Hell behind the screen: cyberviolence is turning into digital weapons in Benin

It often starts with a harmless vibration. A notification, then another, and another. The words scroll by, seemingly harmless, before turning into sharp blades disguised as insults, mockery, threats. Behind avatars and pseudonyms, hate pours out and erases the boundaries between the virtual and the real.

In Benin, as elsewhere, women are the primary targets. Because they dare to speak, assert themselves, occupy public spaces long reserved for men. The attacks take the form of body shaming, threats of rape, sexual blackmail, or reducing a woman to her body. Social networks thus become the extension of a patriarchy that mutates, digitizes and strikes in silence.

For Valdye Gbaguidi, a young content creator, hell began the day she dared to tell her story. An activist for body positivity, she promotes acceptance of all bodies, whatever they are. “Body positivity is acceptance of all bodies. We must respect differences without judging or sexualizing,” she explains in a soft voice.

But the Internet gave her no respite. “I said I had been raped when I was younger. I wanted to understand my wounds, help others speak. Instead of support, I got insults. Some said that, given my body, it was normal that I was raped. Others mocked my chest.”

And everything turned on one evening in December 2024 at the Open Conscience Awards night. “I was a victim of body shaming and sexualization. I came in a dress, a beautiful pink dress, which, by the way, my parents saw and really liked because the dress suited me very well. And already on site, before going on stage, when they called me, I saw a look of disgust on the jurors’ faces that I didn’t understand at first,” the young Valdye recounts.

“The jurors lingered on my body shape and my style of dress and told me how much I deserved to be harassed. He went further and said, for example, that my chest didn’t displease him at all, that I had put it forward so people could see it and that he had seen it and that, moreover, he wanted to fall on my chest and maybe even go lower”, she added.

While investigating cyberviolence, we quickly understood that words can also wound the people they’re told about. Behind our camera and our notes, the fear of becoming a target ourselves was never far away. Words hurt more than a blow. They seep into the flesh, imprint on memory, and destroy self-esteem.

“Yes, I cried, I cried a lot, I cried all the time,” she confides. “I told my mother I wanted to have surgery. I couldn’t stand my body anymore. Social media was supposed to help me feel better… but it became a prison”, confessed Valdye. The filming scene was so moving that even the journalist had tears in her eyes, which she hurriedly wiped away discreetly with the back of her right hand so as not to attract attention.

Harassed, threatened, broken and silenced

These violences are not only emotional. They trap victims in a cycle of humiliation and isolation. Some drop out of school, others delete their accounts, others lock themselves away in shame.