A Singaporean woman wrote about her traumatic experience of being doxxed when she was in Secondary School.
In a Dayre post, she said that she had her photos and personal information circulated on Tumblr sites when she was still schooling. Someone had taken her CCA pictures and photoshopped them to make her chest look bigger. The posts were shared more than 300 times.
"I felt degraded and stripped of my dignity. I was helpless."
She was horrified when she came across it and started investigating it herself. Along the way, she received many messages from strangers who asked her for favours.
Once, she even confronted a stalker near her house despite feeling very afraid about what he could have done to her. She reported it to the police but did not find closure as the man escaped and they had lacked details to arrest him.
She confided her friend about it only to realise belatedly that he was the one behind it all. Traumatised, she asked why he would do something so awful to her and if he ever thought of apologising.
It took much persuasion for him to remove all the posts and issue a public apology. Except he removed the latter just a day later.
"Knowing the truth did little to comfort me. I was shaken. I was shocked. And most of all, I was hurt and confused that someone whom I trusted and regarded as a close friend was behind all of this."
Today, she is a stronger person because of her traumatic experience but she will never forget the hurt she had to go through. Having her personal life, her face, contact information and all that exposed on the Internet really caused her a lot of emotional stress.
"Apart from the emotional stress, my health plummeted. I couldn’t eat and only slept after crying. I vomited a couple of times due to anxiety and felt depressed. I even visited my grandmother overseas to take my mind off things, but the incident didn’t entirely go away. I was still afraid each time I received a text or email notification. What kept me going was family and friends...
It was no way to live, really."
Now, she juts wants to raise awareness so that women everywhere can be brave enough to speak up for themselves. There will always be perverted men who go about harassment and doxxing, but it is not worth to let them ruin innocent lives.
Stand up, fight, and protect yourselves. The world has changed and there are some things we must not stay silent about. Otherwise, we will truly let ourselves down.
