The public should pay greater attention to the issue of “digital sexual violence,” and people whose private images have been disseminated without their consent should seek help, the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation said yesterday.
“In recent years, with the advancement of Internet technology, ‘digital sexual violence’ has become a new type of crime that knows no bounds,” the foundation said.
People’s private sexual images continue to be distributed without their consent, as shown by media reports, so the foundation in 2015 established a hotline and Web site to help victims, and their family and friends, consult with professionals, it said.
Photo: CNA
From 2015 to June, the hotline served 374 people, foundation chief executive officer Tu Ying-chiu (杜瑛秋) told a news conference at the Ama Museum in Taipei.
The news conference was held to coincide with this year’s Qixi Festival, also known as Lovers’ Day, which is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar.
People aged 21 to 25 made up the majority, or 24 percent, of callers to the hotline, followed by people aged 26 to 30 at 13 percent, a foundation report said.
Twenty-three percent of the callers declined to disclose their age, or the foundation had no age data for them, the report added.
Nearly 92 percent were female callers, while about 8 percent were male, it said.
For 45 percent of the callers, the party who possessed their private images was a former or current partner, the foundation said.
For 20 percent of the callers, it was an “online friend” who they had never met before, while for 12 percent of them, it was a peer or coworker, it said.
Victim blaming and self-blame are reasons victims often do not seek help, Tu said, citing foundation observations.
The foundation yesterday released a video featuring its charity ambassador, entertainer Huang Lu Tzu-yin (黃路梓茵), also known by her stage name “LuLu,” to encourage victims to seek help and to raise awareness about digital sexual violence.
Using Huang’s influence among adolescents, the foundation hopes to teach them about how to prevent digital sexual violence, it said.
The video, which was recorded in Chinese, is about four-and-a-half minutes long and can be viewed on YouTube.
It takes great courage for victims to seek help, said Albee Chang (張艾筆), executive producer of the video.
The expectations that society places on women and their relationships form a part of their self-identity, foundation chairwoman Theresa Yeh (葉德蘭) said, urging people to work together toward creating a culture where it is “easy for women to refuse” requests for private photographs or videos.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
Travel agencies in Taiwan are working to secure alternative flights for travelers bound for New Zealand for the Lunar New Year holiday, as Air New Zealand workers are set to strike next week. The airline said that it has confirmed that the planned industrial action by its international wide-body cabin crew would go ahead on Thursday and Friday next week. While the Auckland-based carrier pledged to take reasonable measures to mitigate the impact of the workers’ strike, an Air New Zealand flight arriving at Taipei from Auckland on Thursday and another flight departing from Taipei for Auckland on Saturday would have to
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS