The Internet's Influence & "Boys Will Be Boys"

I HAS INTERWEBS BACK!

I found this article on Tumblr and it has to be the most genius thing I’ve ever read: http://kateelliottsff.tumblr.com/post/51134366578/the-problem-with-boys-will-be-boys

In short, this little boy goes and knocks over a little girl’s stack of blocks, his parents say: “Boys will be boys.” Another boy knocks it over and his mother makes him apologize. A third boy goes up and asks if he can knock it over, then they knock it over together and rebuild it together. How cute is that last one? It’s so cute. How cute is the first? Not cute at all.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this a thousand times, the “teach men not to rape rather than teaching women to defend themselves.” Why not both? No one would try to rape someone who just kicked their ass, but if they hadn’t tried to rape them in the first place, they wouldn’t have gotten their ass kicked.

Here is the saddest chart in the world:

In my first post, I used a picture from the music video of Robin Thicke’s popular song, where he says: “I know you want it.” How many of you have heard that before? I certainly have. “You want me, I just have to prove it to you.”

Uh, no.

Again – Y U NO UNDERSTAND!?!?! Tanya Horeck wrote an article about the hashtag #AskThicke that was “for a very public—and feminist—calling out of misogyny and sexism.” That song is a total rape anthem, she says, and was actually banned from several universities in the UK.

Who in the blazes would write a song like that? I’m glad that hashtag was created to call them out. “The Internet is uniquely qualified as a venue for public shaming,” which I don’t particularly approve of, but when it comes to bringing issues to light and raising awareness so we can all do something about, go for it. Tanya also wrote: “But before getting carried away with the radical potential of digital media, it is vital not to forget that social networks also promulgate sexually violent discourse and expand the opportunities to shame and humiliate women.”

This is not okay. We heard of that sixteen year old who was sexually assaulted, then pictures of her passed out were posted online, and people actually imitated the poses themselves with the hashtag #jadapose. How awful for her. How would you feel if people did that to you?

“It is undeniable that digital culture has reconfigured the ways in which we experience, and respond to, images of sexual violence,” Tanya concludes. We should be using the Internet for good instead of evil. That is why I started this blog. I find all of this humiliation and lack of prosecution of rapists horrific.