There’s seemingly no escape from gender-based violence; it has transcended the real world to find women online and through the use of technology. Up to 58% of women and girls have experienced violence online. The UN notes that while gender-based violence (GBV) is not new, the growth of internet and digital platforms has created new types of GBV and exposed women and girls to unprecedented threats. The COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns marked a turning point in the prevalence of cyberviolence.
Shanley Clemot McLaren is a young feminist and anti-cybersexism activist from France. McLaren, herself, experienced cyberviolence and harassment following her battle against the rise of online GBV. She created the #StopFisha organisation to defend women and girls by combating technology-facilitated GBV. In her own words, the 2024 Young Activist Summit laureate shares the challenges of dealing with online violence.
My name is Shanley Clemot McLaren. I have been a feminist activist since I was 17…
…that’s when I organized a blockade of my high school to protest gender-based violence (GBV) and sexual harassment within the school.
This blockade took place during the rise of the #MeToo movement in the late 2010s, at a time when the issue was gaining significant public attention and women were coming forward with their testimonies. However, not all women were represented in the public debate — minorities and young girls, in particular, were often left out. For both of these reasons, I conceived this feminist blockade, using chains, bins, and any materials we could find to block entry and exit points to the school. This form of protest is common in France. It's one of the main forms of activism for young people studying in high schools and universities. The press later referred to me as a “whistleblower.”
A few years later, in 2020, I raised the alarm on social media about the surge in online gendered violence, launching the hashtag #StopFisha — “fisha” being French slang for “afficher," meaning to display or make public. I subsequently founded #StopFisha — a digital, social movement that became a civil society organization.
Alongside my activism, I currently serve as a Gender and Digital Policy Advisor at the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MFA), where I continue to work on these issues at a global level. I started as an intern for the French MFA's Ambassador-at-large for Gender Equality, Her Excellency Delphine O. Together, we built an initiative called the "Laboratory for Women's Rights Online," a global and fully multi-stakeholder platform dedicated to combating online and technology-facilitated GBV.
It is also an incubator for projects to be developed transnationally to combat the local and global scale of OTFGBV. Once my internship ended, I was hired as Gender and Digital Policy Advisor within the Department for Feminist Foreign Policy and Education, where I closely worked with Ambassador O on those matters. The French MFA is well aware of my activism - and I was also offered this due to my activism and expertise.
#StopFisha was created during the COVID-19 lockdowns, in response to the surge in cybersexism and online gender-based violence.
Just days after the first quarantine was imposed, I noticed an explosion of fisha accounts on social media platforms. These fisha accounts, organized by region or city (e.g. "fishamarseille"), were created to share intimate content of girls without their consent, along with their personal information — such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and schools.
I first came across two fisha accounts based in a Parisian suburb, where intimate content of girls was being shared alongside their personal data, accompanied by messages like "Would anyone be interested in seeing X's content? She studies at Y school, and I have hardcore stuff on her", "For pedos following me, send me a private message and you'll be able to buy exclusive content of girls from our schools."
It was my little sister — who was studying in that suburb and knew some of the victims — who first discovered these accounts and showed them to me. I was completely shocked and outraged by the lack of moderation on online platforms, the impunity, the massive support these "fisha” accounts were receiving, and above all, the unimaginable harm inflicted on the girls being exposed.
Faced with this impunity, I had to act.
So I reported the accounts, hoping they would be taken down. Spoiler alert: they weren't. I reported these accounts to Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and to the French cyber police Pharos. I also submitted an official report, containing approximately 300-400 pages of evidence, data, and testimonies I had collected, with the help of a lawyer who assisted me pro bono.
A few hours later, many more of these accounts emerged across other French cities. That was when fisha accounts became a viral trend — not just in France, but also in other countries, including South Korea, India, Italy, Morocco, and Portugal. Openly violating the rights of women and girls — and reveling in it — became both a national and global trend.
Faced with the urgency of the situation, I launched the #StopFisha hashtag on social media to raise awareness, provide legal and psychological support, show victims they were not alone, demand action from platforms and public authorities, and create a counter-movement. That was the moment my activism for women’s rights on the internet began.
Today, #StopFisha is a feminist civil society organization combating cybersexism and online GBV.
We have members in France, Turkey, Germany, and Belgium, and we work at the national, European and international levels.
When I first started working on #StopFisha, my efforts were focused on the local and national levels. But soon, victims and activists from other countries began reaching out to tell me they were facing the same phenomenon in their own communities. Little by little, I realized that because the digital environment is transnational and knows no borders, online and technology-facilitated GBV and cybersexism do too.
With this in mind, #StopFisha’s International Team was formed, dedicated to advocating on a global scale, partnering with civil society organizations (CSOs) from other countries, and working collectively to address this issue worldwide.
Since its creation, our team has been heard by Members of the European Parliament , lobbied for stronger regulations in the Digital Services Act, the AI Act, and the EU Directive on violence against women and domestic violence, and engaged in multilateral advocacy.
Finding justice — or rather, the means to access justice — is a struggle when it comes to gender-based violence.
But when victims face both GBV and the challenges posed by the digital environment and social media platforms, they are confronted with a double challenge, a double mountain that seems impossible to climb.
So in this context, accessing justice is clearly not easy — securing justice is even more so. Accessing the means to even hope for justice remains a privilege. For instance, it’s even harder for you if you are not a public figure, if you are not part of the higher social class, and if you do not have enough money to finance your own lawyer. Yet without justice, there can be no peace. And without peace, fair societies cannot exist. Additionally, when justice is absent, the social contract is broken. Today, there is an urgent need — in France and in 99% of countries worldwide — to fix the justice system.
By creating #StopFisha, I immediately became a target of online violence — specifically, online gender-based violence.
One day, a Telegram fisha group called “Dossier” (which means “folder” but also “shameful content” in French slang), with around 233,000 members, published my social media accounts on the channel and urged its members to cyber-harass me, claiming that I was “harming” their work.
Within minutes, I received hundreds of threats, hateful messages, and comments. In less than 20 minutes, Iwas forced to fully privatize my accounts and block any access to me. But it didn’t stop there.
Later, someone from this group recognized me in a Parisian train station and physically threatened me. This highlights the continuum of online and offline violence — both work hand in hand. Digital violence is real violence and poses a real threat. This also illustrates the scale of threats that feminist activists — and even everyday women who dare to raise their voices online — face, both in the digital world and in real life. In France misogynistic movements and discourses online are spreading at an alarming scale and masculinist movements are on the rise, and they need to be stopped.
We are now facing a global backlash as the surge of hate speech and online violence remains unregulated…
…a lack of regulation further justified under the guise of freedom of speech.
Recent announcements and decisions, such as Mark Zuckerberg’s move to replace fact-checking with community notes and Elon Musk’s “moderation” policies since Twitter became X, have only exacerbated the issue. As a result, online misogyny is dangerously on the rise, along with online racism, xenophobia, and other forms of discrimination.
In reality, it is our freedom of speech which is under threat. Many minorities — whether public figures or not — are being silenced, forced to self-censor out of fear of backlash.
At the time of writing this, in February 2025, this global backlash is only growing stronger. Now more than ever, we must raise awareness, recognise the dangers of online hatred and violence, and acknowledge the threats the digital environment poses to our rights, societies, and democracies. It’s also time to explore and promote alternatives to big digital platforms.
However, beyond raising awareness, we need stronger legal frameworks, genuine political will from states, and international coordination to regulate digital platforms and hold them accountable. In November 2024, at the Young Activists Summit, I issued a call to action by launching a global petition alongside nine other women from around the world: Andrea Powell, Barsha Chakraborty, Clare McGlynn, Ghada Oueiss, Ines Marinho, Marwa Azelmat, Noelle Martin, Silvia Semenzin, and Tsitsi Matekaire.
The women who co-signed the petition are also active in this space, each bringing a different perspective. McGlynn, for instance, is based in the UK, and specializes in image-based sexual abuse and deepfake abuse. Azelmat is a globally recognized advocate for digital rights, and specializes in gender and AI, having worked in Morocco and Amsterdam. Oueiss is a Lebanese journalist working for Al Jazeera and a survivor of online gendered violence and abuse. A recent data case study recognized her as "a journalist at the epicenter of online risk amid weaponized geopolitical threats.”
They are all very inspiring and powerful women, who I believe are paving the way for gender rights in the digital realm and who will change the world in that matter.
Titled: “A Global Call for Urgent International Action against Online Misogyny,” this petition highlights the growing threats to women, girls, and human rights, and urges decisive global action to challenge big tech and social media platforms. Since the digital environment is transnational, so too are online hatred and violence. The backlash we are witnessing today proves this that decisions made by a few white, very powerful, men in the US. are having far-reaching consequences on rights worldwide.
I am in contact with many activists around the world who are fighting the same battles — we all face similar challenges.
Advocating at the intersection of gender and digital issues comes with a double burden: confronting sexism while also taking on big tech and the vast, borderless nature of the digital space.
In this field, the scale and impact of the problem often feel overwhelming, and it can be isolating. That’s why it is crucial for us, as activists, to meet in person from time to time to break silos, strengthen our collective efforts, and strategise more effectively, both locally and globally — and especially given the current context.
We need funding, support, and the exchange of best practices from experts across various fields, including legal, psychological, and cybersecurity, to enhance our efforts. Additionally, support from UN agencies is essential to bolster our work both locally and globally and to implement recent multilateral agreements such as the Global Digital Compact and the recent UN Cybecrime Treaty, among others.
We also need more people in the fight — join us! Reach out to us on social media @stopfisha on X and Instagram, visit our website, or email us at contact@stopfisha.org.
This article, as narrated to Gugulethu Mhlungu, has been slightly edited for clarity. The 2024-2025 In My Own Words Series forms part of Global Citizen's grant-funded content.