the trash

I have somehow managed to avoid all of the sexist trash on Twitter and Instagram for a while now.

"Why, Sarah? What trash? Can you be more specific?"

Oh, you know, just any time a person who identifies as or looks like a woman, or has a "feminine" username, gives an opinion about sexism. THAT trash.

The "You don't understand" trash.
The "You're just a butthurt feminazi" trash.
The "I'm a woman, and I don't think I've experienced sexism, so I think sexism doesn't exist, and also fuck you for bringing it up" trash.
The "If sexism does exist, it's Feminism's fault" trash.
The "Shut up or I'll [insert vague threat here]" trash. (This is interchangeable with the legally less actionable but still awful "I hope someone [insert stronger threat here]" trash.)

I could go on and on here. So many varieties of trash. Frustrating, insulting, dehumanizing trash.

But lately I've been venturing out into the wilds of the internet, and I've gotten into a few skirmishes. I enjoy a good argument, but I've also encountered quite a bit of sexist bullshit (and I want to stress, I've encountered VERY LOW levels of bullshit, nowhere near the amount or strength of bullshit that people like Jessica Valenti deal with on a daily basis). And most of it is the boring "You're a fat, ugly man-hater" type, which doesn't do much to ruffle my feathers.

Lately I've been paying more attention to the "You're an immature female for wanting people to not be sexist" trash, like this:





Again, not much to ruffle my feathers. His original post was of the "Why would you bring up sexist language when there are more serious issues" trash variety, and with the tiniest bit of push back on that BS, he reverted immediately to really sad and bad insults about how childish and lonely and dowdy I am. Sure, whatever.

But what gets me is that, if you go to his Twitter page, you get the ALLY tweets:

Yes, it's a woman's world, as long as you don't question the dude who doesn't think it worth his time to be respectful of women. Just... the hypocrisy.

And again, this is a super mild example of daily trash that I see, usually not aimed at me.

Anyway, since I'm having fun with it, let me give you more types of trash I've seen:

The "You used 'mansplaining' in your reply, so you automatically lose the argument" trash.
The "You're sexist for bringing up sexism" trash.
The "You keep answering me, so you're obviously shook and crying and so upset, which is why women can't be in power" trash.
The "Women are weak because you can't even handle death threats on the internet" trash.
The "Who cares what you're talking about, I'm just going to answer with 'NOT ALL MEN'" trash.
The "I'm going to say 'NOT ALL MEN' even though you specifically said that your tweet doesn't apply to all men" trash.
The "I'm all for equal rights, but feminism has taken it too far" trash.
The "Gender essentialism exists for a reason, and you should be prettier and skinnier and less mouthy" trash.
The "I don't like what you say on the internet, so I'm going to doxx you and your family" trash.

So many varieties of trash. And there are so many varieties of sexist trash that also intersect with racist trash, homophobic trash, transphobic trash, xenophobic trash... Smarter people than me have written about this and come up with possible solutions, but as we all know, so many people just want to be trashy edgelords on the internet. The good news is that I see a lot more people than I used to pushing back the trash in stronger and more interesting ways than I have the mental energy for. When I need a little internet reset, I like to browse for awesome arguments and clapbacks and what have you. And I like to give those people a little support, you know?

Comments

Popular Posts