Article How Much They Hate You
Article How Much They Hate You
Yesterday, 8:09 PM
Quote: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.
Isn't it interesting how guys so often project what in reality are their own traits onto their female counterparts? As if it were not males who are designed for, and broadly practice, more competitive promiscuity.
Quote: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 b*tch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
...
A few days ago I saw an Instagram reel of a young woman talking about how she had been raped six years ago, struggled with thoughts of suicide afterwards, but managed to rebuild her life again. Among the comments – the majority of which were from men – were things like “Well at least you had some”, “No way, she’s unrapeable”, “Hope you didn’t talk this much when it happened”, “Bro could have picked a better option.” Reading those comments, which had thousands of likes and many boys agreeing with them, made me feel sick.
If a girl my age posts any video of herself online, the comments section will be filled with objectifying and hateful remarks about her, regardless of what the topic of her post was. If she wears anything revealing, or just happens to have larger breasts, she’ll be abused and sexualised. Completely unprompted, there might be hundreds of comments insulting specific features she may have, or rating her attractiveness out of 10. “Sub5”, for example, describes someone who is below 5/10 in attractiveness. I’ve seen videos of boys telling anyone who is unattractive that they should end their own life.
...
Often it feels like we’re hated not only if we’re sexual but simply for existing. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t affected by seeing boys my own age post things about women like: “Men are objectively superior in pretty much every conceivable metric,” and “They are just devils that imitate feelings so we feel empathy.” Words such as “b*tch” are the least of it. One of the worst labels is “foid” – originally from incel subculture but now becoming mainstream – which refers to women as being less-than-human, female humanoids.
And what is the effect? If I spend even 10 minutes on an app such as Instagram, I will close it, feeling disheartened and unhappy about being a girl. When nearly every comments section on a video of a girl my age is filled with disgusting and objectifying comments about her body from boys, it causes me to feel deeply uncomfortable in my own body, and compare myself to her; especially if she is beautiful and still being deemed unattractive. Endless emphasis on beauty as worth and all kinds of videos criticising specific features, some of which I possess, have made me start to loathe my own face, as difficult as that is to admit. But the worst thing is knowing how much hate there is from men and boys for all women and girls, including me.
Using social media has ruined my self-esteem and my relation to being a girl in this world, and nearly every day I feel hatred towards my gender, my appearance, or even teenage boys as a category. The misogyny I see from boys my age online, which is echoed in real life too, has made me grow resentful and bitter towards them, as much as I try to avoid it. As wrong as it is, I persistently find myself considering if there are truly any boys out there who are not misogynistic to some extent, and have even questioned whether I can find love in the future because of this. I understand that boys are victims of harmful content, as well as perpetrators of online misogyny – they’re growing up learning how to do this from the adults who post misogynistic videos first. But even so, I feel such a strong divide now between girls and boys in my generation, especially when the way they talk about us in real life mirrors the way they do on the internet.
(The bolding is mine for emphasis on a key part that's rarely allowed to be voiced in mainstream media.)
Like I said, I've tried to be selective in my re-posting and have shown you only about half the article's content here, but it's just too damn spot-on not to quote extensively. It gets to the heart and soul of a lot without having to be terribly academic just by being honest about her experiences and feelings because they're ones an entire generation of girls has grown up experiencing for themselves. Is it seriously any wonder that so many experience body dysphoria and/or frankly reach a place of justified hatred of the male sex?? Seriously, you couldn't out-hate or oppress males if you tried. Like that Traditions of Conflict blog entry I linked above highlights, it's why there have been no true matriarchies in known human history before. That simple fact angers me. Every so often we have to be reminded of the limits on our horizons that way. Like even with simple things like the Olympics. My country won the most gold medals and the most medals overall, but only because of our female athletes, being as they're generally more skilled than their male counterparts. The response of society? The men's team alone is celebrated at the president's State of the Union address for their victory because it was more novel. The also-victorious women's team had to go on Saturday Night Live to be publicly recognized for their achievement and something about it struck me: the statement that "It was gonna be just us, but we thought we'd invite the guys too." When men win, we celebrate them. When women win, we celebrate both sexes because it's a victory for everyoooooooooooooone!
Why do I feel like somehow I lost a little something in that moment? It's just a microcosm of how men can imagine themselves as special and equality, generously defined, is the limit of our horizons by contrast. That subtle yet profound lack of parity makes me angry not because I care much about hockey per se, but because it (the lack of parity; the lower horizons and self-esteem of girls and women) pervades every aspect of our lives.We shouldn't have to ban girls from social media because they aren't the problem. It's necessary because of boys and men and how much they both hate you, me, and them for existing. In the end, this girl tries to be politically correct and minimize the responsibility of teenage boys for their own attitudes and actions in favor of socialization theory because otherwise she couldn't get published in the Guardian, but is it really just Andrew Tate and Clavicular who serve as the root of the problem, or do we at least partially reverse cause and effect by simply blaming fall guys and choosing to ignore the likelier biological roots of what content catches on and what content doesn't? We'd need our own internet to get away from it! In fact, a female-only internet doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.
Edited 1 hour ago by Impress Polly.
2
Last week, some random, anonymous 15-year-old girl from the UK wrote the most compelling formal article I've read in years for the Guardian. Apparently I wasn't alone in my sentiment, as at the original time of my reading, it was ranked as the platform's second-most-viewed article. Anyway, the girl's purpose for writing was to argue in favor of proposed legislation in her country that would ban kids under 16 from social media. The problem she articulates though is one she makes clear goes much deeper than what such a ban can possibly solve. She believes simply that such a ban could help and champions it on that basis. She provides many examples of the sorts of quotes from boys and young men that she spots online all the time, many of which prove very popular, and it's these specifics together with the depth of the pain she gives voice to experiencing that makes it so powerful. Since I know many are too lazy to click on a link, it's tough to resist the temptation to just quote the entire article for you below because the entire thing is must-read material, but I will do my best to cherry pick highlights for you.
Quote: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.
Isn't it interesting how guys so often project what in reality are their own traits onto their female counterparts? As if it were not males who are designed for, and broadly practice, more competitive promiscuity.
Quote: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 b*tch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
...
A few days ago I saw an Instagram reel of a young woman talking about how she had been raped six years ago, struggled with thoughts of suicide afterwards, but managed to rebuild her life again. Among the comments – the majority of which were from men – were things like “Well at least you had some”, “No way, she’s unrapeable”, “Hope you didn’t talk this much when it happened”, “Bro could have picked a better option.” Reading those comments, which had thousands of likes and many boys agreeing with them, made me feel sick.
If a girl my age posts any video of herself online, the comments section will be filled with objectifying and hateful remarks about her, regardless of what the topic of her post was. If she wears anything revealing, or just happens to have larger breasts, she’ll be abused and sexualised. Completely unprompted, there might be hundreds of comments insulting specific features she may have, or rating her attractiveness out of 10. “Sub5”, for example, describes someone who is below 5/10 in attractiveness. I’ve seen videos of boys telling anyone who is unattractive that they should end their own life.
...
Often it feels like we’re hated not only if we’re sexual but simply for existing. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t affected by seeing boys my own age post things about women like: “Men are objectively superior in pretty much every conceivable metric,” and “They are just devils that imitate feelings so we feel empathy.” Words such as “b*tch” are the least of it. One of the worst labels is “foid” – originally from incel subculture but now becoming mainstream – which refers to women as being less-than-human, female humanoids.
And what is the effect? If I spend even 10 minutes on an app such as Instagram, I will close it, feeling disheartened and unhappy about being a girl. When nearly every comments section on a video of a girl my age is filled with disgusting and objectifying comments about her body from boys, it causes me to feel deeply uncomfortable in my own body, and compare myself to her; especially if she is beautiful and still being deemed unattractive. Endless emphasis on beauty as worth and all kinds of videos criticising specific features, some of which I possess, have made me start to loathe my own face, as difficult as that is to admit. But the worst thing is knowing how much hate there is from men and boys for all women and girls, including me.
Using social media has ruined my self-esteem and my relation to being a girl in this world, and nearly every day I feel hatred towards my gender, my appearance, or even teenage boys as a category. The misogyny I see from boys my age online, which is echoed in real life too, has made me grow resentful and bitter towards them, as much as I try to avoid it. As wrong as it is, I persistently find myself considering if there are truly any boys out there who are not misogynistic to some extent, and have even questioned whether I can find love in the future because of this. I understand that boys are victims of harmful content, as well as perpetrators of online misogyny – they’re growing up learning how to do this from the adults who post misogynistic videos first. But even so, I feel such a strong divide now between girls and boys in my generation, especially when the way they talk about us in real life mirrors the way they do on the internet.
(The bolding is mine for emphasis on a key part that's rarely allowed to be voiced in mainstream media.)
Like I said, I've tried to be selective in my re-posting and have shown you only about half the article's content here, but it's just too damn spot-on not to quote extensively. It gets to the heart and soul of a lot without having to be terribly academic just by being honest about her experiences and feelings because they're ones an entire generation of girls has grown up experiencing for themselves. Is it seriously any wonder that so many experience body dysphoria and/or frankly reach a place of justified hatred of the male sex?? Seriously, you couldn't out-hate or oppress males if you tried. Like that Traditions of Conflict blog entry I linked above highlights, it's why there have been no true matriarchies in known human history before. That simple fact angers me. Every so often we have to be reminded of the limits on our horizons that way. Like even with simple things like the Olympics. My country won the most gold medals and the most medals overall, but only because of our female athletes, being as they're generally more skilled than their male counterparts. The response of society? The men's team alone is celebrated at the president's State of the Union address for their victory because it was more novel. The also-victorious women's team had to go on Saturday Night Live to be publicly recognized for their achievement and something about it struck me: the statement that "It was gonna be just us, but we thought we'd invite the guys too." When men win, we celebrate them. When women win, we celebrate both sexes because it's a victory for everyoooooooooooooone!
Why do I feel like somehow I lost a little something in that moment? It's just a microcosm of how men can imagine themselves as special and equality, generously defined, is the limit of our horizons by contrast. That subtle yet profound lack of parity makes me angry not because I care much about hockey per se, but because it (the lack of parity; the lower horizons and self-esteem of girls and women) pervades every aspect of our lives.We shouldn't have to ban girls from social media because they aren't the problem. It's necessary because of boys and men and how much they both hate you, me, and them for existing. In the end, this girl tries to be politically correct and minimize the responsibility of teenage boys for their own attitudes and actions in favor of socialization theory because otherwise she couldn't get published in the Guardian, but is it really just Andrew Tate and Clavicular who serve as the root of the problem, or do we at least partially reverse cause and effect by simply blaming fall guys and choosing to ignore the likelier biological roots of what content catches on and what content doesn't? We'd need our own internet to get away from it! In fact, a female-only internet doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.