WASHINGTON—Susanna Gibson has a horrifying tale to tell about what happened to her in the social media age. A new study for the National Organization of Women shows, horribly, that she’s not alone.
In an interview with People’s World, Gibson, an activist in Virginia, discussed when unauthorized images of her and altered unauthorized sexual images of her, were posted on the web, and the aftermath. They’re officially Nonconsensual Distribution of Intimate Images (NDII)—and what they led to is worse.
“Online abuse and violence” abounds, Gibson says. “It came my way,” after the initial sexual harassment. “There’s victim blaming and shaming.”
There was “a narrative that I made or created those images, which was not true.”
It’s also turned her into an activist campaigning for legislation severely penalizing such conduct, both targeting harassers but also forcing the cyber-platforms that now permit it to “take it down.”
A study and report by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the private personal data security protection firm Incogni, unveiled just before International Women’s Day, March 7, reveals Gibson is not alone. It reports sexual abuse is rampant in Internet and social media posts and platforms.
The study showed one of every four women faced online sexual harassment and 69% believe current laws to protect them are insufficient. Surveyors interviewed 5,110 women between January 23 and February 2. The sample was scientifically weighted to reflect the nation’s population.
Some 31% of mixed-race women faced sexual harassment and abuse as a result of nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, along with 29% of Latina/Hispanic women, 27% of Black women, 26% of Asian-American women and 21% of white women.
Gibson and the report say the abuse includes harassment, threats, doxxing, cyberbullying, revenge porn, trolling, hate speech, stalking or swatting. “Swatting” occurs when the harasser calls 9-1-1 emergency services, summoning a SWAT team of squad cars, first responders, ambulances and more to a woman’s residence—even when nothing has happened.
Those scenarios scare the daylights out of her, Gibson says. And the often-untrained responders don’t know what to do, either. “The vast majority of police are not well-versed in this,” she adds. Sometimes, Gibson told Virginia state legislators, “things go horribly wrong.”
The threat to women also includes “use of artificial intelligence to make sexually explicit deep fakes—and you can’t tell the difference between what’s fake and what’s real.” Gibson said she experienced all but one of the listed forms of harassment online.
“And it’s all without consent.”
Not the only problems
Those aren’t the only problems women face in this cyberage, the NOW study says, More than eight in ten women (84%) fear being hacked, and 29% say they’ve already been hacked.
“The younger generation knows what’s right and what’s wrong” and are more likely to speak up and report the harassment, bullying and worse, Gibson explains. They’re more likely to suffer it, too, because they’re online more and more often than older women, she noted.
The federal law to stop such assaults, harassment, abuse and worse is behind the curve, Gibson says. She commends Sens. Amy Klobuchar, DFL-Minn., for pushing legislation to force operators of online and social media to monitor their platforms and immediately remove such nonconsensual intimate images, or face high fines. Democratic Biden administration lobbying of the private companies to regulate themselves began in mid-2022, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative reports.
That lobbying, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, got verbal pledges from social media platform executives to regulate themselves. But, the initiative subsequently reported no private sector follow-through. It didn’t say why.
Instead, some cyber firms turned to making themselves legally exempt, by amending Section 230 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934, from lawsuits over any content they let users post.
Advocates, including Gibson, have turned to the states for action. They’ve succeeded in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New York and Pennsylvania, so far. Gibson pointed out every state surrounding South Carolina moved on the issue, but South Carolina hasn’t. Other states use general anti-harassment statutes to pursue such bullying.
Many, including New York, outlaw specific types of cyberbullying, such as hate speech and stalking, but not all of it, the institute’s compilation of coverage shows. There are other signs of progress in states.
Gibson said that “after they heard my story about the violence that came my way” after invasive online images of her hit the net, two key Virginia lawmakers who deal with criminal justice issues are pushing the bill through its General Assembly. Before hearing her story, one had opposed it.
“Amending state codes will be significantly more important,” she comments. But even the states with tough anti-harassment laws focused on banning deep fake videos or revenge porn have a high hurdle for victims to vault, the Cyber Civil Rights Institute reports. All states but one make proof of nonconsensual dissemination of intimate images, or worse harassment and abuse, tough to prove.
The exception is Illinois—so much so that Gibson and her advocate colleagues use its law as their model for other states and for Congress. Illinois alone deleted its prior high bar for proof of harassment: Intent.
State legislature lowered the standard
Not only did the state legislature remove that barrier to a conviction, but it lowered the standard of judicial consideration from “strict scrutiny” of the evidence to “intermediate scrutiny,” the Institute adds.
Laws are necessary against such online sexual harassment, violence, abuse and worse, the NOW-Incogni survey reveals. Private social media platforms can’t be trusted to do it themselves, the Institute reports. And the survey results back that up. So do records of White House jawboning on the issue, starting in mid-2022 after two years of study, according to the institute’s compilation of news coverage.
“One in four American women experienced online harassment, with ethnic diverse backgrounds and younger generations facing disproportionately higher rates of abuse,” the study says. “And 60% of victims report these experiences—including sexually motivated harassment, cyberbullying, doxxing, stalking, or swatting—severely or significantly impacted their lives.”
One in eight women suffered from cybercrimes resulting from having personal data available online.
Besides the higher reporting of sexual bullying or worse from younger women, who are more likely to be online, 37% of women from mixed ethnic backgrounds reported online abuse, along with 31% of Latina or Hispanic women. Cyberbullying, (10%), sexual harassment (9%) and trolling (8%) were the most frequent abuses. Mixed-race women suffered twice as often from cyberbullying (23%), hate speech (21%), and sexual harassment (16%).
Latina and Hispanic women were second to their mixed-race sisters in three categories of abuse: Cyberbullying (13%), hate speech (10%), and sexual harassment (13%).
The “severe or significant impact on victims’” of online sexual harassment, abuse and worse is widespread. Seventy-eight percent of swatting victims—from the SWAT team invasions—were significantly affected. Seven in ten respondents suffered “severely or considerably” from after-effects of revenge porn, and 68% suffered from the AI deepfakes.
Geographically, the highest rates of abuse occurred in Washington state (33%) and the four states of the deep South Central region, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas (29%).
“Interestingly, all four of” the South Central “states are in the National Organization for Women’s list of the 15 worst states for women, based on factors such as homicide rates, intimate partner violence, wage gaps, and access to reproductive healthcare,” the organization drily commented.
“This research exposes the pervasive nature of online abuse, how it extends to real-life threats, and its impact on women’s livelihood, affecting their self-esteem, mental health, and financial wellbeing,” said NOW President Christian Nunes in releasing the report.
“The disproportionate targeting of minority women and younger generations is particularly concerning and is further proof our federal and state legislatures need to pass laws to protect women.”
“The results of this analysis underscore the role of personal data accessibility in enabling cybercrimes aimed at intimidating and silencing women,” added Darius Belejevas, head of Incogni. “Unfortunately, without effective legislation preventing these crimes and protecting the victims, we expect an increase in online harassment activities, especially those resulting from how easy it is to find and exploit sensitive personal information.”
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