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Sexuality, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and the Internet

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Sexuality, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and the Internet women’s, gender, and rights perspectives arrow for change in health policies and programmes vol. 22 no. 1 2016 vol. 22 no. 1 2016 issn 1394-4444 Sexuality, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and the Internet published by the asian-pacific resource & research centre for women editorial 2—6 New Technologies for Safe Safer Nudes! A Sexy Guide to The New Green: Medical Abortion Services Digital Security The Landscapes of Digital Activism The Potential Impact of Free Women’s Bodies on Digital Basics on SRHR Advocacy in Battlegrounds: Networks of Bangladesh Information and Support by spotlight 6—27 Pro-choice Activists in Latin America One and the Other: in our own words 28—33 Fighting Online Gender, Romance, Misogyny, Fighting a and the Internet: The resources from the arrow srhr Corporatised Internet Creation of a Non-Binary, knowledge sharing centre 41—44 Non-Binary Person Minding the Data developed in selected arrow resources 44—46 collaboration with Gap: Data Risks and Is Access Real? Disability, Revolutions in Meeting Sexuality, and the Digital definitions 46-48 the Sustainable Space Development Goals factfile 49—55 Quantifying Fertility and monitoring regional and Reproduction through global activities 34—40 Access, Legislation, and Online Mobile Apps: A Critical Freedom of Expression: A Data published with funding support of Overview Security in Contentious Overview Contexts: Exploring Digital Apps, Drones, and Resilience for Organisations editorial and production team 56 iTunes: Opportunities Serving Sexual and Gender and Challenges in Using Minorities 2 arrow for change editorial vol. 22 no. 1 2016 THE NEW GREEN: The Landscapes of Digital Activism In an episode of the popular American The internet works in a television show Mad Men set in a New York manner inimical to access advertising firm in the 1960s, the family of the protagonist, Don Draper, goes for a picnic in and voice: control exists the park. Once the picnic is over, Draper’s wife in the very architecture Betty picks up the picnic blanket and shakes of the systems that we it out, spilling paper napkins, plates, drink believe enable freedom. bottles, and food waste out onto the grass, Harassment, abuse, then folds the blanket and puts it away. She manipulation, exclusion, dusts off her hands and the family gets into their car leaving a littered field behind them. and discrimination— This shocking little detail reminds the viewer of these experiences that the period the show is set in: environmentally we have known and friendly civic behaviours that are commonplace experienced offline find today—like being conscious of littering, eating their twins online. local, or recycling—were once not. The internet is the new green. The sectors are doing something similar for digital environmental rights movement raised technologies. consciousness about our relationship with, and Surveillance, blocking and filtering, social effects on, the natural environment; and have media, “hashtag activism,” phishing, scams, demonstrated the interrelationships between spam, viruses, online abuse, big data, leaks of actors like states, corporations, communities, personal data, privacy violations, and hacks consumers, and the law in matters of climate have also entered a collective awareness of justice. Activists and advocacy groups in the what it means to be online today. The internet tech-for-change and technology-activism works in a manner inimical to access and voice: control exists in the very architecture of Information technologies the systems that we believe enable freedom. are now part of the Harassment, abuse, manipulation, exclusion, chemistry of activism. and discrimination—these experiences that we The struggle for digital have known and experienced offline find their twins online. Large parts of the internet belong sovereignty and freedoms entirely to corporations that users have no online are not necessarily control over, though businesses profit from new; they are a continuation users. Governments control the infrastructure of existing political of the internet: electromagnetic spectrum, laws struggles. Movements and governing digital access, publishing policies, activisms for “internet even malicious surveillance software that are sometimes deployed against citizen activists freedom” or “digital access” and journalists. should therefore not be isolated from movements What does this mean for activism, political engagement, and human rights defense? What and collective action in are the relationships and interdependencies other areas such as SRHR. influencing the promises of being online: voice, editorial arrow for change 3 vol. 22 no. 1 2016 visibility, and power? This ARROW for Change …sexual health information Notes & References (AFC) issue on sexual and reproductive health is being censored, and and rights (SRHR) and the internet documents some of these dynamics. nudity is being equated 1 Associated Press, “Indonesia Bans Gay with pornography. Emoji and Stickers from Messaging Apps,” Information technologies are now part of The Guardian, February 12, 2016, http:// www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/12/ the chemistry of activism. The struggle for indonesia-bans-gay-emoji-and-stickers- from-messaging-apps. digital sovereignty and freedoms online are a total of 5,034 YouTube videos claimed to be not necessarily new; they are a continuation 2 Google Transparency Report, https:// “harmful” to youth with no definition of what www.google.com/transparencyreport/ of existing political struggles. Movements and was considered “harmful.”2 removals/government/notes/?hl=en#autho activisms for “internet freedom” or “digital rity=KR&period=all. 3 access” should therefore not be isolated from Online Censorship is a project that documents 3 Online Censorship, https:// onlinecensorship.org. movements and collective action in other removal of content by technology corporations that own popular social media platforms— 4 Jessica Anderson, Matthew Stender, areas such as SRHR. This AFC is an attempt to Sarah Myers West, and Jillian C. York, narrativise sites of continuity, connection, and Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, and Unfriending Censorship: Insights from YouTube. The project’s aim is to push for Four Months of Crowdsourced Data potential collaboration. on Social Media Censorship, Electronic transparency in how speech is regulated online Frontier Foundation and Visualising by these corporations. From November 2015 Impact, March 2016, https://s3-us-west-1. amazonaws.com/onlinecensorship/ to March 2016, people submitted 186 reports posts/pdfs/000/000/044/original/ …Facebook, Instagram, of takedowns of their social media content on Onlinecensorship.org_Report_-_31_ March_2016.pdf?2016. Twitter, and YouTube these five platforms. Of these, 89 are related 5 For example, The Guardian recently are also sites of abuse to nudity concerns and primarily on Facebook. analysed over 70 million comments in Some broad themes emerged from Online response to articles posted in a ten-year- and harassment, period and showed how its female, LGBT, which affect women Censorship’s early findings: sexual health and Jewish writers were more regularly information is being censored, and nudity is and consistently harassed online. See and sexual minorities here: Becky Gardiner, Mahana Mansfield, being equated with pornography.4 Ian Anderson, Josh Holder, Daan Louter, disproportionately and Monica Ulmanu, “The Dark Side of At the same time, Facebook, Instagram, Guardian Comments,” The Guardian, April compared to the other 12, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/ populations online; and Twitter, and YouTube are also sites of abuse technology/2016/apr/12/the-dark-side-of- and harassment, which affect women and guardian-comments. yet these are not regulated sexual minorities disproportionately compared 6 J. Nathan Matias, Amy Johnson, Whitney Erin Boesel, Brian Keegan, Jaclyn Friedman, with quite the same vigour. to the other populations online; and yet and Charlie DeTar, “Reporting, Reviewing, these are not regulated with quite the same and Responding to Harassment on Twitter,” Women, Action, and the Media, May 13, vigour. Through these initiatives and high- 2015. http://womenactionmedia.org/ Speech Acts. A significant dynamic of the profile cases of online harassment, there has twitter-report. internet is the struggle to use it as a platform been a mainstream discussion of its scale 7 See Gender and Tech Resources, “Complete Manual,” https://gendersec. 5 for speech and expression, sexual speech and and effects. In 2014, research by Women, tacticaltech.org/wiki/index.php/Complete_ content in particular. However, States and Action, and Media, in partnership with manual#Counterspeech for an extensive list of feminist counterspeech actions and technology corporations emerge as partners Twitter, demonstrated that in 800 reports of projects. in the regulation of sexual speech and content harassment, 27% were about hate speech, 12% online. For example, as part of a wider about threats of violence, and 22% were to do suppression of LGBT communities, in February with doxxing (uncovering details of the user’s 2016, Indonesia’s Communications Ministry identity and location, and sharing this as an banned gay emoji stickers in messaging incitement to violence offline).6 applications like Line and WhatsApp, as well In the past few years, there have been new as on larger social media platforms.1 Other guides and toolkits to help internet users states in the region, anxious to maintain control mitigate harassment online.
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