WomensStuffHmmm. Welcome to 1979. NGL, this is exactly the same shit I used to hear - and see, some 50 years ago when I was about her age.
What I see is that the boys are boasting and trying to one-up each other in the perennial game of "Who Could Care Less". Standard noise.
Hope the author jettisons Insta and TikTok and moves to a non-photo/video platform.
I have found they represent the most toxic aspects of our culture. The ONLY thing those sites respect is views so leaving is the best option.
She can find real empowerment and friendship with an older group.
That however, is a tough sell because of how the youth culture today looks to validation from their own peer crowd instead of looking outside their group, so best of luck to her.
The best any of us can do is hold our hands out and say "here we are.." and have no strings tied to the offer.
might also x-post to !feminism@beehaw.org
EDIT:
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.
I know when someone claims to experience harm from something that's not automatic justification for us to care about that harm or to think their experience of that harm is reasonable, but I don't think people realize how these comments constitute a legitimate and severe harm to people - not just for promoting a kind of "rape culture", but I mean the harm victims experience when they encounter this stuff online.
Given how many of us have been sexually assaulted and harassed, the combination of the violence and comments like this in support for that violence amounts to a kind of "terrorism". I could talk more about the PTSD that can develop and the way people underestimate how awful PTSD triggers are, etc. but it's almost pointless for people who don't already have a traumatic history and have some amount of first-hand experience to draw from.
Regardless, I think the immediate solution for victims is to abandon social media - do not use Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc., and to instead participate in and cultivate online communities that take seriously the need to protect users from these kinds of harms.
Lemmy is broadly not a safe space for women (it feels actively misogynistic), but I would like to see some lemmy sub-communities, e.g. instances like Blahaj, develop and apply moderation policies to protect women and victims of assault, etc.
There is a lot to work out there, but it seems like a potential starting point.
Hmm, I've not experienced misogny so far but that might be because I have a nice long list of keywords that I block. So any posts or communities with those are a-gone. In addition, I'd recommend to make an account on Blåhaj zone (either Lemmy or Piefed is good really), as it has a strong policy against misogny and queerphobia.
In case anyone's curious, here's a non-exhaustive list with reasons included. Will add a 'Done' below this line when I'm finished. CW, some parts may contain triggering words.
Done!
::: spoiler Keywords
Reason: Fascism, Authoritarianism
Trump
Elon
Musk
ICE
Putin
Republican
Israel
IDF
fascist
Kirk
Corporate
Bitcoin
Crypto
Luigi
AI
Misogny/phobic
rapist
removed
alpha
:::
::: spoiler Blocked sites
Breitbart
Fox News
Sputnik
Russian Today
New York Times (made misogynistic headlines)
:::
::: spoiler Blocked communities
most of these were blocked because of ties to radicalism, others were just too spammy
ca_firearms_rights @ sh.itjust.works
gegenstrom @ feddit.org
genealogy @ lemmy.world
news @ lemmy.world
politicalmemes @ lemmy.world
politics @ lemmy.world
politics @ piefed.social
conservative @ lemm.ee
hugeboobs @ lemmynsfw.com (don't mind tits, just not the spam)
maga.place @ lemmy.world
:::
::: spoiler Blocked Users (spaced as to not ping them)
AlHouthi4President @ lemmy.ml
Jemmy_GPT2 @ sh.itjust.works
RandyChadson_GPT2 @ sh.itjustworks
:::
it really came to my awareness when 4chan doxxed Tea app users, and the average Lemmy response was along the lines of "good!"
Of course it was mostly .world users
absolutely, or certain more right-wing libertarian programming / tech instances
I prefer to just call them liberals, mostly because the grand majority of right wingers are just libs (specifying right wing is uneeded because all liberals are right wing)
- "conservatives" = conservative-liberals (economically liberal and socially conservative)
- "libertarians" = liberals (I mean they're literally just classical liberals)
- "liberals" = neoliberals (an inherently right wing ideology)
- "social democrats" = neoliberalism (but with a fancy coat of paint)
I say "right-wing libertarian" because the term "libertarian" was coined by a French anarchist in the 19th century, and AFAIK, outside the US the term "libertarian" still has that left-wing connotation and meaning. So it's at least useful to clarify by libertarian I mean conservative liberals and not communists / anarchists.
In the US, the conservative or right-wing liberals adopted the term "libertarian" around the mid 20th century to distinguish themselves from social liberals, and since then the term has just come to mean conservative liberal as you mention - I don't know many people in the US aware of other meanings of the term "libertarian".
As an aside, I'm not as willing as you to paint social democrats or social liberals as "an inherently right-wing ideology" because we would get into trouble with the fact that social liberalism represents the majority of what we might call "leftist", particularly on social policies.
This disagreement isn't really about the fact that social liberalism has right-wing positions, we agree that on the issue of property rights for example social liberals are right-wing, but I'm not sure it's as helpful as it at first seems to portray social liberalism in such a reductivist way, i.e. as being simply just another solidly right-wing movement (esp. historically this would be harder to argue, considering even the very origin of the term "left" refers to liberal revolutionary sympathizers in the French National Assembly who sat to the left of the assembly's chair as compared to the royalists who sat to the right).
That said, I completely understand the reason this has become such a strongly harped-upon piece of dogma for leftists, because liberalism is so total and dominating particularly in the US, it's hard for people in the US to understand that social liberalism has any right-wing aspect, and we've come to the point now where progressives and social liberals in the US will even call themselves socialists, sort of owning the lies that the Right in America tells about them.
Also, I think on a psychological level, a lot of leftists at least in the US start as social liberals, and that process of radicalizing to the left is accompanied by feeling betrayed by liberalism, since it might be said that leftist politics is more "pure" and in accord with the values that social liberals hold and espouse. So for these people, there is a stronger desire to identify as a leftist and not a liberal precisely because of the discontent and betrayal they come to associate with liberalism.
From my point of view leftism inherently means revolutionary and revolutionary is the opposite of reactionary. Supporting capitalism and private property in any capacity is inherently reactionary as is bigotry and class collaborationism. It is therefore impossible for a leftist to also be reactionary or hold significant reactionary positions (if they did they wouldnt be a leftist. Back to my main point it doesnt matter if someone is a "libertarian", "social liberal" or "conservative", the positions many hold on Tea is inherently reactionary and in my opinion thats all I really need to know.
