From the Archive: #DearJohn - another hashtag of note

"From the Archive" is a series of posts that I wrote on past, no-longer-updated blogs that I feel are good enough to need a new home.

This post was originally written in January 2011.



This time, it's not horrifying the way #rulesforgirls was.

The #DearJohn hashtag started in response to the HR3 bill - which is on the surface about federally-funded abortion but more importantly would re-define rape to include ONLY instances of force. Rapes that involve coercion or drugs, as well as statutory rape and incest on anyone over 18, would not be covered if they resulted in a pregnancy that the woman wanted to terminate.



Basically, it's a giant clusterf@#$ that serves only to endanger women and empower rapists.

So some awesome feministas have taken to Twitter, much like they did with the #mooreandme tag, to address tweets to Speaker of the House John Boehner, explaining to the self-righteous, overly-spray-tanned disaster of a speaker that HR3 is disgusting, appalling and unacceptable. They are also directed at different members of Congress to urge them to vote AGAINST this terrible bill.

The original call to action (with hashtag) appeared on Tiger Beatdown. They also linked to a site where you can find your representative and write to them.



I don't know if a Twitter campaign can truly change policy. I'd like to think it can - it certainly shows that the people are unhappy with this bill, and theoretically it's the people that Congress was elected to represent. I'd like to think at least some Representatives see what their constituents think and act accordingly. It's also somewhat heart-warming to see people use social media this way. In between idiocy and terrible grammar, people are speaking out about something important.

From the Archive: My rule for girls is not to listen to sexist hashtags

"From the Archive" is a series of posts that I wrote on past, no-longer-updated blogs that I feel are good enough to need a new home.

This post was originally written in January 2011.

OK, it's going to seem like a major idea rip-off, because Jezebel now has a post up on this very idea. But I have been rolling it around in my head, trying to think of something coherent to say that wasn't just a string of curse words. But I'll keep it brief, because now it's been covered.

The #rulesforgirls tag on Twitter is disgusting. Appalling. Horrifying. Etc.

And for awhile there, it was trending.

So it's a collection of "tips" for the ladies. That in and of itself is a bad idea - why do women need a whole separate set of rules to follow? I'm not sure if what's worse - the tweets that are deliberately malicious "jokes" or the ones that appear to be sincere.

There's a lot of "fat chicks shouldn't wear leggings/get tattoos/exist in public and be happy" and of course rules on properly conducting yourself regarding the sexytimes, but there are also lots of sad gender role upholding. For example, "cook for him in stilettos" and "don't behave like a dude." (I'm not entirely sure what that even means.)

And it looks like now there's a #rulesformen tag trending. Guess what? It's still pretty anti-woman sounding. It tells men what kind of women to avoid and what to have women do or not do for them. So, no matter who the tags are aimed at, they're still all about what women can do for men.

And don't get me started on why men are men but women are girls. Plus, Twitter grammar makes my soul die a little.

Don't Fat-Shame. Really, Just Don't Do It.

Seriously. Just don't fat-shame.

There's no point to it. It doesn't make people magically thinner. Being magically thinner wouldn't make people magically healthier. It doesn't make you superior. It doesn't do anything positive.

All it does it promote bigotry. It makes people hate themselves. It reveals that you are an ugly and small-minded individual full of prejudice.

It's worse for fat people than actually being fat. It's degrading to mental health. It promotes stereotypes. Stereotypes have real implications.

It leads to fat people being hired less. It leads to fat people hearing rude comments shouted at them from cars. It makes people feel awful.

It hides behind some veil of "helping." People who fat-shame get away with it because they think they're encouraging fat people to de-fat themselves. And apparently de-fatting is the be all and end all of...something.

But it just causes pain. It leads to depression and isolation and prejudice. It causes nothing good and everything bad.

So just don't do it.

Pro-Selfie

I think selfies are great. There are always so many people talking about how annoying they are and how self-absorbed people who take them can be, but to me, they're great. They give people, especially young women, power.

Yeah, power.

The internet has democratized so many things -- music, publishing, art, etc -- and taken the gatekeeping away from the small number of outlets who used to hold it. This means that instead of relying on magazines and style sections to display the images of women, the control is now in the hands of the women themselves.

Look, here's a selfie of mine from this morning:

Seeing that picture makes me feel good. I am in control of my image, and I am choosing to share what I looked like at 8:30 this morning. I am also noticing that I need to Windex my mirror, but whatever.

The point is, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of self-pride (or even self-absorption) in a world that constantly demeans women and tells us we're not good enough. And it's empowering to see different people from different backgrounds, with different body types and personal styles showing off what they look like and what they're wearing. It's a celebration.

Facebook's Sex Trafficking Problem: A Follow-Up

So, the Sonagachi Facebook page has finally been removed. This is a good thing, and I'm proud to be part of the group of people who worked to have it done.

But I'm also incredibly disappointed in Facebook. Why did it take this much work to remove a page that was blatantly graphic and in promotion of human trafficking? Why was this example of violence against women not immediately recognized as a violation of their terms of service?

In light of WAM's successful campaign to get Facebook to agree to give gender-based hate speech the same treatment as homophobic, anti-Semitic, racist, Islamophobic, etc, hate speech, it seems especially appalling that it took as much effort as it did to have this removed.

Here is a brief overview of the process of reporting this page:

June 4
-My friend Liz discovered the page while doing research into the Sonagachi district for a blog post she is writing.
-She shared the page with a Facebook group that we are both members of, asking anyone who could stomach looking at the page to please report it.
-Many of us reported it as sexually graphic content.
-After a short period of time, those of us who reported it began receiving the emails saying it would not be removed (I included the language in my post last night). Many of us filled out the feedback form with some strongly-worded disagreement.
-Some of us reported it a second time, only to receive the same email, and fill out the feedback again.
-Liz wrote about the process on her own blog. Another friend, Slay Belle, wrote about it for the Powder Room section of Jezebel.
-We share these posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, sometimes tweeting at well-known feminist activists and groups who might also promote the issue.
-Emails were sent to WAM

June 5
-The Jezebel post was promoted to the first page of the site.
-More people tweeted at Nick Kristof, Anderson Cooper, and other individuals they thought might be interested in the story.
-Women's Media Center shared Liz's blog post
-Liz's post was also published on Persephone Magazine
-The Daily Dot picked up the story
-Another member of the same original Facebook group created a Change.org petition (which has been refocused to be a more general plea for the site to take trafficking pages more seriously)
-The Sonagachi fan page was removed

I repeat my question: why did it take almost a full day, dozens of reports, a social media barrage, and blog attention to get this page removed? Why was it not enough that it was full of graphic imagery and victimization of women, many of whom appear underage?

Why, despite their recent promises, does Facebook still not care about women?

Concern Trolling and Unattainable Perfection

Concern trolling is the act of pretending you care about someone as a means of bullying and harassing them. It's the person who hates all fat people but pretends to just be super worried for our health, for example.

People who do this don't actually care about whatever it is they say they care about. They hate. Whatever group it is they're after, it is out of loathing and prejudice. And it's yet another way we are expected to strive for an unattainable level of perfection.

I wrote about the burden of perfection before, and it hasn't gone anywhere. Previously, I was talking about how the internet and the lousy job market come together to make sure our every little move and flaw is held against us and that we must be utterly perfect in order to be considered for jobs. With concern trolling, it's more about social perfection.

We're too fat; we're too thin; we're too slutty; we're prudes; we're too this or too that. There is no winning. No matter what we do, we're doing it wrong. There's no way to work within a system like this, so the only way to overcome it is to take a radical instead of reformist stance.

This is where we reject and ignore everyone who tells us there's something wrong. All the magazines that give out diet tips, all the shows that ridicule wardrobes, all the commercials for magic pills and gyms, and so on. Throw them out, turn them off, whatever. Ignore people who say awful things on the internet. Don't let the trolls -- online or in real life -- dominate your mind.

If we were all perfect, no one would have anything to learn and life would be pretty boring. As trite and cliche as it sounds, our flaws are what make us who we are. Why are we constantly under pressure to eliminate the very things that make us interesting ? (The answer to that is money. If we hate ourselves it's easier to sell us self-improvement products.)

Obviously, a radical overhaul of the system is easier said than done, especially for people who need to find and keep a job. But we can live outside it in small ways, like what I listed above. Striking a balance between your needs and your principles won't always be easy, but it's part of growing up.

Remembering and Forgetting Online

For one of my classes I'm reading a book by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger called Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. It covers many different aspects of forgetting and remembering, and how a switch to digital media has altered the way humans do that, but one thing that struck me is the age-old (or digital-age-old) debate about how social networking can affect our professional lives.

Early in the book we are introduced to a woman who was denied a teaching license because she had a picture of herself on her MySpace page wearing a pirate hat and holding a drink. There are plenty of people out there who would say, well, then she shouldn't be posting pictures like that online. Anyone can see them and you deserve what you get and so on. It's the same argument that comes about when you hear of someone being fired for complaining about their job on their own Facebook page.

I hate that argument. A lot. See, if this woman was in the process of obtaining a teaching license, she had to at least be old enough to be through college. Unless she's a Dougie Howser-style genius, she's probably in her mid-twenties. Certainly of legal drinking age. Now, a review of the book mentions that there may have been other factors in her denial for a license than just the photo, however, it shouldn't have been a factor at all. Personal activity, unless illegal or wildly unethical (no, drinking does not count as unethical, nor does profanity or consensual adult sex), ought not to be held against people who are otherwise qualified.

Many of our interactions happen online. I'll be posting tomorrow about internet-based friendships. So, naturally, that's where our conversations about work or our photos from parties will end up. Before, yes, they may have stayed confined to a phone conversation or personal scrapbook, but people were still behaving the same way. Just because these things are easier to find doesn't mean it's alright to use them against people.

The job market is awful right now. It's really bad. I don't have to tell anyone that. Employers are at such an advantage that they can put applicants through intense, rigorous, borderline ridiculous screening processes for pretty low-level positions. As it already is, we have to be nearly perfect to even get our resumes considered for anything other than the circular file. Companies should not be adding to this by scrutinizing what we post as normal daily activities. It places an unprecedented and undue burden of perfection on people. But people aren't perfect. We never have been. We aren't doing anything different than we did in the analog age; we just have a new way of documenting it. Holding things against us that would easily have been ignorable before just creates a standard no one can live up to.

Let people have their privacy. Just because a profile is there doesn't mean it needs to be seen by everyone. We have a right to a personal, non-professional life. Assuming legality and ethics, the two need not inhibit each other.

Internet Arguments: Not Always Bad

I know! We've probably all been told to get off the computer and stop arguing with strangers. It's a waste of time, they say. You'll never change anyone's mind, they say.

A lot of the time that's completely true. Often when you get into a bickering match on an online forum, you're just going to get frustrated and spend a significant chunk of your day fuming to yourself over something some random person in East Jesus, Iowa, said about the Affordable Care Act and nothing productive will come of it.

Image credit: xkcd.

But. But! Sometimes they work out. First of all, they can actually be a good way to teach yourself what to avoid. Maybe you realize that half of your high school class hasn't actually outgrown the privileged mindset of their wealthy suburban upbringing the same way you have. So then you decide to remove the bulk of them from your friends list on Facebook. And now you only see things from people you actually want to stay in touch with instead of rolling your eyes and self-involved, judgmental drivel. I may or may not be speaking from experience here.

Secondly, sometimes you can strengthen friendships. Just like how deep heart-to-heart conversations in person can make you feel a tighter bond, so can online discussions. Without revealing too many details, I have a lot of friends with whom I mainly communicate via social media. I've gotten into arguments with them. Sometimes big ones. But we come through, and usually after the air has cleared and everyone has assessed their feelings, we've exchanged messages and come out closer than ever.

And last but not least, you can actually learn things about the world if you are willing to listen. Yes, sometimes you will be bickering over something stupid and the person you are fighting with will be completely obtuse. Those are the ones from which you should just walk away. But something you are the person who screwed up, and the argument is because of your defenses. If that happens, you have a chance to learn. Think about what people are saying. Think about what you said and how it may have been hurtful. Think about what you can do or say in the future not to have a repeat of this incident. Do that. Congratulations, you just grew as a person.

So, no. It's not always worth your time to have internet fights. But sometimes it is. What we should all be working on is knowing the difference between a waste of time and an opportunity. That's how we grow, and how we grow up.