One women's rights ac­tivist says the sham­ing of new Ch­agua­nas May­or Van­dana Mo­hit is out­right misog­y­ny and could even be do­mes­tic and sex­u­al vi­o­lence.

Amil­car Sanatan says it is time that form of misog­y­ny is chal­lenged.

Ac­cord­ing to the gen­der rights ac­tivist, whether you call it ‘slut sham­ing’ or ‘re­venge porn’, what is be­ing done to the new Ch­agua­nas May­or is some­thing much worse and very se­ri­ous.

“What ac­tivists call it—es­pe­cial­ly the fem­i­nists and the women’s rights move­ment—is ‘non-con­sen­su­al pornog­ra­phy’,” he ex­plains. “We see non-con­sen­su­al pornog­ra­phy as a form of sex­u­al vi­o­lence on the in­ter­net; but al­so, it can be mo­bilised as a form of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence.”

And ac­cord­ing to Safiyyah Acos­ta of Wom­antra, it's a form of vi­o­lence that af­fects women dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly.

“Women tend to be at­tacked in this way,” she points out, “be­cause our im­age, our body and our sex­u­al­i­ty are tied so close­ly with our val­ue and our worth as hu­man be­ings.”

Amil­car Sanatan be­lieves one way to change this prac­tise of sham­ing and dou­ble stan­dard, is for men to stop per­pet­u­at­ing the prac­tise of shar­ing pri­vate im­ages of women.

“All those What­sApp groups which sup­port Ar­se­nal or Barcelona, or want to watch Cham­pi­ons League,” he says, “that al­ways leads to shar­ing of nudes and leaks. Fel­las, you need to stand up and speak out and say that is wrong. You need to ex­it that group. You need to call out your brethren.”

And in this dig­i­tal age, San­tan says what we're see­ing is po­lit­i­cal sex scan­dals that are now hap­pen­ing on the in­ter­net. How­ev­er, he stress­es that the dis­pro­por­tion­al way on how it af­fects women makes it “out­right misog­y­ny”.