The Silent Survivors: Why Child Sexual Abuse Online Is a Feminist Issue

Why Child Sexual Abuse Online Is a Feminist Issue

In today’s digital age, harm doesn’t always begin in dark alleys or locked rooms, it often starts with a message, a friend request, or an innocent-looking link. Behind the glow of a phone screen, countless girls and young women are being targeted, exploited, and silenced through child sexual abuse online. And yet, these survivors remain largely invisible in conversations about tech policy, law enforcement, and digital innovation.

At Shetechtive, we believe it’s time to say it plainly: Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) online is not just a crime, it is a feminist issue.

 

✊🏾 Gendered Harms in Digital Spaces

CSAM disproportionately affects girls. According to global statistics, over 90% of known CSAM victims are female. This isn’t accidental, it reflects broader gendered patterns of power, control, and sexualized violence that extend from offline patriarchy into online platforms. Girls, especially those from marginalized communities, are groomed, coerced, and blackmailed into sharing explicit images. In Uganda’s slums, where digital literacy is low and access to justice is limited, these risks multiply.

 

🧱 Structural Silence: Why the System Fails

Despite the trauma they experience, survivors of online abuse, particularly girls, are often met with disbelief, victim-blaming, or outright inaction. Law enforcement lacks training. Tech companies prioritize profits. Communities remain silent out of shame or fear. Meanwhile, survivors suffer in isolation, afraid to speak out.

This is what feminist digital justice challenges: a system that upholds perpetrators’ anonymity while punishing girls for their vulnerability.

 

🧠 Feminist Approaches to Digital Safety

Shetechtive is grounded in the idea that digital rights are gender rights. A feminist approach to online child safety means:

• Centering survivors’ voices in the design of reporting tools and support systems
• Prioritizing digital literacy for girls, so they can recognize red flags before harm occurs
• Calling out tech platforms that ignore abuse in favor of engagement metrics
• Training communities and caregivers, especially in underserved areas, to support, not shame, victims
• Advocating for intersectional safety policies that consider gender, class, age, and access

 

Without the voices of feminist organizations working on the frontlines, like Shetechtive, these conversations risk becoming abstract and detached from the girls most at risk.

 

📣 Our Call to Action

We need more than firewalls and filters. We need feminist fire.
We need policies rooted in lived experience, tech built with care, and justice that doesn’t end at a server log.

To truly protect girls online, we must first believe them, see them, and stand with them.

Let’s shift the narrative, from blaming victims to building safer digital ecosystems where girls are free, informed, and empowered because child sexual abuse online isn’t just a tech issue.
It’s a human rights issue. It’s a feminist issue.

 

By Rebecca Nanono
Co-founder, Shetechtive Uganda