In the three days since, Dhanya has been called a slut, a whore, and a sex-worker, all by fans of the actor Vijay. In Tamil, she’s been called a thevediya (prostitute), punda (vagina), motta punda (shaved vagina), and more. She’s been asked to upload nude videos and to reveal who she’s giving blowjobs to. To be clear: this isn’t “trolling”. It is sexual harassment and abuse.



Vijay fans created the hashtag “#PublicityBeepDhanya” to neatly contain all their attacks, and they trended it nationwide. That hashtag alone has over 30,000 tweets under it, and the cumulative tweets attacking and harassing Dhanya number well over 50,000.

Sura, the Vijay film she mentioned walking out of, is seven years old. It was critically panned and a commercial failure even when it was relevant, but none of that mattered to Vijay fans this weekend. A woman had criticised their hero, and it was their moral duty to avenge him.

Roll up the sleeves, crack the knuckles, put the woman in her damn place.

There’s no way to know too much about who these people are. Most accounts this abusive hide behind anonymous handles and either have no photos or fake ones. (And despite pleas from trolled women around the world, Twitter is infamously unhelpful in punishing such folk.)

In Dhanya’s case, all we know about these scum-people is that they are fans of Vijay. In my case, all I knew was that they were fans of Salman Khan. And, honestly, that’s enough.

Vijay, Salman, and countless other male actors have found success by entering already-misogynistic film industries, and shooting to superstardom as poster-boys of that misogyny.

Khan’s films have famously romanticised stalking women, harassing women, and objectifying women, all of whom go on to fall in love with him. So it’s no surprise that his fans online exhibit similarly violent sexism online, and an inability to reckon with a woman without sexualising her, be it in praise or protest.

Vijay’s films haven’t been too different. I haven’t watched many myself, so I reached out to Lavanya Mohan, a friend, writer, and Tamil film expert.

“They're mostly misogynistic,” she told me, and “very heavy on ‘teaching the heroine a lesson’”.

Of course.