In a report released yesterday, entitled “Cyber Violence Against Women And Girls: A Global Wake-up Call,” UN Women, the group behind last year’s risible “He for She” campaign, called on governments to use their “licensing prerogative” to ensure that “telecoms and search engines” are only “allowed to connect with the public” if they “supervise content and its dissemination.”
In other words, if search engines and ISPs don’t comply with a list of the UN’s censorship demands, the UN wants national governments to cut off their access to the public.
So, what sort of content does the UN want to censor? ISIS recruitment videos, perhaps, which lure women into lives of rape and servitude? Live-streamed executions from Syria? Revenge porn or snuff videos? There’s no shortage of dangerous and potentially traumatising content on the web, after all, much of it disproportionately affecting women.
Alas not. The UN is hung up on “cyber violence against women,” a Kafkaesque term that is apparently shorthand for “women being criticised on the internet.” At least, that’s how at least two attendees at the launch of the UN report, published by the United Nations Broadband Commission, explained it yesterday.
I’m sorry, and I know I don’t speak for all women, but:
1) Censorship and political correctness don’t lead to solutions to the problems that they think exist.
2) People tend to rebel against those who try to control them unnecessarily.
3) If I let words hurt me, if they’re just words and not actions, it is up to me to decide how I’m going to feel.
4) Learning to deal with adversity is a skill set that everyone needs to learn. Without practice, I cannot learn.
5) Nobody likes whiny babies. Grow up.
6) Oh, and there’s something called “free speech”. I know that many countries don’t allow it, and our country is on the brink of losing this right, but we still have it and we can and should exercise it, dangit.
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