‘This is not a case of gender inequality. This is a case of injustice’: Perceptions of online resistance to camera sexual voyeurism

Abstract

In November 2018, Monica Baey, a student at the National University of Singapore (NUS) was recorded by a fellow student while showering in university accommodation. After the perpetrator was issued a formal warning and a one-semester suspension, Baey posted about the case on social media and named the perpetrator. This generated public support, news coverage and institutional reform. In this article, we explore a range of responses to the Monica Baey case through a thematic analysis of publicly available comments about the case on a popular message board forum, Hardwarezone. By contextualising our analysis within the political setting of Singapore, this research demonstrates that public responses to testimony-based resistance require close analysis, as extant tools for citizens to engage in ‘naming and shaming’, were relevant to understanding these responses to this mode of resistance and reflected what Ibrahim (2018) calls ‘everyday authoritarianism’.

Keywords

Camera sexual voyeurism everyday authoritarianism image-based abuse online resistance narrative resistance vigilantism

Introduction

In April 2019, Monica Baey, a student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), discovered someone filming her secretly while she was using the university’s student accommodation showers. Baey reported the incident to the police and the university. The perpetrator, a fellow student named Nicholas Lim, was issued a formal warning, suspended by NUS for a semester and asked to leave the student accommodation. Disappointed with this outcome, Baey posted about these events on her Instagram account, naming Lim as the perpetrator and criticising both the university and police for failing to take her case seriously. The posts were quickly picked up by local media and became the subject of intense news coverage in Singapore. Following on from public discussion, NUS changed its policies on sexual misconduct on campus and the case was used to further affirm the pending criminalisation of image-based abuse.

As is evident in the Monica Baey case, social media has become an important mechanism through which to centralise anti-violence testimony. Scholars have long examined the ways in which victims-survivors use these sites and technologies to expose and address sexual violence and harassment (Vitis and Gilmour, 2016). However, in the wake of the #Metoo movement, following the allegations of sexual violence against the movie producer Harvey Weinstein, the longstanding use of social media as a site of resistance and consciousness raising – or what Serisier (2018) refers to as ‘narrative politics’ – has been recognised and celebrated (Fileborn and Loney-Howes, 2019). #Metoo gained global traction when women and girls started to use the hashtag to share their experiences and this created a newly ignited discourse on sexual violence against women, and their resistance to this violence (Clark-Parsons, 2019). It has been suggested that these modes of resistance capitalise on the ability for testimony to shift the public’s frame of reference for interpreting the scope and nature of sexual violence (Clark, 2016) and facilitate solidarity and consciousness raising in counterpublic spaces (Fileborn, 2017; Salter, 2017). However, questions remain as to how these modes of resistance generate community support or play an instrumental role in shaping public understandings (Clark, 2016). As Salter’s (2017) work highlights, speaking out online can be beneficial for those who sit within the parameters of ‘ideal victimhood’ and detrimental for those who do not. Pointing out the often vitriolic responses to non-ideal victims’ testimony, Salter (2017) emphasises the necessity of acknowledging and analysing the socio-political contexts and technological affordances which shape the transformative power of online resistance. To better understand these dynamics requires a consideration of public responses. As such, in this article, we explore one specific example of how the public can respond to and make meaning of women’s resistance in online spaces, through a thematic analysis of public comments about the Monica Baey case on a popular thread in a Singaporean message board forum.

As we argue, this is an important case study through which to examine the dynamics of public responses particularly because outcomes connected to this case – raising awareness, policy changes and affirming criminalisation – allude to the instrumental impacts of narrative politics and online resistance. By examining a range of publicly accessible responses within one popular message board, this article situates these particular responses within the wider political context of Singapore where the conditions for naming and shaming are determined outside the parameters of narrative politics. Drawing from Ibrahim’s (2018) work on everyday authoritarianism, we explore how collective vigilantism and prioritisation of zero-tolerance expressed in this thread relates to practices of citizen sovereignty which affirm lateral surveillance as a central function of public order. Additionally, while some policy and legislative changes have emerged in the aftermath of this case, this article considers whether shifts in the ‘frames of reference’ for interpreting sexual violence were evident in these public responses.

The Monica Baey case

In April 2019, Monica Baey, a student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), published a series of posts on her Instagram account, in which she shared her experience of being filmed when showering in her student accommodation in November 2018 (Ang, 2019a). After Baey reported the incident to campus security and the police, the perpetrator, fellow NUS student Nicholas Lim, was identified on CCTV footage. NUS ordered Lim to write an apology letter to Baey and undergo mandatory counselling. They suspended him from university for one semester and banned him from entering the student hall in which Baey lived (Ang, 2019a; Teng, 2019). Lim received a 12-month conditional warning by the Singapore Police Force (SPF), stating that he must not commit any offences during this period or he would be prosecuted for the past offence. This conditional warning would not be placed on his record or disclosed to employers (Seah, 2019). The SPF justified their decision due to Lim’s ‘high likelihood of rehabilitation’ (Ang, 2019b) arguing that a ‘prosecution, with a possible jail sentence, will likely ruin [Lim’s] entire future, with a permanent criminal record’ (SPF, 2019 as cited in Seah, 2019).

In her Instagram posts, Baey recounted the details of the incident and expressed her disappointment with Lim’s punishment, which she found to be too lenient. Eventually she publicly named Lim as the perpetrator – an act she stated was her ‘last resort’ to bring attention to the matter (Ang, 2019c). The Instagram posts were picked up by the local media and soon received widespread public attention (Seah, 2019). In response, NUS set up a committee to review their disciplinary frameworks for sexual misconduct on campus, which resulted in the adoption of tougher sanctions for offenders, including a minimum of 1-year suspension for serious offences, and immediate expulsion for severe or repeated cases (Ang, 2019a). Measures also included stronger involvement of victims in disciplinary procedures and enhanced support structures such as a victim care unit (Teng, 2019); and enhanced campus security, including the installation of secure shower cubicles and increased numbers of CCTV cameras (Ang, 2019a; Teng, 2019).

Baey’s Instagram post received widespread public and political support. Around 30,000 people signed an online petition calling for university and police to punish Lim more harshly (Ng, 2019), and Baey reported she received over 1000 messages on social media from survivors of sexual assault (Tam Tam, 2019). On his Facebook page, the Singaporean Education Minister Ong Ye Kung publicly agreed that the punishments were ‘manifestly inadequate’ (Teng, 2019). However, there was also a considerably high number of criticisms for Baey’s naming and shaming of Lim, who in return was subjected to online harassment. In an Instagram post published in late April, captioned ‘Closure’, Baey stated she hoped ‘that the unnecessary online harassment towards [Lim] and his loved ones will stop’ and that Lim ‘does not deserve to be bullied online by trolls, and he definitely does not deserve to have his punishment met by anyone on the internet – including [herself]’. However, Baey stated that she ‘still stand[s] by the fact that [she does] not owe it to him to keep his name private’ and voiced her hopes that discussions of sexual violence would continue to lead to positive change (Baey on Instagram, 2019¹).

In a wider context of the #MeToo movement, this case could be seen as solely reflective of the power of narrative politics as a mechanism for achieving transformative change and recognition. However, by exploring online sites where public responses to this case emerged, our research examines the role of wider political contexts in shaping public support for survivor testimony. Before unpacking this project, we first turn towards mapping understandings of naming and shaming as a mechanism of resistance in the Singaporean context.

Online resistance, digilantism and everyday authoritarianism in Singapore

Resistance forms for violence against women which draw upon the socio-technological affordances of online networked spaces have become more visible and varied. As evidenced during the #Metoo movement, victim-survivors have engaged in ‘narrative politics’ by sharing testimony of violence in online spaces (Fileborn and Loney-Howes, 2019; Serisier, 2018). They have also engaged in justice-seeking practices like naming and shaming by posting perpetrator details and recordings of harassment and misogyny on social media (Fileborn, 2017; Jane, 2017a; Salter, 2013; Vitis and Gilmour, 2016).

These resistance acts are often understood as responses to the failure of formal institutions in delivering justice for survivors (Chang and Poon, 2017; Fileborn, 2017; Jane, 2016; Salter, 2013; Vitis and Gilmour, 2016). As Jane (2017b: 46) describes in her work on ‘digilantism’, practices like naming and shaming are ‘politically motivated extrajudicial practices. . .intended to punish or bring others to account’. As such, they reflect a desire to pursue accountability and punishment outside the formal criminal justice system.

Scholars researching sexual violence have highlighted the emancipatory potential of these new digital resistance forms. Including their ability to shape the public’s frame of reference for interpreting the scope and nature of sexual violence (Clark, 2016) and their ability to generate counter-hegemonic discourses on sexual violence (Powell, 2015; Salter, 2013). However, they are not without problems and potential pitfalls. New communication technologies are not automatically progressive and ‘liberatory’ (Powell, 2015: 597) and unequal gendered power relations exist in online spaces. For example, public responses can be negative and victim-survivors are often subjected to abuse and victim-blaming on social media (Henry and Powell, 2015).

While these strategies have been utilised by survivors and supporters, the use of online spaces to seek justice outside of formal institutions has emerged in varying contexts. For example, citizen-led digilantism also takes the form of websleuthing, where members of the public investigate and publicise crimes and wrongdoings online to punish offenders and/or those engaging in corrupt or immoral behaviour (Chang and Poon, 2017; Henry and Powell, 2015; Yardley et al., 2018). Collective practices of digital vigilantism emerge as a ‘new type of citizen policing’ (1916) aiming to reinstate moral and social justice in the (perceived) absence of an effective criminal justice system. Here, those engaged in digital vigilantism perceive themselves as correcting ‘structural flaws’ (Chang and Poon, 2017: 1917) in the system and contributing to improving and/or transforming society more broadly.

For the purpose of this article, this raises questions about the specific dynamics of (online) resistance and digital vigilantism in Singapore. The city-state in Southeast Asia is known for its rigid mechanisms of social and formal control. Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is commonly credited with the rapid economic success of the country since gaining independence in 1965 (Kaur et al., 2016). The PAP exercises an authoritarian rule that employs a rigid legal system to discipline transgression (Ganapathy, 2000; Kaur et al., 2016) and constrain civil liberties. Loyalty to the PAP is ensured through careful management of the economy, investment in social policies and the provision of a certain standard of living through employment and public housing (Kaur et al., 2016). At the same time, an ideological ‘survivalism’ (Pow, 2013) is mobilised to garner support for authoritarian rule, here, the government employs a rhetoric of a vulnerable nation consistently under threat by internal and external forces (Pow, 2013) and links rigid control and surveillance to political, social, and economic stability. Therefore, consent to authoritarian control and the limitations of civic freedom is based to a great extent on the fear of downward social mobility. This is accompanied by a hegemonic discourse of meritocracy promising economic and social rewards for individual merit (Teo, 2019) and hard work as the pathway to social mobility.

Singapore is often characterised as a place of ‘top-down’ authoritarianism which forecloses dissent and political engagement and renders citizens ‘passive, powerless dupes’ (Teo, 2012: 77). Here, the trade-off between (economic) security and authoritarianism and ‘the people’s overall trust in these principles’ is seen as creating the ‘conditions for political obedience, acceptance of unpopular policies and political apathy, in general’ (Tan, 2012: 71). However, political dissent and resistance in Singapore are far more complex. Here, it is important to recognise the specific legal and cultural frameworks which shape possibilities for resistance in the city-state, as well as the specific forms of resistance (and accommodation) that emerge in these contexts.

First, political dissent is not absent in Singapore, as, for example, Singham and Thomas (2017) demonstrate in their account of the manifold ways in which Singaporeans resist the politics of the PAP government. Political resistance, however, comes with significant limitations, and hence, severe risks for those involved. The Sedition Act restricts free speech by criminalising speech or acts that hold even minimal risk of disturbing social, racial or religious ‘harmony’. Under the Public Order Act, any protest outside of the narrowly set parameters of the government’s permit process is criminalised. Civil society debates are controlled by the so-called ‘OB’ (‘out-of-bound’) markers. These denote topics which are considered too sensitive for public discourse and can be prosecuted under the Sedition Act. As these markers are ‘unclear until they are crossed’ (Ibrahim, 2018: 223), they often lead to self-censorship.

Yet, as Ibrahim (2018) argues, the relative absence of political opposition to the PAP government is also the result of consent to and active participation of citizens in authoritarian rule. Here, his concept of ‘everyday authoritarianism’ allows insight into the complexities of governing processes in Singapore. ‘Everyday authoritarianism’ describes the practices through which authoritarian rule is maintained ‘bottom-up’ (instead of state driven and top-down) (Ibrahim, 2018: 228). This includes the conscious enactment and enforcement of rules and forms of social control, exemplified in a willingness of citizens to report transgressions to authorities and the widespread engagement in practices of naming and shaming. Various platforms allow for online vigilantism through the public shaming of anti-social and transgressive behaviour. The most popular example is the ‘citizen journalist’ website Stomp,² a subsidiary of the government-owned news outlet Straits Times. On the website, Singaporeans are encouraged to post pictures or videos of incidents of public transgressions, ranging from cases of assault and the incitement of racial or religious hatred to not giving up a seat for the elderly or eating on public transport.

Practices of ‘everyday authoritarianism’ are also demonstrated in the punitive, and at times aggressive, reaction of citizens towards individuals considered as breaching the rules of acceptable behaviour. This reaction, according to Ibrahim (2018), is particularly strong when acts insult significant symbols of Singaporean nationalism. The case of the blogger Amos Yee exemplifies this process. In 2015, 18-year-old Yee posted a range of controversial YouTube videos in which he made derogatory comments about Christianity and the late PAP founder Lee Kuan Yew. Yee was arrested under the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act and incarcerated for 4 weeks in an adult prison. Gaining international traction, the strict verdict was widely perceived as a punishment for Yee’s dissenting political views (Ibrahim, 2018).

Despite international concern, Singaporeans widely approved of the harsh verdict (Human Rights Watch, 2017; Ibrahim, 2018). Outraged by the derogatory comments about Lee Kuan Yew shortly after his death in March 2015, citizens actively engaged in the mass reporting of Yee to authorities and on two occasions, Yee was physically assaulted (Ibrahim, 2018). As Ibrahim (2018) argues, the public outrage that motivated community members to report, shame or assault Yee was predominantly about the very political symbols he had attacked. By insulting Lee, the blogger insulted ‘the nation state itself’ (Ibrahim, 2018: 228) – and citizens’ reactions soon turned from a defence of Lee to enacting Singaporean sovereignty (228). According to Ibrahim (2018), both the case of Amos Yee, and the prevalence of online vigilantism in Singapore are symptomatic of a longing for social and national order. In both practices of ‘everyday authoritarianism’, the individuals transgressing norms are identified as symbols of social disorder. Therefore, rather than constituting a supressed populace, community members actively express, and enact social and political order.

Resistance is commonly defined as an action or practice enacted in opposition to a certain order, situation, condition or behaviour (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004). The notion of resistance itself requires the existence of an opposite force towards which it is targeted, that recognises the oppositional act as such. The moment both forces enter into confrontation makes visible those power structures, including gender hierarchies within patriarchal societies, which are concealed in everyday life by various cultural mediations (Naegler, 2018). In moments of confrontation, if the legitimacy of these structures is threatened and/or refused, the threat of violence underlying unequal power relations (Graeber, 2009) materialises in the response. As we argue in the following, the Monica Baey case is situated within this specific context, where naming and shaming of public transgressions online, as a practice of ‘everyday authoritarianism’, is part of the ‘bottom-up’ processes of maintaining authoritarian control, and through which citizens consciously enforce social control. Therefore, the Baey case raises questions about whether political permission for everyday authoritarianism is evident in public responses to women speaking out against gendered violence in the Singaporean context.

Method

Our article draws from a thematic analysis of public responses to the Monica Baey case by looking at comments posted to the popular Singaporean public message board forum, Hardwarezone. This forum was selected because of its position as a hub for online social and political discourse in Singapore. Like other message board forums, Hardwarezone is an open-source platform where any user can create their own interest-based thread. Users are anonymous and maintain their anonymity by setting up accounts using pseudonyms which allows for a more open style of communication. As Massanari (2015: 3) argues, pseudonymous spaces are often characterised by a ‘play and candour that one might not associate with traditional social-networking spaces that enforce a “one-name/real name” policy’. This tendency to ‘candour’ borne from the affordances of pseudonymous spaces makes Hardwarezone an ideal site for examining a range of public responses to the Monica Baey case.

To examine the cultural work within these responses, the research team conducted a search of Hardwarezone to locate threads on the Monica Baey case. The most populated thread was posted on the sub-forum EDMW which is dedicated to lifestyle and local issues in Singapore. We selected a thread focused on the Monica Baey case with the largest number of comments to ensure we were focusing on a discursive space frequented by commenters which would allow for a detailed qualitative analysis. Additionally, in selecting this thread we were led by users’ decisions to participate in this particular site of discussion. The original poster began the thread to raise concerns about the lenient police response after seeing Baey’s Instagram post criticising NUS and SPF. The thread spanned 10 days after the original post and was modulated by updates emerging in news and social media. The data collected included posts, responses to posts and post times and dates. In line with the Association of Internet Researcher’s (AoIR) guidelines on ethical research conduct (AoIR, 2019), usernames were removed, and users were assigned a numerical code. The thread contains a small portion of the online public discourse surrounding the case and was started by a user sympathetic to Baey’s original posts. However, the aim of this research is not to suggest that this thread is, in and of itself, representative of the definitive ‘public response’ to the Monica Baey case. This analysis examines how meaning is made within the responses posted in this particular setting. In order to gain in-depth insights into this meaning making process we have focused on a highly populated thread within a popular sub-forum.

Due to the exploratory nature of this research and the volume of data, we used a qualitative thematic analysis (Massanari, 2018). Analysis focused on comments from individual users and conversations which emerged between users. The research team used a two-stage coding process and the data was openly coded then coded to generate key themes. Drawing from this coding process, the following themes were generated: support for and participation in vigilantism, elite privilege, carceral punishment and objectification. They are organised under two larger sections. The first looks at the ways in which support and the emphasis on elitism and punishment cohered with everyday authoritarianism. The second focuses on patterns of objectification and questions whether the frames of reference for sexual violence shifted in this thread. In the following section, we discuss the role of each of these themes and explore their implications for understanding public responses to women’s resistance to sexual violence.

Support for vigilantism

A sizeable number of users indicated that they were deeply angered by the lenient approach from both police and NUS. They supported Baey’s actions and her decision to use an online public space to raise awareness of the unsatisfactory outcome. For example:

Support this girl to seek justice. . .

If anything, the victim’s sexpose help to warn the entire cohort about the existence of this pervert. That in itself is a win.

Such comments also explicitly recognised this mode of justice-seeking as legitimate in the absence of an institutional response:

If I firmly believe in that I have been denied justice, I will also do whatever it takes, regardless of your doxxing or whatever laws you have. I have my conviction to fight for my rights and that justice be served and wrongs be punished. Not keep quiet and let a man made law stand in my way.

Commenters also took on the role of vigilante responders, for example, users continuously named the perpetrator, encouraged others to post about the case and shared information to keep the story in the public sphere. For example:

can sleep well. that guy gonna get pwned ³ in the morning when this thread is viewed by thousands and continue stirring.

This needs to blow up by the media then something will happen

bump thread until it appears on papers.

These invitations were mobilised by the pre-existing expectations that EDMW users are well versed in practices of websleuthing (Yardley et al., 2018). This was evidenced in the repeated invitation for users to ‘CSI’ the perpetrator and find/share information about his family members, National Registration Identity Card number, National Service standing, parents and girlfriend. For example:

where is edmw csi team?

Anyone csied this pervert. . .

Post after post. Till no info. CSI so slow.

These posts and the expectations that the ‘CSI’ team would be prompt and detailed suggest that practices of websleuthing are embedded within the normal functions of EDMW. Importantly, this information was solicited, gathered and circulated across the forum. Users found out where Lim worked, his name, his girlfriend and information about his National Service standing. Within the thread EDMW users were deputised with the auxiliary function of investigating public wrongs and modulating media coverage of current issues in the Singaporean landscape.

Elite privilege

Discussions about the case further centred on accusations of corruption and class privilege. Users fixated on why Lim had not received a more serious punishment and there was extensive conjecture about his social status. The most prominent comment in the thread involved users arguing and assuming that he was an ‘elite’ with either wealthy or politically connected parents. These claims were tied to his attendance at NUS and were used to compare his treatment with others who have been prosecuted for similar offences. For example:

But polis always catch mrt molesters. . . Maybe there’s an invisible force field dome protecting such scum around our unis.

Too elite to be jailed?

so parents powerful means can get away freely after filming girls go shower? wa can like that one ah? no law?

‘Wah backing so powerful ah. . . must be meritocracy. . .

Lets not deviate away from the main focus of this thread Main focus: -[the perpetrator] committed a crime -He went scott-free even after reported, because police and nus did nothing more than a slap on his wrist -This could be due to his potential “powerful parents” as mentioned by some -Who are his parents?

Another facet of this emphasis on elite privilege were references to Lim as a ‘White Horse’. The term ‘White Horse’ refers to a classification used until the 2000s to identify sons of influential Singaporeans so they could receive preferential treatment during mandatory National Service.⁴ It is now used to indicate elite privilege. For example:

This guy is a white horse?

want to see the power behind white horse.

This guy must be some kind of white horse How can NUS let the pervert go off scot free?

As with the general references to elitism discussed above, the description of Lim as a ‘White Horse’, locates camera sexual voyeurism and its policing within the pre-existing modes of social stratification and privilege. For example:

What’s unspoken here is that we each have a hidden social value score that society judges us by. This score determines the quality of justice and treatment that we get. And our public institutions (AGC ⁵ /SPF/NUS) have indirectly indicated that Ms. Baey’s social score is not high enough to warrant their granting her the full support of the justice system, and she’s told to just “let it go” by the NUS administrator chick.

Because of this, the long-reported failures of formal (educational and policing) institutions to provide victims/survivors with support and intervention were subsumed under these lasting forms of social stratification. In doing so, this case was more frequently discussed in relation to injustices of elite privilege rather than gender inequality and its relationship to sexual violence.

Failure of punishment

In addition to ascribing the source of this outcome to elite privilege, users problematised the violation of the principles of punishment and deterrence. Firstly, they noted that others had received more serious punishments, so it was ‘unfair’ not to apply those same punishments to this case. Secondly, this was not considered a serious enough response and thirdly, it was suggested that without carceral intervention there would be no deterrence.

In Singapore, both the issue of camera sexual voyeurism and the use of short-term jail sentences for perpetrators (particularly those caught in public) are well publicised (Vitis, 2020). An increasing number of men have been prosecuted for camera sexual voyeurism in the State Courts (Vitis, 2020). There have been extensive reports of these cases in the main broadsheet newspaper Straits Times and many have occurred in shared public spaces like MRT stations, shopping centres and supermarkets (Vitis, 2020). This was clear in the comments, as users were primarily concerned that others had received short term jail sentences for similar actions:

indeed strange. . .we read on newspaper judges dishing out harsh sentences for similar offences and giving grandfather lectures about deterring others. . ..if evidence is clear you have to wonder why he got off so lightly. . .or specifically why spf did not raise charges against him. . .

Similarly, users noted the importance of consistent custodial sentences for camera sexual voyeurism. For example:

This is not consistent with other peeping Tom, upskirt case in recent years where they got 2 weeks jail minimum.

So many cases for film upskirt video, but the punishment so different. - imprisonment - suspension - police warning.

‘criminal offence. . .alot of ppl go to jail for filming upskirt.’

[Shares link for a case of camera sexual voyeurism in the State courts] Why this guy got 8 weeks jail ah? Similar offense right?

While some discussed the lack of punishment as an issue of ‘fairness’ others noted that a warning was not adequate for such a serious crime:

Commit the crime, do the time. Else world fill with criminal going Scots free. Think before u starting harming others. . .

He didn’t even face the law. That is what pissed off most people

So all those taking spycam videos and upskirt videos should be given warnings as well? All those committed molest/rape also given warnings? What about those that smuggle drugs?

This punishment-deterrence nexus also centred around general and specific deterrence. Some suggested that punishment (in carceral terms) acts as an important form of general deterrence:

If the punishment is not enforced then there is no deterrent for such crimes. People will continue taking videos of women in showers knowing they can get away with it. . .

means next time we can just take video of people showering and issue a letter of apology to get away with it lo.

Others suggested that the lack of punishment of Lim meant that this case would not result in specific deterrence:

Lol 12 months conditional warning is simi? After 12 months no problem pls proceed again issit?

Public support and everyday authoritarianism

These responses are situated within the freedoms and anonymity borne out of online counter publics, in addition to the wider practices of online narrative politics. They demonstrate a direct response to Baey’s use of Instagram to share this story and mirror her emphasis on the failed response of key institutional actors. However, the vigilante efforts of EDMW users and the various forms of meaning-making within this forum also exemplify Ibrahim’s (2018) conceptualisation of everyday authoritarianism as it evidences citizens naming and shaming public disorder as an expression of citizen sovereignty. The emphasis on the perceived failure of police and public universities to implement zero tolerance policies for public disorder, and forms of social stratification which violate national organising principles, demonstrates that the political permission for everyday authoritarianism bleeds through when disorder is not recognised by state institutions. Users’ efforts –particularly the immediate recourse to doxxing Lim – do not circumvent forms of social control but rather absorb and replicate them. Here, the continuities between policing forms and the impetus to name and shame is of crucial importance. As Yardley et al. (2018) argue, the rise of websleuthing can be placed on the continuum of the pluralisation of policing in late modernity. Similarly, in this case, public shaming and reactive ‘CSI’-ing exemplify practices of citizen sovereignty by affirming lateral surveillance and shaming as central to maintaining public order.

According to Ibrahim (2018), practices of ‘everyday authoritarianism’, as the conscious enactment of enforcement of rules and participation in authoritarian rule, target rule breakers who denigrate nationalist symbols. Similarly, users conceptualised Lim’s transgression and the response to him (or lack thereof) as a violation of contiguous principles understood as nationalistic symbols and part of national identity: meritocracy, zero-tolerance and law and order. The ideology of ‘meritocracy’ in Singapore promotes principles of work ethic as a pathway to social mobility (Koh, 2014; Teo, 2019), it is also tied to discourses of multi-culturalism and positioned as a mechanism for subverting and preventing racial inequalities (Teo, 2019). However, there exist significant tensions between the promised egalitarianism of meritocracy and the realities of social inequality. The awareness of these tensions was also revealed in comments where users called Lim a ‘White Horse’ and explained his lenient treatment in relation to his perceived elite status. In this process of meaning-making, the issue of camera sexual voyeurism is placed within, and eventually reframed as related to, extant class and social tensions in Singapore’s educational systems (Koh, 2014). The reframing of this case as primarily symptomatic of elite privilege and violating principles like meritocracy and zero-tolerance policing then allows the application of conservative tools available to citizens to ‘call out’ public disorder.

Emphasis on sustaining order was also shown in prominent suggestions that this case was fundamentally about a failure of punishment and repeated calls for carceral punishment. This is exemplified in the comment below, which makes a firm distinction between injustice within the criminal justice system, and gender inequality:

The way this whole issue is handled is deplorable. Perpetrator let off with a slap on the wrist by NUS and SPF. - Victim has to resort to social media to expose the injustice. - Some reports revealed that this is not the first case. . .This is not a case of gender inequality. This is a case of injustice. Many have seen examples with lighter repercussions but harsher punishments. What the fug is wrong with our system?

This evocation of national narratives of zero-tolerance policing, where swift and strict punishments for public disorder are positioned as essential for crime deterrence and social control demonstrates ideological support for the carceral state as the solitary solution to camera sexual voyeurism and affirms state discourses which suggest that zero-tolerance creates low crime rates. As such, the disorder being emphasised here is a failure to meet the standards of maintaining social order.

This example of discrediting questions about the structural dimensions of violence against women, coupled with the overall emphasis on punishment, suggests that the ‘right’ punishment could ‘solve’ this problem. This prioritises institutional punishment as the penultimate form of deterrence without emphasising the role of wider conditions such as gender inequality, the commodification of non-consensual intimate images and the popularity of non-consensual image sharing between male peers. As Serisier (2018: 29) argues, defining the problem of sexual violence ‘as one of inadequate or selective punishment critiques legal responses and simultaneously re-centres them as the appropriate institutional venue and discursive framework for defining and responding to sexual violence’. Many users were angry and supportive, and the repeated focus on the double standard between elites and ordinary citizens and failures in applying punishment and comparatively limited explicit references to everyday nature of women’s experiences of sexual violence as an ongoing social problem interrelated with gendered inequalities, emphasises individualisation as a frame of reference for sexual violence. As citizen sovereignty allows active participation in the restoration of social order (Ibrahim, 2018), the characterisation of this case as a failure to meet the standards of fairness is, to some extent, affirming of the status quo as this issue is framed on terms that cohere with national conceptualisations of order and disorder.

Objectification and changing frames of reference

As noted above, it has been proposed that online testimony can shape the public’s frame of reference for interpreting sexual violence. In this data, despite overarching support for Baey, there were a small number of highly prolific users that either maintained dominant myths surrounding sexual violence and/or legitimised both objectification and image-based abuse. For example, some users deployed a common feminist backlash trope by implying that Baey’s actions represented the pendulum of power swinging ‘too far’ in women’s favour. These comments characterised Baey as a danger to men because her conduct could encourage women to make false complaints:

this monica want to see ppl die then she happy? he already got suspended by NUS now still wan ppl go jail then she happy? all support her just because she xmm? this is a woman utilizing the STATE against MEN and it will only get worse.

Yea i guess this is what gender equality looks like. The guy’s reputation is going down before a trial while everyone else supports the girl with just words from her. Dangerous society we live in.

This perpetuates a zero-sum vision of gendered power relations, conflating the validation of women’s speech acts with threats to men’s social position and is indicative of wider discursive patterns of ‘aggrieved entitlement’ which have manifested online (Kimmel, 2015). Myths of male victimhood at the hands of women (through feminism or misandry) are a central characteristic of male dominated pseudonymous spaces (Marwick and Caplan, 2018; Massanari, 2018) and these myths are used to ‘justif[y] harassment as a defence mechanism to protect men against loathsome feminists out to oppress them’ (Marwick and Caplan, 2018: 554). These characterisations serve to undercut the potential for speech acts to expose the role of gendered power relations in sexual violence. As Fileborn and Loney-Howes (2019: 8) argue in their work on #Metoo, characterisations of the movement going ‘too far’, ‘reduce[d] the space for nuanced discussion, reflection and exploration of the complexities of violence’. Similarly, these comments divert attention from the violence evident in Baey’s case and the questions it raises about the rise of camera sexual voyeurism in Singapore and the limits of general deterrence.

This smaller subset of users who were angered by Baey’s actions also characterised her as an excessive and unruly subject who was ‘crazy’ and punishment hungry. For example:

If the victim wants consequences, does it mean she wants his future destroyed or somethin? He’s is still a young man, when one is young is bound to make mistakes, so I guess that’s why the authorities gave what she perceived as a lesser punishment.

Importantly, towards the end of the thread when Baey began appearing in the public eye, these aggressive comments became more vehement. Users told her to be quiet, called her annoying and described her as an attention seeker. For example:

What justice she want served ah?. . .if really so frightened, still got time make noise on insta? Probably just another attention seeking nonsense’;

she is quite the attention whore.

With this rate of growth, In one week time, she can become social justice influencer liao.

These allusions to attention and noise serve to characterise both Baey and her speech acts as excessive and illegitimate. In doing so, they replicate the historical characterisations of women’s anti-violent activism as collective over-sensitivity (Fileborn and Loney-Howes, 2019). The repeated references to Baey’s media presence as a form of attention-seeking are undergirded by entrenched rape myths which suggest that women use disclosures to their own personal advantage. From this, it follows that maintaining a critical stance towards the transformative potentials of online disclosure is important, as the commodification of attention becomes another source of criticism for disclosures made via these mediums.

In addition, accusations of excessive speech suggest that Baey violated her place as a victim and demonstrate the narrow terms upon which victims of violence are accepted. These comments suggest that objecting to violence is acceptable so long as the victim does not exceed their position by using their agency to raise awareness or affect institutional change. While there was certainly push back against such comments, overall, their placement among wider support demonstrates Serisier’s (2018: 11) argument that survivors who speak out are placed in an ‘ambivalent position’ between power and danger.

Additionally, other users used the thread to objectify Baey and normalise support for image-based abuse. For example, a smaller subset of users commented on Baey’s appearance, attractiveness and ethnicity. They sourced images from her Instagram to comment on her looks and invited others to do so. In the first instance these comments demonstrate that the dangers of speaking out are not just failures of witnessing (Serisier, 2018) or negative witnessing (Loney-Howes, 2018: 45) but also sexualised and misogynistic invective (Jane, 2017a; Massanari, 2015; Vitis and Gilmour, 2016).

These objectifying utterances are also redolent of the normative discursive patterns within male dominated pseudonymous spaces, which are characterised by the reproduction of women as sexual objects or outsiders, antipathy to feminism and misogynistic humour (Massanari, 2018). The jocular nature of many of these comments are suggestive of these discursive patterns and highlight the humour/misogyny nexus underscoring male dominated online spaces. As Jane (2014: 566) argues,

gendered e-bile has now become normalised such that it is now acceptable to express even the most minor disagreement through the most affronting, offensive and aggressive sexualised venom.

Similarly, the sexualisation of Baey, among the support for her justice-seeking, demonstrates the undercurrent of objectification which marks women’s experiences online.

Importantly, the objectification went beyond comments on her appearance: a smaller portion of users openly encouraged image-based abuse, solicited the video recorded by Lim and suggested that they would like to see it. For example, example: ‘Nicolas pls send me the video. Want to fap too.’; ‘Csi the guy and ask him share the video? Sic ma’; ‘Anyone has the video?’; ‘Where leak bedio. . ..’; ‘Wa no leaks ah; ‘ok. . . all things aside. . . is the vid leaked?’. The normalisation of these images in online forums was also shored up by references to them as ‘snipe’ images, which is a shorthand term for online non-consensual intimate images. For example:

now those fallen Singapore bike forum snipers can all petition to review their case. why they snipe need go jail but this guy no need??

In sum, within this one thread users vehemently vilified the perpetrator and called for harsher punishment, while others objectified Baey and demonstrated the same peer support which undergirds image-based abuse in male dominated online spaces.

Conclusion

The conditions of possibility for public responses to testimony-based resistance are complex and intertwined. The impact of technological affordances, global movements such as #Metoo and shifting public attitudes towards violence against women, particularly newly recognised forms like image-based abuse, are worth considering in their own right. However, this research indicates that specific political contexts also need to be carefully considered when examining public responses to online resistance forms. As noted above, moments of confrontation following acts of resistance visibilise power structures which are concealed in everyday life by cultural mediations (Naegler, 2018). Baey’s post revealed – among other things – the lack of recognition for sexual violence, the normalisation of women’s everyday experiences of violence and the complicity of institutions in sustaining this normalisation. However, as our analysis demonstrates, public responses play an important role in how this moment of confrontation plays out. Available mechanisms of cohering social control which use powers conferred upon the citizenry to demand order were reflected in some of the positive and supportive responses in this thread. Particularly, comments where users reiterated state-supported narratives on order maintenance – in this case general deterrence via zero-tolerance. The presence of these comments throughout a wider discussion of elite-privilege and carceral punishment, demonstrates how sexual violence was discussed on terms that cohere with everyday authoritarianism, without reckoning with violence as a wider, systematic and gendered problem. This support affirms a carceral response which sits comfortably with the individualisation of sexual violence towards women.

While online testimony is a powerful resistance-form for shaping frames of reference, the core dynamics which architect the production and distribution of non-consensual images – objectification, sexualisation, peer affirmation and denigration – were, at times, evident in this thread. This is perhaps unsurprising considering male dominated pseudonymous spaces are primed to make such comments sayable particularly under the guise of ‘humour’ (Massanari, 2015). Nevertheless, this reveals a desire to view non-consensual material by some users, who openly encouraged the production and commodification of non-consensual images. It is important to note that these comments contradicted the general sentiment of the thread and were challenged by fellow users. However, they affirm wider reports of the proliferation of image-based abuse in male dominated online spaces in Singapore (AWARE, 2019; Vitis, 2020) and demonstrate that, far from an issue of ‘elitism’, this is an ongoing gendered problem. This suggests that frames of reference for sexual violence were not fundamentally shifted at this specific site of public discussion and demonstrates that public responses require close and critical analysis, as wider political contexts are central to understanding the impact of online resistance.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Laura Vitis

Notes

Author biographies

Laura Vitis is a Lecturer in the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology. Her research focuses on how technology is used to facilitate gendered, sexual and domestic violence. Her work also examines the role of mediated sites in justice-seeking for violence against women with a particular focus on informal justice-seeking and true crime.

Laura Naegler a Lecturer in criminology at the University of Liverpool. Her intersectional research focusses on cultural and political resistance. Her cross-disciplinary research is located within a theoretical tradition of critical and cultural criminology, advancing knowledge about practices of and responses to resistance.

Ahmad Salehin’s research looks into the use of technology - specifically, of online spaces - and its role in facilitating resistance efforts within marginalised communities in Singapore, focusing on issues such as gender and sexuality.

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