In January of this year, a 20-year-old Jordanian woman, Layan,
posted
videos of herself
on Instagram, where she pleaded for safety. She stated that she had endured
years of abuse at the hands of her family and had been routinely harassed by
her brothers. Layan decided to flee the country and posted the video, which
quickly went viral, as a cry for help asking for intervention and security.
Despite the video’s wide circulation, cynicism quickly flooded the comments,
and various influencers began expressing their disbelief in her story, rather
than concern. In a since deleted video, a local news site published a video of
a “comedian” mocking the victim, and the issue was very quickly shifted from
addressing violence against women, to dismissal and absolute ridicule.
اضافة اعلان
Social media and the power of influencers seem to fall on
two very different sides of the spectrum. On one hand, there is a platform for
voicing opinions, a space for youth to fight injustice and bigotry. On the
other, there is also a platform for uncensored misogyny, where women are openly
laughed at, even when they are beaten, mutilated, and murdered.
According to a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor,
women in Jordan reported about 6,965 cases to the social service offices of the
Family Protection Department in 2019. The rates of so-called honor killings,
domestic abuse cases, and gender based violence have skyrocketed, only amplified
under COVID lockdowns as women are locked in with their abusers. Jordan saw myriad
horrifying cases which initiated both physical and virtual protests by
feminists exhausted by the lack of regulation and legal protection of women.
After the tragic incident of Fatima, a woman whose eyes were
gouged out by her husband and was left to bleed in front of her children, a
protest was organized demanding justice and legislative reform. Social media
responses to the protest, however, were almost overwhelmingly offensive —
protesters were called sexist slurs, and a horrific crime was reduced to
sarcasm.
Youth have control of social media, so why is the dominant
narrative still vastly patriarchal, aggressive, and outdated? Many virtual
platforms continue to make light of such drastic matters and use battered women
as the butt of the joke. This form of “humor” enables the motives of domestic
violence and feels the need to defend and protect the reputation of abusers rather
than calling them out. Sadly, women themselves often partake in this mockery
and narrative as a result of internalized misogyny, justifying the violence by
victim blaming.
Despite the backlash however, it is undeniable that social
media also has a very significant role in achieving social justice. The
heartbreaking murder of Ahlam, a woman who was killed by her father, who then
proceeded to drink a cup of tea next to her lifeless body, led to social media
outrage where the hashtag #صرخات_احلام or “the screams of Ahlam” started trending. Online petitions for legislative
reform began circulating, calling for the amendments of articles 98 and 99 of
the Penal Code, which reduce the sentences of those who kill in the name of
“honor”, as well as Article 52, which allows families to halt legal action and the
implementation of punishments, thereby taking power away from the abused. Various
organizations also partake every year in the 16 Days of Activism against
Gender-Based Violence campaign, during which they use their social media
platforms solely to highlight this issue.
Women have a long way to go in achieving equity in Jordan,
as various factors contribute to their treatment as second class citizens. In
2018, the World Economic Forum reported on the wide gender gap in Jordan, stating that labor participation among women
is below 15 percent, compared to around 60 percent for men, among other alarming
statistics. The
report ranks Jordan at number 138 out of 149 countries in terms
of gender parity.
The question remains: How many incidents will it take for
change to take place? How many more women must die before the paradigm shifts,
or for the situation to be taken seriously? Social media figures hold the
potential to greatly influence or disrupt the narrative. The issue is however, that
the wrong voices are being listened to, and the rest are being willfully
ignored.
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