{"id":412294,"date":"2018-03-23T13:55:36","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T13:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=412294"},"modified":"2018-03-23T14:27:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T14:27:30","slug":"following-the-trends-abuse-against-women-in-ghanaian-online-space-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2018\/03\/following-the-trends-abuse-against-women-in-ghanaian-online-space-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Following the trends: Abuse against women in Ghanaian online space [Article]"},"content":{"rendered":"
Reflections on selected stories that trended on the internet in Ghana in 2017 <\/em><\/p>\n Various kinds of abuses, especially sexual harassment in all its forms, are prevalent in many societies across the world\u2014principally against women. The situation enkindled the #metoo campaign\/movement that was launched in 2017.<\/p>\n By the end of 2017, the Me Too (#Metoo) movement had more than half a million tweets and hundreds talking about it on Facebook. The teeming female proponents who joined the campaign through tweets and Facebook comments are only a fraction of the many women offline who may have gone through similar experiences.<\/p>\n A baseline study on Women\u2019s Right Online in Ghana by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), for instance, found that about 40% of the women respondents reported experience in different forms of harassment online with almost 7 out of 10 of those women experiencing the abuses more than once.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A snapshot from Milano\u2019s twitter page<\/p>\n As the online world is largely a reflection of offline realities, a lot of the forms of sexual harassment reported offline are being perpetrated online globally\u2014and Ghana is no exception.<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Source: MFWA field data, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n As though to corroborate the findings of the study, 2017 recorded a number of online abuses against a number of Ghanaian females which trended on social media for a while. A few of them are detailed below:<\/p>\n Attacks\/Abuses against Rashida Black<\/strong><\/p>\n In July 2017, a nude video of a young woman who was barely an adult (18-years-old) trended. The woman, Rashida Black, had gained popularity in 2016 for another video in which she hurled insults at her boyfriend. This nude video inflamed comments that sought to attack her.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sampled Facebook comments<\/p>\n While the publisher of the video was unknown, a considerable section of the public seemed to assume that the girl whose privacy had been abused was the one who put the video out. The general public sentiment on the internet over the nude video was against the girl. She was \u201cdirty\u201d \u201cstinking\u201d and \u201crustic\u201d they claimed. In the end, the poor woman was arrested by the Police to answer questions on why her nude video had gone viral on the internet\/social media.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>Revenge Porn against Afia Schwarzenegger<\/strong><\/p>\n In September, a video of a popular radio and TV personality, Valentina Nana Agyeiwaa (referred to as Afia Schwarzenegger in media spaces) known to be a firebrand and an outspoken person, had been caught in bed with another man trended. The man who took the video, reported to be her husband, threatened to empty the contents of a bottle he claimed was acid on the naked body of the lady in the video. The \u201crevenge\u201d video generated a lot of comments on the Ghanaian cyberspace. Below is a section of comments beneath a post of a local online website which published the story.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source www.myjoyonline.com<\/p>\n Whilst a few posts sympathized with the victim and chastised her husband for videoing the nakedness of her former wife, many others lambasted her for being a \u2018prostitute\u2019 whose cup had run full.\u00a0 For some, the \u201cloud\u201d TV personality had been silenced.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>Sexist Discrimination against Pepper Dem Ministries<\/strong><\/p>\n Also in September 2017, Pepper Dem Ministries, an online feminist group launched their activities on Facebook.\u00a0 They had charged themselves with \u201cunlearning and learning the toxic narratives\u201d against women and establishing a better approach to socialisation in society. Perhaps superannuating the old mantra of \u201cwomen must only be seen and not heard\u201d, the group caused a lot of \u2018traffic\u2019 on the internet.\u00a0 The internet was awash with many reactions under the hashtag #PepperDem\u2014maybe\u2014owing to their swift, unconventional and radical response to issues which came off as abrasive to many.<\/p>\n