What is wrong with women?
There have been some high profile cases about women recently. Actually that appears to be all the time. There seems to be a fascination with women and by that I don't hint that it is all positive.
Two women recently received death threats for posting pictures on social media of their period blood (as if half the population bleeding once a month is a scary thing), Kim Kardashian-West posted a naked selfie and either pissed everyone off or didn't and a model turned actress rightfully pointed out that a male counterpart was never described as an 'ex'stripper' like she was.
The other big one of course is the fact that America might be about to have its first female presidential candidate for the Democrats in Hilary Clinton. Considering even the UK had a female PM in the 1970s - 1980s (not that it went particularly well in my opinion but that had nothing to do with her being a woman and everything to do with her being the most evil Tory to ever walk the Earth) it seems the US should catch up a bit with women in politics. The alternative to Clinton (who would, if elected, be the first person to be the spouse of a former president while being president) is Bernie Sanders (think of his support base as being like the Corbyn lot in the UK). The opposition could be Donald Trump for the Republicans who is a man that has built an empire (only to go bankrupt...apparently...several times) on property, appeared on the American version of The Apprentice and couldn't tell his own quotes apart from an evil dictators. Not only that but Trump has said some derogatory things about women including saying he would date his own daughter if she wasn't and thus objectifying his own offspring and also insinuating that a Fox News presenter was rude to him because she was on her period or something.
There is still a huge gap in pay between men and women around the world. As stated, politics is not great (in a previous blog I pointed out the low numbers of women in the UK Parliament). There seems to be a world wide fear of women. There is fear of the power that women can have. That is why there is a rape culture and why there are so many laws around the world preventing women from doing simple things like drive a car (in fact one such country recently had a plane land where the three members of flight crew were all women and yet the country they landed in wouldn't let them drive)!
Why are we so squeamish about period blood too? Take the women that posted those pictures. Whatever your personal take on their actions they don't deserve comments like 'go kill yaself' as one person commenting so eloquently put it. They were making a point that a natural thing like period blood is banned on social media but graphic violence from television and video games, which are mostly aimed at men, are allowed to remain. The problem with the internet is that it allows a certain level of anonymity and that means we don't know if those leaving the comments are male or female unless we do a lot of digging.
What gives someone the right to go online and spread this hate. Rumours or through the press was always the way to get at someone in the past. No one would usually go up to someone's face and tell them to kill themselves because of something they were doing right then and there or for posting something publicly. Why do it online.
What is the threat that these women seem to have. Are we concerned about body image in the case of Kim Kardashian-West? Are we scared of something that bleeds for 7 days and doesn't die (as put by Mr Garrison of TV animated comedy show South Park)? What is wrong with women?
It isn't just men who turn on women (although you do see a lot of this especially from the days of 'gamergate'). Women turn on other women too. Why is that? We are all fighting the same fight and getting through the daily struggles. Shouldn't we be supportive. Shouldn't we be questioning the logic of social media that deems period blood and boobs as more offensive than video game violence (especially the likes of GTA V which has a downloadable mod allowing you to rape and film the rape of female characters in the game)? Back to boobs for a moment, there is anger online about breastfeeding in public too. Breastfeeding is totally natural and something that has been done for thousands of years. Why is it so scary to people? Men are allowed to post topless shots online and they have nipples too so what is the problem? Shouldn't we be questioning our own politics if we think a woman isn't as capable as a politician as a man would be? Surely it should come down to who we believe most closely matches our political beliefs and is offering the things we want from a leader rather than the genitals they carry?
An interesting experiment is taking place on social media where a trans-woman is posting topless selfies as she undergoes hormone treatment and eventually operations such as breast creation. She is monitoring the moment social media deems her body and bust too offensive to be allowed to be shown naked (or rather topless). I will be interested to see what she finds from that experiment.
We are quick to condemn as a species and not to support. Perhaps we need to take a long hard look at ourselves. We are a species that has allowed the Daily Fail to produce a daily side bar of shame objectifying and ridiculing women's bodies. I am thinking of having kids in the next couple of years and I pity the world they will be brought in to. Any sons I have I will teach to respect women as equals and any girls I have I will teach to be strong but I don't want them to have the same fights I see daily myself.
To end. A personal experience. Back in December 2015 I saw a billboard poster for The Avengers Age of Ultron appearing on TV for the first time that Christmas. The characters shown were all male. There are three strong female characters, Black Widow, Maria Hill and Scarlet Witch and none of them appeared on the billboard and yet more minor male characters did. I simply took to Twitter to express concern about this and to question where they were. Using the common hash tag #everydaysexism I received comments from clearly male accounts telling me that I basically needed a good seeing too and that as a woman I wasn't important (and neither were the characters) and that I shouldn't have an opinion on something I clearly didn't understand. To make things clear I am a Marvel fanatic. Not one of those people in it because they think Tom Hiddleston is hot as Loki or anything, I am in it because I am fascinated to see how the story all links together. I want to know more about the infinity stones and I want to see how Captain America Civil War is going to play out. I am really interested to see the dynamics between the characters change and I can't wait to see the new Spiderman and Black Panther. I have been watching since the first Iron Man film came out and I love all the characters and the story so far. Test me on the films and see if I don't come out as a true fan...I dare you!
The things that made me most angry were: 1. the implied notion that I don't know my Marvel films and 2. that my fiance was dragged into it all! They started messaging him telling him to get me under control and to give me a seeing to to put me in my place. Nice.
Needless to say that everything we do we do as an equal partnership. We work together on everything and come to all the decisions together because that is the correct thing to do in any relationship like ours. It makes me angry that people we don't know would want him to have power over me when they don't see the day-to-day dynamics of our relationship and how it works.
It will be interesting to see how this blog is received by the wider world.
It would be interesting to see why women are so scary to the wider world in the first place. Why are we so threatening?
Two women recently received death threats for posting pictures on social media of their period blood (as if half the population bleeding once a month is a scary thing), Kim Kardashian-West posted a naked selfie and either pissed everyone off or didn't and a model turned actress rightfully pointed out that a male counterpart was never described as an 'ex'stripper' like she was.
The other big one of course is the fact that America might be about to have its first female presidential candidate for the Democrats in Hilary Clinton. Considering even the UK had a female PM in the 1970s - 1980s (not that it went particularly well in my opinion but that had nothing to do with her being a woman and everything to do with her being the most evil Tory to ever walk the Earth) it seems the US should catch up a bit with women in politics. The alternative to Clinton (who would, if elected, be the first person to be the spouse of a former president while being president) is Bernie Sanders (think of his support base as being like the Corbyn lot in the UK). The opposition could be Donald Trump for the Republicans who is a man that has built an empire (only to go bankrupt...apparently...several times) on property, appeared on the American version of The Apprentice and couldn't tell his own quotes apart from an evil dictators. Not only that but Trump has said some derogatory things about women including saying he would date his own daughter if she wasn't and thus objectifying his own offspring and also insinuating that a Fox News presenter was rude to him because she was on her period or something.
There is still a huge gap in pay between men and women around the world. As stated, politics is not great (in a previous blog I pointed out the low numbers of women in the UK Parliament). There seems to be a world wide fear of women. There is fear of the power that women can have. That is why there is a rape culture and why there are so many laws around the world preventing women from doing simple things like drive a car (in fact one such country recently had a plane land where the three members of flight crew were all women and yet the country they landed in wouldn't let them drive)!
Why are we so squeamish about period blood too? Take the women that posted those pictures. Whatever your personal take on their actions they don't deserve comments like 'go kill yaself' as one person commenting so eloquently put it. They were making a point that a natural thing like period blood is banned on social media but graphic violence from television and video games, which are mostly aimed at men, are allowed to remain. The problem with the internet is that it allows a certain level of anonymity and that means we don't know if those leaving the comments are male or female unless we do a lot of digging.
What gives someone the right to go online and spread this hate. Rumours or through the press was always the way to get at someone in the past. No one would usually go up to someone's face and tell them to kill themselves because of something they were doing right then and there or for posting something publicly. Why do it online.
What is the threat that these women seem to have. Are we concerned about body image in the case of Kim Kardashian-West? Are we scared of something that bleeds for 7 days and doesn't die (as put by Mr Garrison of TV animated comedy show South Park)? What is wrong with women?
It isn't just men who turn on women (although you do see a lot of this especially from the days of 'gamergate'). Women turn on other women too. Why is that? We are all fighting the same fight and getting through the daily struggles. Shouldn't we be supportive. Shouldn't we be questioning the logic of social media that deems period blood and boobs as more offensive than video game violence (especially the likes of GTA V which has a downloadable mod allowing you to rape and film the rape of female characters in the game)? Back to boobs for a moment, there is anger online about breastfeeding in public too. Breastfeeding is totally natural and something that has been done for thousands of years. Why is it so scary to people? Men are allowed to post topless shots online and they have nipples too so what is the problem? Shouldn't we be questioning our own politics if we think a woman isn't as capable as a politician as a man would be? Surely it should come down to who we believe most closely matches our political beliefs and is offering the things we want from a leader rather than the genitals they carry?
An interesting experiment is taking place on social media where a trans-woman is posting topless selfies as she undergoes hormone treatment and eventually operations such as breast creation. She is monitoring the moment social media deems her body and bust too offensive to be allowed to be shown naked (or rather topless). I will be interested to see what she finds from that experiment.
We are quick to condemn as a species and not to support. Perhaps we need to take a long hard look at ourselves. We are a species that has allowed the Daily Fail to produce a daily side bar of shame objectifying and ridiculing women's bodies. I am thinking of having kids in the next couple of years and I pity the world they will be brought in to. Any sons I have I will teach to respect women as equals and any girls I have I will teach to be strong but I don't want them to have the same fights I see daily myself.
To end. A personal experience. Back in December 2015 I saw a billboard poster for The Avengers Age of Ultron appearing on TV for the first time that Christmas. The characters shown were all male. There are three strong female characters, Black Widow, Maria Hill and Scarlet Witch and none of them appeared on the billboard and yet more minor male characters did. I simply took to Twitter to express concern about this and to question where they were. Using the common hash tag #everydaysexism I received comments from clearly male accounts telling me that I basically needed a good seeing too and that as a woman I wasn't important (and neither were the characters) and that I shouldn't have an opinion on something I clearly didn't understand. To make things clear I am a Marvel fanatic. Not one of those people in it because they think Tom Hiddleston is hot as Loki or anything, I am in it because I am fascinated to see how the story all links together. I want to know more about the infinity stones and I want to see how Captain America Civil War is going to play out. I am really interested to see the dynamics between the characters change and I can't wait to see the new Spiderman and Black Panther. I have been watching since the first Iron Man film came out and I love all the characters and the story so far. Test me on the films and see if I don't come out as a true fan...I dare you!
The things that made me most angry were: 1. the implied notion that I don't know my Marvel films and 2. that my fiance was dragged into it all! They started messaging him telling him to get me under control and to give me a seeing to to put me in my place. Nice.
Needless to say that everything we do we do as an equal partnership. We work together on everything and come to all the decisions together because that is the correct thing to do in any relationship like ours. It makes me angry that people we don't know would want him to have power over me when they don't see the day-to-day dynamics of our relationship and how it works.
It will be interesting to see how this blog is received by the wider world.
It would be interesting to see why women are so scary to the wider world in the first place. Why are we so threatening?
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