Strength TogetHER 7 - Session 8

September 6, 2021

"IF YOU'RE INSULTING PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET, YOU MUST BE UGLY ON THE INSIDE." - PHIL LESTER

Lokopakar is a youth-based organization that is currently running four programs among which Strength TogetHER is one of its projects where a group of girls from different backgrounds meet virtually and share their stories, insecurities, ideas, and perspectives and help each other grow. In each session, a moderator is invited who listens, appreciates, and guides the participants.

On 6th September 2021, we conducted our 8th session, on the topic " Online Bullying" as suggested by our participants and shared our bitter online stories. Around 13 girls virtually came together to discuss what's bothering them and bid goodbye with relief.

Our session was moderator by Ms. Brigid Baba Shrestha (She\They) who loves to engage in feminist discourses and calls herself a radical feminist. Currently, she is working as a Speech-To-Text interpreter\ captioner for the hearing group of persons with disabilities. In addition to that, she is also a freelance content writer.

After a short introduction with the moderator, our participants started their stories. some stories are:

Our first speaker shared that when she was in grade 8, she got homophobic and racist comments on one of the confession pages by her known friend. He even messaged her close friends and started blackmailing her. He had even made a fake account to slut shame his ex-girlfriend. Our speaker was devastated to see comments from her girlfriends. Though she had blocked him, reported him from her all social media accounts, she recalled feeling helpless and crying for days. 

She shared that a few days back when she was scrolling her photos on her phone and saw those screenshots, it made her cry even after four years of that awful experience. She still finds it disturbing.

Our second speaker shared that she recently found that her cousin is being abused by a stranger. She shared that her sister is so naive that she has no clue who she is talking to. She replies to creepy strangers completely unaware of their intentions. When asked why she chats with such people she replies that they are her friends. Our speaker was saddened to know that her sister's parents think that their daughter is smartly taking her online classes while their daughter is being abused online.

Our third speaker shared that she often gets hate comments on the school confession page. She has found many of her fake accounts who text her close friends asking for her photos, she has even been abused by her friends on group chats. It got worse when her teacher characterized her. She said it is very disturbing to experience daily and see other people experience the same.

Our fourth speaker shared that she doesn't like to see message requests from random strangers. It just confuses her, makes her worried to see the unusual message from people whom she has never known before. She finds such people a threat to her privacy and things like'' why did this person text me? How did he know me? will he harm me?" keep playing on her mind making her feel unsafe every time she scrolls social media.

Then our moderator gave individual feedback to our speakers. She even related them with her experiences and shared how she handled such situations. some of the conclusions from her feedbacks are:

• It is not our accountability to educate the abuser, he already is problematic, so stand up against him.

• Don't protect the abuser even if he is related to you.

• Many young people are being abused, they are not aware of intentions of the abuser so it is our responsibility to aware and empower them.

• Blocking the abuser from social media is a temporary solution, we should call out them, let's report them by writing formal applications to concerned cyber security authorities.

We learned that we should draw the line of harassment at our comfort. None has the right to defame, abuse, sexualize, we do not owe civility to the abuser. We should stand up against them by reporting them, calling out to them, and supervising our minors. Our moderator even suggested safety and precautions. She suggested some organizations that run online and that have been making the youths aware. 

Our moderator said that she was very proud to see the girls being expressive, which assured that the fight against online bullying is starting somewhere. She stated that" this discussion is making us vocal, identifying the problem which is already an initiative."

It was indeed a thought-provoking session!.

I am Aahana Dhakal, cohort coordinator of cohort 7, learning by sharing and listening to stories in the Strength TogetHER family.