It happens all the time, says Kholoud al-Ameri, an Iraqi journalist and the editor of a news website.
"Female journalists here are often getting messages, and mostly from men," she explains. "They somehow find you online and then they say they just want to talk or they want to add you on Instagram or Facebook," says al-Ameri, who also heads a network of female journalists working on climate change stories. "Sometimes it's hard because the men say they're our readers and we don't want to discourage them. But I usually tell the women just to block these guys."
Syrian activist Yaman Amer tells of similar experiences as a result of writing about women's rights online — she says she gets hundreds of critical comments. "When I talk about women's rights online in a patriarchal society, that's just how things are," Amer, who is studying to be a lawyer in Damascus, told DW. "Not that I accept it. Out of every thousand offensive comments, there's usually one or two that make me feel like I have to report them because they're particularly vile. As in, they're extremely vulgar or threatening. And then it's more than just harassment. It's on a whole other level, humiliating and degrading."
Online harassment of women isn't unusual anywhere.
