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HomeOpinionLesson from Shehla Rashid's Twitter departure: Log off women, you're allowed to

Lesson from Shehla Rashid’s Twitter departure: Log off women, you’re allowed to

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Despite how important Twitter is, the cost-benefit analysis of being an Indian woman on the platform just does not add up. 

When activist Shehla Rashid decided to quit Twitter, it didn’t come as a surprise. It was the sad, sorry culmination of something that has been building on for years now.

“I have 4,27,400 followers on Twitter. This means that the trade-off between leaving Twitter and having a voice is too high. This points to a deeply abusive relationship that we have with Twitter. We have virtually been held hostage to its benefits,” Shehla Rashid wrote after she deactivated her Twitter handle due to the immense abuse and hate she faced from trolls.

Remember when author and actress Rose McGowan, one of the loudest voices in the allegations of sexual abuse and assault against Harvey Weinstein narrated her story on Twitter and the platform suspended her? The anger, the sheer frustration already fermenting inside women was finally bursting out, and thousands of women, including many Indian women, boycotted the microblogging platform under the hashtag #WomenBoycottTwitter last year. They said instead of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s 280 character upgrade offer, they wanted online safety for women.


Also read: Shehla Rashid- The Marxist who was unaware of her Muslim identity till Modi came to power


For years, women across the world have been demanding safer online spaces, but were ignored and ridiculed. So, when women started quitting Twitter, it was a message: We deserve a right to online spaces, without the harassment, hate, or hurt. It was a moment of reckoning, or so we thought.

Come 2018 and the situation has somehow only managed to get worse. As women use social media to assert their identities, rights, and griefs, the backlash isn’t just there— it’s accepted and normalised. Instead of asking how hate can be stymied, the approach has become how to live with the hate. In India, specifically, the social media juggernaut that set the online agenda and narrative for current Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s candidacy in 2012 has snowballed into an army of trolls that can be let loose like a swarm of locusts whenever a new, strong voice emerges.

No matter what Shehla Rashid said or did, the Hindutva brigade would always make it about her Muslim identity, her ‘anti-national’ stance, and sometimes even threatened her with rape or death. It was never a one-off incident, it was her every day and every hour on Twitter.

Twitter is social media’s enfant terrible in many ways. Go and see the replies on any woman’s tweets. If she has an opinion, and if it, in any way, threatens status quo, all attempts to silence her are made. A fine example is Barkha Dutt’s Twitter feed. Every single tweet, something as innocuous as a Diwali wish is bait for hate, dehumanisation, and vile, terrorising torrents of threats. The nature of Twitter, and the ability to be anonymous allows people to bring their basest, most terrible selves online.

And often without consequence. Many women complain that the hate comments they report to Twitter are never taken down. Downright lewd, vulgar messages are sometimes not considered ‘offensive content’ by Twitter.

The argument that online spaces aren’t inherently misogynistic or unconducive to women is too simplistic.


Also read: Why can’t Shehla Rashid celebrate Sinead O’Connor’s embrace of Islam?


Online spaces, as they get enmeshed into our ‘real life’, start mirroring them. And considering how rudimentary the Indian government’s cybercrime handling skills are, the safety of women on social media is cause for concern. Combine that with a majority that churns hate on the basis of a hyper-masculine, hyper-nationalist, and intolerant identity, and you have the recipe to drive women off every platform they might have access to.

I don’t blame Shehla for leaving Twitter. Despite how important it is for dialogue, publicity and simple awareness, the cost-benefit analysis of being on the platform just does not add up, especially for brown women from minorities. Twitter’s repeated, halfhearted attempts at addressing security concerns have only resulted in further erosion of faith.

Twitter’s former CEO Dick Costolo had even said, “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years.”


Also read: Why young Indians aren’t on Twitter


Sure, Twitter’s recent sojourn into India is confirmation that the platform has observed and taken cognizance of the fact that it needs to become safer, and quickly. But Twitter only seems to be shaking its head and doing nothing.

The space is going to get nastier as the 2019 elections near, and I think our personal mental health matter a whole lot more than partaking in aimless, vitriolic debate.

Log off. You’re allowed to.

The author is a poet.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Very bad, it is shock for me. I always called her Didi and I hope she would return one day. I will always pray for her bravery and good health. Now I also want to quit twitter.

  2. Sad you didnt mention the number of guys who trolled her when she mentioned that love intercaste marriage was okay for muslims. This is a very biased view about hindu trolls

  3. Unfortunate. Each civilised voice, like Ms Shehla Rashid’s, enriches the national conversation. I don’t understand the mechanics of how people tweet, block abusive followers, etc, but perhaps one option would be to keep plugging away, blank out the responses completely from one’s mind. Twitter may lack the resources to continuously monitor online content, but when they receive a complaint which encloses explicit or derogatory content, they should be more proactive. Similarly, the cyber cell of the police would be overwhelmed, but they could pick up a few high profile offenders and make an example of them. Social media our commons, it needs to be kept Swachh.

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