In the middle of this pandemic, which obviously deserves a great deal of attention, two incidents happened that particularly shocked young women around the world. Multiple group chats were discovered on the popular social media Telegram which were aimed at sharing private pictures and informations of unsuspecting girls who ranged from strangers to even daughters. I speak about two incidents because this happened in two distinct countries, South Korea and Italy. In South Korea the groupchats were much more organised with ring leader Cho Ju-bin blackmailing women, often underage girls, into sending him pornographic material which he then proceeded to share to members who paid up to $1200 dollars to access the material. The case in Italy was probably even more disturbing for me personally as the material distributed came from members themselves who shared pictures of partners, exes or even family members who were either received from the girls themselves or stolen from their phones (in the case of fathers sharing pictures of their daughters). The pictures and videos were often followed by personal details of the girls and verbal abuse. What surprised me was that, while not the majority, some of the photos shared were innocent selfies that showed only the girls’ faces and were not provocative in any way. This is what made me reflect the most because independently from what women do, wear or say, we are constantly objectified and sexualised.
These two episodes coincided with my mother telling me, for unrelated reasons, that I should post less “sexy” pictures on instagram because when you apply for jobs, your social media accounts are highly looked at and used to judge you as a candidate. I started asking myself why men can sexualise a woman as much as they want but women are shamed for embracing the sexuality that is constantly pushed on us. As women we are often told to cover up from people close to us but told to undress by strangers in the street and people on the internet. If we’re not “sexual” enough we’re prudes and nuns but if we are comfortable in our sexuality we’re sluts. It seems like there is absolutely no middle ground and that we are defined for what we show men instead of what we are really worth as human beings. It’s as if everyone had a right to our bodies but us. But why is this? Why are we encouraged to do things we are also shamed for?
