Dear abusers who hurt women online...
This letter is to online abusers: Do you remember the moment before you pressed send? The women you targeted are still carrying the pain.
What you need to know:
- The 16 Days of Activism have ended, but the perpetrators of digital violence are still there.
- This letter asks them one question: Do you remember the moment before you pressed send?
- The campaigns are over, but the women they targeted are still carrying the pain — and only they can choose to stop.
The 16 Days of Activism Against GBV ended on Wednesday. This year's theme—Unite to end digital violence against all women and girls—inspired thousands of articles, webinars, panel sessions and social media posts. Much has been said.
Online violence spares no one; men too are targeted. But research consistently shows that women bear the brunt—more frequently, more viciously, and with consequences that follow them offline.
As I reflected on what to write this week, I realised one audience had not been addressed directly: the perpetrators—the trolls, stalkers, ex-partners weaponising intimate images, political operatives manufacturing online hate, and spouses who surveil and control. This letter is for them.
Intimate photos
Dear you, behind the screen,
I hope this letter finds you well. I suspect it will. After all, you are not the one who lay awake last night, heart racing, dreading what fresh attack awaited in your notifications. Someone else endured that. She had her intimate photos forwarded to strangers while you slept soundly, as you always do.
The '16 Days' hashtags are fading and the world moving on. But you are still there.
Behind the screen with your anonymous account. You, who typed those words, created that fake image, forwarded that video and threatened that woman. You did it, went to bed and woke up the next morning as though nothing had happened.
I am writing to you—not to preach or shame, but to ask you something I guess no one has ever asked you directly: Do you remember the moment before you pressed send button?
There is always a moment. A pause, however brief, when your finger hovers and something inside you knows. You know that what you are about to do will hurt. You know the woman on the other end is real—that she has a name, a family, a life that will be disrupted by what you are about to unleash. And yet, you press send anyway.
What happens in that moment? What do you tell yourself to make it acceptable?
My work has exposed me to violence in all its forms—physical, sexual, economic and psychological. But in recent years, a new wound has emerged, one that leaves no visible scars but destroys just as thoroughly – digital violence. It comes through the very devices we depend on to connect with the world, arriving in inboxes, comment sections, private messages, and group chats. It follows women home, into their bedrooms and into their most private moments.
And unlike a bruise, it never fully heals. A screenshot lives forever. A leaked image circulates beyond recall. A threat, once sent, cannot be unsent. You know this. That is precisely why you do it.
What unsettles me most is not the faceless troll—though there are many of you. It is the man who knows her. The ex-partner who still keeps those photos and wields them like a weapon. The political operative paid to manufacture outrage against a woman who dared to lead. The husband who monitors her phone, not out of love, but control. You are not all strangers. Some of you sit across the dinner table from the women you torment.
'Harmless joke'
Research tells us that nearly four in ten women globally have experienced online abuse. But statistics flatten the horror. Behind every number is a woman who stopped posting, a journalist who went silent, a politician who withdrew from public life and a young woman who couldn't face her family after her private images were shared without consent. Some have taken their own lives.
You did not hold a weapon; but you pulled a trigger. I wonder sometimes whether you understand the physics of digital violence—how a single act of cruelty online multiplies in ways you never anticipated. What you sent to one WhatsApp group reached a thousand people by morning. What you intended as embarrassment cost her a career she had spent years building. What you dismissed as a harmless joke left her wondering whether life was still worth living.
The internet has given you a mask. But masks do not change who you are. They only reveal it. The anonymity you hide behind does not make you invisible. It makes you visible in a different way—to yourself. Every time you attack a woman online, you are telling yourself who you are when no one is watching.
Is this who you want to be?
I know that among you are those who are remorseless. You enjoy the power, the chaos, and the fear you create. But I also know that not all of you are irredeemable. There are those who did it once and have never fully shaken the discomfort. Those who are still telling themselves it was harmless, even as something deeper knows it was not.
It is, however, not too late to stop. The 16 Days are over and the campaigns have ended, but the women you targeted are still carrying what you did. Tonight, somewhere in this country, a woman will hesitate before reaching for her phone, bracing herself for whatever fresh attack might be waiting in her notifications.
Written not in anger, but in hope that you will choose differently tonight.
