Hate Speech Against Women in Australia
Check out this recent policy brief on hate speech against women in Australia.
The Policy Brief makes the following key points:
- (a) The communication of contempt for women is nothing new. However, the proliferation of digital and online media means that the prevalence and severity of sex-based vilification is increasing and is more easily observable and documented than before.
- (b) Although the extent of the relevant harms cannot be assessed with precision, one need only look at the vitriol encountered by women, particularly those with public profiles, in Australia and overseas, on Facebook and Twitter, in news and tabloid media, and even in parliaments, to appreciate how prevalent the problem appears to be.
- (c) Sex-based vilification silences women by preventing them from speaking, marginalising and devaluing their speech, and building structural constraints impeding their speech. Women respond to sex-based vilification by adapting their behaviours; policing their identities, speech, and movements; leaving online and offline spaces; and/or disengaging from public life. Even where women can and do speak, sex-based vilification makes it more difficult for what they say to have its intended force.
- (d) If the legitimacy of democracy rests on political equality (i.e. equality of opportunity to participate fully in democratic processes), sex-based vilification impedes women’s participation and represents a crisis of democracy itself.
- (e) The ubiquity of sex-based vilification, including its pervasiveness in online spaces, plausibly raises unique difficulties with respect to its regulation. However, regulation is possible.