social media

Hannah

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I have a male relative who is famous in our family for being very rude on Facebook. If you ever post something he doesn’t agree with, he will blast you for it in the comment section. I’ve never been a particularly controversial person on Facebook and tend to steer towards feel good, humorous stuff, but recently I started sharing things pertaining to feminism and issues surrounding it. He, as you can probably guess, wasn’t too fond of it. The first incident was when I shared a picture of a tweet by a girl named Chloe Cheek about the Brock Turner trial which said “rape culture is victim shaming a woman for being ‘too drunk’, then defending a man by saying his actions were influenced by alcohol”. My relative went on to comment with “there is no such thing as “rape culture” and if a woman chooses to get drunk if ANYONE!!! chooses to drink…they get EVERYTHING that comes with it. sorry! that’s the plain truth of it” first of all, what the actual heck? How on earth can you ever insinuate that a woman deserved to get raped? Under any circumstances? I understand that he and I both come from a christian perspective that being drunk is sinful, but I don’t believe that just because you sin means you deserve to have bad things happen to you. No human being deserves to get raped. Period. God does not punish a woman’s sins by making a man rape her. That was his first offense, and I let it slide because A. I’m not a controversial person, and B. I know he’s the kind of person who will never have his mind changed. His beliefs are rooted too deeply. and when a stubborn man think God is telling him something in particular, nothing but an act of God is going to make him see his ways. So I responded with an “Okey dokey, artichokey” and left it at that. But today another incident happened. I posted an Emma Watson quote that stated “If you stand for equality, you’re a feminist. I’m sorry to tell you.” seemingly harmless, right? Something a young woman should be able to post on Facebook without being insulted and degraded simply for the fact that she has a vagina and not a penis, right? WRONG. Him: oh. my. God. ugh…I don’t even know where to start. Me: Then don’t. Neither one of us will convince the other to see things the way we see them and our opinions aren’t hurting or affecting each other at all, so we’re both better off just agreeing to disagree and nobody gets hurt feelings. Sometimes we just have to choose our battles. So thanks for not starting. 🙂 I was being so kind and accepting of our differences in opinions, right? Surely that merits me at least a little bit of respect for being a human. Him: well feminist lies are not opinions per se. and yes the spread of them does hurt. it hurts men. it relations between men and women. and it hurts gullible young women who refuse to learn better. there. that is where I started. and stopped. There he goes. I am simultaneously told that A. Because he sees my opinion as a lie it means that I am automatically stripped of even having an opinion, B. That I am just a gullible young woman who refuses to learn better, and C. That I am hurting men and my relationship to my fiance by wanting to get equal pay if, say, me and a man are both working a job and have the same qualifications, and also because I don’t want to, you know, have to worry about being RAPED every time I walk out of my house without a man I trust with me. I have bad anxiety where when someone says something mean or degrading to me, my heart starts pounding, I can’t think straight, and I start to cry. This is not the first time this man has made me cry, but it is the first time he’s treated me like a lesser human. My older sister, who has had lots of battles with this man, including over feminism, gave me the advice to not rise to his bait or act angry, because it will just infuriate him more if I act nonchalant about his rude attitude. But it just made me so sick. That’s when I started to think about how he can only make me feel small and lesser if I let him. That I cannot stop making my voice heard just because he wants to shame and scare me into being a good submissive woman. That’s when I got my idea. This may sound a little crazy and obsessive, but for the last hour I’ve been stockpiling bookmarks of feminist quotes, pictures, articles, everything….and I’ve decided to periodically post them. I feel like he will either see that I am standing my ground and give up, or he’ll continue to make a fool of himself on my posts and eventually I won’t get that heart pounding, blurry thoughts, teary eyed moment that he usually makes me have. It’s a win/win. So with that being said, I know that this is not nearly as bad as what a lot of women face on a day to day basis, but this is my story. I wanted to get it out there and share that sometimes a misogynistic man who picks on little girls can end up being just the fuel that makes that girl finally decide to stand up for what she believes in.

J

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When I was 18, I managed to get on a work placement doing what I wanted to pursue later on at uni. I was the youngest in the whole office by 5 years, though the average age was probably late 30’s, and I was the only female in my department. On my smoke breaks I would often run into my boss’ boss, who I’d say was about 40. We would chat, he would tell jokes, sometimes of a slightly flirty nature, but I let him be, not wanting to cause a fuss as I’d only be there for a couple of months. I went on a night out with my other colleagues, and they all added me on Facebook. A couple of days later I got a request from my boss’ boss. I accepted, as he’d offered to help me with a job after I finished university. Over the course of the next 8 months, he messaged me several times, at first friendly, but then asking me about my sex life, trying to tell me about his, describing what he’d like to do to me, belittling my boyfriend and eventually asked me – with a very graphic description – for a blowjob. He got married during this time. I could never tell to what extent he was “joking”, but it made me feel so uncomfortable either way. He eventually got bored, but I hope it wasn’t because he found another innocent young woman to prey on.

Kitty

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I logged into Facebook this evening to be greeted by a post from a young man (not the same one who posted something similar before- I mentioned that instance under a different ‘handle’) on my friends list which read something to the effect of “surprise sex is the best thing to wake up to”. Now I don’t know if I’m overreacting, or if I’ve taken the comment the wrong way, but I didn’t like it or find it particularly amusing. It struck me as being a bit too close to being a rape joke for my liking, & I hate rape jokes & fail to understand how someone could find something so horrible funny. It’s a complete mystery to me. I didn’t bother reporting it on the grounds that I figured Facebook wouldn’t do tiddly pop about it, given what I’ve read here about that site’s response to similar stuff.

Chloe Metzger

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When a Twitter hashtag asked what women want in five words I decided to be honest. Equality, Equality, Equality, Equality, Equality. While it was possibly my most liked tweet and was retweeted many times, I also faced a lot of sexism. I was told that the gender pay gap was a myth, that feminism had done enough, what more could we want? That women were not meant to be equal to men. More and more tweets from men kept coming in all full of hatred and mocking what I stood for.