TRIGGER WARNING FOR EXPLICIT DISCUSSION ABOUT SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Despite the many instances that I once heard about sexual harassment through digital media coverage, it had never occur to me that one day I would find them close and relatable, not until the April of 2020. On April 7th, 2020, my Weibo (a Chinese social media) was flooded by friends posting and reposting comments on a video posted by @Muhelos, a current Chinese international student studying in Europe, but is of the same origin as me (in Guangzhou). In her video she revealed the misdeeds of her former middle school classmate, Mr. W (name altered due to privacy reasons), and attempted to speak for justice online. The video went viral within my community, and many of my close friends, alongside with myself, discussed the matter, shocked by the fact that sexual harassment can be incredibly close at hand.

In her video and postings, @Muhelos started by explaining the reason why she now spoke of instances happened earlier when she was a middle school student: on April 6th, a day before the video was out, she and her middle school friends discovered a twitter account posting photos of middle school girls with off-color remarks. Moreover, the account owner went on posting inappropriate images of females with their faces photoshopped into faces he knew, which were the same group of his female classmates mentioned above. His victims furiously figured out the identity of the account owner based on the seating in the classroom, the context of his speech and the memory of his guilt back then.

@Muhelos briefly talked about Mr. W’s past speech and behaviors, and even though I was appalled by his behavior. @Muhelos herself was one of the girls that he went after, and after refusing him with a note of finality, exasperated, Mr. W replied: “You might not know by now, but you’ll eventually get to understand the power of money and titles… My grandpa is in XXX governmental department…  My uncle is in XXX governmental department… My dad is in XXX governmental department”. Things were the same for several other girls, and one who did share a relationship with him ended up brokenhearted and dropped out of school. While Mr. W constantly bragged about how “when I’m at my 40s, there would be plenty of 20-year-old girls who would be desperate to be with me”, his other misdeeds include cajoling female classmate to work part-time as lingerie models, attempting to peep while the girls showered, and even after graduating, he would spy on their social media (thus taking down recent photos of them to photoshop) and spontaneously present himself at gatherings without invitations. 

As @Muhelos explained her reasoning for using digital media as means to punish the guilty (and her friends back in China did call the police), the amount of difficulties to safeguard one’s rights against someone with a background is revealed. To begin with, the severity of the crisis was beyond ignoring, but her previous postings on Weibo (of words and images, about 5 or 6 postings in total) had been censored and taken down, therefore she was left with no other approaches besides shooting a video. In addition, after learning that Mr. W indeed has a backing, she didn’t trust the school to act and via people like my community and me, the spread of the video ensured that Mr. W would end up utterly discredited. By the end of the Weibo wave, Mr. W was dismissed from his job at a renowned Chinese Airline and was sentenced with criminal detention for a year and 8 months.

During the wave, both @Muhelos and I noticed that the crisis was hashtagged as “A Local ‘Nth Room Case’ in Guangzhou”, because just a month or two ago, the world was shocked by the South Korean “Nth Room Case”, which was a series of digital sex crimes, all started with the chatroom and its founder “godgod” when he was still a highschool student. Participants of the nth room illegally produced and traded sexually dehumanizing footage of women, many underage, who were coerced by perpetrators into abusing their bodies. At its peak, there were approximately 260,000 chat room users (which was about 1% of the entire South Korean male population). Though Mr. W’s sexual harassment was not so severe and extensive a crisis, @Muhelos and I briefly discussed the similarities and differences between the two, and the role digital media plays in two separate events stands out most obviously.

First, the fact that no one reported the nth room (rumors started a few months before the news) before it was exposed by undercover journalists, overlapping with Mr. W’s case in which there had been basically silence during the middle school years, probably grounded by the victims’ capability to speak up at such young ages. According to @Muhelos, her friends back in China helped with reporting to the police but none stood up online, and there were worries about the public opinion environment and pressures from family, friends, and workplace. @Muhelos and the netizens have asked the flight company to speak up, but the company remained silent besides a brief declaration in April about Mr. W’s dismissal, and she mentioned how Chinese renown companies tend to alway be avoiding scandals, especially when another LGBTQ dispute just happened to this company with over 100 million views. Correspondingly, the fact that the crime is a digital sex crime and the confrontation was carried out online has led us to consider public opinion, and @Muhelos thankfully talked about how the majority of public feedback she received was positive, with bullet screen of her video showing her support and commenting below offering help and advice. 

However, she also mentioned a small portion of voice under news posts that either made sarcastic remarks or criticized slyly, similar to those, in the nth room case, still defended the male perpetrators making irresponsible comments.

The other side of the role digital media plays was not so positive. The notion of censorship has always been a heated topic in the discussion of digital media. The fact that Mr. W would only speak filthily on twitter was to somehow escape censorship not only from the Chinese Great FireWall but also acquaintances. But during @Muhelos’s confrontation, censorship interfered greatly not only when her previous postings were taken down, but also led to her having to flip an image upside down with some kind of mosaic under the comments of her own video to pass through surveillance. 

Among the bullet screens, I spotted someone saying that he/she helped with spreading the video on another social media platform but was taken down in return, it was significantly frustrating.

Nonetheless, we cannot ask for everything when confronting injustice via digital media, and especially in the nth room and Mr. W’s case, more interestingly, when the crime itself was committed digitally. While we argues the pros and cons for speaking up online, we’re still provided with broader audiences and more opportunities to be seen while confronting injustice, and it’s a bliss that we get to remember, archive, and cheer for the courageous one such as @Muhelos via our ever-developing digital media.

CITATIONS:
Kang, Haeryun. “South Korea's 'Nth Rooms' Are Toxic Mixture of Tech, Sex and Crime.” Nikkei Asia, Nikkei Asia. (2020, April 10). Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/South-Korea-s-nth-rooms-are-toxic-mixture-of-tech-sex-and-crime.
Weibo @Muhelos. (2020, April 7). Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://m.weibo.cn/6364361805/4490889961926295.
Weibo @南方都市报. (2020, September 4). Retrieved October 15, 2020, from https://m.weibo.cn/1644489953/4545363882541646.