Conferences

Friday - 10:45am - 11:25am
Stereolux - Micro

Fighting cybersexism

Shanley Clemot McLaren

france

Feminist Activist and Author @#StopFisha

An activist since I was a teenager, I organized the blockade of my high school against sexism in schools in the midst of #MeToo. This action aimed to demonstrate that playgrounds are the first playgrounds of sexism and that solutions must be thought at the root of the problem: in Education. Teenage girls being the most affected by sexual harassment, this blockade was an alert to make the voices of those who are never heard heard. This alert led me to work on a school reform that I presented to the Minister of Equality between Women and Men, at the age of 19.

During the April 2020 lockdown, not only did our lives become digitalized but so did the violence as I witnessed an explosion of accounts named "fisha". These accounts, listed regionally as "fisha78", "fishamarseille", etc., were designed to post and publish intimate content of teenagers without their consent, with their personal information (name, first name, address, phone number, school...). The violence was such that many girls were in danger to the point that it led to the suicide of Elise, a teenager living in Le Havre. Faced with the lack of regulation of platforms and help for victims, I launched an alert on social networks with the hashtag #StopFisha to denounce sexist and sexual cyber-violence and demand a reaction from platforms and public authorities.

Because of this alert, I was joined by dozens of victims, parents, activists to counter the fisha accounts. We formed a collective that actively fought, night and day, for the closure of these accounts through techniques such as raids and flooding.

Once the confinement was over, we became an association of law 1901 named "#StopFisha" so that shame and fear change sides and so that what happened during the explosion of fisha accounts never happens again.

Today, I continue to watch over sexist and sexual violence and to denounce the things that are not named, which is why I have been called a "breaker of silence" by many media.