With Rhiannon Wong at Women’s Shelters Canada. The Tech Safety Canada website says technology-facilitated gender-based violence “happens when someone uses technology to harm or control you.” It can take the form of “harassing text or social media messages, restricting access to technology, non-consensually sharing intimate images, using location-tracking technology, or threatening to do any of these.”
The scope of this abuse is big because the scope of gender-based violence in Canada is big. Statistics Canada says that sixty-seven per cent of those who report online intimidation to police are women and girls, and one in five women report experiencing online harassment.
Over coming episodes, we’re delving into gendered digital hate and harassment with leading experts and content creators, releasing in-depth episodes every single week. We talk about the problem and what we can do to change it. We offer practical tips to help you in your digital life, and we talk about what it means to “take back the tech” for all of us.
Our guest Rhiannon Wong is project manager for Women’s Shelters Canada’s Technology Safety Canada project. She has researched and developed practical technology safety resources and training for anti-violence workers and women, girls, and gender-diverse people that address how technology can be used to create safety and misused by perpetrators to commit crimes of domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, impersonation, and harassment.
A note about content: this episode addresses gender-based violence.
Transcript
00:00:02 Rhiannon
Harassment, threats, and location tracking are the three most common forms of tech-facilitated gender-based violence, and that there are really high rates of co-occurring abuse happening with experiences of tech-facilitated gender-based violence.
00:00:19 Andrea
Technology can be helpful to abuse survivors getting help, but it can also be misused to perpetrate more abuse.
What do we need to know about it and what can we do to build safety?
I’m Andrea Gunraj from the Canadian Women’s Foundation.
Welcome to Alright, Now What? a podcast from the Canadian Women’s Foundation. We put an intersectional feminist lens on stories that make you wonder, “why is this still happening?” We explore systemic routes and strategies for change that will move us closer to the goal of gender justice.
The work of the Canadian Women’s Foundation and our partners takes place on traditional First Nations, Métis and Inuit territories. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet and work on this land. However, we recognize that land acknowledgements are not enough. We need to pursue truth, reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship in an ongoing effort to make right with all our relations.
00:01:19 Andrea
The Tech Safety Canada website explains that tech-facilitated gender-based violence “happens when someone uses technology to harm or control you.” It can take the form of “harassing text or social media messages, restricting access to technology, non-consensually sharing intimate images, using location-tracking technology, or threatening to do any of these.”
The scope of this abuse is big because the scope of gender-based violence in Canada is so big. Women, girls, and gender-diverse people are at high risk of digital abuse and hate, especially the most severe types of harassment and sexualized abuse. Sixty-seven per cent of those who report online intimidation to police are women and girls, and one in five report experiencing online harassment.
Whether you’re on social media, streaming platforms, dating, messaging and meeting apps, or on game sites, if you’re a woman, girl, or Two Spirit, trans, or non-binary person, you’re at greater risk of hate, harassment, and violence.
Over coming episodes, we’re delving into gendered digital hate and harassment with leading experts and content creators, releasing in-depth episodes every single week. We talk about the problem and what we can do to change it. We offer practical tips to help you in your digital life, and we talk about what it means to “take back the tech” for all of us.
Our guest Rhiannon Wong is project manager for Women’s Shelters Canada’s Technology Safety Canada project. She has researched and developed practical technology safety resources and training for anti-violence workers and women, girls, and gender-diverse people that address how technology can be used to create safety and misused by perpetrators to commit crimes of domestic violence, stalking, sexual assault, impersonation, and harassment.
A note about content: this episode addresses gender-based violence.
00:03:17 Rhiannon
Our office is located in Ottawa, but I’m gratefully joining you today from the unseeded Coast Salish territory of the Musqueam Squamish Tsleil-Waututh Nations, colonial known as Vancouver in British Columbia. The project that I work for is the Tech Safety Project and we really aim to address an abuser’s misuse of technology to perpetrate violence against women, girls, and gender diverse people. As well as we want to look at how anti-violence programs can use technology safely themselves in a way that doesn’t undermine the confidentiality, privacy, and safety of survivors accessing support services.
A fun fact about me is that everybody thinks that I got into this work because I’m an expert in technology and I know everything about tech and in fact that’s probably the opposite. When I started working in the anti-violence movement back in 2007 at the BC Society of Transition Houses, it was a super hot July and I was the only person in the office who wasn’t off on summer vacation.
And so, the ED sent me to a tech training in Kansas City, Missouri, and I kept thinking to myself over and over again, “Why on Earth would I have to go to Missouri to learn about tech because you know, surely there’s a place in Vancouver somewhere where I can learn about Excel or Outlook or Word”. At that time, you know if Facebook was just starting out at a local college like here at home. But I went and it turned out that those three days that I spent with the National Network to End Domestic Violence and their Safety Net team really changed the trajectory of my life and my interest within the VAW movement for what has now been like 16 years.
00:05:15 Andrea
Tell me about your work and research and what you’ve discovered about tech-facilitated gender-based violence in Canada.
00:05:21 Rhiannon
We really aim to equip, shelter, and transition house workers and other anti-violence workers with the knowledge and resources that they need to support women, children, and gender diverse people with their experiences of tech-facilitated gender-based violence. And we’re doing this by scaling up the BC Society of Transition Houses existing Tech Safety Project and our work also draws on the experience of our Tech Safety Project partners at Westnet Australia, from Refuge in the UK and of course the National Network to End Domestic Violence in the United States.
We’ve done some really interesting research about tech-facilitated gender-based violence and what frontline shelter and transition house workers across the country are reporting survivors need support for. And we’ve also developed and are currently developing more resources in the forms of online toolkits that are being posted to our techsafetycanada.ca website. And we are delivering training to shelter and transition house workers across the country virtually, in French and English.
You know one of the most important learnings for me has been from our soon-to-be-published national survey report. 95% of our survey respondents, which were 204 frontline workers across Canada, reported that they have worked with a survivor who disclosed tech-facilitated gender-based violence.
We also found that harassment, threats, and location tracking are the three most common forms of tech-facilitated gender-based violence, and that there are really high rates of co-occurring abuse happening with experiences of tech-facilitated gender-based violence.
96% of our respondents said that emotional abuse was co-occurring.
78% said the financial abuse was co-occurring with tech abuse.
One in two reported that sexual abuse was co-occurring with tech-facilitated violence.
One in three said child abuse is co-occurring and interestingly, 17% of our respondents said strangulation co-occurs with tech-facilitated gender-based violence.
And we know that this is really important because strangulation is used as a measure for serious violence and attempts on survivors’ lives.
In terms of solutions, like almost everything, training and education about tech-facilitated gender-based violence is key to prevention and intervention. And Women’s Shelters Canada, you know, we’re committed to continuing to do this for as long as we can. We have a whole lineup of trainings, but as we continue to do this work I’m grateful that there are a really great group of academics and organizations like the Canadian Women’s Foundation in Canada and internationally that are working together to try and minimize and address tech-facilitated gender-based violence so that survivors are empowered to use tech safely.
00:08:26 Andrea
In your effort to end technology-facilitated gender-based violence, what has surprised you most?
00:08:31 Rhiannon
Folks that we’re training and survivors don’t or didn’t necessarily understand or know prior to our trainings that tech-facilitated gender-based violence is violence or is a form of violence; that the behaviours that abusers are choosing to do through technology – like harass, threaten, location track, stalk, impersonate, post or share those nude images without consent or defame and impersonate – folks don’t understand that all those behaviours are illegal.
And so, we get questions all the time in our training like: “Do police know that this is illegal? Are you sure tech abuse is illegal? How do how do we find more information about tech-facilitated gender-based violence being illegal?” And so, we do direct folks to resources. Of course as you know, there’s so many great legal folks and organizations working on the issue of tech-facilitated gender-based violence like LEAF Canada and The eQuality Project at the University of Ottawa. And you know from sort of these trainings, we’ve actually created a legal remedies toolkit as well that could be found on our website.
All of this, you know, really spoke to how much power and control the gas lighting and the emotional abuse that often coincides with tech abuse like I just said. It really highlighted also some of the insufficient responses that we have to tech-facilitated gender-based violence.
00:10:05 Andrea
What do you think needs to happen for us to end technology-facilitated gender-based violence in Canada?
00:10:11 Rhiannon
Advocating for, you know, updates to our legal system and our criminal codes, ensuring that you know, there are a lot of civil remedies starting to to come about for you know, the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images and just ensuring that those are designed with survivors in mind from the start.
You know, it’s not just about issuing takedown orders or holding somebody accountable criminally or civilly. It’s about you know, how do we work with tech companies to get intimate images taken down? How do we work with platforms to have an option to stop hate messages or threats from coming through our online platforms? It’s about providing those support services for free and super timely for survivors who are experiencing some form of, or any form of tech-facilitated gender-based violence.
For survivors experiencing violence through tech, I think one of the best things that they can do is to document and preserve the digital evidence that they have right away. With tech abuse, there is almost always a digital trail, but sometimes digital evidence of the violence gets deleted, or a post gets removed. And so, survivors can work with an anti-violence worker in their community, and they can find one through sheltersafe.ca, which is available in both French and English, to support them through developing a safety plan, guide them through the preservation of evidence process, and discuss their options.
00:11:58 Andrea
Can you offer any tips for survivors of this abuse who might need help right now?
00:12:03 Rhiannon
If it’s, again, safe for them to do so, they need to assess their risk of monitoring and control and thinking through, you know, what happens if an abuser does all of a sudden not have access to their location, reading their text messages, all of those different safety planning things that are tips that you know survivors need to think through.
You know if it is safe for them to do so, if it is something that’s going on with your phone, check out Apple. If you’re on a iPhone, check out Safety Check from Apple on their IOS system or Android also has a safety check. Go through that. It will tell you who you’re sharing your location with, what companies you’re sharing your location with, who has access to your devices, and your accounts. I think that’s a really great place to start because you’re going to be able to see who’s monitoring your phone very quickly.
You can always download a free antivirus software for your phones or your desktop or your laptop computers. That’s a great way to check for any malware or spyware that is on your phone.
And passwords – have a safe, hard-to-guess password for your devices. If it is safe for survivors to have those passwords on their phones because we know that with power and control, oftentimes abusers demand to know what their survivors’ passwords are or that they not have a password on their device.
00:13:41 Andrea
Do you have any other resource recommendations for our listeners?
00:13:45 Rhiannon
Accessing support from a women’s shelter or transition house or another anti-violence program is free. You do not have to stay in a shelter to receive support and you can find a program in your community through sheltersafe.ca, which is available in both French and English.
If you want to learn more about developing a safety plan that includes how to use technology safely, if you want to learn more about preserving digital evidence, the legal remedies of tech-facilitated gender-based violence, safety tips for various technology like phones, social media, location trackers, home automation tools, or even information and resources on teen digital dating violence, our project’s website is a really great place to start and that website link is techsafety.ca.
There’s a separate web page for survivors that has a tech safety and privacy toolkit, and that toolkit would be super useful for anybody wanting to learn more about how to use technology safely. I think there’s around 33 different resources and tip sheets for different types of technology and tech software, including like online dating apps and gaming, and more.
00:15:14 Andrea
Alright, now what?
Visit Tech Safety Canada and access a wealth of digital safety tools at techsafety.ca.
If you want to hear more about tech-facilitated gender-based violence from a legal perspective, listen to our July 2021 episode entitled, “De-Platforming Misogyny: How to Address Online Hate”, featuring Rosel Kim and Pam Hrick of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund.
Get the facts from gendered digital hate, harassment, and abuse by visiting our fact page on canadianwomen.org. While you’re there, read about our new Feminist Creator Prize to uplift feminist digital creators advocating for gender justice, safety, and freedom from harm.
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