Day 23: Just shut up

Do you want to see what misogyny looks like? I copied this from a friend's Facebook after he posted a hilarious comparison of Donald Trump with a lonely chimp playing with his own turd. One of his friends commented, "I'd vote for the turd before I voted for a cackling, sneaking, lying, duty neglecting, elitist, wolf-titted, she-bitch."

I don't think he meant Jill Stein.

He meant, of course, Hillary Clinton. I see shit like that every day on Facebook, especially in the comments of posts where people dare to say they support Clinton, like my friend did. It's like a slap in the face every single fucking time I see something like it. My stomach clenches. My skin crawls. My temper flares. It's verbal violence, and verbal violence is often followed by the threat of physical violence. Especially when that verbal violence is toward a woman who has stepped out of her place in the world and dared to climb too high. It's not just Hillary Clinton. It's any woman who takes a place in the world that belongs to men. But right now it's open season on her, and anything goes.

Don't believe me? Ted Cruz said this about Hillary Clinton: “I’ll tell you in my house, if my daughter Catherine, the 5-year old, says something that she knows to be false, she gets a spanking. Well in America the voters have a way of administering a spanking.” Bad enough the image of him hitting his 5-year-old daughter, who will simply learn to lie better, but he's also insinuating that Hillary Clinton deserves a spanking like an unruly child. Hillary Clinton, who has been shown by a respected journalist to be the most honest of the candidates, including fucking Ted Cruz. Bend over, Ted.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie said, “I’ll beat her rear end on that stage and afterward she’ll be relieved that I didn’t serve her with a subpoena.” Not "I'll kick her butt," which I could have tolerated, but "I'll beat her rear end." Where is our national safe word?

These are men who wanted to become the president of the most powerful nation in the world, and this is how they talk about their female opponent, a former US senator and Secretary of State? I haven't been able to find any examples of infantalized violent talk toward any of the male candidates, because it doesn't exist. Although this does.



I'm constantly telling myself I need to get off Facebook. I feel like I have sand under my skin from the open hatred, the derision, the perpetuation of lies, the total lack of rhetoric skills. Somehow people like that guy up there in the first paragraph have forgotten they're talking to friends in a public space with a megaphone. We can hear you. All of you. We hear you, and it's a cacophony of woman-hatred that reminds me, as a woman, that I'm fair game any time I stick my head out of my shell and piss off the guys. As if that hasn't been pounded into me all my life.

Not that Facebook has a lock on it. The misogyny is even worse on Twitter, Reddit (dare to find a Red Pill thread), and the addictive Straight White Boys Texting. But I can avoid those sites. I can't avoid it when it's coming at me on Facebook from my friends' friends, or even worse, from my friends. What used to be a place to keep up with people's lives and send out invitations has become a place where people feel anonymous enough to flaunt their true colors .... and often their color is that ugly shade of greenish brown that is nobody's favorite color.

I'm sick of it. I tell myself I need to ween off Facebook, because it's only going to get worse. And yet then I would miss the rare intelligent discourse that happens there. And I'd miss the personal posts, about pets dying, babies being born, about dealing with a parent with Alzheimer's or about a friend's adventure on the bike trail. I resent that social media has become one more place where men can spank women who get out of line. Like we need more of that shit.

Here's my suggestion. Start deleting. Send a message to guys like that one up there that we don't want to see that shit. If he can come up with a reasonable, well supported argument for whatever he's trying to say, let him talk. If he's only interested in spouting his woman-hating mouth-shit, then take away his forum, because you damn sure aren't going to change someone like him. You could keep that shit away from my eyes though.

And what the hell does "wolf-titted" mean anyway? Was that supposed to be clever?


Note: When I googled images for "shut up," more than 80% of the images were of men saying some version of "shut up," often with the word "bitch" attached. Shut up, bitch. Google also offers options for narrowing the search to "shut up woman," some of which were pretty vile, or "shut up mom," but not "shut up man" or "shut up dad." Just noting a fact.

Note: If you prefer videos, watch this video from Blue Nation Review, which of course comes with an agenda. It's propaganda. Don't think I don't know it. But it's still scary.