Cyberfeminism
Hello friends, in this blog I'm going to discuss Cyber Feminism and the bias we see on the internet platform. First of all we need to understand what cyber feminism is. According to Wikipedia source,
Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology.
According to Oxford Reference,
It is a movement that began in the 1990s utilizing cyberculture and feminist ideas to re-theorize gender, the body, and identities in relation to technology and power.
The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring and re-making the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general. It is a community, philosophy and set of practices concerned with feminist acts in cyberspace. Cyberfeminism is a postmodernist keyword used to describe the philosophies of a contemporary feminist community whose interests are cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. The term was coined by Sadie Plant to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general. Cyberfeminism is considered a predecessor to networked feminism. The dominant Cyberfeminist perspective takes a utopian view of cyberspace and the Internet as a means of freedom from social constructs like gender and sex difference. Cyberfeminism views technology as a vehicle for the dissolution of sex and gender as well as a means to link the body with machines. For better understanding watch the video:
It is a term of any illicit activity that involves the use of a computer as its elementary means of the commission. It is a wrongdoing which is committed against a single individual or a group of them with a criminal mind to intentionally cause harm to the dignity of the sufferer or to cause physical or mental trauma to the victim in any manner, direct or indirect, by way of modern telecommunication networks like the internet.
If we see in society we find females are not much connected with cyber space and technology. But males are all much familiar with all this technology. Why did it happen ? Because there are the reasons like,
Culture
Gender Stereotypes
Growth of baby and their Sports equipment
If we talk about culture, we find that in our society boys are much familiar with technology and cyberspace. Slowly and steadily girls are starting to use technology and doing work with technology. Because of the patriarchal society, we see most things were not taught to girls. We find most of top companies and their founders are men. For example, if we look at the big tech companies and their founders :
Microsoft - Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Apple - Steve Jobs
Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg
Amazon - Jeff Bezos
Google - Larry Page and Sergey Brin
All are men ! We find very few women who are founders of companies. Because they are not connected with technology. The girl was also restricted from using this heavy work, like repairing. So the mindset of girls has been narrow in this field of technology since childhood.
Since technology became important, we used to fill out the online forms and all these works,and that was done by our father, brother or friend (boy), because they know much about it and we don't know how to do all the things. Why does it happen ? Because from childhood we divide babies into genders. If the baby is a boy then we give him toys like, car, airplane, machine etc. and if we have a baby girl we give them toys like, kitchen equipment, Barbi doll etc. So they learn the things which we are giving them. So that is why women are not much aware about technology.
On the internet many female writers publish their work with male names. Because the work is judged by people with gender discrimination. We find many examples from the past. If women write anything, people will question her abilities. But if a man writes anything, their work easily overcomes the question of ability. So gender biases are also created in AI. And this AI was created by humans, so we have to input equality into them also.
But now the situation is changing. Women got space in using technology. But the threats are also rising for women. Cyber crime has become an easy weapon to abuse women. So what are the reasons behind that ? Let's see.
MAJOR REASONS FOR THE GROWTH OF CYBER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN :-
The usage of the internet for criminal activities causes big threat to the society in the form of cyber violence and the major victims of this crime are females of all age groups. According to studies, it has been shown that the number of users which were 52 million went up to 71 million in 2009. In these users, 8% of the users were working women and 7% of the users were non-working women in 2009 and 37% of all the users used the internet by way of cyber cafés. What commonly happens is that the cyber café owners leak the personal and essential data of the internet surfer which is then used for illicit activities. And that is why families are not allowing females to use these technologies.
What are the reasons in this cyber violence against females against women are following:
(1) Easily available information of the victims:-
Social networking websites are made for people to connect to each other even at long distances and also to let people know each other. To show the presence of a profile, the users have to put their personal data like age, phone number, residential address, marital status, and so on.
(2) Ignorance and carelessness of the users:-
The social networking websites provide for several options to keep the profiles secure and keep oneself protected from being harassed in numerous ways such as putting up security measures and giving options to lock the personal photos, albums as well as messages. A user can also block a harasser which permanently hides the profile and cannot be found on the website by the harasser. Further, there are options like with whom to share information, a user can select to share it with only the members or with the public or with just oneself. Even after all these security measures provided by the social networking websites, women are prone to all types of cyber violence such as stalking, morphing, hacking, cheating, defamation and sexual abuse on the online platform. Some females had oral arguments with their group mates and they suspected that their user profiles on the website were hacked by some people. Very few women are aware of their legal right to protect their privacy from any outside intervention on the social networking website although many women experience cybercrime more or less and in some or the other way.
(3) Hiding one’s real identity under fake profiles:-
The fundamental right of freedom to speech and expression has encouraged the right to be unidentified on the social media. These websites provide space for changing names, addresses and other personal details regularly. This was done by social networking websites to allow a user to change their physical condition and geographical location from time to time so as to get in contact and interact with the other member on that website but, this has resulted in the other way around where the perpetrators commit crimes and get a blanket to hide under different identities which are fake. These fake account users have put females in more danger and risk on the social media.
TYPES OF CYBERCRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST WOMEN :-
(1) Cyber Harassment:
This is a form of harassment, including blackmailing, threatening and continuous sending of love letters by fake names or constant sending of embarrassing emails to the mailbox of some other user. This behaviour is intended to disturb a person through the usage of the internet. Sexual harassment is a specific type of harassment which is particularly sexual in nature, among several other types of them, it vitally takes into consideration constant and undesirable sexual activities.
(2) Cyber Stalking:
Cyber stalking is one of the most talked about cybercrimes in the modern day. It takes into account following the movements of a person all over the internet by sending messages which are sometimes threatening on the bulletin boards and going into chat-rooms frequently visited by the victim, constantly bombarding the mailbox of the victim, etc. The offence of cyber stalking is generally committed by men who stalk women or by adults who stalk the children.
(3) Cyber Pornography:
It is defined as the posting of sexual substances on the internet. This is again a threat to female internet users as they don‟t even know which of their activities are being recorded and might then go viral all over the web. It is a non-consensual activity wherein pictures and videos of the victim are obtained by certain ways such as hacking into the computer or phone of the victim, via social media accounts, etc. and these harm the life of the victim in the real world. This offence has been covered under the IT Act, 2000 to some extent under Section 67.
(4) Cyber Defamation:
Defamation is a tort and cyber defamation is when the defamation is committed by the use of computers and on the internet. It happens when people start publishing defaming statements or obscene material on various social networking websites on the online platform. The bulletin board of a user is open to be accessed by all other users which means that anyone can post a defamatory statement on their board and then it is visible to everyone. Cyber defamation is also called cyber smearing.
(5) Morphing:
It is to make a picture look different completely or partially from what it originally looks like by a fake identity. The offenders download photos of women from their social media accounts and edit (morph) them and then again upload the new picture in the name of a fake account. Morphing is generally done with two pictures wherein one picture is mixed with another picture and shown in a compromising situation or position which make it look like the women is indulging in the act portrayed in the picture. After this comes blackmail, where the woman is threatened to do something and if not, the pictures would go viral all over the web which will lead to embarrassment of the woman in the community and her status will be diminished too. The offenders committing this crime are booked under Section 43 and Section 66 of the IT Act, 2000.
(6) Email Spoofing:
Email spoofing is to change the real origin of an email in a fraudulent and illegitimate manner. The header part of the address and the sender‟s address is changed in such a way that it is not possible to recognize that the email has been spoofed and looks like that it as been sent from a different source. Men generally send their obscene and vulgar photographs to women via such emails, glorifying their beauty, demanding favours for them and asking for a date or for the price the woman would take for a night with them.
So, in this way cyberfeminism works. If want to reduce the cyber crime we have to educate women more, because the knowledge make them aware about the technology and it will easy to Artificial Intelligence for them.
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