gisw13_chapters

ox 1In February 2009, intimate pictures of a Malaysian female politician were sent, allegedly byher partner, to local daily newspapers and subsequently posted online and circulated viamobile phones. While newspapers did not publish the pictures, they questioned and reportedlybullied the politician over the images. Her political opponents used the leaked photos andvideos to question her morality and demand her resignation. Despite her public statementthat she did not feel embarrassed or compromised, she resigned from her political post. Dueto overwhelming public support, her resignation was eventually rejected by the government.Although the Constitution of Malaysia enshrines a conclusive list of fundamental rights,including freedom of assembly, speech and movement, it does not specifically recognise theright to privacy. 23of how violations of women’s privacy rights have reverberatingeffects on individuals and societies.Thirdly, the need to balance one person’s rightto privacy with another person’s right to know – twobasic human rights – makes this a particularly complexpolicy terrain. Often the way that these rightsare defined depends on power relations within asociety. This debate has traditionally generatedsignificant friction within feminist and social justicemovements, unmasking divisions of race, class andother perspectives between those who advocate forlimits to freedom of expression that are needed tostrike a balance with other human rights and thosewho believe that freedom of expression must be absolute.The complexity of this terrain was uniquelyvisible in May 2013, when a coalition led a weeklongcampaign to hold Facebook accountable forits policy on dealing with hate speech and the representationsof gender-based violence shared byits users. Within one week, the Everyday SexismProject, Women Action & the Media (WAM!) andactivist and writer Soraya Chemaly succeeded ingenerating enough pressure on Facebook to getthe USD 1.4-billion company to admit that contenton the site has been “evaluated using outdatedcriteria” and to promise to review and update theirCommunity Standards around hate speech. In response,freedom of expression advocates havevoiced concern and criticism over the precedentset by demands for Facebook to remove hatefulcontent from its site.Despite this ongoing debate, there is clearspace for agreement on the need for accountabilityin how internet intermediaries deal with abusivecontent, a point made by advocates from a varietyof backgrounds, including the UN Special Rapporteuron freedom of opinion and expression. 19 Ifhuman rights are indivisible, inalienable and interdependent,then freedom of expression cannottrump the right to live a life free of violence. Collectiveadvocacy to move this agenda over the nextthree years of global policy debates could be animportant contribution of women’s and social justicemovements to creating an online environmentthat respects freedom of expression and individualrights to safety.Moving to the left-hand side of the framework:What changes in individual consciousness andinvisible norms and cultures are needed?Securing resources and policies that create opportunitiesfor more women and girls to access and usethe internet – or for more women’s rights advocatesto have an equal voice in decision making aboutinternet governance – will fall short unless ampleattention is paid to the left-hand side of the Genderat Work framework: that is, the largely invisible andexpensive-to-track areas of individual attitudes andcollective norms and values that ultimately influenceour choices, our attitudes and our actions.There are two dimensions to monitoring andchanging individual attitudes that perpetuate genderdiscrimination on the internet (the upper lefthandquadrant). Firstly, there is the power of theinternet to track and change the attitudes of thosewho actively promote or enable gender discrimination,both online and offline; secondly, there are theattitudes of women themselves, who can encounterboth empowerment and disempowerment withinthe power of the internet.19 www.takebackthetech.net/blog-feeds/4412 / Global Information Society Watch