Women get
a rough deal of it. It doesn’t matter if this is because it’s a
little difficult to get used to the idea that thousands of years of
male hegemony was stupid in the extreme. It doesn’t matter if it’s
because men are predominantly in charge of government and business
and wish to, for want of a better expression, maintain an old boy’s
network. It doesn’t matter if it’s because men tend to be
physically stronger than women. I say it doesn’t matter, I rather
imagine it matters hugely, because if people agree on the cause/s of
a problem, finding the solution makes it that much easier. That’s
why this #YesAllWomen movement confuses me.
I am aware that women are raped more
than men. I am aware that women are degraded in media more than men,
that women are judged more superficially than men, that women are
victims of physical violence more than men. I am aware that this
shouldn’t be the case, and #YesAllWomen is trying to get across
this message. There are some men out there who apparently don’t
know all of this, and they're learning. Other than that, I am unsure
of this movement’s aims. Is it merely enough that to know a problem
exists, without doing anything about it?
A couple of years ago, there was an
internet campaign called KONY 2012, the subject of which was a
warlord in Uganda called Joseph Kony, who was abducting children and
forcing them to serve in guerrilla armies. The aim of this campaign
was to raise awareness of Kony, for as many people to start talking
about him as much as possible and to share a video denouncing him.
There was a problem, and people were discussing it and raising
awareness. The main aim was to raise awareness, and that was achieved
(apart from the fact that the Ugandan military had used child
soldiers against Kony themselves, and that it was generally
acknowleged that Kony was operating in a different country, but
that’s by the by). People who shared the video felt good about
themselves, people who clicked the like button felt proud, they felt
a genuine sense of accomplishment. However, all of this was
essentially a masturbation aid for the people clicking. They
fantasised that their involvement, their sense of being in a group,
would facilitate change, and doing this made them feel good about
themselves . It’s two years later, and in the post-orgasm drowse
when the fantasy has evaporated, nothing seems to have changed. Ask
most of these people to name who that warlord in Uganda they were
campaigning two years ago and most of them won’t remember. And so
it will be for #YesAllWomen. In a couple of years, people won't
remember what this campaign was called. They won't remember that the
catalyst for it was a 22 year old mentally unbalanced man who killed
six people and himself because he was emotionally frustrated at his
lack of a relationship with women. I say people won't remember,
perhaps they aren't even aware of it now. No matter- it's sad that it
takes seven high profile deaths to get millions of people discussing
misogyny, but at least there is some good come out of it.
The problem of sexism, and all of
its unwanted connotations, will not disappear and people will not
forget that it exists, but people will forget the #YesAllWomen
campaign itself. Attempts to combat sexism will become less
co-ordinated, less vociferous . The fact that there are so many
things to support all of a sudden (there aren’t, it’s just easier
to advertise them nowadays) gives us good cause fatigue. As a rule,
we can't give our full concentration on something that someone says
would be nice to sort out. With the advent of Facebook and the vast
majority of activists having many friends to lobby support for their
various causes, people feel pressured into acknowledging those
causes, be it in the form of signing a petition, or actually donating
money. If you don’t, then the spectre of “Oh, I see, so you’re
only my Facebook friend, not my real friend” raises its ugly
head. We are battered by causes and charities and the like, and the
vast majority with an admirable ethos, #YesAllWomen amongst them. But
It’s much easier to pay lip service to these charities and
campaigns, click like and you’ve done your bit. The rules are
different, though, for the cause that has snowballed and suddenly has
all the media behind it. There is a tendency for people to adopt
these (temporarily), whereas they didn’t really care so much about
them before, or if they did, they took no action. The #YesAllWomen
campaign will exponentially become more popular until it peaks
(it may have already, I realise I am a little late on this one). I
fear that this campaign will not make many people into feminists for
a long period, or if it does, they will be silent. I am a hypocrite
in this regard- I am, for the most part, not an active feminist. The
supporters who profess to care about #YesAllWomen, and a great many
do (for the moment) will drift away as it burns out. This is why
people should actually propose action, rather than discussion, whilst
the iron is hot, whilst there is more interest in the issue and more
momentum for change.
Twitter is not the ideal place to
promote cogent socio-political debate, simply for the reason that
it’s incredibly difficult to get a meaningful point across and back
it up with such character limitations, but it has gotten people
talking. I want these talking people to start proposing action. Why
not me? Well, I haven’t the imagination to help solve such a
thing, but I imagine amongst the millions of people talking about it,
there must be some people out there who want to try a few things to
improve the imbalance . If they don't speak up, then some time down
the line we'll be in the same position or worse. If they do have
useful ideas, they should propose them whilst they have a large
audience of fired up people, and perhaps if enough people actually do
something about the issue, then in the future we'll be able to be
part of the #YesShitStillHappensToWomenButItsGettingBetter movement.
