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In a new book titled, I Am A Troll, Sadhavi Khosla speaks out on the ugly social media trolling that she was once part of, and how it targets women in particular.
Sadhavi Khosla, a former volunteer of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), recently made an explosive revelation. In a tell-all interview, in a book titled I Am A Troll, authored by Swati Chaturvedi, she speaks about how the party would instruct her to do social media trolling against Indian public figures.
She says that she was asked to criticize journalists, actors and political figures online and put up malicious posts against them. Notable persons on the hit list she says, included Rahul Gandhi, and Bollywood star Aamir Khan. Sadhvi however decided to call it quits when she was ordered to tweet criticisms of journalists such as Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt.
“I simply could not follow the directions anymore when I saw rape threats made against female journalists like Barkha Dutt,” she says.
In recent times, the degree of the abuse targeted at notable personalities, especially women, has surely increased. With sexual innuendos, trolls often suffocate women users in cyberspace. In fact, Swati Chaturvedi, the Author of I Am A Troll and a former journalist, has herself been a target. Last year, she filed a police case against an anonymous twitter handle that targeted her and maliciously spread rumours.
The advent of social media has surely opened up various avenues for women. It has given women a place to be vocal, on matters that concern them the most. In a patriarchal society such as ours, which restricts a woman’s movement in public places, this surely is a big phenomenon. She has the freedom in the world of the web to express herself and make her presence felt. However, it seems that patriarchy has trickled down into cyber space as well, in the form of trolls and stalkers.
And the best way to achieve this is to target women. It is easy to harass women with sexually explicit messages, and it can be done anonymously as well. Such sadistic pleasure could be attributed to the insecurity brewing due to the increased visibility of women online. For the troll, the Internet is the only access he has to these women.
The personality of the Internet is changing. A place that was once filled with intelligent discourse and exchange of ideas is today also a space where it is easy to malign anyone with abuse, name-calling, stalking, trolling and shaming. It indeed makes it an ugly place for women, going against the basic freedom that the online world once provided them.
Top image via Pixabay.com
A blogger who writes on society and culture, hoping to bring about positive impact on as many people as possible. Read more posts on www.meotherwise.com. read more...
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My house-help asked excitedly, “I am going for wedding. Can you let me wear your red & black saree? To be honest I was stumped for a moment; I didn’t know what to say but I still said yes.
I lent a gorgeous saree to my house-help for a wedding in her family. Soon I stated getting questions if I would wear that saree again or if I was okay to be seen wearing the same saree my house-help was wearing?
We are all so conditioned to give our used clothes to our house-helps but are we okay to wear the clothes they were wearing?
A few days ago she came excitedly to me, “I am going for a family wedding. I want to wear your red & black saree, Ill wash and give it to you after the function. Please can you let me wear it?”
Beauty is a very clever, very evil capitalist tool. It traps those who have it into hanging on to it for dear life and those who don't into mutilating, torturing themselves to achieve the unachievable.
I recently wrote a piece about MP Shashi Tharoor’s tweet in which he had shared a pic with six women parliamentarians tagging them and saying “Who says the Lok Sabha isn’t an attractive place to work?”
There was a rash of comments on the post shared on Instagram, which ranged from “chill, it’s just a compliment” and “stop overthinking compliments”, to (worried) men lamenting about “these feminazi”.
Here’s my answer to all those comments.
Menstruation is still a taboo in India. Justifies the trolls and comments Rimli Bhattachary received on twitter for saying out loud that she bleed every month.
Menstruation is still a taboo in India. Justifies the trolls and comments Rimli Bhattachary received on twitter for saying out loud that she bled every month.
“Menstrual blood is the only source of blood that is not traumatically induced. Yet in modern society, this is the most hidden blood, the one so rarely spoken of and almost never seen, except privately by women” – Judy Grahn
I had opened a twitter account and was taking baby steps to learn how to use it when I faced the rudest shock of my life. I had started following the noted journalist Barkha Dutt and always loved reading her regular tweets. She had launched a campaign for breaking the taboos encompassing menstruation where I happily tweeted, “I say it loud and clear, that I bleed every month”. While my tweet was supported by Dutt herself, there was one particular man who retorted, “Control, these things are not to be spoken in public.” And then the trolling started.
The recent tragic attacks in Pulwama, Kashmir which took the lives of more than 40 CRPF jawans left the entire nation grieving. Noted journalist Barkha Dutt shared her nuanced piece on Twitter regarding these attacks; however soon she was horribly trolled.
Some of these trolls also managed to get her phone number and sent her menacing messages, one of which included the picture of a male genital with a crude message attached to it. All this in the name of ‘love for the nation’.
Who are these people? Those fearless men who feel that war is solution to all problems. Respond to bloodshed with more bloodshed. And no, they are not the ones that will go on the front to face the bullets. They are only comfortable making faceless treats to women in the name of patriotism.