Daily Times

Cyber criminals are increasingly turning to “sextortion” attacks in which they blackmail victims with the threat of exposing explicit photographs or messages. Sextortion is a form of online blackmail, where criminals try to befriend victims and trick them into sharing pictures or may use malware to target victims’ webcams and take pictures themselves in order to acquire blackmail material. The criminals then demand sexual favours in return or threaten to distribute the videos to friends and relatives of the victim, unless a ransom, often hundreds or thousands is paid. Victims feel ashamed or embarrassed, but of course, criminals are relying on that reaction in order to succeed.

Thousands of young women in conservative societies across North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia are being shamed and blackmailed with private and sometimes sexually explicit images. Last Tuesday, additional session judge, Lahore, handed down two-year imprisonment to accused Yasir Lateef, a painter by profession, and also imposed a fine of Rs30,000 on charges of uploading objectionable pictures of a female schoolteacher of a small village in Kharian on her Facebook account after hacking it in order to blackmail her. This case of Yasir Lateef looks at how smartphones and social media are colliding head-on with traditional notions of honour and shame in our society.

Outraged that Yasir Lateef had attempted to shame her publicly, she took legal action. Although she succeeded in having him convicted for defamation, he uploaded the morphed pictures. But the courageous school teacher fought the humiliation after this and did not give into to his inappropriate sexual demands. She stuck to her guns despite tremendous internal and external pressures to withdraw the case. In the West, a naked picture might only humiliate a girl, but in our society, it might lead to her death. And even if her life is not finished physically, it is finished socially and professionally. People stop associating with her, and she ends up isolated, suicidal and depressed.

Sick of the abuse and tired of worrying about who might see the pictures on her Facebook, the female school teacher made a brave decision. She refused to make an out-of-court settlement with the criminal who uploaded her objectionable pictures on her Facebook account. In this accompanying statement, she has defined and argued that it was time to stop using women’s bodies to shame and silence them. Although the new cybercrime law – the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act – has been introduced in the country in August, the court has convicted him on the charges framed under the Electronic Transaction Ordinance as the case was registered in May. But the message has been simple and clear that she had no reason to feel ashamed.

Luckily, the female school teacher from Kharian refused to be shamed into silence. She is more outspoken than most Pakistani women, but her situation is not unusual. A BBC investigation has found that thousands of young people, mainly girls and women, are being threatened, blackmailed, or shamed with digital images from the innocently flirtatious to the sexually explicit. These images are being used to extort money, to coerce women into sending more such images or to force them to submit to sexual abuse.

Sextortion is a problem in every country on Earth, but the potency of sexual images as weapons of intimidation stems from their capacity to inflict shame on women – and in some societies, shame is a much more serious matter. Sextortion is part of a widespread, deeply sexist online culture everywhere from blog comment sections to YouTube videos to message boards. Anonymous sexualized harassment of women online has been around since America online AOL chat rooms, and it seems to be getting more mainstreamed, more organised and more efficient.

It is hard to explain the psychological impact these kinds of anonymous posts have but sometimes within romantic relationships, people have always exchanged tangible things that would be highly embarrassing if publicly revealed, whether that is an intimate note, a suggestive article of clothing or a photo. Society sees it differently, at least when it is about the modesty of a woman. There are not many infamous sextortion cases with threats and demands of inappropriate sexual relationships and pictures of naked men because some societies do not think it is inherently as much degrading or humiliating for men to have been wrongly blamed. Despite the fact that large numbers of predator men torment and stalk women on the internet, there are apparently not large numbers of women who find personal gratification in publicly shaming and demeaning men.

And that is, fundamentally, what these sexually pervert behaviours are all about. They are not about acquiring meaningful relationships; there are plenty of those who are on the internet consensually. It is about hating women, overpowering them, taking enjoyment in seeing them violated, and harming them. Fortunately, the law has caught up with the internet. Under the new cyber law, the offence related to the modesty of a person like superimposing a photograph of a person over any sexually explicit image or video to harm his/her reputation or to take revenge or blackmail is punishable by up to five-year jail or a fine of Rs5 million.

Our current laws have been written with a new social media system in mind, and they need to be regularly updated to protect free speech while also defending against defamation and gross invasions of personal privacy. In the meantime, we can all do small things to marginalise the appeal of sextortion. Support the women who have the nerve to stand up to these privacy violations. Read, promote and raise up women’s voices generally, online and off. And push legislators and prosecutors to stand up to our laws even when the criminal is not just a painter by profession.

Right now, the law and our culture are both on the side of those who shame and humiliate women for cruel intentions, instead of those of us who just want to go about their normal lives, whether that is going to work or living with our family, without putting our careers, our reputations, our psychological well-being and our basic ability to trust the people we are closest to on the line. Here is hoping the school teacher has thrown the first stone to bury the crime that involves extorting money or holding someone to ransom for financial or sexual gains.

The writer is a professor of Psychiatry and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com