So like lots of teenage girls, I'm online a lot. Tumblr is my go-to website *click here if you want to check it out* and I follow lot's of blogs that are very vocal about feminism, equal rights, basically everything I believe in. One of my favorites is sexistfacebookdudes, which calls out social networking accounts that are either a threat to women or making offensive comments towards us as a whole.
To be 100% truthful with ya'll, I knew some stuff about feminism and I identified as a feminist but I hadn't even known about some of the CRAZY bull that is online. One of the things I saw was a website called creepshots (BEFORE OPENING WARNING: NSFW, TW: RAPE, NONCONSENT), a blog that posts pictures of unknowing women and sexualizing them.
Basically this is a scenario of how lot's of the pictures on there get taken. You go out in a pair of yoga pants to get yourself an iced tea from the Starbucks in your neighborhood. After you get your drink, you are probably going to go back home and shower and then go to work or something. As your waiting in line, a man standing behind you is like "that bitches ass is fine imma take a pic and post it online". So your butt gets posted online for thousands of people to see, and the caption says "Mmmm some sexy ass wakes me up in the morning". You don't know about this picture, but lots of people are seeing it and using it as a sexy picture.
Thats basically what the blog is, pictures of women without their consent online with captions like "She's not asking for it, she's begging for it." Feminists on Tumblr are pouncing on this gross blog and theres a petition to get rid of their social networking accounts (Facebook is down but Twitter and Tumblr are still around). You can sign the petition here.
I knew that there were creepers, but I was really surprised at the idea of this blog. I guess you could call me naive, although I had never thought of myself as that. I was outraged and freaked out and actually a little scared to wear a sports bra to the gym, or wear my shorts out even though it was super hot outside. At first the idea is disturbing by itself, the fact that these women are unknowing, but after lots of thinking, these kinds of blogs actually communicate a lot more about modern technology and its part in society then they seem.
Blogs that post pictures of women being sexualized without the women's knowledge are extremely different to porn, or at least in my opinion they are different. Many women in porn find it empowering, or even they don't, they always know that the video or photograph is sexualizing them and they are okay with it because they are, more or less, in control of the image and how they are portrayed. The pictures posted on blogs like creepshots are different because these women don't even know they are being photographed. The defenders for blogs like creepshots think that someone not saying no is the same as someone saying yes. Women shouldn't have to turn around to a stranger and say "Oh hey btw you cannot take pictures of me", it should be an unspoken rule. The idea of not saying no being yes supports rape culture, the idea that women not having consent over the sexuality and their bodies is normal and completely okay.
This of course brings in a lot of other issues, like celebrities. Would it be less immoral for someone to zoom into a picture of Janet Jackson's nip slip, or Britney Spears without underwear? This is when the line gets a bit blurred. On one hand, these celebrities did not say yes, but on the other hand they are fully aware that pictures are being taken and that they are constantly in the public eye.
This line has become even more thin because in the day and age, we are always being watched. Almost everyone has a camera on their phone, and anyone can take out their phone and snap a picture of stuff. This is an upside and downside to modern technology, on the upside we can use this technology for good and to inform (Part 2 of this article will adress this), but on the downside it also means that people can overshare and share things that aren't even rightfully theirs. What do you think about all of this? Part two will be here soon!
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Trending Interent Topics: Sexism and Rape Culture (trigger warning yo) (Part 1)
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