Several weeks ago, I uploaded a video responding to a subscriber who suggested that I would buy razors to shave my armpits or never lift my arms. My response was to show the hair in that area, claiming it wasn’t my intention to do that because I like it. Some time later, I started getting a lot of followers. More specifically, male followers who, in addition to following me, wrote me comments and private messages saying how much my hairy armpits excited them or, directly, trying to flirt with me.
He didn’t need proof, but he had no doubts. This video was circulating in a group online and the result was this avalanche of subscribers And unwanted interactions. The final straw was when one of them started asking about my sessions and after receiving a response, made a sexual advance towards me. I ended up hiding the video to stop the drip and preventively block each follower who arrived following this publication.
He management of time, energy and emotions that I invested – which ranged from surprise to disgust to anger at talking to someone who was feigning interest in my work to attract sexual attention – that’s what you might call the cost online female. A price that women pay to be present on social networks and which is seen as inevitable.
Those of us who distribute feminist content or are connected to social justice movements pay even more. This toll includes moderate comments consistently, block, report, document attackslearn cybersecurity to survive, endure sexualized violence, and even reach normalize it to continue to occupy the network.
It is also a time, energy and emotional exhaustion that men do not invest to the same extent, because for them the Internet is not a hostile space. In fact, if there is a cost online For us, the opposite case is clear digital male privilege. In other words, being able to show yourself, give your opinion or make a mistake without fear of being punished or having to anticipate harassment, violence or public humiliation before putting something online.
For me, this is further proof that we are evolving in a structural digital inequalities. An inequality that not only affects individual well-being, but also limits freedom of expression and participation in virtual space. Many of us self-censor for fear of retaliation. and it is incompatible with a democratic statewhich must protect our right to freedom of expression instead of allowing censorship and intimidation to go unpunished.
It is no coincidence that many of the voices silenced be those who question the power structure: journalists, politicians, activists… And, in my case, speak from my own bodyshowing how it falls under the aesthetic mandate, is a form of activism that seeks to reach young girls and offer them alternatives to standards who dictate what women should look like.
But when the conclusion we come to is that it is better to stop giving your opinion, expose yourself less, create less content or close your account directly, what happens is that women disappear from socially influential spaces. And we are not talking about a minority, but about 50% of the population. So the fact that I view all of this as showing a few hairs is not an individual problem or a personal anecdote: it is a political problem.
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