Materiality and Discursivity of Cyber Violence Against Women in India

Abstract

With the advent of the digital age and online networks, a new facet of human experience materialised called the cyberspace. In other words, it is an addition to an individual’s intrapsychic world. Millions of people are using the Internet as a day-to-day activity to enhance their lives while at the same time there are people who are using it for anti-social purposes such as stalking, harassing, bullying and so on. This, with the advent of the Internet, has become a new weapon of abuse. This research intends to bring the two realms of virtual and physical, which are considered as binaries into a productive dialogue on violence against women. In doing so, it takes forward the narratives of cyber violence survivors into rethinking the construction of disembodied and embodied violence. I pursue this aim by exploring how women survivors of India conceptualise and respond to cyber violence. This is a qualitative exploratory study located within the theoretical framework of feminist standpoint theory in order to engage each survivor’s story from their individual standpoint. An in-depth interview was conducted for 30 women survivors in India. This study will help to critically understand cyber violence as an embodied experience.

Social Networks as a Means of Combating Gender-Based Violence

“…Chan et al (2021) believe that cyberbullying on social media should be counteracted by analysing the relationship between perpetrators, victims and bystanders. Sarkar and Rajan (2021) divide violence against women on social networks into virtual and physical. Women who have experienced cyberbullying overestimate the structure of disembodied and embodied violence and are more wary of possible cases of cyberbullying in the future.…”

“…Van Laer (2014) analysed cyberbullying in the social media and identified the main preconditions for committing gender-based violence on the Internet. Sarkar and Rajan (2021) considered harassment of women on the Internet and recognized this phenomenon as a component of Vol. 40 Nº 72 (2022): 164-181 cyberbullying.…”

Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence and Abuse in Low and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review

“…One study used the term non-consensual sharing of intimate images as an alternative to "revenge porn" to refer to any non-consensual sharing of intimate images by strangers or intimate persons (França & Quevedo, 2020). Sarkar and Rajan (2021) found that women who voiced their opinion regarding socio-cultural structures and the objectification of women in the media experienced online sexual harassment as punishment.…”

“…Image-Based Sexual Abuse. The non-consensual taking, sharing, or threats to share personal, intimate images or videos were reported in most of the included studies, highlighting how IBSA is used to blackmail, humiliate, or perpetrate emotional abuse (França & Quevedo, 2020;Hassan et al, 2020;Jatmiko et al, 2020;Makinde et al, 2021;Sarkar & Rajan, 2021;Zagloul et al, 2022). A study conducted by Zagloul et al (2022) of Egyptian women (n = 563) found that more than half (51.9%) of study participants experienced non-consensual pornography.…”

Crimes against women a digital Method solution using the SPSS Method

“…Obviously, further improvement can be achieved by integrating the NOMA scheme with the CSTN, which ensures access to multiple users and further improves spectrum utilization without further resource consumption. However, in CSTN, the transmission power of the cognitive network must be controlled and thus communication [1].a case of domestic abuse or the unauthorized distribution of another person's sexual or private photos. In this essay, we concentrate on the reach and constraints of criminal law in dealing with these various but related gendered harms.…”