It is hard to keep track of the atrocities that play out on social media on a daily basis, but the events of Thursday, May 13, were particularly egregious. An India-based YouTube channel ‘Liberal Doge’ streamed a live video on Thursday, sexualizing and making misogynistic comments on the Eid-ul-Fitr photos of Pakistani women.
“Today, we will stalk women with our eyes filled with lust,” the YouTube description of the video read in Hindi. According to multiple social media handles, the channel is run by a man named Ritesh Jha.
They made the video private on YouTube after people took to other social media platforms to call them out.
In the video, men discussed the targetted women’s bodies and rated them. They made something as normal as posting a celebratory photo into an anti-women sickfest. The channel’s audience not only ‘rated’ women, commented on their ‘looks’, but also went to the extent of ‘auctioning’ them.
Liberal Doge then posted on their Twitter handle:
Thanks to the outpouring of anger against the live stream, Liberal Doge’s Twitter handle had been removed. Ritesh Jha runs several social media accounts under the names “Liberal Doge” as well as “Secular Doge”, with 96,000 subscribers.
His videos have a common theme: the vilification of Muslims, dog-whistling, and hate speech. Moreover, his deep-rooted loathing for Muslims shines through across social platforms.
Twittersphere calls out the ‘disgusting’ YouTube live
Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur Police tweeted that the Cyber Cell has been directed for information and legal action against the YouTube channel.
We live in a world where the objectification of women has become increasingly normalize and generalized.
We are constantly bombarded with hypersexualized images of female bodies that we have become depressingly acclimatized to it. Are women nothing more than just bodies?
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