Collective Action: #MeToo 2.0

Gender
By Editor_1
Sri Lanka’s laws are quite clear on certain aspects of consent without which a sexual act would be considered rape – Getty Images

By Dulcinea Gunatilaka

Up until a few weeks ago, I thought that #MeToo as a movement had not yet happened in Sri Lanka. A colleague then pointed me in the direction of the failed #MeToo movement that began in this country in 2021 and ended in just a few months. It was so brief in fact that to many people it had been invisible. But it happened. It did not fade away. It was blocked. It was not taken seriously by those with authority to investigate and prosecute misconduct. It was invalidated.

In 2021, a journalist in a series of tweets on the Twitter platform accused a colleague in her workplace at a Sri Lankan newspaper office of threatening to rape her. Her statements created an outpouring of comments from women who had experienced similar misconduct and the many women speaking up at that time were explicit about the gross sexism to which they were subjected in their workplaces.

The Minister for Mass Media, Keheliya Rambukwella, had initially publicly promised a full government investigation into the matter. This encouraged the women to name the perpetrators of the abuse they were experiencing. Shortly thereafter, however, this pathway to justice was blocked. Rambukwella stated that the investigation would not be conducted based on a few social media comments. Government resources could not be allocated based on a few tweets. Victims needed to submit official statements and direct complaints to the police or the Media Ministry before action would be taken. This backtracking was criticized and it led to the humiliation, diminishing and endangerment of the women who spoke out as they were effectively disempowered by the erosion of their rights to justice. Their legitimate concerns were trivialized.

The victims of this conduct were often unable to make complaints within the workplace because the HR departments did not answer to a higher authority than the Public Relations departments of their organizations. The victims were subordinates or juniors and were afraid of losing their jobs and reputations within their industry if they spoke out against the perpetrators of misconduct against them. Systematic workplace reforms were needed and it was also clear that their workplaces were profoundly unsafe environments for many young women. Their career paths were disrupted and compromised by the abusive behaviour directed at them.

The underlying thought patterns, beliefs and concepts that caused this systematic disrespecting and devaluation of women were not addressed at that time. But now we have an opportunity to do this.

There are approximately 10,000 men sharing images of girls, women and children for sexual gratification and profit online. The victims themselves are not aware that this is happening to them until the perpetrators are identified and their computers taken into custody and the images on them are examined.

There is no sex education in the country that focuses on rights and responsibilities or consent. Added to that, the repressive culture pushes sexual matters into a shadow realm that is unmonitored, creating a black market for pornography. Added to this, in an economy like ours, people are looking to make money from the resources available to them. The women, girls and children most available to them are in their homes. The monetization of the bodies of these girls, women and children is a step that many are prepared to take, especially in the belief that their activities are cloaked in anonymity.

It is capitalism applied to the family unit. Access as opportunity.

As disturbing as it is, the abuse outlined in the stalled #MeToo movement is only one part of the abusive conduct women face – harassment in the workplace. It has now become clear that in addition to the domestic violence and sexual abuse endured by women in their homes, there are about 10,000 men in using digital platforms like Facebook and Telegram to share photographs and images of the women and children they live with – their wives, partners, sisters and girlfriends and even their mothers and children. By sharing the images with other men and exploiting the demand for them for monetary gain and respect from the fellow comrades in the groups, the men are violating the values that shape our family structures. They are humiliating people who they share their lives with and devaluing the connection they have with them.

Not all of these images are sexually explicit in themselves. Some are of women and children in everyday situations but some of the women are disabled and immobile and images of them shared non consensually are indecent and a violation of their trust and their right to privacy and dignity. It is an absolute disrespect of their rights to choice and consent about the parameters of their bodies and how they are viewed and by whom. Today, in August 2026, harassment and abuse of women takes place in four concurrent categories – in the workplace in professional settings, in transit, in public transport and on the streets where they are subjected to physical and verbal harassment, in the home environment and now via technology – photos taken without consent and shared on Facebook and other social media groups, breaching the boundary between private and public spaces.

And this time the young women at the forefront of the movement are using digital platforms like TikTok to systematically and collaboratively spread a wide net to create awareness of this gross disrespect and unacceptable trafficking of the bodies and images of other women and of children. And they are resisting the attempts to represent this as a gender war with men as the enemy. Their focus is on the behaviour of the men creating and sharing on these groups and the beliefs that motivate them.

In 2021, the anger directed against the perpetrators of sexual harassment and misconduct against women in the workplace was frustrated. Many women who had experienced harassment themselves or had witnessed it in their work environment were silent. There are many reasons why they would have kept silent.

But in the last six months, three apparently unconnected developments have occurred.

  • A Peradeniya professor has been charged with sexual harassment from a case brought against him in 2018. He has experienced severe consequences for his professional misconduct. He has been barred from proximity to potential victims. He has been declared unsafe. The court’s judgments in this matter are worth reading because they open a pathway to justice that was previously not clarified. It shifts the blame to the perpetrator.
  • Under the 2023 anti-corruption laws, there is an anti-bribery section under which sexual misconduct in the workplace can be prosecuted. Every complaint that has previously been frustrated by the lack of a clear path to justice can now be brought to the judgment of the Court.
  • Under the broad Duty of Care doctrine upheld in Common Law, any perpetrator of abuse and violence in the domestic environment can also be charged. In conjunction with the laws criminalizing the use of digital platforms to share images violating individuals’ privacy, all the creators and users of the Facebook and Telegram groups whose activity has been detected can also be charged with criminal offences. Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), ratified without reservation.

It is not possible to argue that a man has no duty of care to his partner, whether wife or girlfriend, to his sister, his mother and his daughter and any woman living in his household. This duty of care, but a skewed view of it centred on a perception of male ownership, is the basis of the protectiveness assumed by advocates of patriarchy that empowers them to control the processes of the household. If they themselves violate these principles, the penalties should be severe.

Unlike sexual harassment cases, where he said/she said situations and the fact that much of the conduct occurs without witnesses, disempowering the victims for lack of evidence, online abuse of this kind leaves direct digital paths which can be identified and tracked, via IP addresses. We are told some anonymous accounts with fake names originate overseas but it is easy via VPN for a local creator to fraudulently try to cover their tracks in this way.

The underlying belief held by men and boys who violate girls and women whether in the workplace or in the home is that women are not people with rights and dignity but objects, toys and commodities. The bodies and images of the bodies of these women, girls and children can, under the operation of this belief, be used to make money for the man who has access to them, whether it is a husband, partner, father, brother or son or in the workplace, an employer or colleague.

This violation of human rights is not just a women’s issue. It is an issue which impacts the way men and women relate to each other in our society. The disrespect which devalues women and reduces them from dynamic whole human beings to the status of pornographic material to be rated, graded and drooled over is endemic in the world today. Commercialism and monetization of female beauty had long been a feature of various industries, including fashion and cosmetics. Female bodies are used in advertising and marketing to sell cars and planes and every item or artefact under the sun. Prostitution sells the bodies themselves. Pornography sells the images of the bodies, positioning the women and girls as available to the eye and mind of any beholder. Only Fans attempts to state that if a woman chooses to sell images of herself, it’s a form of feminist empowerment. But non-consensual image sharing is an outrage and a defilement of human dignity.

In Sri Lanka we can do something to challenge it.

In the space of a few weeks, since one digital content creator exposed the Facebook groups on social media, there has been a rallying of voices on Tik Tok and Instagram with women and men of all ages but predominantly in their teens, twenties and thirties, speaking out against this behaviour and informing us all how to report and take down these groups. This was an organic uprising and it was a powerfully positive use of the internet and its reach. The information and opinions they have shared have also been translated into all three main languages to maximize its reach to all communities.

The tide of protest they created has now reached parliament, fuelled by the active support of key figures in the social media sphere across all communities and generations who have built massive public followings. These account holders are using their power and influence for good, recognizing that their followings are electoral blocs and holding elected representatives to account, actively commenting on their level of accountability and timeliness of follow up.

It helps a great deal that many of the decision makers in this matter and those in authority in the current regime are not men but women, and not just isolated token women in key places, but individuals who are working to collectively address this crisis. The public too are far more aware and literate socially and culturally than they were a decade ago, and the digital tools available to track and monitor damaging and exploitative activity are now becoming increasingly more accessible. Most significantly, individuals and organizations that have long worked in isolation to support victims of this kind of injustice are now collaborating to raise awareness and share insight and knowledge.

People working in this sphere to raise awareness of the abuse and exploitation of women and girls have been repeatedly denied justice and shortchanged in the past. This time, there is a sense of collective responsibility to support everyone affected and to see each of the incidents not as one off crimes but as part of a pattern of violence against women and girls and vulnerable children that needs to be understood and changed. This is essential for the whole society to progress. For how can any woman feel safe in an interaction with a man if the minds of the men she is expected to interact with are saturated with pornographic images? How can people who are immersed in such images and perspectives of women and girls who are portrayed as available, provocative or enticing, catalogued for consumption and rated out of ten, differentiate between images of women on the screen and women and girls in real life?

The current government seems to be responding to the public outcry in a timely way, criminalizing the conduct, invoking the CID and acknowledging the issues voiced by Child Protection and Women’s Rights organizations to de-platform the predatory and exploitative Facebook and Telegram groups.

It is an illustration of what happens when shame changes sides. We are not just a nation shocked and shamed by the actions of some of us. We are a nation that takes action to confront the need for self- reflection and accountability and choose to create a safer Sri Lanka.

-This article was originally featured on groundviews.org

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