Cyberbullying and women

Simple
1, Introduction of the group: (adressing parts in the presentation)
2. Presentation
- Intro: Over the past decades cyber-bullying has become a debatable topic in schools,
workplaces, forums and the list continues. Moreover, this kind of bully via cyber-space is
most prevalent among women. Although, cyber-bullying against female is alarming and
disturbing globally, the promblem has sadly gained a miniature attention in our country,
Vietnam. The aim of this presentation is to explore and take a closer look at the inequality of
gender in a digital world.
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3. Definition and isssue

- What is cyber-bully? According to UNICEF.org, Cyber-bullying or cyberharassment is
bullying with the use of digital technologies. It can take place on social media, messaging
platforms and mobile phones. It is repeated behaviour, aimed at scaring, angering or
shaming those who are targeted. For instance: spreading lies about or posting embarrassing
photos of someone on social media, sending hurtful messages or threats via messaging
platforms, impersonating someone and sending mean messages to others on their behalf.
Face-to-face bullying and cyberbullying can often happen alongside each other. But
cyberbullying leaves a digital footprint – a record that can prove useful and provide evidence
to help stop the abuse.
Tragically, girls are at the forefront of this technological disater. A study by Hindujia and
Patchin in 2010 found that 95% of girls report having been cyberbullied, compared to only
15% of boys. For a momment, please leave those datas aside and understand that women
are more likely to be targets of online bullying than men.

4. Reason
- Firstly, we have to clarify that cyber violence is indiscriminate. Almost anyone with an
Internet connection or mobile phone can cyberbully someone else. But bullies tend to pick on
people who are different or don’t fit in with the mainstream. Especially women since they are
regarded as the “beauty gender”. This kind of obsolete prejudice is the reason why people
think that it is normal to judge or to send hateful comments towards women online.
- Moreover, the advent of social media provides online users to have more platfroms and
opportunities to make harmful comments about females. And the most dangerous feature of
social media is the anonymity. Bullies can hide their identities and also harm others at the
same time, which means it is easier to bully online than do it in the reality.
- Women have always been suffered from discrimination in the real life and now in the cyber-
space the bullies can connect with each other and gather in a group to hummiliate or give
false prejudices against women.
- For example: Have you guys ever heard of “Take the red pill” page on Facebook? “Take
the red pill” is a public page in Vietnam which strongly support toxic masculinity and criticise
“feminism”. It ís based on “The Matrix” movie, when a character named Morpheus gave the
protagonist, Neo 2 pills to decide which one to take, the blue pill would make him forget
everything and live a blissfully ignorant life and the red pill would reveal an unpleasant or
otherwise life-changing truth. The ideology of redpill is that male is the dominant and the
superior gender and female must submit male’s needs. This page often uploads posts like
these (show on powerpoint) and even gains 34k of likes. Those are some of the reasons why
there are more women get bullied online more than men.

5. Consequence
- The most apparent consequence is that groups, pages like the aforementioned example
can have bad influence to the social media users by spreading lopsided mindsets thus more
men and even women will lower the role of female in the society. The online community is
usually biased by the majority of opinion without knowing it. Take the example of the recent
drama of Son Tung, Hai Tu and Thieu Bao Tram. The phrase “tra xanh” or “Tuesday” has
become more popular than ever before. Those slangs are used to imply the woman who
meddles in the relationship of others. Although the people involved in the story haven’t
clarified it, many users started to catch on the “trend” and strongly criticized HT by
bodyshaming and humiliating her. Even if HT is like what people called her, “Tuseday”, we
must rememeber that about adultery, the first person who breaks principles of a relationship
is the one to blame. But in this case, a lot of people are blindly defending the man and
blaming the woman. Does it mean the only responsibility of woman is to maintain the
relationship? Does it mean if the woman has an affair, it is because of the woman and
otherwise if a man has an affair it’s also because of the woman? That false idea will
gradually grow in people’s mindset with the power of social media, then females will also
start to loose their “identities”.
- Serious consequences like depression and suicidal thoughts and behavior have been
linked to cyberbullying. A lot of women who received
6. Solutions
- This problem cannot be easily solved in a short time. It requires the media houses to take
responsibility and improve their routines both around their own journalists and their freelance
writers. Otherwise, the media will lose important public voices.They also need to protect their
users by creating a safe environment for everyone.
- Instead of spreading toxic prejudices of women or men, we need to support pages and
groups that fight for the gender equality, for instance: VOGE, CEPEW Vietnam
- To help the women or the victims, they should have someone to talk to, perhaps someone
who has experienced the same, may diminish the effect of the threats and the bullying. The
community may help put the experiences into words and turn them into something less
shameful.