The edition “Narratives of power: Unmasking digital stalkers” is an attempt to document and archive the issues of control, harassment, and patriarchal violence that are reproduced with new codes, but with the same logic of discipline, in the digital spaces. Of a hundred proposals received, we had to choose just nine, seeking to offer a safe space to talk about situations, practices, and technologies that facilitate stalking, but also share our strategies and visions on healing.

In this series, writers from across the Global Majority explore various questions and raise important points around how cyber stalking defines and dictates different aspects of one’s experiences of online and offline interactions.

We cannot face these attacks alone. Through these texts, we want to tell stalkers that we too are watching, documenting, and sharing what they are doing to ensure that such violence is not repeated. Day by day we build networks, form cross-border alliances, and we know that in every territory there is someone willing to construct transfeminist memory. Technology is not neutral, and that is why we are analysing it from a situated and gender sensitive critique. We will not be silenced again; together we will lift ourselves up as many times as necessary.

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Images of many surveillance devices like video cameras, computers, and cell phones whose connections are being physically cut by hands of all colours and sizes with scissors, suggesting the cutting off of watching by electronic means and cutting off stalkers' access to the people they aim to harass.

editorial

Challenging Digital Stalking: Recognising Intimate, Political and Cultural Violence

Karen Vergara …

Digital stalking is a pervasive form of violence that blurs the lines between intimacy, control, and surveillance. In this editorial, Karen Vergara explores how stalking functions as both a personal violation and a tool of cultural and political discipline. Drawing on narratives from across the Global South, the article examines how digital stalking leaves deep emotional and physical imprints, silences public participation, and reinforces patriarchal power. Yet, it also highlights collective resistance, healing, and feminist strategies for reclaiming safety, care, and digital presence.
Drawing of a screenshot of a website with different texts such as "stalk", "meet your friendly neighbourhood ladyboy" and "click here to send hate" as well as drawings of eyes and a person

Under digital siege: How marginalised genders survive online stalking in India

Anjani Chadha & Niv

This article explores how online stalking is weaponised against women and marginalised genders in India for expressing dissent or asserting their identities. It traces how digital harassment, driven by majoritarian backlash, misogyny, and transphobia, mirrors real-world structural violence. It examines the emotional, social, and professional toll of being surveilled and attacked online, especially when visibility becomes a political act.
A hand holding a bouquet of colourful wires with a purple bow on a blue background with white cloud outlines as well as a purple clothespin and a heart with a QR code.

“Disconnect from your ex”: Experiences of online control and cyberstalking

Fem Bloc

This article examines cyberstalking as a prevalent and persistent form of digital male chauvinist violence (DMCV), particularly in the context of intimate partner relationships. It highlights how digital tools are used for ongoing control, surveillance, and harassment after separation. It shares real case studies, critiques the failures of legal and platform responses, and reflects on evolving strategies for support.
A green butterfly net in the center with white, blue, and pink butterflies on the left and click arrows on the right with a butterfly with the colors of the trans flag in the center and an x to close.

When the oppressed use the master’s tools to oppress: cyberstalking from anti-rights trans activists

Michel Riquelme

This article explores a growing and troubling trend: trans and detransitionist activists aligning with extreme right-wing groups to cyberstalk, discredit, and divide the trans rights movement. Drawing on examples from Chile and beyond, Michel Riquelme examines how tactics like misinformation, online harassment, and collaboration with anti-gender forces undermine decades of progress.
Woman at desk looking at computer screen with messages, emojis, and bugs popping out of it. Messages such as phone hacked, insults and HA HA HA.

Varakashi: Here and abroad, Zimbabwe´s state online-stalkers brigade hunts female prey

Nyasha Bhobo

This investigative piece exposes how Zimbabwe’s ruling regime weaponises digital stalking to silence outspoken women, both within the country and across the diaspora. Through coordinated troll armies known as Varakashi, female activists, lawyers, and dissidents are harassed, surveilled, and threatened with fake leaks, sexualised slurs, and psychological intimidation.
A woman lying on a green blanket surrounded by a red background with holes from which surveillance cameras, eyes, and a hand with a cell phone taking a photo emerge.

Re-memory

Sofía Celi

Through intimate storytelling, Sofia Celi recounts how digital surveillance, censorship, and manipulation became extensions of past trauma, revealing how laws, platforms, and moderation systems replicate historical silencing. Yet, despite this erasure, Re-memory is also a testament to survival, collective resistance, and the power of writing as a form of reclamation - a refusal to disappear, and a commitment to reimagine digital justice.
Woman on stage with a microphone and a piece of paper on her hand with her shadow as a stalker wearing a coat and a hat.

I Keep Receipts

Vickie Wang

Through the chilling account of how her stalker weaponised social media against her, Vickie Wang reveals the insidious nature of cyberstalking and how it erodes women’s public participation.
A woman at her desk with a printer with messages and emojis coming in.

You look cute: How electronic checkout slips became a stalking nightmare for South Africa’s women

Winnie Ximba

The article explores how systemic gender inequality, precarious employment, and corporate inaction converge to leave women workers vulnerable and unprotected. With testimonies from cashiers and trade unionists in South Africa, it highlights a rarely acknowledged tech-enabled violence, and calls for urgent changes in retail technologies and practices to prioritise women’s safety and privacy at work.
A person wearing a hoodie hidden among green leaves looks into the distance with binoculars while the vacation in the background is surrounded by a purple frame.

Is there life after stalking? How to make space for our emotional responses to cyberstalking

Constanza Figueroa

Through storytelling, humour, and community care, this article emphasises the importance of vulnerability, support networks, and collective healing. It rejects isolation and self-blame, and encourages honouring the pain while building boundaries, resilience, and shared resistance against the structural violence of cyberstalking.
A chair with different LGBTQIA+ in the middle of a spotlight and in the middle of the illustration surrounded by users typing on a keyboard

The rise of cybertroops and digital stalkers in Indonesia

Juliana Harsianti

This article examines how state-affiliated cybertroops in Indonesia are evolving into digital stalkers targeting women and marginalised groups. Originally deployed to manipulate political discourse during elections, these coordinated online actors now use harassment, doxxing, and surveillance to silence activists, feminists, and LGBTQIA+ voices. Juliana Harsianti shows how this tech-facilitated gender-based violence threatens freedom of expression and participation in public life.
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