If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Here’s a recent example from Instagram: “Do y’all females ever tell ur homegirls ‘Sis chill you letting too many dudes hit?’” Essentially, that means: “Women – do you ever tell your girlfriends that they’re whores and need to stop letting so many guys fuck them?” The reel, posted by a 19-year-old man, appeared on my Instagram feed without me wanting to see it, or ever interacting with any other similar content. The comments that followed were pure misogyny. “Women see body count as a leaderboard and they try to outdo each other,” was one of them. Translation: all women are competitively promiscuous.
Consider the use of the word “female” in these posts. It is not a neutral term here, it is a term of abuse. It’s used by teenage boys to degrade us and equate us to animals. Boys are never described as “males”, but girls are always “females” – the equivalent of sows or calves, creatures that are less than human. We’re also “thots” (whores), “community pussy” and “bops”. “Bop” stands for “been over passed” and is a derogatory term used by boys to refer to a girl they’ve decided has been “passed around” or had too much sex. Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects. “When community pussy tries to insult me, I just want to beat that bitch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
I’m a 15-year-old schoolgirl and like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media, often scrolling through short-form videos on apps such as Instagram or TikTok. All of my friends use those apps, and many spend multiple hours a day on them. I actively try to avoid online misogyny, but I am met with it incessantly whenever I open my mainstream social media apps. It only takes a few minutes before there’s subtle or overt misogyny, such as comment sections on a girl’s post filled with remarks about her body, videos made by men or boys captioned with a degrading joke, and even topics such as domestic violence or rape, trivialised and laughed about.
Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects.
This isn’t new. I’m a man in my mid 40s and the disparity between how promiscuous men are viewed as compared to promiscuous women has existed for as long as I’ve been sexually aware, and well before.
Obviously that doesn’t make it okay. I also have no idea what the solution might be. There have been a few cultural efforts to normalize the idea of women enjoying and seeking out sex but none of them seem to really reach the people that need to hear it.
I do find it oddly paradoxical that men who make it very clear that they are actively seeking sexual partners would disparage women for being sexually active.
I do find it oddly paradoxical that men who make it very clear that they are actively seeking sexual partners would disparage women for being sexually active.
They don’t want experienced, knowledgable, self-confident partners. They want naive young women they can gaslight and abuse.
They don’t want experienced, knowledgable, self-confident partners. They want naive young women
You’ve obviously never lived with the aftermath of dating worn out, bitter and combative women who have been traumatized by their numerous “experiences.” Men like inexperienced women precisely because they want to mold her and give her her first experiences. Also, “experienced” women are more likely to be single moms.
Boy, this thread is just loaded with reprehensible takes and dudes telling on themselves.
I just don’t believe all of this is real anymore. It’s a fucking psyop! Men and women are different kinds of comments under posts. If a woman looks at the comments of Reel where a woman promotes the most depraved, objectifying a degrading things to do to guys with the sole purpose of making them suffer, they will only see comments of other women (rightfully) blasting OP in the comments. But when a guy opens the same comment section he will 99% see only comments of women encouraging other women to be the most evil things humanly possible.
It is not a conspiracy, it’s a really effective way to farm engagement for basically free. We are letting them take control over society with the most obvious divide-et-impera tactics ever applied in human history
Obviously this is true and it sucks, but I don’t really view it as a man vs woman issue. I think it’s a social media issue where these companies purposefully push outrage content to drive up engagement. It’s an unethical practice with little to no legislation protecting users exposed to it.
Many of these platforms don’t even have a way to opt out, forcing users to view it via “suggestions” in their main feed.
Delete TikTok and Instagram for starters.
This is simple advice for an adult who isn’t mired in the drama of high school. For most teens, these apps are how they socialise, how they share information and learn what is cool or uncool. Deleting the apps means you have cut yourself off from the social system and have made yourself a social pariah.
An equivalent for the millennials and gen Xers would be not having Facebook as a teen. It meant not being invited to parties because Facebook was the only platform people used to plan events. No one was going to seek you out individually because it was assumed you were on Facebook and would see the updates.
I agree that social media is harming all of us, but telling teens to just not use it ignores what it was like to be a teenager.
I agree with this sentiment, but fuck do I feel old rn. Myspace was my generation’s Facebook. And it was so much cooler! Custom backgrounds/layouts, and music. Facebook just seems so sterilized in comparison, and it makes me sad.
And even MySpace had ‘Top Friends’ that dictated social hierarchy. For as long as there has been social media, teens have been socially required to interact with it.
I dont agree with it, and would prefer to see all social media burning to the ground, but I understand the situation that teenagers are in.
Facebook didn’t exist when Gen X was in highschool, likely all of them had been through college.
Not sure why you were downvoted, but you’re correct - I’m a late Gen Xer, and Facebook launched several years after I finished grad school - and didn’t become mainstream for another few years.
MySpace was started only one year earlier than Facebook. So, basically, the social media online that I knew before then were forums (like car forums that still exist).
- Article violates Rule #1 §1. Why is it still here?
- This article looks like it’s has a sublimal message to justify ID uploading (just read the last paragraph).
Too easy saying not to use social media, when cutting off the fucking things – as in a total ban – completely might as well be more fair for everyone.
Because their billionaire creators can’t help themselves but expect PROFIT through engagement and validation.
I was then pulled so late into social media because playing an MMORPG required me to socialize off the game, and this includes having contacts on Facebook, which was then hosting funny little games.
the internet is not a daycare for children.
if you don’t have the skin to be online, don’t be online.
it’s like walking into a biker bar and complaining about the loud music, smoke and lack of healthy food.
if you don’t have the skin to be online, don’t be online.
yeah no how about we don’t build rapey applications then entice kids to use them?
STOP MAKING EXCUSES, THEY BUILT A BIKER BAR NEXT TO A ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND ADVERTISE $2 JELLO SHOTS FOR 8TH GRADERS
fucking gross
they didn’t build a biker bar next to an elementary school. the school built next to the bar that’s been there forever and now these puritanical fuckheads want to tear the bar down.
the internet is not a fucking daycare. it’s the dirty grity back alleys of Detroit at 3AM.
get some perspective.
Oh so social media predates kids. yeah that makes sense. we should just let the tech bros and algos shit all over the souls of kids because “puritanical fuckheads” are tired of this garbage being poured into our kids’ lives.
jfc you’re telling me to get perspective?
did you even read the fucking article?
the internet is not a fucking daycare. it’s the dirty grity back alleys of Detroit at 3AM.
bwahaha yeah I’m sure that’s what the internet’s pioneers had in mind NO WAIT THAT’S NOT IT AT ALL. Not even fucking remotely.
You’re some usenet-wannabe twat who thinks he’s l33t and the kiddies should stay off their 'net. infrastructure doesn’t work that way, child.
The complaint here is that the culture we live in is so deeply misogynist that it causes even young women deep emotional pain.
Maybe pick up on that message and show you want to make the world a better place for the women who are part of your life.
you’re right, and when I see misogyny I speak up against it.
the problem here is that the article wants you to treat the symptom and not the illness.
the symptom is systemic misogyny. the problem is poor ethics and morals when raising our kids.
teach a child to treat others with understanding and acceptance regardless of who or what they are.
when they’re no longer children, shame them publicly.
it’s nigh impossible to do that on the internet without losing the basis of the freedom of speech the internet affords.
stop treating misogyny as the problem, and treat it as the symptom and things will improve over time.
This community should be renamed to anything goes community.
Moderation team never actually moderate.
This is an opinion peace. Why is it posted here?
I’m a whole cisgendered 30 year old male who games a bit too much, so I try to discourage misogynistic comments when they’re made by people in games.
I think there’s another layer to the misogyny where any form of “defending” women is seen as white-knighting or simping. You don’t even have to be directly referring to comments about a specific person, but you’ll still be labeled as a loser who likes women, for some reason.
Dont defend, it doesnt do shit. Clown the person talking about it. Its easy to get a dogpile going if you are obviously wittier than them and much more effective in getting them to knock it off
I would argue that it isn’t necessarily social media, it’s the internalization of the male defined culture.
This topic is male centric.
The truth is that those boys(and most men) are insecure. I’m a 46 year old man I’ll tell you without a doubt that this stems completely from insecurity.
But so what? Women control the only thing that men want. I promise that women actually have all the power so long as violence and rape isn’t normalized. If women stopped engaging those boys would be on their knees.
All that matters to me, all that matters to the vast majority of men, is sex. Everything we do is a complication of getting sex and controlling women. I have a good job and a nice car and I cook and I work out and blah blah blah to display value to get women.
That’s all we are for, is to add some randomization to the gene pool.
This opinion is equal parts repellent and depressing. Get a hobby and a therapist, self-actualization is important.
Do you not see all the rape and abuse being normalized in the posts and comments she wrote about?
I was an early Facebook user. I had an account from 2007-2018. The early years it seemed fun and Fairly innocent. I kept up with friends and saw funny posts. I could curate my feed to be things I wanted to see. When I left Facebook in 2018 it seems like the app was targeting me. Showing me things to rile me up. First I quit the mobile app. I deleted it and used a browser. Then I left Facebook altogether. A year ago I did a similar thing with Instagram. It was no longer a place curated to my interests. It’s horrible. I barely touch it anymore. Even Reddit is not my usual collection of posts that interests me. It’s why I’m on here! Everything is just so polarizing now. I have been able to cut way back and do my own thing. But at 15 friends are your world. Everyone is using the app. Everyone is speaking the speak. It’s so hard for them to disconnect.
What’s interesting is that in the early online days, there was still a lot of misogyny. In the early days of Friendster / Myspace there were a lot more guys online than girls. By the time Facebook started to come around, being online was more of a normal thing, so there were more women and girls online. But, at least at the beginning, the feeds were smaller (mostly just posts from friends) and tended not to be algorithmic. It was a timeline, not a feed.
So, there was a bit of a golden period when all young people were starting to go online, so it wasn’t just a small, male-dominated space any more. There also weren’t algorithmic feeds yet, or influencers, and nowhere near the level of surveillance-based advertising. These days the big social media companies feel that their audience is locked in, and have nowhere to go, so they’re squeezing them, trying to extract as much value as possible.
If you’re a 15-year-old girl your options are really being ostracized by the other teens for not using the apps, or using the apps and dealing with all that shit. I don’t know if being a teen girl has ever been a wonderful experience. But, I sure wouldn’t want to be one right now.
By the time Facebook started to come around, being online was more of a normal thing, so there were more women and girls online.
Well, yes, that’s why Zuck started Facemash, to let him and his pals rate the faces of those people.
I read the article and found it poignant and interesting.
That said, why am I seeing this on !world@lemmy.world ? It is not about anywhere else in the world specifically and it is not even news.
I know that in the rules it says only opinion pieces are potentially removed, but the fact that this “needs” to be published here makes the problem two-fold:
- it creates noise in the community where I would like to see news from anywhere else in the world than the US.
- it means that who posted it here thinks there is no other community where this actually would fit? Looking at the crossposts the other 2 communities (Technology and WomensStuff) seem way more fitting.
Putting everything everywhere doesn’t help communities grow. It just generates noise.
I think this has always been a problem in many of the online social spaces.
Forums, xbox live, all the way back since the Internet became a common service.
The parents need to be more involved in regulating kids access to internet, socials and otherwise, and they can make choices based on what they see.
Absentee parenting, at least in the digital realm is the problem on both sides of this issue.
The answer is to disengage yourself, and to teach your children AND OTHERS to disengage from social media.
Social media is harmful, advertising is harmful, drugs are harmful, gambling is harmful. This is a question of societal level harm and is is a problem for individual counties, nations, and states to address by the creation and enforcement of law, and for individuals to address by collectively shaming participants.
How dare you ask of parents to parent their kids?!
Let’s speed up online censorship and surveillance capitalism instead!The problem is not the users who find the content harmful. The problem is with the policies of those platforms and their algorithms.
Still, yes, I also believe mainstream social media now does more harm then good.
This.
I’m convinced it should be illegal to operate social media platforms for profit. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but it would make a dent.
Nope. Read.
“There’s a man screaming in my window and following me around when I leave my house telling me to buy his shit and that I’m his object to play with while I’m just trying to live my life. This harassment is affecting my mental health”
“Nope. Read.”
Idiotic.
collectively shaming participants
That should suffice. Laws/censorship are unnecessary. Stupid opinions on the internet or in society aren’t new.
deleted by creator
It’s not only misogyny.
Social media absolutely removes the inhibitions of just about all kinds of assholes, builds pat-each-other-on-the-back support groups for them by putting them together with like minded assholes and then algorithmically shovels all that shit on everybody else because anything that elicits strong emotions means more clicks and anger from being offended is one such emotion.
By the way, this also applies to unhealthy gender expectations on males (including misandry), though this being The Guardian I expect this is about the UK, which IMHO (having lived there and also elsewhere in Europe) is a country with serious problems when it comes to gender expectations around women and insidious “benevolent” sexism (“benevolent” not because it’s good but because it follows the whole “women are fragile creatures” and subsequent subtle disemplowering of women “to protect them” or because “they’re emotional creatures”) which far too often taints the articles in The Guardian because they’re very much from the British upper-middle class Acceptable Feminism, which tends to underestimate the strength of women and favor “protection” “solutions” over empowerment and agency.
So whilst I absolutely believe in all of this and in misogyny online being very bad, especially in certain countries, the choice of focusing on misogyny rather than as a whole in the problem of social media’s Profit Driven amplification of societal dysfunctions in general, is very much a typical privileged British Upper Middle Class “Third Wave Feminist” perspective and choice.
Social media absolutely removes the inhibitions of just about all kinds of assholes, builds pat-each-other-on-the-back support groups for them by putting them together with like minded assholes and then algorithmically shovels all that shit on everybody else because anything that elicits strong emotions means more clicks and anger from being offended is one such emotion.
