Actor Parvathy, a member of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) recently joined the organisation’s campaign against cyber abuse. The campaign titled Refuse the Abuse is an attempt to throw light on cyber bullying, online abuse, harassment etc and ask people to not give in to it.
“It has been 15 years since I joined the film industry. Just like how I have got appreciation for my films, on social media too I have been happy to see positive comments and feedback. I enjoy that a lot. But at the same time, when I share my personal or political stances, in the same proportion I face trolling, cyberbullying and cyber abuse,” Parvathy explained in a three-minute video posted on WCC’s Facebook and Instagram handles.
She added that wounds inflicted by cyber bullying are hidden, but as painful as physical wounds. “From my experience, what I have understood or what I have been learning is that if it is a physical attack you can see the wounds outside. But the wounds inflicted by cyber bullying is not something that you can see outside. We need to be more aware of this,” she added.
“To make a person live in fear or paranoia - that behaviour of ours, we need to understand why we do it. Are we getting out of it? And what is the need to do something like that? These are questions we need to ask ourselves,” she said.
The actor also requested her audience, be it men or women, to engage in introspection and identify if they were involuntarily engaging in cyber harassment or bullying.
Watch what Parvathy has said:
Meanwhile, “if you’re facing this (being harassed/bullied), you need to know that you also have some rights. The law does not fully protect us. But we have the ability to change that and more importantly, as citizens, we have the responsibility to highlight the problem and help effect changes in the law. So let us join this cause and refuse the abuse,” she said.
The actor also requested her audience to take the cause seriously. “The wounds that are invisible can really affect one’s mental fabric. To take it as seriously as a physical injury. Refuse the Abuse,” she said.
Several actors from the Malayalam industry including Ahaana Krishna, Sincy Anil, Sanjana Dipu, Kani Kusruti, Navya Nair etc have also lent their voices to the cause in recent times.