Some days I feel like I need to take a break from the internet.
The troubling thing is, I never know which side I'm more disappointed at. In a perfect world the internet and social media would be a place for the spread of ideas, a medium to allow people to express themselves and to connect with people they would otherwise have never had the chance of interacting with. Instead, when I look on Facebook, or Twitter, or read the comment section of any article or page, all I see are people in pissing contests with one another in a pointless contest to validate their personal beliefs and prove everyone else wrong. These aren't pleasant discourses either. Some of them make me sick.
A page on Facebook calls itself Heterosexual Awareness Month and mocks the struggle for gay rights and equality in our nation, the people who disagree post hateful and disturbing comments to their page. Their is an article calling for better and safer practices in the adult film industry, the comments section is full of people who cry "that's what you get" and "serves you right". You can't get on Yahoo.com to look at the news without being bombarded by hate and ignorance in every comment, more often than not having nothing to do with the aforementioned news. People are attacked for merely holding opinions, and not only from one side.
There is a preacher who very often comes to my University and stands on a corner outside the library and preaches. Many people simply smile, shrug, stop and listen, or walk on by. However, every now and again there comes along someone who doesn't identify religiously, be they atheist, agnostic, or what please you, and they shout at him. Some shout "praise Satan" and some yell at him, telling him to prove his claims and calling him false. I don't identify as religious, but to see these people decry his "ignorance" with their own makes me stop and reconsider the way we communicate our ideas to one another. Less and less do I find that we do so in a manner than affords respect to the opposite position. We no longer have discussion, we simply try to make ourselves the biggest person in the room, asserting that we must be the right side and disregarding and disrespecting all other views in the process.
I may not agree with every thing everyone around me says, but as I get older I find that I cannot simply dismiss them. To do so would do nothing to expand my understanding and would only leave me ignorant to that point of view. I wish I could look into the world around me and see a similar attitude. This isn't to say that things people say don't still make me angry, or upset, or sick to my stomach, but I have come to the realization that I gain nothing by beginning a fight over the social media used. It only serves to make me look as if I'm insecure in my own beliefs, that I need to assert them in order to validate them, and I don't feel the need to do that. I'm comfortable in the way I live my life and the beliefs that I hold, and nothing I read or see on the internet is going to make me change that. Fighting brings us no closer to understanding, and if I am to have a dialogue with someone, I would much rather have it with them face to face.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Cover up...
Very rarely do things get me so angry that I have to get out my frustration somewhere before I put a foot through a wall or something else of value.
The reason I'm so angry is because I'm disappointed and saddened that in our society these attitudes are still so present. Before I jump into that, here is a screenshot of a blog post recently shared to my timeline by a friend, and the ensuing conversation. I'd like to draw particular attention to the bottom comment, and preface that this was posted along with a very detailed rant by my friend, who I can only assume finds this as saddening and troubling as I did:
The blog post is from a mother concerned with the kinds of photos being posted by girls her sons are friends with on Facebook. If her sons are under 18, I have no issues with her wishing to monitor what her sons view as far as the internet and social media is concerned. While I am not a personal advocate for this sort of monitoring of children, I am not a parent and will not put anyone down for wishing to raise their children this way.
What troubles me about this blog post is not that she want's to monitor her sons Facebook, or that she is concerned with who and what they are viewing. Those things are something that is left to any parents discretion. What does trouble me.... Actually, there are a few things about this that really trouble me.
The first is the tone that she uses throughout the post. Sentences such as " Wow – you sure took a bunch of selfies in your pajamas this summer!" and "Will you trust me?" with such a tone of condescension and judgement, for young women that she may not even personally know. And trust you? Trust you to tell me that I am purposefully trying to lure your sons into impure thoughts? That I have some pictures on Facebook that you don't agree with I need to "run", of all things, to take them down in order to have value in your eyes? And then, at the very end of this public humiliation of this poor girl who is thankfully never named, the gall to add "I'm glad we're friends". Again, like you're doing this girl a favor, not shaming her for pictures that may give your sons "impure thoughts".
This brings us to the second reason this bothers me so deeply, and that is that it is reinforcing this societal mentality that it isn't the fault of the man should he have impure thoughts, but that it is the fault instead, of the woman. This is illustrated so clearly in the final comment on my friend's post. If you can't read it too clearly from my picture, let me re-quote it for you:
And that isn't the only instance. Everyday there are Facebook posts and tweets calling girls who dress less conservatively "sluts" and "whores". Our culture is full of people who are willing to look at a situation and decide "well, look how she was dressed. Clearly she was asking for it." That's convenient for all the guys out there. You don't have to take any responsibility for your actions because you weren't the one at fault. You saw a woman who was dressed in a way you deemed provocative, which you view as a neon sign saying that she's up for anything. If you should do something like make a sexual advance or force something on her that she doesn't want, it's not your fault or responsibility because she was tempting you. It's her fault. And I'm not trying to stereotype all men into this category, but there are a significant number in our society who think this way.
I urge you, whoever is reading this, to do what you can to stop this kind of thinking. Just because a women dresses or acts a certain way NEVER makes her an object, and NEVER makes it okay to blame her. If men can't keep their thoughts "pure", that's on them. It's things like this that poison our society, that make people disregard serious topics like harassment and rape. It tells young girls to always be cautious of everything they do, and that when something terrible does happen to them that they only have themselves to blame. It's disgusting, and it's wrong.
Finally here's the blog post for those of you are interested in reading it:
http://givenbreath.com/2013/09/03/fyi-if-youre-a-teenage-girl/
Try now, to imagine someone writing a blog post criticizing the photo she used of her sons, saying that it is too provocative or that they need to cover up. No one thinks twice, and that is a disturbing double standard in our society.
The reason I'm so angry is because I'm disappointed and saddened that in our society these attitudes are still so present. Before I jump into that, here is a screenshot of a blog post recently shared to my timeline by a friend, and the ensuing conversation. I'd like to draw particular attention to the bottom comment, and preface that this was posted along with a very detailed rant by my friend, who I can only assume finds this as saddening and troubling as I did:
The blog post is from a mother concerned with the kinds of photos being posted by girls her sons are friends with on Facebook. If her sons are under 18, I have no issues with her wishing to monitor what her sons view as far as the internet and social media is concerned. While I am not a personal advocate for this sort of monitoring of children, I am not a parent and will not put anyone down for wishing to raise their children this way.
What troubles me about this blog post is not that she want's to monitor her sons Facebook, or that she is concerned with who and what they are viewing. Those things are something that is left to any parents discretion. What does trouble me.... Actually, there are a few things about this that really trouble me.
The first is the tone that she uses throughout the post. Sentences such as " Wow – you sure took a bunch of selfies in your pajamas this summer!" and "Will you trust me?" with such a tone of condescension and judgement, for young women that she may not even personally know. And trust you? Trust you to tell me that I am purposefully trying to lure your sons into impure thoughts? That I have some pictures on Facebook that you don't agree with I need to "run", of all things, to take them down in order to have value in your eyes? And then, at the very end of this public humiliation of this poor girl who is thankfully never named, the gall to add "I'm glad we're friends". Again, like you're doing this girl a favor, not shaming her for pictures that may give your sons "impure thoughts".
This brings us to the second reason this bothers me so deeply, and that is that it is reinforcing this societal mentality that it isn't the fault of the man should he have impure thoughts, but that it is the fault instead, of the woman. This is illustrated so clearly in the final comment on my friend's post. If you can't read it too clearly from my picture, let me re-quote it for you:
"Um. Lawl.
If you pose provocatively and dress provocatively, you are expecting people to think of you in a provocative manner. Its horribly naieve to think you can dress however you want and not be at least a bit responsible for how someone else thinks. Turning this into a man vs woman appropriateness problem.... double lawl"
I've heard this logic before. Its the same thing that happened in Steubenville, Ohio. No one stopped to say that these boys were responsible for raping and abusing this girl. All I heard anyone say, on almost any news network, was how terrible it was that these boys lives were ruined by it. Yes, those boys lives are ruined, and that girl who was raped, videoed, and put on Youtube will walk away as if nothing has happened having wrongly ended the promising careers of two high school athletes.
And that isn't the only instance. Everyday there are Facebook posts and tweets calling girls who dress less conservatively "sluts" and "whores". Our culture is full of people who are willing to look at a situation and decide "well, look how she was dressed. Clearly she was asking for it." That's convenient for all the guys out there. You don't have to take any responsibility for your actions because you weren't the one at fault. You saw a woman who was dressed in a way you deemed provocative, which you view as a neon sign saying that she's up for anything. If you should do something like make a sexual advance or force something on her that she doesn't want, it's not your fault or responsibility because she was tempting you. It's her fault. And I'm not trying to stereotype all men into this category, but there are a significant number in our society who think this way.
I urge you, whoever is reading this, to do what you can to stop this kind of thinking. Just because a women dresses or acts a certain way NEVER makes her an object, and NEVER makes it okay to blame her. If men can't keep their thoughts "pure", that's on them. It's things like this that poison our society, that make people disregard serious topics like harassment and rape. It tells young girls to always be cautious of everything they do, and that when something terrible does happen to them that they only have themselves to blame. It's disgusting, and it's wrong.
Finally here's the blog post for those of you are interested in reading it:
http://givenbreath.com/2013/09/03/fyi-if-youre-a-teenage-girl/
Try now, to imagine someone writing a blog post criticizing the photo she used of her sons, saying that it is too provocative or that they need to cover up. No one thinks twice, and that is a disturbing double standard in our society.
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