The internet unites us against sexual violence
Lucy Bailey reflects on the shared struggle of women around the world as they March 4 Justice.
There’s a brisk wind above the crowd, but within it is sweltering hot. Bodies press against each other from all sides, masks puff in and out - conforming to the drawing of breath. The speakers are so far away that all that comes across to you is the dull, metallic roar of microphone feedback. A fiercely smiling newswoman directs the camera towards the crowd with a long, nude nail - capturing the impatient tides of the somatic sea. Lurching forward with the momentum of the crowd, there’s a feeling of connection to the current of bodies driving us forward: an understanding that we are there for a singular purpose and that this purpose is shared by people across the globe.
Over the last 48 hours, there have been simultaneous protests both here in Australia and the UK surrounding gendered violence. Having attended the Sydney protest myself and followed twitter coverage of the UK, I was struck by the uncanny parallels between the two, down to the popular phrases used on protest signs. In Sydney, the protestor to my left carried a sign reading “Boys will be boys held accountable for their actions.” Logging onto Twitter this morning, I observed the same sign toted by a protestor in London. These signs are symbols of the key role that the internet now plays in social justice and community organisation.
Just as the internet has transformed the way we socialise, it has transformed the way we organise. Moreover, it transforms the way we view our relationships to world events: tragedies across the globe can be viewed as symptoms of the same cause due to the amalgamation of personal and national contexts that occurs within online discourses.
In March, Four Corners published a piece detailing the historical rape allegations made against Attorney-General Christian Porter and the torment and suicide of his accuser. Concurrently, news broke about a 33-year old London woman who had last been seen on 3 March - along with an impassioned social media campaign led by feminist pages on Twitter and Instagram. News of her death and the subsequent charging of Wayne Couzens with her murder only further stoked the fire of online outrage.
“As long as [men] can blame women for the violent behaviour of men, they don’t need to do anything… and can continue getting away with their own predatory and violent crimes,” reads an Instagram highlight from British feminist account @Salty.biitch.
The online discourse surrounding these events has produced the hashtag #toomanymen - a response to the popular retort that ‘not all men’ can be considered responsible for the perpetuation of gendered violence. Going further, a viral post by Instagram user @Feepaints features a 50 item list, detailing “which men are part of the problem”, from “men who rape” to “the ones who are more upset about the issue being raised than they are about the issue itself”. The post, which has amassed over 11 thousand comments and has been shared widely across social media platforms, features the subversive message: “no, not all men, but probably you.”
Whilst protests against gendered violence exist far away from each other, this radical reframing is happening in our shared online spaces - allowing activists to reach a far larger, international audience. Everard’s murder and the allegations against Porter have inspired large outpourings of pain and fear at the seeming ubiquity of sexual violence. They have also, however, evidenced the power that emerges from harnessing the worldwide structures of social networking sites - allowing activist messages to potentially gain that same ubiquity. This, I believe, is something we should truly be excited about.