Since my last piece on the cyberbullying taking place through Facebook, other sites targeting girls for their alleged flaws have been found.  One identifying young women not considered  “marriage material”.  Another naming and shaming ‘12-year-old sluts’.  Another for girls labelled “bitches”.  British girl Poppy Bracey recently took her life  as a result of a cyber bullying campaign against her.  Poppy was 13. She was harassed for being “too pretty”. (Some commenting on the story said girls like this just need to toughen up).  It seems no girl can ever be good enough. She must grow up trying to shield herself from virtual darts and real-life abuse, coming at her from every direction.

The piece below by Melbourne blogger Elizabeth (left) at My Spilt Milk  (whose comments I have valued on my  posts), is a passionate exploration of these online monuments to cruelty. Elizabeth nails the hypocrisy of Facebook in banning breastfeeding images while allowing sexualised depictions of women, harrassment and abuse to flourish on untold numbers of sites.

On the weekend – on the eve of International Women’s Day – I wrote about a Facebook slut page, arguing it enabled cyber bullying, stalking and harassment. On the page, photos were posted of girls and women who were labelled ’sluts’. One was 10-years-old. Another had been bashed (she deserved it, she was a slut). A later image showed a woman bound, with her head decapitated. Many were just smiling young women at home or having fun with girlfriends. And so it went on, image after image of girls and women branded with this virtual scarlet letter.

The piece got a run in On Line Opinion today.

It appears that Facebook has responded to criticism. The site has been removed. Thanks to all who reported it.

 Of course, that’s not the last of the bullies. Dannielle Miller from Enlighten Education blogged on bullying and social networking sites this week. You can read her piece here. 

 My friend Anita had her own experience with on-line abusers this week, who demanded their entitlement to child pornography. Anita set up a Facebook site to find 3 billion people willing to add their voice to a global campaign against child porn. The site was inundated with comments by men extolling the pleasures of child rape and posting links to child porn. (She has removed them). Please support Anita’s efforts against the production of and demand for child sexual assault images and sign up.  

Below is a comment on my original blog  by Merryn Smith. It’s so good I wanted to give it more prominence.  

“I think the problem with social networking sites and a great deal of internet is that people assume that it merely reflects socio/cultural reality. Actually it produces reality, as does all discourse. So it’s easy to reduce the meanings generated by groups like these as mere ‘words’. Hence men (and a small proportion of young naive girls) always call forth the freedom of speech argument to conceal one of purposes of this type of ‘othering’ discourse. Women are the largest group that are targeted as the ‘other’ inhuman ‘thing’ through this type of ancient discursive act. But of course ethnic groups and the working classes are also kept in place through these ‘othering’ discourses. This is of course about power. The power to dehumanise comes hand in hand with physical acts of violence. But we know that young women suffer terribly high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in our cultures. Yes these groups reflect that, but they also produce a cultural climate and language that condones, encourages and applauds the dehumanisation of half of the worlds population. Of course these groups hide behind notions of freedom and the separation of bodily acts and psychological acts, or body and mind, body and speech. But of course these young men and boys (mostly) are passing through their right of passage-their right to dehumanise woman and girls. This is how men bond. It is through the ‘othering’ process that makes them feel that they belong. We need to fight this by creating spaces for young women where they can ‘go’, real and virtual, where they are not used as a symbol of male belonging and bonding. We need to create spaces where woman and girls (especially girls) can create their own embodied and disembodied world realities. But it aint easy. Happy Women’s Day…”

 

Since when did it become okay to hate women and girls so publicly and to judge them so mercilessly? 

There’s a new page on Facebook. It’s only two weeks old but already has more than a million members. I’m not going to post the link but of course it is easy to find. You don’t have to go far to find online domains where women are held up for ridicule and contempt. 

This is a site for anyone who wants to post pictures of girls they have judged to be sluts.

Some girls appear in overtly sexual poses. 

Others are doing that common tween pouty thing with their lips and surprised eyes. Which apparently means they are sluts. 

Then there’s the young girls of 13, 14 or 15 having fun with their friends, smiling and fooling around as young girls often do and somehow ending up on this site. Because even innocent mucking around with your besties is to be interpreted as sluttish behaviour. 

One average normal young woman is standing in a front yard looking relaxed and happy in a long blue summery dress. This girl cops a torrent of abuse on the site. Because girls can’t just look or actually be relaxed and happy. They must be covering up for the fact that they’re really sluts. 

Other images are of larger sized girls posted purely to be ridiculed. And they are. Condemned for being alive, though some men comment that despite their obvious hideousness, they could still manage to find some use for them. 

There is even a picture of a woman with a bashed face. 

It is revealing that the girls whose images have been put up here are either condemned for their whorish ways  - or condemned for not deserving the slut title. So they can’t win. Either they are too slutty or not slutty enough. 

Each girl or woman is analysed based on her body parts and what she is wearing. The text includes allegations of their prostitute-like ways, describing multiple STD’s, multiple pregnancies to multiple fathers, and all the sexual acts they have ever allegedly performed on multiple men. 

Some images are clearly posted for revenge. Often full names are used. What means do these women and girls have to defend themselves? How do they deal with it? What does it mean for them in their daily lives at school or work or at home or anywhere, to be identified to the whole world as a slut? 

By allowing this site, Facebook is a conduit for bullying, harassment and abuse. 

These are some of the comments. I’ve left out the pornographic ones which means I won’t be citing most of them. 

“Tripple ew”, “She’s so ugly”, “Meat”, “Pig”, “Dog”, “Vomit bucket anyone?” 

This site is a temple to human cruelty. 

One of the pictures of a larger girl looking depressed provokes special attack. 

Just yesterday a man calling himself ‘D.j.Stack’ labelled her a “baarbarian” [Sic. But you get the idea]. He also questions whether she really qualifies as slut material: 

“and i doute thats slut material because i wouldnt even look at that, nor do i think many would.” 

She is a ‘that’, not a real person. 

Who is the real barbarian in this picture? 

Another image of a larger bodied girl at the beach attracts the comment: 

“It looks like someone threw pancake batter against a wall and it slid down”. 

So the women whose images are posted on this virtual dartboard are insulted with the label slut. But they are equally insulted if they are seen as slut imposters: pretenders to the slut title. 

For example: “She couldn’t be a slut if she wanted to be”. 

And:  “She’s too f***ing ugly to be a slut. who would f***k that? 

Again, she is a that. 

In the image of the bashed woman, her eye is swollen and black. Why is she here?  Because she’s a slut too and she deserved what she got. That’s what one of the commenters said. 

A couple of images of men have been posted on the site. One male helpfully points out that men can’t be sluts “cos only the bitches are sluts”. 

And there you have it. 

The creator of the site, in a display of faux concern, writes: “’Lots of people have uploaded fan pics of people they know. That’s not cool guys that’s bullying.” 

So why have you left them there?
Images of young girls stripped and performing for a webcam have been removed in the last 24 hours.  As has an image of a 10-year-old girl. 

But it’s not enough. The whole site remains harmful to the mental health of girls whose images have been posted – in many cases most likely against their will or without their prior knowledge. 

Its presence is also harmful to girls who may fear their faces could soon appear there any day, meaning they too will wear the virtual scarlet letter.

This site facilitates cyber bullying, cyber stalking and harassment.  It puts girls and women in significant danger. 

Will Facebook leave it there for ever, until every girl and every woman is labelled a slut?

Following my blog posts on the death-by-bullying case of Brodie Panlock, I asked my friend and colleague Sarah McMahon, (above), a consultant psychologist and accredited mediator who has counseled many victims of workplace bullying, to provide advice to those who are subjected to bullyling at work.

1. Keep detailed notes of events- and keep these as matter-of-fact as possible. Should the incidents need to be investigated these notes will serve you well. Therapeutically, including information about your feelings can also be very helpful.
2. Tell someone senior in the workplace. If you work for a large employer you will probably have an HR department- which is a good place to start. This can be more difficult if your employer is small, however begin by talking to your manager (or their manager if you feel this is not appropriate). Often you will be required to make a formal complaint, which can be daunting. However given that bullying and sexual harassment are serious offenses, this will usually enable an investigation and formal grievance procedure to be instigated.
3. Seek the counsel of friends and family. Having support from people outside the workplace- particularly if your workplace has a toxic subculture- is invaluable because family and friends can provide some perspective on the events that are taking place. Utilising this support can also prevent you from being accused of unprofessional conduct, such as discussing private issues with your co-workers.
4. Consult your GP. Being the victim of workplace bullying or sexual harassment can be stressful so it is useful to have the support of someone that can monitor your mental health. Your GP might refer you to a more specialised health professional, such as a psychiatrist or psychologist if they think this is required. If you develop a mental health condition such as anxiety or depression and work is considered to be a significant contributing factor, your condition should be compensable. This means that if you require time off work or psychological treatment due to the bullying or sexual harassment, this should be paid for by your employer’s workers compensation insurance at no cost to you.
5. Look for another job. Technically you shouldn’t have to do this- it is unfair that you should have to change jobs because of another person’s conduct (and of course there are times when standing up to a bully is important). However changing jobs can often be the simplest, quickest and easiest solution and thus an option that warrants consideration.

My friend Cordelia Fine had a terrific piece in the SMH and Age yesterday  Feel sorry for Kiely, but pity more his female colleagues in which she makes the case that sexualised images in the workplace undermine women.

Even as psychologists learn more about how gender stereotypes adversely affect women trying to gain ground in male domains, material that primes those very stereotypes and attitudes becomes more common. Pornography is increasing in work settings, according to the Fawcett Society in Britain. And pornography in the workplace, however mild, serves as a signal to women that they are in male space…

The drip, drip, drip effect of male workers viewing porn is the creation of an environment that is hostile and degrading to women – and this is in violation of the Sex Discrimination Act, as human rights lawyer Professor Aileen McColgan pointed out in the Fawcett Society’s recent Corporate Sexism report. But when public responses to transgressions are casual and forgiving, women may be reluctant to complain about their male colleagues’ use of pornography, for fear of seeming prudish. >more