I have a me ok and your industry and im really could be lied to based violence knows no borders especially in this Digital World today we discuss how to end Online Violence against women share your thoughts you can tweet us at 8 a stream or leave a comment to the live chat and youll also be in the street. And have a 25th International Day for the elimination of violence against women that go a step an attention to gender based violence its an issue that continues to plague women and girls around the globe despite the 1904 United Nations resolution aimed at tackling the problem and in this age of the internet new forms of violence also saying unmentioned in these matters can be in numerous forms such as Sexual Harassment revenge porn boxing trolling and even the threat of physical violence the impact is that it undermines the work of women especially black and black women and women of color and schools their confidence making it difficult for them to come online and do their activism and we need our governments to step up on the work hard towards ensuring that the rights of women are protected online and offline. Joining us to discuss face in islamabad pakistan has a ball shes the acting coach director of the Women Rights Division at Human Rights Watch in London England shea if you will shes the founder and executive director of glitch thats a Nonprofit Organization determined to end on line abuse and in San Antonio Texas artist and activist Ashley Fairbanks her work focuses on finding creative ways to enact social change welcome everyone to the stream it would be hard pressed to find a woman at least in our community who cant simply relate to todays topic ourselves included here on that i know i want to bring in a few of those people who share with us some of their thoughts 1st one is ari ari on twitter says Online Violence against women and girls is part of a continuum of violence against women women and girls online or at risk a very Violent Attacks that go from sexes and massages mystic hate speech to brutal threats and a great number of these attacks target their gender she why is it important as ariel here explains to categorize Online Violence and online abuse under violence against women. Language is so important if we talk about online of the use as a form of violence then we start treating the symptoms as as trauma or we start looking at solutions as if it is violence because it is and we also start looking at investing in the root problems when we have a language that still believe its always online to be used and it impacts it means that send us back and weve gone weve made so much progress actually line of our recreating the night around reclaiming our public spaces to have to repeat this same narrative online and we have a little victim brain when it comes to online abuse which means book we mean suffer in silence and im not seeking support or not speaking out because of the fear of ball abuse and its really important to understand it into sections with other identities that women women of color are most likely to face online abuse and also more likely to be silenced by other white women and other other people chain youre not just saying this because youve seen it its a series that you have you are living this pretty much in the day to day basis can you give us one example so we really understand where youre coming from i mean youre absolutely right its just yesterday we spoke out about a backlash of a film talking about been and been open issues and the amount of abuse that we have seen on social media the last 40 hours its been ridiculous the play of the n. Word and its in the diverse use that it has been disgusting and the fact that Tech Companies have not been able to pick up. This language is inferior i think but its not just me its m. P. s who have cited the online abuse is one of the reasons why theyre standing down here in the u. K. And at the next election weve also got died at the office black the no and b. Shadow home secretary saying that the amount of abuse that starr have to deal with every single day and thats really important because the levels will troll much the Online Violence has its not just on the individual its on their friends their family effects their walk place it affects their finances all quite series of violence which is why its so important we acknowledge online and offline violence on this day actually as you know to go ahead articulate that knowledge. Yeah well i just used to be the digital director for 11 m r who is one of our 1st muslim congressman here in the u. S. And the amount of threats and violence she faced online and i mean she was very grave in the face of them every day but you know as the person who had read every comment has to for those comments to turn best again it was horrifying to see what was normal lives almost every treat you know would have you know threatening language and it was it was brutal every day which even i think yet go go go ahead i was going to spend i think thats really important to acknowledge because there are women and young girls that are looking ill efficiency who are finally seeing themselves in people. In america but also all around the wild and they also see the abuse that they receive and that is not that they are putting we have young girls thing that i dont think politics is for me small and that i think of it as the overall flowing impact that this is basically be trapped as well. So i one of the things go ahead heather go ahead heather no i was just going to say that i mean i think theres a real continuum between violence offline and violence online and one of the things thats interesting that the un has actually started recommending is that in orders of protection that are issued for example in Family Violence cases that judges also look at including Online Violence as part of those orders and one of the issues that weve been looking at where i think the internet has really taken it and Old Fashioned abuse and sort of put it into hyper drive is sharing of images online intimate images that people either didnt know were being taken or consented to having taken but didnt expect didnt consent to having shared online and and we really saw an example of that in the katie hill case where we had this incredibly promising young woman who was driven out of a political career by you know in consensually shared images so as soon as you all are talking i want to i want to jump in here because i want to get people a little taste of what this is like and what its like for me as a woman going into our you to Comment Section sometimes sometimes its full of really intelligent comments and other times not so much so ill give you just a little taste you can see here some people are saying Online Violence in tweet and quotes how is Cyber Bullying real just turn off your computer another person writes in all and violence is a real another says well theres a lot a laughing why does why do men need to help solve this problem this isnt a thing so it goes on and on and i get i could scroll forever in that but actually i want to pick up on the point that heather was making about why this is real and why its not something you can just turn off your computer and pretend didnt happen talk about your experience. Yes so i mean very often the things that happen on land theres you know less and less of a boundary between that mary real lives and its frequently paradox into so people are not just sharing those intimate images but then also sharing what your details are of where you live or whatever and the experience i have in mind is you know when i was younger. A person got me intoxicated in films me performing a sexual act against my will and for years i was haunted by that video being out there on the internet he released it on a message board that i had moderated at the time. And i didnt talk about it for a decade because i was so terrified that one day those images would be released and ruin my career and every job that i did it was like when will this money goes happen so many things happened to katie hill the congressman from california who resigned it just prompted me to share my story and say we shouldnt actually have to be in the closet about having these things out there because its actually pretty normal and theyre being used against us all the time theres something to really important to say how whats up as well young young go speak a Little Washington discourse citizenships and young girls are terrified of how their career and leaving school because some of them have made informed decisions are now being sexually expressive and i teach facilitating that but some of them have been coerced into sharing. Images of themselves and they now report about their careers and i think this is going to be the new form all gender based out of the law and that will be you so much against women who want to stand in public life and you know im seeing some of the comments that come through on zinni and in the with those things some of the comments that you brought out thats why its really important to talk about online abuse not to. Talk about it as if its just trolling a lot of these is a very much an umbrella for all of the different tactics and just saying Somebody Just to block it its not going to help the situation i actually just thought about its not about help somebody who has been dead one. Which affects trans communities where their previous name and identity is up online so its really important so i can you shut down for a 2nd this is a phrase that i saw on a lot about Online Harassment days named that ones need to me i can explain what that means yes there are dead no humans tends to affect trans communities the most and its whether people somebody will maliciously use their previous name or bring up their previous name or previous photo and that tends to happen to a lot of young trans people who are online so have lived through both identities and that gets used against them to ridicule them to make them put in barriers to try and get them off the platform and blocking is not going to help that situation and thats why i think its really unfortunate we talk about revenge porn on the show to consensual photography we talk about docs in but we all also talk about how he moved out in real life and that happens with m p a couple years ago so that i threw organizing online im blocking is not the solution here and i just remind everybody joe cult site m. P. It was motives. It was not just you. Yeah i just want to jump in and follow on shays a point about educating people especially young people about being a responsible Internet User i mean we look at this issue globally and womens rights issues globally in general and its very difficult to find a government anywhere in the world that stewing a good job of including comprehensive Sexuality Education in their schools and its incredibly clear that how you use the internet and what consent means in the context of the internet is a crucial part of what children need to be learning these days and what we need to teach people is not that you shouldnt allow yourself to be photographed we should all be a lot we should all be able to photograph any part of our body we want doing anything we want any time without there being any expectation that that means that its now free for anyone to share anywhere but children just arent being told that in pretty much any country we can think of one im glad its friends are you getting about all of that im glad that you race that night and i hear you coming in actually ill give this to you but im glad to have the raise that because its kind of pushing it into what then do we do about this education being one of those things so tackling the problem is one of the things we want to make sure we bring out into the show and to that point we asked the Stream Community for ways that theyd like to see the problem address here just a few of their thoughts. One so i didnt see any young woman and. I have is actually the National Cyber assman how blind that. Started in 2016 and woman from anybody is on what us and get us and digital to go to hell or our legal help we know that Sexual Violence happens to all women but particularly for women of color and in my own case for black women the stories that they tell can be a pairing because theyre often ignored and marginalize its my hope that there becomes a much more deep understanding of recent gender politics hold your workplaces and your communities accountable who are supporting you because in fact when people are isolated in this way it is much much harder to respond much harder to continue to speak out if they are activists to run for office if theyre politicians to be journalists if theyre writers so actually from Holding People accountable to setting up a National Cyber harassment helpline whats your take. I think and what have you just said about affirmative consent education is incredibly important in my home state of minnesota i would been fighting really hard to get for me to consider education pass as a standard for everyone im just of the people know that you have to opt in to Sexual Activity and that could be you know actual physical acts or its the sharing of photos as well great but then there actually has to be a massive cultural shift that happens so we can put all kinds of legal standards in place and different kinds of education in place but there really has to be a shift in the idea that you know small acts of harassment online are just building to those next levels right so we have a continuum of violence that you want if i share something you think that you put together that a lot of people are sharing and this is this is tracy spicer she tweeted this out a Sexual Violence pyramid but this pyramid was created by you and explains beautifully what you about to say but lets do it via the poem tell us explain it to us just very briefly how it starts the bottom with its just a joke and then how the very top the pinnacle we end up with murder how is the city i tell it of acting out of a really dense academic text and turns into a Cartoon Version and then can translate it like you know which is talking about how those base level jokes or language you know using someones turnarounds incorrectly those things build upon the next level then normalize that behavior so that you can do that next thing and people dont really look at it as much right right just like any kind of a system that youre building a ladder so the eventually you know that gets to the physical abuse and then eventually to those crimes and then to with them aside being the end result the death of women so what so anyone whos watching is thinking oh its just cyber harassment is just online 10 your phone off that that this just very little that pair between harassment threats and verbal abuse when we get physical violence on. Individuals and then just real tragedy there right at the very top but it very pinnacle i want to share something with you this is liz shes the founding executive director of online is an ngo helping of a victims of Online Harassment she talked to a. J. Plus last year in this what she talked about a possible looking at the dark side of the internet have a look i was just a girl out of college and just graduated moved back to new york city starting my 1st job in finance you know excited to be in the real world and getting these strange emails i got an email that had kind of an implicit threat and there were like if you dont show up on this day you know i will do x. Y. And z. But i didnt know what to do about it do i tell my employer or do i tell my parents and its one on one so it doesnt matter if anyone knows about it its just men for the target to be afraid this. Really didnt know what to do about it so she set up her own ngo what to people do if this is happening to them. Well i think one of the problems is that there often arent good options for i mean youve shown some people like you got diabetes doing such interesting work in pakistan but what we found in our work in south korea is that. People sometimes try to go to the police but that rarely ends well we heard about terrible experiences with you know police being dismissive or left saying or passing pictures around the Police Station you know intimate pictures and and sort of comparing notes and laughing about them or telling telling victims that they need to give the photos themselves to the police so i think theres a huge amount of work to be done in terms of reforming criminal justice responses but i think there are a lot of other responses as well we dont want putting people in jail to be dissolution to everything and so we need to look at options like being able to sue the person who did this and perhaps also be able to sue the platform that knew that it was there and that it was evidence of a crime and didnt take it down more i think its really just important to jump in here and talk about when what happens when you try and act this justice the amount of it is that people and if you are in a hitch is that the relationship or your head has that feel its easier for you to go to Law Enforcement but if your home ethics bisexual it and youre in a country where legislation is just been introduced or doesnt exist you are basically outside yourself and put in a call get on your back and that is what people around the wild have told us in this letter is that thats why we might feel when were talking about recommendations we have a global out that we dont recommend things that are all censoring all because of expression but also doesnt acknowledge the fact that not everybody has the human rights that we fire the have and i think education is really important i think we dont discuss the na what does the author is and ship me we understand with every responsibility that weve not thought its a quad about what it means to be in on. That is than and thats going to be you know in a whole being identity every time as a new tech piece of technology a whole issue were going to have to adapt and change but weve never had that conversation and you know today that my foundation i have a social contract or a new contract for the web i really want to make sure that access around the and around the well to the internet and i think thats fantastic and what you find that same as you were trying to get were more people signed up to the internet then must be this was this the ship education that goes along side it there must be Safety Training for women that goes along fight it because you are providing mobile phones to women in Rural Communities which you think is empowering and to some extent it is but you also putting them in real danger of their within because that if families or village is weve had stories of women talk about having been forced to take photos of themselves and then being men and not being sold and the and now being you know. That now trafficking so we have to really think about the intersection here and how we want to embrace the online space is that an amazing amazing tool and it is a social good but only we all keep making sure its a social good and take responsibility for it so you mentioned the end Online Citizen and i think theres someone online in our community who brought up something i hadnt thought of before but part of that work starts at the very beginning with language i want to bring in this from asha who says language is critical revenge insinuates a prior relationship that has broken down leading to an act of revenge this is not often the case porn indicates sexual pleasure can be gained from these images read victimizing the survivor this is image based sexual abuse and she of course is referring to what several you have alluded to the the attempt to shame people by sharing pictures or images or videos she goes on to say the Digital Space is crucial in facilitating trafficking of women and girls for Sexual Exploitation globally this is not just an issue of hate speech but an acknowledgement of the impact of Digital Technology on our lived violent realities so with that ashley where should this onus lie is it on the individual person or is it also on the social Media Companies is it on governments. I think thats a thing that we kind of missed so far is that a lot of the gender divide in the text based the gender disparity that we have so few women present at the levels of leadership and throughout the process that they miss what the reality is the lived reality for women is so they dont understand as theyre making terms of Service Agreements as there are no building in Safety Devices in the platforms theres critical voices missing at those tables that are saying heres the problems were dealing with and how do we address those things right so i think theres a massive onus on Tech Companies and in a massive you know thing for governments to catch up like our policies are so far behind where they need to be to keep people safe on the internet and thats present in violence against women but its also present in you know our huge fight against White Supremacy especially on mine and white terms is that its actually its you know so many many. Its also about how how we think about each of them and about intimate revelations and how if it is an intimate revelation why with angel korea. Thats where we are at this point how do we think differently ashley. I think we have to just realize that our social norms are changing and we have to have a conversation about what that means what does accountability look like in the digital age what does it mean to teach kids what consent looks like at all levels not just about like physical touch but the idea that like our digital personas are an extension of our physical bodies so we have to define those conversations from the youngest age because the only way that we can actually change social norms and social mores is to start with children and it starts with you know the things i love seeing here and tell their kids you dont have to accept that hug from a relative you can just say no you decide who touches your body and that that can be with photos too you know children should have the right to say hey mom and dad you dont have to put my photos on the internet let me get to own there and have agency over there and i did i actually sing a couple generations away before some xs video was picture will phone picture. As dire consequences weve got to wait for the little ones to grow up before were actually mature enough to understand that that shouldnt impact your work life or any of the other people that you think you interact with are we talking a generation. I dont think it has to be that long for some significant changes to make as more especially Millennial Women move into managerial classes across industries and in that we can choose to make some different decisions and say that if we see these things were not going to perpetuate the idea that theyre disqualify we dont think that were going to like slut shaming women and because they took a photo of themselves when they were 24 years old or whatever were going to say actually are still valid person that this is a normal thing to do right and that we keep on changing the conversation i mean just go back to me who is of wrangling in the community right now this is good advice from someone on twitter who says until online gender based violence is outlawed a few protective strategies are reporting the abuser online ignoring and or blocking releasing a statement securing your account filtering the content you see and asking for help so have a shiny and ashley are all online you can follow them and get advice from them directly on line of close need to be civilized upright and courteous that for the last half an hour of a conversation together thank you guess a key fact munity as well they can i will see you online take. The ad. To the a. To. The a. To. The on. Talk to notice there are winners they dont believe in the 2 state solution the do you still believe in the 2 state solution we listen to what i just said it was the park to stand would never start a war im anti war we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on the 00. From ancient emperors to communist leaders. Age old philosophies and the rule of order remains central to the worlds oldest living civilization. In a 2 part series the big picture charts the rise of a 21st century superpower and examines the challenges it now faces from the outside and from within the china complex coming soon on aljazeera new talk an alaskan village rapidly losing ground to the road thawing permafrost its inhabitants forced to move to safer ground below the west 1st the environment one of the roots when its also where its finds people struggling to cope with rising sea and asked whether those who have the power to stop it appreciate the true cost of failing to act on aljazeera. As flames engulfed me on this is the world watched in horror but behind the smoke screen a murky world is devouring the forest and its inhabitants killing pull the personal always standing up on differently before. The message to everybody in the community fold lines meet those on the front line of defending their environment and asks who is stoking the flames in both scenarios brazil isnt burning on aljazeera. Hello im Maryam Namazie and london with a look at the headlines this hour now the United Nations is calling for calm in the democratic republic of congo after hundreds of protesters in the eastern town of bennys stormed un buildings and set fire to the Mayors Office at least 4 people were killed by gunfire during the clashes but the u. N. Denies that its peacekeepers shot at any demonstrators people are saying they are angry at the government and the u. N. Mission for their failure to stop the rise in deadly rebel attacks in the region. Reports. This is the moment protestors in beni were shot from inside a United Nations compound by