has learned about it, potentially leading to domestic violence.” This is not an isolated
fear but a recognized pattern where the digital violation is compounded by realworld retribution.
The toll is also deeply personal and psychological, eroding a woman's place in
society. The constant threat of harassment forces a painful retreat from public life.
Many women experience a "lack of trust in people," becoming isolated and
introverted to protect themselves. This withdrawal has a devastating impact on
their education and civic engagement. As one observer noted, “I have dealt with a
lot of women and girls who stopped volunteering because men perceive volunteering
as an opportunity to get girls’ numbers and start harassing them.” Similarly,
academic futures are cut short, as “women who get harassed often would have a
drop in their grades and it would sometimes lead to them dropping out for their
‘protection.’” Faced with these challenging choices, many women make the
rational, yet heartbreaking, calculation summed up in one woman's resignation: "I
thought about how my participation might harm my family and decided it wasn’t
worth it."
Ultimately, a woman's ability to withstand this storm depends heavily on her
support system. A lawyer with resources and legal awareness can, as in one case,
not only bring a harasser to justice but force a tribal mediation that turns the
tables. However, women lacking that support are often left isolated and are, forced
to "just block the harasser" out of fear and a lack of alternatives. The violence does
not happen in a vacuum; it ripples outwards, subjecting the entire family to stigma
and jeopardizing their standing in the community. The online attack becomes an
offline crisis, proving that, for women, the digital world is not a separate reality,
but a dangerous extension of the pressures and perils they navigate every day.
Offline repercussions of online violence are often interconnected with societal
backlash against the woman or girl for facing online violence in the first place, due
to the culture of victim-blaming. As seen in (Figure 1), many types of TFGBV target
a woman or girl’s reputation in her community, using sensitive images to ensure
that the blackmail or extortion does maximum damage.
One young activist and journalist stressed that most femicide crimes often start
with online threats. The perpetrator may see that no one held them accountable
for this behavior because people do not take digital harassment as seriously. Then,
they push a little bit further until it becomes offline violence, which can reach the
level of rape or murder. The victims are often subjected to a public trial as they are
blamed for being killed or raped due to a deeply rooted culture of victim-blaming26.
26
Roa’a Abu Nada, “The Narrative of Blaming Victims: Public Trials of Femicide Victims,” Features, Jordan News, July 3,
2022, https://www.jordannews.jo/Section-106/Features/The-narrative-of-blaming-victims-Public-trials-of-femicidevictims-18816.
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