“I’m tired”: it is with these words that the streamer Maghla begins her thread on Twitter. Present on Twitch for several years and with almost 700,000 subscribers on the streaming platform, Maghla is one of the most important streamers in France. Faced with cyberbullying for many years, the streamer and videographer expressed herself on social networks through several long messages, denouncing the sexualization of which she was the subject. Pornographic photomontages, discord dedicated to sexual scenarios around her, insulting comments and messages, videos where men masturbate on photos of her… The streamer details all the cyberviolence to which she has been subjected for many years as soon as she shows a patch of skin during her streams.
A thread taken up thousands of times, and in particular by some of its fellow streamers, who also said they were “tired” of the massive sexualization they could experience online, and the threats and insults they were regularly subjected to . “I have chosen silence for +10 years so as not to get me more problems, but here is the reality of everyday life”, explained DamDam, another streamer specializing in video games. Ditto on the side of Baghera Jones, another streamer: “We are all exhausted from all this, we spend our time hearing about the progress that is being made and not the ugly but normalized things that happen to us on a daily basis. To be a woman is to “have” to be prepared to be sexualized and threatened during our lifetime. As the day progressed, more streamers spoke out on the issue.
Stalkers, doxxing and social anxiety
The problem is not new: for years now, women on the Internet have been speaking out about the various types of violence they experience, and more particularly when their image is public. In these various testimonials from videographers and streamers, many recount having had to deal with “stalkers”, these obsessive people who stalk them, having seen their personal information (such as their address or telephone number) revealed online, or even having been forced to move to find some semblance of peace. As streamer Baghera Jones explains, “Here you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, personally I had to move because of harassment and “visits” to my apartment, I developed enormous anxieties and my insomnia has become terrible. In a since-deleted tweet, videographer and science popularizer Charlie Danger explained the ravages of months of cyberbullying on her mental health.
A few hours before the tweet from Maghla and other streamers, streamer Shironamie shared a surreal scene on her own account: during her live, a man pretends to be a delivery man and claims to have his address, before threatening to rape her. If the streamer did not let herself be dismantled and recorded it to add evidence to her complaint file, the sequence is chilling. “If something happens to me, there is this oral evidence,” she says, facing the camera. Again, this streak is just the tip of the iceberg for many women on the internet. And even for those who seem to play with the sexist codes of the platform, the reactions are not tender, as we have seen with the streamer Amouranth: whether they cover themselves or expose themselves, whether they speak or remain silent, visible women on the Internet are always at fault.
Sexist and sexual cyber-violence, a blind spot in the fight against violence against women
Women on Twitch and YouTube have been talking for a long time. It would be wrong to speak of a sudden “freedom of speech”, as the hallowed phrase goes, when talking about gender-based and sexual violence, online and offline, that women have been denouncing for years. Many have filed a complaint, expressed themselves, denounced their attackers. But on Twitch as on the rest of the Internet, they are often discredited, accused of doing this “for the buzz” or for notoriety, are brought back to their bodies. For years, streaming on Twitch, and particularly in the field of video games, was intended to exclude those who would only bring views with their bodies… Even though they were being insulted at the slightest cleavage or if they did not seem not “prepared” enough.
On this 5-year anniversary of the #MeToo movement, these messages leave a bitter taste. Women speak, alert, denounce. But who listens to them? The only difference compared to the other speeches is that they seem to be speaking together, at the same time, in connection with a common affair. But cyberviolence and cybersexism against streamers and videographers present online seem to be a blind spot, especially on the side of justice. If French law punishes these facts, the filing of complaints rarely succeeds in sanctioning this online violence. As one Internet user explained: “I feel like I have read this kind of thread over and over again. “Because it seems that since the GamerGate affair of 2014, nothing has changed.