[ad_1]
Three times in the last few weeks, Samantha Lilly has stumbled across pictures of herself online that she didn’t know had been taken.
The photos had been posted alongside derogatory captions, attracting dozens of comments from people laughing along and mocking her appearance.
It’s a scenario that Australia’s short statured community says has been increasing with an influx of Facebook groups dedicated to soliciting photos of, and ridiculing, them.
One group called “M****t spotting Australia” contained a tagline, “See something small, give us a call”.
The photos of Ms Lilly were taken without her knowledge and show her going about her day at the supermarket, near her gym, and in a car park.
“I just got really angry, and I then felt really sad,” she said.
“[It] made me feel completely powerless, completely subhuman, and something that I don’t want anyone else to have to experience.”
The 35-year-old said the mocking of the short statured community had become a “bit of a sport”.
“I’m actually feeling … unsafe because [the photos taken are] in my community,” she said.
“But I think the worst thing about all of this is there are photos of people I love on there with quite violent, graphic, disgusting comments — and then there are photos of children.
“The only thing they have in common is they’re all short statured and they’re all living their life, going about their day-to-day activities, which everyone is entitled to do.”
‘Offensive and distasteful’, but doesn’t fail Meta’s community standards
Some of the photos have been taken in public, while others were stolen from personal social media pages.
Some comments referred to non-disabled people as “normal” and told the short statured person they “look wrong”.
One group member asked whether others would be interested in buying stickers for the group.
When called out, group members often doubled down on their insults.
Short Statured People of Australia (SSPA) president Sam Millard said the photos weren’t as troubling as other aspects of the situation, such as the organised and blase nature of the groups.
“I was shocked by … people using their real names, people with high profile employment, just having these conversations in the open,” he said.
But getting the Facebook groups removed has been difficult – as some have disappeared from public view, new, more localised ones have been created.
Before being removed, one group had more than 17,000 members.
Despite being reported to Meta, the owner of Facebook, several groups were not removed.
According to communication seen by the ABC, the platform concluded at least one “did not go against our community standards”.
Meta did not respond to specific questions from the ABC, and instead sent through information about its hate speech policies and how to report content.
Ms Lilly said complaints to the office of the eSafety Commissioner — which has limited powers when it comes to removing content — were also unfruitful.
In one piece of correspondence seen by the ABC, the commissioner’s office agreed the content was “offensive and distasteful”, but stated the situation was “outside of our legislative reason“.
A spokesperson for the eSafety Commissioner said it could only flag content for removal when it met the threshold set out under the Online Safety Act, and also breached a platform’s own terms of service.
“It’s important to understand our powers can only be enlivened when we receive a report from the person targeted, or someone authorised to report on their behalf. We cannot investigate reports of online abuse targeting a group of people, but we acknowledge this content causes distress to community members who identify with that group,” the spokesperson said.
“We also cannot remove entire accounts or websites, only specific URLs featuring the abusive material.”
The spokesperson encouraged anyone targeted by serious online abuse that a platform had failed to remove to report it, and for anyone interested in the current review of the Online Safety Act to make a submission.
Mr Millard and Ms Lilly want authorities to be able to do more.
“They could be doing a lot more to proactively take down the pages and also follow up on the individuals that start the pages,” Mr Millard said.
“I’m quite strong and resilient and don’t really care what people think of me … I don’t know if I would possibly be here if that weren’t the case,” Ms Lilly added.
“But the violence and threats online, I just think is potentially the first step to something horrible happening.”
A disability ‘acceptable to make fun of’
The public abuse of people of short stature is far from new.
In 2022, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability spent a week examining harassment and discrimination in public places, including online spaces.
In addition to being filmed and mocked, people of short stature recounted stories of being sexually assaulted, sexualised, and lifted off the ground by strangers.
“We feel we’re one of the last communities with a disability that it’s acceptable to make fun of or be the butt of jokes,” Mr Millard said.
“People just don’t associate dwarfism or short stature with disability necessarily, so it’s kind of seen as fair game.”
Ms Lilly said she wanted the wider public to help in the fight against their abuse.
“We need people who are not short statured to actually call this behaviour out when they see it. Have really uncomfortable conversations with friends [and] family,” Ms Lilly said.
“That’s going to put people in a tricky position, but we live with this discomfort every day.”
Mr Millard said businesses also had a role to play in calling it out, given many of the photos and videos were recorded inside restaurants, shopping centres, and gyms.
“A lot of the time, people with a disability are the ones kind of policing the situation [and] that can become quite burdensome,” he said.
“If the wider community is, firstly, aware that this is happening in the first place and then be empowered to kind of step in and say, ‘this is unacceptable’, then I think that goes a long way.”
Loading…
