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Summary
Online bullying is an increasing phenomenon increasingly making the internet space unsafe for users, especially women. Recently, a lady became a victim of online bullying from men in online forums due to her appearance, exemplifying the menace.
Online bullying and harassment are widespread issues all over the globe, with women mostly at the receiving end of men’s digital bullying and harassment, typically driven by societal gender imbalances. When a woman is threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed, or otherwise targeted through the Internet, interactive digital technologies, or mobile phones, it is referred to as cyberbullying.
Online abuse could range from verbal abuse to more severe threats, with devastating effects on women’s mental health, careers, and online presence. Women receive up to 10 times more negative comments than men in online chatrooms.
A study on Insights into Sexism revealed that the negative and sexist comments expressed by some men are just a form of bullying, motivated by the fact that they perceive women as being lower in the pecking order. Bullying is more common in the presence of strong hierarchies, and the victims tend to be less powerful and lower in the social order.
Men bully women online through various means, including verbal abuse, doxxing, sexual harassment, threats of violence, gaslighting, and cyberstalking. They also employ tactics like mansplaining, mockery, and silencing to belittle women’s opinions and suppress their voices. These actions create a hostile online environment that undermines women’s safety, confidence, and participation.
With such tactics, women can go from feeling low self-esteem and depression to withdrawing from online platforms and facing damage to their professional reputation due to false accusations or attacks.
It has increasingly become commonplace on social media for men to target women unprovoked, even when women haven’t done anything to them. A recent example is when DrAllyLouks made a post on Twitter where she bagged a PhD degree but came under intense bullying from men and incels for posting her achievement because they believe a woman’s role in life is to be a trad wife or a stay-at-home mum not go on to bag degrees.
Like Dr Ally, a lady by the name of Roseline Mgbodichinma, a creative writer and a law student, became the newest victim of online harassment and bullying after she posted a picture of herself appreciating her face with the caption, “You didn’t lie.”
This tweet garnered 11k likes, 2.2k retweets, and 4.5 M views. Women alike gave it many beautiful compliments. @Onwamma01 commented, “You have a beautiful name that fits your beautiful face.”
Similarly, another woman, @tare_abang, tweeted, “So beautiful. I wish I could, but my forehead will finish me. It frames your features well.”
Unfortunately, the post got into the incels pavilion. Tweets praising the lady’s features from women got many men enraged with bitterness and paranoia.
One of the male users @Melvinbenjamin_ quoted “Why una dey lie give her na ??”
Why would a woman, whom men consider unattractive, appreciate her looks instead of complaining about being ugly? Men are not used to women being confident, especially when they don’t fit societal beauty standards. Yet, like headless flies, they made it all about themselves, claiming that the women in the comments who agreed with Roseline that she is beautiful were lying.
Like the Twitter male user above, there were a lot of good compliments until other male Twitter users stumbled upon Roseline’s post and began piling up and being abusive. One such was @spellieEmma, tweeting,
“All of you that commented, “You’re beautiful. Wow you ate. You’re a discovery… Etc.” I promise y’all you really had the option of not saying anything. Not saying anything is also kind.”
The tweet got to “The Boys” community with one such user @joyfulone001, quoting, “This is the type of ugliness you wish on your hated enemy children.
Another male user, @SMARTXX231, from the Boys community also harassed her with the tweet “Dem just day lie give the girl since.”
There is a consensus among these men that she is not beautiful and that women complimenting her are deceiving the lady and should tell the truth that she is ugly. What the male users can’t seem to see is their blindness to piling the abuse and harassment they keep dropping in her comment section under the guise of telling her the truth.
This begs the question of why such men are in a hurry to go to a woman’s page and make her understand she is ugly according to their warped view of what a woman should look like.
In all of this chaos and argument of men trying to prove she is ugly, Roseline Mgbodichinma
responded with a new post,
“In all of this, don’t forget—I’m an excellent writer and editor who tells beautiful stories. Your retweet might just land me my next client. Thank you in advance! I’m not very vocal about the myriad of things I do, but let’s start here.”
She has shown an excellent way of not addressing the bullies but using their piling to do her work instead of wallowing in hatred as they expected her to.
However, studies have shown that online bullying perpetrated by men and targeted at women often causes them to lose trust and confidence in the online community and social media platforms.
