The Newest Gender-Based Violence

Key Points

• Technology is the newest weapon in gender-based violence.
• Digital abuse is real abuse. It harms, controls, and isolates.
• What happens online doesn’t stay online. It does damage offline.
• Silence protects abusers. Talking about it protects survivors.
• Gender-based violence is nothing new. But its methods are evolving faster than our awareness.

While there has been progress in understanding and treating domestic violence, sexual assault, and other forms of interpersonal trauma, one growing form of harm remains largely overlooked: digital abuse and harassment.

As a psychotherapist who has worked with women survivors of childhood sexual abuse for over two decades, I am hearing a new theme brought into sessions: how technology is being weaponized in the hands of abusers.

However, what I am not hearing is other clinicians talking about it. In fact, it seems to be missing from the conversation in many mental health circles. Women describe partners or exes who monitor their phone, track their location, post or threaten to post intimate photos, or humiliate them publicly online. The stories of such abuse are no longer rare, and the problem is no longer unique. They are proof that as technology grows, so do the methods used for control and coercion.

The Numbers Tell the Story
Research doesn’t lie.

According to the research organization Data & Society, 12 percent of adults who have had a romantic partner have experienced some type of digital harassment or abuse by that partner, and the rates are nearly twice as high for younger women and three times higher for LGBTQ+ folks. Additionally, the National Network to End Domestic Violence reports that about three-quarters of survivors looking for help from domestic-violence programs have experienced digital abuse.

And it doesn’t stop there. The Human Trafficking Institute’s 2020 Federal Report documented that the internet is the single most common place that victims in U.S. federal sex-trafficking cases are recruited, accounting for about 40 percent of all cases. It is clear from the data that the same technologies that bring us together can also be used to isolate, control, and harm others.

What Is Digital Abuse?
Digital abuse is more than hacking your accounts or sending threatening messages. It can look like:

• Monitoring or controlling a partner’s phone or social media use.
• Threatening to share private photos or information.
• Spreading rumors or humiliating someone publicly online.
• Using GPS or smart devices to stalk or surveil.
• Withholding access to shared digital accounts or finances.

What makes digital abuse especially insidious is its long-lasting impact and staying power. All abuse leaves a mark. It endures in memories, in body responses, and sometimes in flashbacks or intrusive thoughts. But digital abuse exists in an ongoing and tangible way. Unlike other types of abuse, the harm can exist indefinitely. Every repost, screenshot, resurfacing of a traumatic image or post can retraumatize the victim, keeping them frozen in a cycle of fear and vulnerability that feels impossible to escape.

Link to full story here.