Don’t you just hate it when women wear cute, figure-flattering outfits and then have the audacity to suggest men should treat them with respect?
I mean, hello! If a woman doesn’t want men staring at her tits or grabbing her ass, then she should cover up! Amirite?!
If you’re new to my blog, imagine those two comments written in your favorite sarcasm font. I’ve written about Purity Culture and Modesty Culture and bikinis before, so I’m hardly about to judge other women for what they wear.
Too bad the same can’t be said for people on social media.
A few years ago, a Kappa I was following on Twitter retweeted the following.
Tweet reads: You can’t dress like a slut and want to be treated like a princess.
Isn’t it a shame that the Internet is forever? Dude eventually deleted all of his replies to my tweets and then blocked me, but apparently he thought his original tweet was still good enough to keep.
That was on a different account of mine that I don’t use anymore, so I can’t link to my replies. I had screenshots of them, but I can’t find them in my files. How about screenshots of screenshots?
I know it was “just” a joke, but when does a “joke” become something more sinister?
“You can’t dress like a slut and want to be treated like a princess.”
“Respected ladies don’t get raped.”
“The act of the rapist is made easy because it would be easy to remove the half-cloth worn by the women.”
“Don’t dress like a whore” (or you might get sexually assaulted).
“When you see some of the 13 year old young ladies strutting their stuff as they walk through the mall there is only one word of description, Jail Bait.”
Not so funny, is it.
I’m not alone in criticizing the deplorable things men say about women.
Yesterday morning I discovered the most glorious Twitter account, with the most glorious hashtag. Lindsey tweets from @CardsAgstHrsmt, with at least one tweet a day tagged #ShirtlessShamers2016. She’s taking these terribly depressing misogynistic attitudes and finding a small way to laugh about them.
You're right about one thing: I am gagging a little. #ShirtlessShamers2016 #wifematerial pic.twitter.com/DB32qOXnaq
— CardsAgstHarassment (@CardsAgstHrsmt) August 31, 2016
Who are the #ShirtlessShamers2016? They’re the half-naked dudes berating half-naked women on social media. Because obviously it’s okay for all dudes to do whatever the fuck they want, but all women must meet the exact “modesty” standards of all men.
If you go through some of the examples Lindsey has tweeted, you might laugh. I laughed. The hypocrisy and the total lack of self-awareness are pretty hilarious.
But after you’ve had a good laugh, you should read Lindsey’s essay on why this double standard is so disturbing. (Emphasis my own).
When I started using the #ShirtlessShamers2016 hashtag, I expected things to stay funny. Light. Playful. Sexism and gender-based double standards aren’t really funny, of course, but lampooning shirtless broskies who are heavy on ego and light on self-awareness has a certain silliness to it. They flex their pecs and regurgitate some casual misogyny, and we marvel, bemused, that they aren’t in on the joke…
Many of the featured guys frame their disapproval in the most punitive way they can imagine for young women in 2016: she will never be “wifed” (as if being legally bound to a misogynist is better than staying single.) Many extrapolate further: because a girl or woman who is half-naked lacks self-respect, she’s not entitled to respect from men. Some take it to its worst logical conclusion: if she is not deemed respectable, or if she disrespects me as the man in her life with a vested interest in her purity and respectability, she will be beaten; she will be raped; she will be killed.
Lindsey reiterates the same point I tried to make years ago. This overall culture of controlling women’s clothing has real-world consequences of men committing violence against women.
Next time you see someone judging women by their attire, call them out on it. Let them know that misogynistic bullshit isn’t okay. Oh, they’re “just joking”? Nope. Casual misogyny isn’t a joke.
And to that guy who still thinks his tweet is okay?
“You can’t dress like a man-whore and want to be treated like a prince.”
How’s that for #ShirtlessShamers2016?
If you find this post helpful or informative, please share to Facebook or Twitter!
Have you come across any #ShirtlessShamers in your own life, online or otherwise?
Sarcasm is problematic on the internet. Pretty much no matter what you say sarcastically, there’s someone out there who would say the same thing seriously. And vice versa.
Statements prefaced with “it goes without saying that” are literally refuting themselves. And trying to have something literally go without saying, through sarcasm or other wordplay, only works if it really is accepted as more-or-less unquestionably true by all parties to the conversation. But if it were all-the-way accepted as unquestionably true, then you wouldn’t need to say it at all. That leaves a pretty narrow range.
I saw the tweet with the shirtless-guy pic, and I thought he was just fantasizing about getting to marry someone whose continued posting of sexy pictures during the boyfriend/girlfriend stage would make the other guys envy him then, and who would later be likely to defy the sexless-marriage stereotype. That is, I thought that the “definitely wife material” was not sarcastic. But it certainly could be.
“Gagging for a boyfriend but you still smash social media with half naked pictures? Definitely wife material.”
Context matters. And maybe that context is more obvious to women who have directly experienced this kind of misogyny. “Gagging” and “half naked” have negative connotations when a man is speaking/writing about a woman.
“Gagging” is regularly used to imply “so desperate she’d give a blow job for it.”
“Half naked” is regularly used to shame or objectify women.
I would also add that I trust another woman’s ability to judge the words or actions of a man. Lindsey doesn’t dox the Twitter users who she mocks. In fact, I changed my original decision to dox the Twitter guy from my past because of Lindsey. We don’t have the ability to look up this guy’s timeline and see what else he has written.
However, again, from experience, I certainly look at entire Twitter timeline’s before making a judgement call on a single tweet. It’s incredibly helpful to discern whether or not to engage with a disagreeable reply to my own tweet. Some people genuinely ask questions or suggest an alternate POV. Others have a timeline full of thinly-veiled hostility towards feminists. Those I just block.
I think it’s fair to give another feminist the benefit of the doubt that she’s reading these tweets correctly.
I love this! I think I saw a post about Lindsey or someone who was doing something similar a little while back and it made me chuckle. It is pretty funny to point out how big of the double-standard is, especially to people who don’t even realize they are reinforcing a double standards.
Also my opinion on the comment below, saying that a girl is “gagging” for something is not just referencing a reflex. It’s definitely a negative term when it comes to saying a woman is “gagging” for anything. I will ALWAYS have a visceral negative reaction if someone says or implies that when I want something badly, that I’m “gagging” for it. No need for a sexual reference.
I’m actually grateful to my social media program that retweets 3-5x overnight based on a safe list of users and keywords for finding Lindsey! I check my tweets each morning in case my program retweeted someone hijacking a hashtag so I can un-tweet it and then block that user. I loved loved LOVED Lindsey’s tweet, so I went to her timeline and ended up reading the entire Storify from this year. I remembered my own encounter on Twitter from several years ago, and a blog post idea was born.
Also, yeah, “gagging” is pretty much always a negative, sexual reference when used against women. It’s so inappropriate and unnecessary.
Whether or not one enjoys giving and/or receiving oral sex should just be a basic thing to consider when deciding if a person is romantically compatible or not. Unfortunately, we’re still stuck with the age-old prude/slut dichotomy and double standards.
In my experience with conversations with people IRL, if they bring up a woman’s enjoyment of giving oral sex, it’s literally always been in a negative way. It’s either been a way to shame her or a way to use her sexually.
I imagine that’s partly because the people who do find a woman’s preference for oral to be a neutral or positive thing are also probably not the ones who would publicly discuss what a woman does privately. Like if a friend told me how much she enjoys some sexual act, I’m not going to praise that preference to all of our friends.
Online it’s a bit different, probably because I actively seek out sex-positive websites. Thus I come across a lot less shaming.
Brita, this is awesome! Thanks for sharing that Twitter account, I’m all over that. The internet can really be a depressing place thanks to the misogynistic attitudes you pointed out, sometimes some humor is a nice touch.