Conclusions

There is an obvious pattern of similarity among the incidents of digital violence due to the predominant social context that is against any nonconforming sexual orientation and gender identity. Conservative societies, such as the Egyptian one, tends to be controlled by misogyny and patriarchy that any deviation from that set course is regarded as debauchery and godlessness. The survivors of that violence were attacked for both their online activity and them being LGBTQI+. Most of the survivors felt powerless to stop those attacks due to its widespread and for the fact that they are condoned, and sometimes led, by the State Police itself. It is also noticeable how most of those incidents were never reported to Cyber Police since the survivors themselves are the only ones viewed as criminals in the eyes of the Police, who uses the same techniques as their offenders sometimes to prey on the LGBTQI+ individuals.

It is worthy of noting that most of the survivors feel hopeless when it comes to leading a safe digital existence and completely eradicating that form of violence. There has been a consensus that such matters are only dealt with individually, over the same platform as nothing else of a more signifcant effect or a further outreach could be done, that is why most of them resorted to their friends’ support and seeking psychological help. Most of the participants responded to those incidents with anxiety and fear; fear of stigma, fear of legal prosecution and fear of discrimination. All of that feeds back into the social context that is hostile to any form of difference or deviation from the misogynistic culture that controls the majority of people. Facebook came on the top of the list of platforms used by the survivors and where these forms of violence took place. This is due to the popularity of the platform itself among Egyptians generally and the Egyptian LGBTQI+ community specifcally, since it eases socializing, community-making and expressing one’s views.

It is also evident the rise in the public hate narrative after the Mashrou Leila incident correlated with a rise in the frequency of the individual incidents of violence against LGBTQI+ individuals.