If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Give us an example, then!
Here’s a recent example from Instagram: “Do y’all females ever tell ur homegirls ‘Sis chill you letting too many dudes hit?’” Essentially, that means: “Women – do you ever tell your girlfriends that they’re whores and need to stop letting so many guys fuck them?” The reel, posted by a 19-year-old man, appeared on my Instagram feed without me wanting to see it, or ever interacting with any other similar content. The comments that followed were pure misogyny. “Women see body count as a leaderboard and they try to outdo each other,” was one of them. Translation: all women are competitively promiscuous.
Hmmm, I'm sensing that the circles this girl moves in are specifically... ethnic.
Consider the use of the word “female” in these posts. It is not a neutral term here, it is a term of abuse. It’s used by teenage boys to degrade us and equate us to animals. Boys are never described as “males”, but girls are always “females” – the equivalent of sows or calves, creatures that are less than human. We’re also “thots” (whores), “community pussy” and “bops”. “Bop” stands for “been over passed” and is a derogatory term used by boys to refer to a girl they’ve decided has been “passed around” or had too much sex. Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects. “When community pussy tries to insult me, I just want to beat that bitch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
And that cements it. Yes, I know the language and culture of this group has spread to the other child cultures, we've all sat on the bus or train convinced that the children we overhear behind us are black by their language, slang and diction, only to be surprised when they get up and move past us to get off to find they are as lilywhite as ourselves, haven't we, Reader?
But this reads like the real thing, and would be consistent with the 'Guardian' ethos of portraying this culture as forever victins of ouside forces:
And what is the effect? If I spend even 10 minutes on an app such as Instagram, I will close it, feeling disheartened and unhappy about being a girl. Using social media has ruined my self-esteem and my relation to being a girl in this world, and nearly every day I feel hatred towards my gender, my appearance, or even teenage boys as a category.
I can’t speak for every girl my age...
The 'Guardian' clearly begs to differ.
....but I frequently feel objectified, dehumanised and disgusted by the hate towards women I see online, and I can say with certainty that most of my friends would agree with me.
And what do you and your friends do to reverse the culturre that these boys emulate? Is it 'nothing' because you'd rather blame something else, like technology, rather than shine an unwelcome light on your culture?
4 comments:
Reminds me of that notice in a girl’s school, along the lines of “The more you act like a lady the more that men will act like gentlemen “. I’ve probably misquoted but that’s the gist of it.
What, I wonder, does the writer of the piece think about the jaw-droppingly explicit performances by the likes of Nicki Minaj, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion?
The guardian has firmly nailed its colours to the mast, heaping praise on ‘bawdy, sex-positive hits’ and ‘subversive lascivious twerking’ which are, apparently ‘empowering’ as long as they are choreographed and performed by ‘strong Black women’ in a a state of undress; if anyone misinterprets the message, it’s clear who is to blame:
‘The real problem, of course, is the assumption that displays of feminine sexuality are indicators of sexual availability. That, and the framework of (white) patriarchal privilege that paves the way for this logical misstep, this mental game of hopscotch where the lines are all drawn wrong.’ (Michelle Lhooq, guardian, 2014)
Call me cynical, but I am inclined to think that the ‘feminist irony’ of ‘subverting the Black girl music culture’ by slathering yourself in baby oil and twerking while describing your intimate anatomy in graphic terms is likely to be lost on an adolescent male audience.
Very true
Can you possibly subvert a ‘culture’ like this?
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