In November 2018, Monica Baey, a student at the National University of Singapore (NUS) was recorded by a fellow student while showering in university accommodation. After the perpetrator was issued a formal warning and a one-semester suspension, Baey posted about the case on social media and named the perpetrator. This generated public support, news coverage and institutional reform. In this article, we explore a range of responses to the Monica Baey case through a thematic analysis of publicly available comments about the case on a popular message board forum, Hardwarezone. By contextualising our analysis within the political setting of Singapore, this research demonstrates that public responses to testimony-based resistance require close analysis, as extant tools for citizens to engage in ‘naming and shaming’, were relevant to understanding these responses to this mode of resistance and reflected what Ibrahim (2018) calls ‘everyday authoritarianism’.
AoIR (2019) Internet research: Ethical guidelines 3.0 association of internet researchers. Available at: https://aoir.org/reports/ethics3.pdf (accessed 28 December 2019).
ChangLYCPoonR (2017) Internet vigilantism: Attitudes and experiences of university students toward cyber crowdsourcing in Hong Kong. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology61(16): 1912–1932
7.
ClarkR (2016) “Hope in a hashtag”: The discursive activism of #WhyIStayed. Feminist Media Studies16(5): 788–804.
8.
Clark-ParsonsR (2019) “I SEE YOU, I BELIEVE YOU, I STAND WITH YOU”: #MeToo and the performance of networked feminist visibility. Feminist Media Studies. Epub ahead of print 18April2020. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2019.1628797.
9.
FilebornB (2017) Justice 2.0: Street harassment victims’ use of social media and online activism as sites of informal justice. British Journal of Criminology57(6): 1482–1501.
10.
FilebornBLoney-HowesR (eds) (2019) #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change. New York: Springer International Publishing.
11.
GanapathyN (2000) Conceptualising community policing, framing the problem. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology33(3): 266–286.
12.
GraeberD (2009) Direct Action. An Ethnography. Edinburgh: AK Press.
13.
HenryNPowellA (2015) Embodied harms: Gender, shame, and technology-facilitated sexual violence. Violence Against Women21(6): 758–779.
IbrahimNA (2018) Everyday authoritarianism: A political anthropology of Singapore. Critical Asian Studies50(2): 219–231.
17.
JaneEA (2014) ‘Back to the kitchen, cunt’: Speaking the unspeakable about online misogyny. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies28(4): 459–475.
18.
JaneEA (2016) Online misogyny and feminist digilantism. Continuum30(3): 284–297.
19.
JaneEA (2017a) “Dude . . . stop the spread”: antagonism, agonism, and #manspreading on social media. International Journal of Cultural Studies20(5): 459–475.
20.
JaneEA (2017b) Feminist flight and fight responses to gendered cyberhate. In: SegraveMVitisL (eds.) Gender, Technology and Violence (pp. 45–61). London: Routledge.
21.
KaurSTanNDuttaMJ (2016) Media, migration and politics: The coverage of the little India riot in the straits times in Singapore. Journal of Creative Communications11(1): 27–43.
22.
KimmelM (2015) Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Nation Books
23.
KohA (2014) Doing class analysis in Singapore’s elite education: unravelling the smokescreen of “meritocratic talk.”Globalisation, Societies and Education12(2): 196–210.
24.
Loney-HowesR (2018) Shifting the Rape Script. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies39(2): 26–57.
25.
MarwickAECaplanR (2018) Drinking male tears: language, the manosphere, and networked harassment. Feminist Media Studies18(4): 543–559.
26.
MassanariA (2015) #Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society19(3): 329–346.
27.
MassanariAL (2018) Rethinking research ethics, power, and the risk of visibility in the era of the “Alt-Right” gaze. Social Media and Society4(2): 1–9.
28.
NaeglerL (2018) ‘Goldman-Sachs doesn’t care if you raise chicken’: The challenges of resistant prefiguration. Social Movement Studies17(5): 507–523.
PowCP (2013) Consuming private security: Consumer citizenship and defensive urbanism in Singapore. Theoretical Criminology17(2): 179–196.
31.
PowellA (2015) Seeking rape justice: Formal and informal responses to sexual violence through techno-social counter-publics. Theoretical Criminology19(4): 571–588.
32.
SalterM (2013) Justice and revenge in online counter-publics: Emerging responses to sexual violence in the age of social media. Crime, Media, Culture9(3): 225–242.
33.
SalterM (2017) Crime, Justice and Social Media. London: Routledge.
TanKP (2012) The Ideology of Pragmatism: Neo-liberal Globalisation and Political Authoritarianism in Singapore. Journal of Contemporary Asia42(1): 67–92.
TeoYY (2012) Neoliberal Morality in Singapore: How Family Policies Make State and Society. London: Routledge.
41.
TeoTA (2019) Perceptions of meritocracy in Singapore: Inconsistencies, contestations and biases. Asian Studies Review43(2): 184–205.
42.
VitisL (2020) Media representations of camera sexual voyeurism in Singapore: a medicalised, externalised and community problem. Feminist Media Studies. Epub ahead of print 31August2020. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2020.1810095.
43.
VitisLGilmourF (2016) Dick pics on blast: A woman ‘ s resistance to online sexual harassment using humour, art and Instagram. Crime, Media, Culture13(3): 1–21.
44.
YardleyELynesAWilsonD, et al. (2018) What’s the deal with “websleuthing”? News media representations of amateur detectives in networked spaces. Crime, Media, Culture14(1): 81–109.
