Nude Self Portraits and Sexual Harassment on Social Media

Recently, a group of self proclaimed hackers had issued threats to women over the content they posted over social media. A group of men, from Kerala, were private messaging women asking them to take down their posts which were 'objectionable'. These objectionable posts were about periods, sex and sexuality. The group threatened to hack these women's accounts, to post their nude photos and openly threatened many who came in support of the women. In Kolkata, the same happened to a woman. She was asked how much she charged for sex among many other things. Mayurakshi Banerjee spoke to WASH about sexual harassment in school, social media and nude photography for which she was sexually harassed and bullied on Facebook and Instagram. In her words, 
 

Let me introduce myself and it is not easy. I am Mayurakshi, and eighteen-year-old from Kolkata. But if you are expecting another teen story, you should stop here. I can't claim that I had a normal life like everyone else. One with friends and lovely parents and how everything went wrong one day. Because nothing ever was right. 
At school, I was the creep no one talked to. I was the ugly little, out-of-place idiot whom no one invited to play with. I used to sit at the far corner of the first bench wearing the biggest skirt that was ever manufactured. Everyone had such creeps in class, right? And everyone knows what happens to such creeps.  

“He he. Look at her ugly nose” 

“Ishh she does double braids!” 

“Look at her skirt! Look at her shirt! How dirty! How weird!”   

When I was introduced to bullying, I was in class five.Years went by, classrooms changed, my classmates grew up but hardly anything changed in my life. Playing lock and key during recess changed to gossiping about boyfriends, the boys in the class started growing moustache and I was still the creep of the class.  

I was habituated to bullying by then. I kept to myself and I never tried to talk to anybody. I sought solace in books. I read everything. From Chetan Bhagat to Charles Dickens to Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett. I knew the world from books and not from experience. 

My granny used to tell my mother “beshi poira poira maiyadar matha kharab hoitase! Uhare eddu baire mishte dao! karo loge kotha koi na! Ohon pagol hoila bujhba.” [She is going crazy reading so much. She should go out and mingle with people. She doesn’t talk to anybody. You’ll understand when she turns insane.] The blame was all on books! I wish I could tell my thammu, my ma and babai how desperately I craved for friends. How badly I needed to talk!  

But the need for human interaction evaporated soon. It was towards the end of class nine. My school participated in an interschool quiz competition and breaking my walls I joined the group that was preparing for the competition. I was the only girl of the team with 5 other boys. Four of them were my seniors and one was my classmate. We had to stay back for an hour after school was over. It was the 7^th day of the fifteen days preparation programme. The teacher who helped in our preparation was absent that day but I didn’t know that.  

After the last class after everyone left, I climbed to the fifth floor to the big hall. The four seniors were already there. I asked them why the teacher wasn’t there yet. They said that she’d be late. I took out a book and sat at the far corner of the room, far from the boys. I looked up from the book when muffled sound of footsteps broke my concentration. There were twelve boys in the room. Four of them were my classmates. The only door of the hall was locked.  

They wanted to know what was beneath my big skirt! I ran form one bench to another. I screamed but the school was empty.The peon who was doing his routine check to see if all the classrooms were locked heard the racket and called the teachers from the second floor. When the teachers came my skirt was not in its place. I had a broken nose and I could feel blood streaming down my temples.  

The boys were suspended for a week. I couldn’t change school because it was class nine.  The principal told my parents that I was very quiet and that I never tried to make friends. His theory was that other students were likely to bully such students. It wasn’t just bullying though. My parents didn’t tell anyone because ‘Loke ki bolbe” [What would people say].’  

Shocked? Well, don’t be. We had written about sexual harassment in Kolkata’s schools earlier. This is not an isolated incident and the attitude of the authorities remains highly problematic. In this case, this case of sexual harassment was not even forwarded to a sexual harassment comlplaints committee. Most probably, the school didn’t have one. Mayurakshi entered social media after this and her years of being called a creep. She continued, 

‘After a few months of this incident one of my cousins made me a Facebook account. She thought I would feel less lonely. Like I said, I knew the world from books and books often create faulty images. 

I thought nobody would be misogynistic. I thought everyone was like me. I assumed people would accept me as the way I was. That people would understand what I was doing. I was wrong.  

My posts, my pictures… they didn’t really match the popular sensibility perhaps. We know that anything different meets with a lot of criticism. The same happened to me.  

People commented shit on my pictures because I wore revealing clothes in them. Every now and then somebody would save my picture and upload it on their profile with filthy captions. People called me a slut and a prostitute. Some asked for my rate for sleeping with them. And not just men, even women hurled abuses at me. I ignored. I was always very good at ignoring.  

Self portrait by Mayurakshi

The recent incident happened on Monday, May 23^rd  2017.  A profile by the name Ar****m M took my pictures from Instagram without my permission and uploaded on his Facebook timeline with the caption “I don’t understand how can people call it as an act of shame. This is art!”  His post got 29 shares. Most of the comments on his post were ones which abused me. Before I knew it, I was the virtual attention seeker whore. 

Self portrait by Mayurkashi

They made fun of me saying that it was not a candid picture because I was holding the book upside down. Some threatened to inform my parents of the picture because no parent would be happy about slutty pictures of their daughter right.  

Well yes! I posed for the picture. I stripped and placed the camera and I clicked the picture and it wasn't a candid! It was a self-portrait. I like clicking pictures and I don't know anyone who would pose for me. Also I can't pay her even if someone agrees to pose for me. So I decided to click self-portraits. 

Facebook user threatening to inform her parents about her nude self portraits

I find body shaming of any nature a criminal offence. One of the comments said that there was nothing to be jealous about my body, if that was what I intended by clicking the picture! I think everyone is beautiful. Human body is more beautiful than anything else on earth. Even if someone is fat, with no thigh gaps and saggy breasts with stretch marks and birth marks here and there, I believe that they look the best when they don't hide behind clothes.’

Facebook user private messaging Mayurakshi asking her how much she charged for sex.

More than the beauty of human bodies in their naked state, we need to address this kind of cyber sexual harassment which happens every day on social media. There were multiple levels to Mayurakshi’s harassment and none of the policies of Facebook or other social media provide any solution to these. 

1. Downloading a user’s picture and uploading it as their own, without permission

2. Moral policing

3. Sexual harassment 

In her Facebook post where she spoke about the harassment she faced and in which she was further harassed she wrote thus.  

'I feel I am walking naked on Shyambazar seven point and people are throwing rotten tomatoes at me! Calling me slut, prostitute! I am ttrying to cover up myself

I am trying to run away. I am trying to vanish in a blink of eye but I am so powerless!
I am so powerless that I can't do anything to these people who are abusing me. I am so insignificant that I can't change the world
What's bothering me more than my own insult is my insignficancy my worthlessness
My weakness
I am weak and I can't stop these people
I am so weak that one day my shine will go matt
my beliefs will erode away and I wilill succumb to the popular notions
That's what I fear the most! I will not be myself anymore
I am not myself anymore
If I had been I wouldn't have been writing this'

 

May be this post also tells us the reason why Mayurakshi and most of us who have faced sexual harassment, bullying, mob violence and violence of other kind on social media never approach the police or ‘cyber cell’ as it is called. Mayurakshi confirmed it. 

 

‘I don’t intend to approach this cyber bullying and sexual harassment that I faced legally. I know the police and I know they will advise me to dress more modestly to avoid further harassment. They will consider me to be blamed for what happened! I still plan to ignore! Because I am weak. Too weak to make a move. Too weak to change anything at all. Sometimes I feel depressed. Everything is wrong! Everything has to change!’ 

We've got good bodies. Her body is nothing to be jealous of.

The photos of Mayurakshi which led to the sexual harassment and bullying have been reproduced here with her permission as an act of solidarity. We also think that ‘imperfect’ bodies should be photographed just the way the ‘perfection’ of size zero models is. The comment that her body is nothing to be jealous of is body shaming and also pointing fingers towards the accepted form of beauty. Women all over the world have started proclaiming their nudity as a political stance. Over here, people like Mayurakshi and many others get harassed.