Online Life Is Real Life: Gender Violence in Virtual Spaces

• Online Gender Violence: What is it? Does it affect everyone equally?
• Challenges in Access to Justice
• Types of Online Gender Violence
• Consequences of digital gender violence
• Let’s take action against online gender violence

In 2016, Johana, a high school teacher in a community in southern Mexico, went through something that changed her life forever. Three years after ending an abusive relationship, her ex-boyfriend sold intimate photos and personal information about her to a criminal network that auctioned them off to the highest bidder on Facebook. Suddenly, her privacy was shattered: hundreds of obscene, harassing messages made her feel like an object, trapped in a nightmare she couldn’t understand.

Desperate, she sought support from her family, who held her up with love and understanding. Although they paid to have the content taken down, peace did not return: the images had already been downloaded, and the online harassment intensified. When she went to the prosecutor’s office, instead of finding justice, she was met with ridicule and blame.

The emotional impact was devastating: panic attacks, isolation, suicidal thoughts, and relentless social pressure (from acquaintances and strangers alike) that singled her out. Even so, Johana found strength in her support network and learned that true love does not violate—and that digital gender-based violence is an aggression that is relived every time someone mentions or shares the incident.

Online Gender Violence: What is it? Does it affect everyone equally?

We might think that online gender violence is something new, but it isn’t. Gender-based violence is opportunistic: it takes advantage of every space of human interaction to manifest, spread, take hold, and perpetuate itself, and the digital realm is no exception.

Online gender-based violence includes all forms of harassment, discrimination, exploitation, abuse, and aggression against women, girls, transgender, and nonbinary people in online environments. These attacks can occur through many channels: text messages, emails, mobile apps, social media, chat groups, forums, and more.

Its purpose is to inflict physical, psychological, emotional, economic, moral, or sexual harm—impacting victims in both public and private spheres, and even producing direct consequences within their closest circles, including their families.

This type of violence does not affect everyone in the same way or with the same intensity; its impact depends on the intersecting forms of oppression a person experiences. For example, a Black, transgender activist woman with a disability faces layers of discrimination and violence that a woman with a very different lived reality does not. These intersecting harms also play out in digital spaces.

For this reason, it is crucial to avoid generalizations and oversimplifications about online gender violence. Any analysis must be grounded in power imbalances, lived realities, and the structural discrimination that shapes people’s online and offline lives.

Challenges in Access to Justice

As we learned from Johana’s story, instead of finding support when she sought justice, she faced even more violence. She recounts:

[At the prosecutor’s office,] the process was incredibly revictimizing—very painful. That’s where the ordeal began… I had never filed a complaint before and I thought it would be very easy, but it wasn’t. They sat me down in front of ten people who were laughing (they knew why I was there), and they started asking me: “Why are you here to file a complaint? Was the person you’re accusing your ex-boyfriend?’”

I told them yes; we had been a couple for five years and had even talked about getting married… I told them I left that relationship because I had experienced a lot of violence (including sexual assault), and what they said to me was: “Why didn’t you report it at the time? If you had reported it, maybe it would matter now—but you didn’t.” After they had asked all their questions, they said: “The truth is, we can’t do anything. He was your partner, and you agreed to this. There’s no crime to prosecute. You should have thought about the consequences.” I just stepped outside with my mom and cried…

Because there was no evidence to inform the legal process, they closed the case. Why didn’t I continue? Lawyers are expensive and we didn’t have that kind of money. Every time I went back, they looked at me and laughed (most of them were men), and it was very hard to keep going to a place where we were supposed to find justice and instead be met with ridicule.”

This shows how structural violence works—and how abuse in digital spaces is often treated as less serious. Despite the rise in sexual and gender-based violence, current legal frameworks still have major shortcomings, gaps, and weaknesses when it comes to addressing digital threats, leaving survivors even more vulnerable.

The global organization WITNESS highlights several key deficiencies in international human rights frameworks:

• Although international human rights treaties address gender-based violence in broad terms, they do not account for its dimensions online, including AI-driven threats or the disproportionate impact of sexual and gender-based violence on marginalized groups.
• There is no adequate global framework to hold social media companies or artificial intelligence developers accountable for sexual and gender-based violence facilitated through their platforms and technologies.
• Because online abuse crosses borders, it makes law enforcement and survivor protection more difficult, underscoring the need for stronger international cooperation.

Types of Online Gender Violence

The phrase that has stayed with me most is one by Olimpia Coral Melo: “What is not named does not exist.” I identify with it because throughout my entire experience, I couldn’t name what was happening to me. I didn’t know how to recognize this violence or what it was called, and not having the words for it made everything even harder. Johana

What Johana describes is crucial: when we don’t know how to recognize violence or its different forms, it becomes harder to act, seek help, and demand justice. That’s why we want to share with you a list of some of the most common forms of online gender-based violence. This list draws on “16 Days of Activism” (UNFPA), Navigating the Web Freely, and the “Guide Against Online Gender-Based Violence” (AMARANTA).

• Dissemination of personal data (doxing): This occurs when someone’s personal information (such as a home address, phone number, email, or social media accounts) or confidential data (such as an ID card, passport, or bank account number) is published without that person’s knowledge and consent.
• Hate speech: This includes aggression, threats, insults, attacks, or harassment—primarily targeting women, trans and non-binary people, activists and defenders, and feminist, human rights, women’s, and environmental justice organizations. These attacks are based on gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, age, or political activism (for example, advocacy for sexual and reproductive rights).
• Unauthorized access to accounts, devices, and servers: This involves gaining access to cellphones, social media profiles, email accounts, computers, or servers without permission, with the intent to manipulate information, steal data, blackmail, or extort.
• Sextortion: A form of sexual extortion in which someone threatens to release intimate images, videos, or information to obtain something in return (money, additional sexual content or acts, etc.).
• Dissemination of intimate material without consent: This refers to sharing, through online or print media, images, texts, screenshots, or recordings, whether real or manipulated, that depict partial or full nudity or sexually explicit content without the person’s prior consent. When the material involves anyone under 18, it constitutes child sexual abuse material.
• Online impersonation: This involves creating a fake profile to pose as someone else, with the intention of causing harm, such as damaging their reputation or compromising their safety.
• Deepfakes: Images, videos, or audio recordings generated with artificial intelligence that mimic a person’s appearance or voice to make it seem as though they said or did something that never happened. Deepfakes are used to spread false information and, in many cases, to harass, silence, or humiliate women in digital spaces. They differ from shallowfakes, which rely on simpler manipulations of digital content using basic editing tools (cropping, speed changes, or removing context).
• Racist rhetoric: Messages or expressions that seek to denigrate or devalue a person based on their origin, nationality, race, ethnicity, or other factors. This rhetoric endangers the safety of migrants and Indigenous peoples and is frequently circulated by far-right groups.

Consequences of digital gender violence

At one point, the social pressure was so intense that I thought about ending my life. I said to myself: I don’t want to exist. I don’t want this body, this face. I don’t want to be me. I wished I could disappear just to make the pain stop—not only for me, but for my family. I felt like I had brought shame on them, even if they never said so. Fortunately, that thought came only once. If it hadn’t been for my support network, I might have acted on it. The love of my family, my boyfriend, and my friends saved me. Johana

For someone who has suffered and survived online gender-based violence, there is no divide between the physical world (“real life”) and the digital world (“online life”). The consequences are painfully real: fear, panic, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, disconnection from one’s own body, isolation, shame, and guilt.

The boundary between what happens offline and what happens online is growing thinner, sometimes to the point of disappearing. For example: if you’ve migrated to another country, are the conversations and daily routines you share with loved ones through WhatsApp, Signal, or similar platforms any less real? Is a workplace that operates entirely online any less real than one that exists fully in person? Are the relationships of transnational couples any less real than those of couples who live together physically? Online life is real life!

Let’s take action against online gender violence

• If you are a woman, a trans person, or a non-binary person
• If you are an activist or part of an organization
• If you are experiencing any type of online gender violence
• If you know someone who is going through this
• If you need help, support or advice…

Visit lodigitalesreal.org

In this space you will find resources and help to deal with this type of violence.

If you’d asked me back then whether I could ever see myself the way I am today, I would’ve said no. I would’ve thought I’d never get to where I am today or become the woman I am now. Now I see myself as a strong woman. Sometimes I even ask myself: Where did I find all this strength and determination to move forward? Johana

Note:

Johana gave her testimony to the Semillas Fund as part of the “Lo digital es real” campaign, developed and promoted by the Alianza de Fondos de Mujeres y Feministas de América Latina y el Caribe.

The Alliance is comprised of:

1. Urgent Action Fund for Latin America and the Caribbean (FAU-LAC).
2. Fondo de Mujeres de Bolivia, Apthapi Jopueti. 
3. Fondo Alquimia, Chile. 
4. Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres (FCAM Foundation). 
5. Fondo Elas+ Doar para Transformar, Brasil. 
6. Fondo Lunaria, Colombia. 
7. Fondo de Mujeres del Sur (FMS), Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. 
8. Fondo Semillas, Mexico.

Johana’s reaction to the dissemination of her story as part of the “Lo digital es real” campaign, during the week of November 25th: