Chayn

25/08/2026

When trauma has damaged our self-esteem, when poor treatment has made us question our worth, it helps to remember: there's a set of needs we're owed. In love. In care. In dignity.

We don't always remember this. Especially after abuse.

That's why we created a Bill of Rights as a reminder of what we actually deserve and are owed as a human being.

You deserve respect. You deserve to be heard. You deserve safety. You deserve to have your boundaries honoured. You deserve to take up space.

If you're healing from a toxic or abusive relationship, our course Recovering from Toxic and Abusive Relationships course is free and here for you, whenever you're ready.

Link in bio 🔗

12/08/2026

✨Tilt your camera sideways for the full cinematic value. ✨

Our research on image-based abuse was inspired and fueled by the experiences of survivors in Pakistan. We want to honour the women who trusted us with their stories so they could support other survivors who had experienced the same. This dance is for them.

This Kathak film would not have been possible without the support of our team.

Concept, words and direction:
Artist:
Wardrobe:
Makeup:
Location: Haveli Barood Khana, Lahore
Production & Direction Support: Sound & Vision Pvt. Limited
Choreography Consultation:

Thank you also to our partners in this research collaboration and all the staff, board, volunteers and contractors at Chayn

31/07/2026

25/06/2026

Zarnaz took a photograph with her best friend. She was fully clothed, but not covering her hair. To many this may be an everyday photo.

But two years later, that image became a weapon when a boy she had rejected used it to threaten and coerce her. She was 17 years old and she went to meet him, not because she wanted to, but because she was afraid of what the photograph would do to her family’s reputation if it was shared.

This is what image-based abuse looks like for many women, yet policies and legislation are not there to help them. CHAYN’s latest research shows that harm has nothing to do with what an image shows, and everything to do with consent.

Hear from other survivors like Zarnaz in our bio 🔗

🌸 If you’ve experienced image-based abuse and need support, head to the resources in our bio for dedicated IBA support and 1-to-1 messaging.

💛 We would like to thank our partner organisations in Pakistan, who work tirelessly to support survivors of tech-facilitated gender-based violence in Pakistan, the and . Their expertise and knowledge have been our compass, as we conducted the research.

23/06/2026

Many women are threatened, abused and blackmailed over everyday images of themselves but laws and tech policy doesn’t recognise it as image-based abuse. In this with , you can see Ayesha Omar .m.omar and us talking about the importance of consent.

Online image-based abuse isn’t just about nudity or explicit content. It’s about whether someone consented to an image being created and shared. Many survivors around the world where any image can become a weapon in the wrong hands.

We’re making it very clear: no-one’s photo should be shared without their consent. That principle would make the internet safer for everyone. Our report looks at the experiences of 60+ women in Pakistan and its diaspora. 

We’ve been supporting survivors of image-based abuse through our free, online resources to support with their healing. 

You can also get support by accessing our Bloom course on healing from image-based abuse (English) and our session “It wasn't your fault: Understanding image-based abuse” in Balochi, Pashto, Punjabi and Urdu.

Find these resources on chayn.co and through links in our bio.

17/06/2026

A woman in Assam had 1.4 million followers, a viral story and a fanbase built entirely without her knowledge. She did nothing to cause this. She consented to nothing. The shame that followed, the withdrawal from public life, the silence, belongs to a system that profits from women’s images and to the people who built it, not to her. If any part of this resonates,

Bloom’s course on image-based abuse and rebuilding ourselves was built for exactly this. Free, anonymous, and rooted in the belief that survivors are never to blame.

Reporting referenced from Adrija Bose, Tarunima Prabhakar and Tora Agarwala for Decode Internet, in collaboration with Tattle. 💛

14/06/2026

Some stories need more than words. Movement says what language sometimes can’t. Something is coming that was created in response to Chayn’s research on image-based abuse in Pakistan, and the stories of the women whose experiences shaped it. Stay tuned 👀 💛

🏷️ pakistani women digital safety staying safe online

07/06/2026

“…from the story of Duchess Margaret of Argyll in 1960s England to Shahnaz Gul in 1970s Karachi, we’ll see how the abuse of women’s images with or without smartphones or AI resulted in a similar treatment. And that while technology is an important medium that exacerbates violence, it’s misogyny and our lack of respect for consent, and broken systems that aren’t survivor-centred that haven’t changed much.”

Read more on our new blog post about historical examples of tech facilitated abuse. Link in bio 🤍

31/05/2026

This story shows how the narrative around image-based abuse operates and why the behaviour has always existed, long before tech advancements and the policy protections.

In 1970, Mustafa Zaidi printed topless photographs of Shahnaz Gul and labelled them “Christine Keeler of Pakistan”. These were potentially ready to distribute and designed to destroy her reputation publicly. She had tried to end the relationship.

When he died, Pakistani newspapers spent two years reporting the intimate details of her personal life while the flyers in his garage were barely mentioned.

22/05/2026

The horror in Obsession isn’t the wish. It’s that he knew she didn’t feel the same way and did it anyway. He only felt guilty when she made him uncomfortable, not when she was suffering. That even when she begged him to undo it, he altered it instead, still wanting to keep her. Image-based abuse follows the same logic. It’s not about the image. It’s about using something intimate to possess someone who never fully agreed, and the control that comes after.