are a woman, when you are racialized and when you are young, reports Stéphanie de Vanssay, author of the book

.

When you have a public life, you become the thing of the public and it's not something new.

It's just that we have direct access to public people via social networks and that some abuse it.

Seeing women succeed triggers a process of oppression for some people.

“It is the response to the empowerment taken online by minority groups, women in particular.

These mechanisms of violence aim to assign to these people the place reserved for them by patriarchy, whiteness, cis heteronormativity, ”said Johanna Soraya, co-founder of the collective

.

In the case of Léna Situations, women who break the codes should, according to their attackers, go through their institutions to be validated in the entertainment industry.

All Responsible

If talking openly about the cyber-violence she suffers is a "political act", Léna Situations indicates at the end of her video that she will no longer let herself be overwhelmed by these messages of hatred.

But the

does not want to base all progress on the word of the victims.

“We want to disembodie this problem of cyberviolence and show that it is a much more structural and political mechanism than a news item.

Unfortunately, in the media, it is treated a lot as sensationalist news items, ”laments Johanna Soraya.

To reduce the phenomenon of cyberbullying, we should "recognize that we are all part of these systems of oppression, that we all have a responsibility online to report content, not to participate in publishing content that is humiliating and derogatory on other people, not to click and not to encourage”, reports the co-founder.

According to the Ipsos study mentioned above, 31% of French people have already been at the origin of a situation of cyberviolence.

Platform impunity

To push back the phenomenon, there's nothing like a collective awareness... which is a bit slow to arrive.

“But I wonder if young people don't have more maturity and perspective than most people who discovered the networks late in life.

I have the feeling that the younger generation will help things be a little more under control,” hopes Stéphanie de Vanssay.

An opinion shared by Johanna Soraya: “The new generation continues to create content, to articulate political thoughts around ecology, feminism, anti-racism… We see an emancipation and a liberation that is done by collectives.

These movements resonate with each other and we encourage them because we are not going to disappear from these spaces,” she says.

Eyes are also turning to the platforms, which host this content and which see the mechanisms of oppression adapt to new practices, like live raids on a live Twitch.

"Platforms make money when there is cyberviolence," says Johanna Soraya.

They themselves do not moderate and let the communities galvanize each other.

The commitment takes and the design of the platforms revolves around cyberviolence”.

A mechanism that does not therefore participate in empowering Internet users.

A new European regulation on digital services may change things.

The "Digital Services Act", voted by the European Parliament on July 5, aims to take the necessary measures to mitigate the risks associated with online violence, such as the removal of fake profiles.

Scheduled for an effective launch in 2024, this text will come into force earlier than that for platforms owned by Gafam.

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• Lena Situations

• Youtube

• Cyber ​​harassment