Women secretly filmed, then ridiculed and abused online
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Women in Kenya and Ghana tell the BBC about being approached by a Russian man who later posts videos of them without their consent.
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Women secretly filmed, then ridiculed and abused online 39 minutes ago Share Save Mungai Ngige BBC Global Disinformation Unit Share Save On Valentine's Day, Joy Kalekye says she received a call from a friend who sounded really worried. She told her to check social media because someone had posted a video of her. The clip shows Kalekye, then a 19-year-old student, standing on her own by the side of a busy road in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, looking down at her phone. Whoever is filming walks towards her, and says: "Hi, I like how you look." It was an encounter Kalekye had forgotten all about. "I realised, oh, it's this Russian guy that I met last year," she told the BBC World Service. After watching the video, she understood that he had been recording her. Kalekye features in one of several videos posted online, showing a man approaching women in Kenya and Ghana, who don't appear to know they are being filmed. He touches their hair, holds their hands, asks for their number, and to meet up with him later. The women are victims of a global trend where men with hidden cameras film interactions without their consent and publish the videos online , sometimes amassing millions of views. Some of the creators of the videos earn money by posting them on social media platforms, or profit by selling guides which claim to help men approach women. There has been outrage among activists and politicians in both Kenya and Ghana, calling for the man, who says in the videos he is from Russia, to be arrested. But online, the women have also been blamed, ridiculed and abused. "It's like being a celebrity, but not in such a good way," says Kalekye. This public reaction, says Brenda Yambo, legal counsel at the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya (FIDA-Kenya), reinforces harmful gender stereotypes and shifts the blame to the victims. Instead of focusing on the wrongdoing - the non-consensual recording and distribution of the clips - society scrutinises the woman's behaviour, she says. "T...
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