In this documentary, a number of women from supposedly civilized nations speak out about the threats and insults they received through various social media. Quite often these threats and insults were packaged, by the perpetrators, as a just punishment for grievous crimes committed by the women, such as the crime of having a strong political opinion, the crime of having an opinion at all, the crime of having survived some shocking tragedy or the crime of having been born female. Other segments of the documentary consist of explanations (or attempts at explanation) by experts such as sociologists or linguists, who try to uncover general patterns.
The whole is a thoroughly disquieting tale about the way in which misogynists mock, muzzle and attack women seen as "uppity" or "difficult". And fighting back is difficult, since the business model of the classic internet giants thrives on hatred and conflict rather than on reason and harmony. Moreover it is far from simple to punish this kind of misbehavior through the courts : many legal systems are woefully uninterested and/or woefully ill-equipped to deal with the problem. Trying to obtain some kind of justice or reparation requires nerves of steel, an iron patience and (presumably) a wallet filled with gold.
Here the Nadia Daam case is particularly illuminating. Mrs. Daam received a variety of gruesome threats, some of which spilled over into real-life danger, not only to herself but also to her minor daughter. Somehow she succeeded in getting the state to prosecute the perpetrators - no mean feat, sadly enough - which led to a number of trials. Eventually the culprits were condemned but the sentences handed out were light - lighter, anyway, than the fear and suffering Mrs. Daam had gone through.
Supposedly there's some legal light dawning in the distance, but then, that same light has been dawning for two or three decades by now.
Quite a watchable documentary, although it would have been interesting to hear something from the perpetrators themselves. (How DOES one justify sending fifteen pages of hair-curling obscenities to some lady living 170 miles away ? Or how DOES one justify threatening a child ?) But then, this might very well have turned into a giant amount of self-serving taurine excrement. In this shadow world, cruelty goes hand in hand with cowardice and lack of conscience...
The whole is a thoroughly disquieting tale about the way in which misogynists mock, muzzle and attack women seen as "uppity" or "difficult". And fighting back is difficult, since the business model of the classic internet giants thrives on hatred and conflict rather than on reason and harmony. Moreover it is far from simple to punish this kind of misbehavior through the courts : many legal systems are woefully uninterested and/or woefully ill-equipped to deal with the problem. Trying to obtain some kind of justice or reparation requires nerves of steel, an iron patience and (presumably) a wallet filled with gold.
Here the Nadia Daam case is particularly illuminating. Mrs. Daam received a variety of gruesome threats, some of which spilled over into real-life danger, not only to herself but also to her minor daughter. Somehow she succeeded in getting the state to prosecute the perpetrators - no mean feat, sadly enough - which led to a number of trials. Eventually the culprits were condemned but the sentences handed out were light - lighter, anyway, than the fear and suffering Mrs. Daam had gone through.
Supposedly there's some legal light dawning in the distance, but then, that same light has been dawning for two or three decades by now.
Quite a watchable documentary, although it would have been interesting to hear something from the perpetrators themselves. (How DOES one justify sending fifteen pages of hair-curling obscenities to some lady living 170 miles away ? Or how DOES one justify threatening a child ?) But then, this might very well have turned into a giant amount of self-serving taurine excrement. In this shadow world, cruelty goes hand in hand with cowardice and lack of conscience...
