In July 2020, KRYSS Network organized a 14-day nationwide Hacking Hate Virtual Camp (2020) (HHVC) where we had 34 participants share knowledge, experiences, and insights and contribute towards building a community of response against online gender-based violence (OGBV) and hate speech. We tap the expertise of individuals from various sectors, not just the human rights sector, and have played key roles in connecting both younger and older feminist activists with each other who were formerly working in silos.
The HHVC was the first-ever national convening on OGBV and gender-based hate speech. These incidents occur on a daily basis to many women and girls and yet many do not have the language to name the violence targeting them. The convening was an important space for the community to meet, share, reflect, unlearn and relearn their knowledge and personal encounter with violence online. Participants were able to locate their personal experience around OGBV within a broader pattern of violence and structural issues of gender inequalities. Participants shared that they have a better understanding of the following topics: complexity and structural issues of gender-based violence, the intersectionality of race and gender, motivation of aggressors, the aggressors as a product of systemic oppression, and how is hate organized online, cost(s) of online gender-based violence, transformative justice v punitive justice system, etc. This in turn strengthens KRYSS’s role in building a movement towards influencing freedom of expression for people in all diversity.
The 14-day HHVC was KRYSS Network’s first major initiative in building a constituency to address OGBV using a feminist approach, and which we hope to make into an annual event for constituency-building.
