“What we are seeing, in the case of the social media abuser that numerous women are reporting at the moment, is an example of the way violence against women manifests itself in our society,” remarked the National Women’s Service Minister, Claudia Pascual Grau.
The minister was referring to the complaints made in a Facebook group by almost 200 women who say they have been contacted, abused and insulted by an individual on various social media platforms.
In response to this case, Claudia Pascual said that “the National Women’s Service, and the forthcoming Women’s and Social Equality Ministry, has always insisted that violence against women in our country has become naturalized. As a result, Chilean men and women accept forms of violence, such as control, manipulation, psychological, verbal and physical abuse. And the fact that some people are abusive is also seen as acceptable; men in this case, that are abusing women on a massive scale.”
Claudia Pascual added: “Unfortunately we have also noticed, and in 2014 we launched public awareness campaigns about this, that abuse can also occur via social media. Violence is not just a physical act, it is not just aggressive behavior; it can also mean manipulation, psychological abuse and coercion via social media and unfortunately, it often goes unpunished. We still don’t have the best mechanisms to counteract it legally.” She explained that “we feel it is also important that women, teenagers and girls talk about these incidents more openly, report them and make them public, to prevent other people and other women from being affected by this type of abuse.”
The National Women’s Service Minister emphasized that: “We need to move forwards with legislation to address and penalize violence against women in its various guises, not only within the family space, between partners or ex partners, victims and victimizers, between aggressors and victims, but also the violence we see in the workplace, on the streets, in public places, or the type of malicious violence we see on social media, and also the symbolic violence against women in the media.”
She confirmed that the National Women’s Service is “in the process of studying our domestic violence law and we hope to propose changes to this law very soon.”