Wednesday, August 10, 2011

F*cked Up Facebook Finds 3

Third edition of Facebook finds! You know the drill, lower left hand corner is where you can find the report button.

Page #1: "Giving your pregnant girlfriend the ol 'whoops a daisy' down the stairs"

Violence towards pregnant women. Because if birth control fails when a man ejaculates inside a woman, the man has some right to be so angry at her and the consequence to push her "accidentally" down the stairs, hopefully inducing an abortion. Not, you know, taking responsibility and taking her to a doctor where yall can discuss the options and have a safe abortion, no no, it's much more hilarious to push a woman down the stairs. I'm surprised nobody on the page recently made a "falcon punch" joke.

Page #2: "Hit with the ugly branch? You've been gangbanged by the whole fkin forrest."

Page #3: "That awkward moment when a fat chick trys to be sexy."

Page #4: "Letting ugly chicks suck your dick cause your a top bloke." 

Because it's our place to walk life judging others by how much we want to fuck them! And our standards? What we value? Obviously not anybody considered "fat." And that phrase - hit with the ugly branch - goes from only physical violence to describe someone who's 'ugly' in some asshats eyes, somehow turn into sexual violence, a gang bang.

I'm so sick of people who walk through life sitting on a pedestal, as if they were cops, judging the value of women based on how much they are attracted to them.

So you think someone's ugly? Who the fuck are you? As if the only purpose women have in life is to look good - no wait, not just look good, but look good *specifically* in the way society tells us too (which is dictated by men), at the very least, and in cases like these - to look good and attractive in some random person's eyes. Because obviously if they're deemed ugly by you then they must be depressed as hell. Women weren't put here to be decoration for you - whoever the fuck you are - as if you're so damn important. Women aren't seen as people, but just potential sex toys. And if they're not fuckable (or someone you'd jerk it to) then they can piss off and die? Their existence is annoying?

Get over yourself. Women are people. 100% people. Value them for being a person, not how much your sorry self wishes they could screw them, because they sure as shit don't believe they were put in this world to be your eye candy.

Happy reporting.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Not offended

I get a lot of comments from people who say “I’m a woman and I’m not offended” or, more recently, “I’m native and I wasn’t offended!” at this video, or in general at whatever discriminatory comment or movie or song or whatever that I’m critiquing.

The reason why this argument doesn’t hold strong is because I could easily find someone who does identify as a woman, or native, and is offended. I could also easily find a GLBTQ ally who is offended. But is this necessary in order for the “unoffended” to recognize what’s wrong? 

If someone in a marginalized community raises a concern, it's quite common that before their concern is even heard they have to legitimize it. This, my friends, is disrespect. Plain and simple.

Usually when someone is offended and recognizes this verbally, they’re met with how wrong it is for them to be offended by a discriminatory statement. They say we ultimately chose to be offended. It's our choice to find it insulting. It's our choice to feel belittled. These are the same people who say marginalized folks shouldn't show pride for their community and identity. Failplz.

So the logic is, “I’m not even insulting your community, and if I am, it’s not offensive or disrespectful because I say so. If you’re offended, that’s your fault.”

Acknowledging when something is discriminatory towards a community, be it your own or one you are an ally in, isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s not a testament to how “thin your skin can be,” how “badly you take humor,” how “tight your ass is,” or how much you just need to “get over shit.”

The people making these insulting statements/jokes, or approve them in media, are usually one of four types.

1)      The Privileged Outsider: The most common. They aren't in the community and are very open with their lack of care. These are the types of people who will go on about how their sense of humor is clearly superior to yours, and you need to “lighten up.”

2)      The Pseudo Ally: They aren’t in the community, but attempt to publically recognize what they did/said was wrong by using a friend as an extension of themselves. “I’m not racist, I have a friend who is black!”

In a larger institution, it might come off as something like Richards stated, the Summers Eve advertising agency founder, as a defense for their racist ads. “Our in house multi-cutural experts confirmed the approach.” 

3)      The Convenient Member: They claim to be in the community to waive any kind of trouble they could get in for being so disrespectful. These people aren’t in the culture in its entirety, but cling onto stereotypes. “My great great long lost grandmother was Cherokee, so don’t think I’m being rude, I’m totally 1/16th native which makes my Halloween costume okay.” 

4)      The Normative Spokesperson: They are in the community, in the culture, but are still fine with the insults. I’ll direct you here for some examples. 

Regardless of the category, it all boils down to one thing: They have no respect for the concerns of community being targeted.

They don’t care to recognize how damaging stereotyping is.

They don’t care to recognize how hurtful insults are.

They don’t care to recognize how detrimental it can be to treat your culture like it is up for grabs.

They don’t care to acknowledge the very real, dangerous and violent ways that accepting this disrespect can manifest itself.

They don’t care. They don’t care about the community. They don’t care about the people in it.

If you cared about people being raped, you wouldn’t make/laugh at rape jokes.

If you cared about people being beaten to death, you wouldn’t make/laugh at jokes targeting that group.  

If you cared about people being bullied, you wouldn’t enable bullying by discriminating the people being targeted. 

If you cared about people being abused, you wouldn’t accept their abuse by paying money to the people perpetuating it.

And a hint, people who typically experience this = people of color, GLBTQ folks, people who are overweight, underweight, redheaded, disabled in any way, have an accent, women, work in the sex industry, etc. Sometimes these categories and communities intersect.  The bottom line is: They are different and they are marginalized. From something as “little” as a joke to something as real as murder.

Most people don’t like to be disrespected simply because someone more privileged than them decides it’s okay and has a big powerful mouth. People don’t like this because, believe it or not, they like to be treated as people.

So, if you don’t get offended? Who doesn’t recognize the things listed above? You’re entitled to your opinion. But you should at least recognize that in accepting and perpetuating those beliefs, you’re also excluding yourself from a large portion of that wonderful community.










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F*cked Up Facebook Finds 2

Second edition of F'd Up Facebook Finds! You know the drill, lower left hand corner is where you can find the report button.

Page #1: "Throwing eggs at a slut, brick shaped eggs - made from brick."

Moar violence and shaming towards women.

What's especially disturbing about this page, and the next one, is that it clearly represents how shaming women can directly lead to and harbor violence. So when reporting, it's up to you to decide if you want to report the page for hate speech towards gender or orientation, or a credible threat of violence. So far I have been reporting under hate speech towards gender or orientation.

Page #2:  "Kick the bitch, why? coz shes a slut"

I'm noticing a disgusting theme here.

When someone is trying to degrade women or discount what they say/believe/their existence for whatever reason, it's very typical for them to simply call her a slut.

Don't like what she said? Call her a slut. Don't like what she's wearing? Call her a slut. Don't like how she's (not) talking at all? Call her a slut. We can also replace this with the word bitch, which is very common as well. If you hook up with her, she's a slut. If she won't hook up with you, she's a bitch. If you think she's ugly, sluttybitchbitch. If she engages in sexual activity at any level (depending on the person doing the insulting) she's a slut.

People have no right to look down on women. They especially don't have a right to look down on women simply because they don't like the fact she's a sexual being. Her sex life is not your business.

And if she is going to talk about her sex life, it doesn't matter if she's had one sex partner or 22, it's not your place to judge or shame her.

Please, go read this and pay heavy attention to the effects of slut shaming.

Page #3: "I'm not sexist, sexism is wrong, and being wrong is for women."

Sexism attempts syllogisms. This seems innocent because it seems like such an outrageous joke, nobody could possibly agree with it. "We all know women aren't actually wrong in all aspects of life, we're just joking." Jokes like these are maintained when a real argument or disagreement comes up. Not only is a joke like this a reflection of real values in our culture, a page like this on Facebook fosters a place where women can be bashed, openly, and it's all okay!

We have gems such as this from the people who liked it, "I think it's so effing funny when bitches crack the shits about sexist jokes. Like fuck, pull the wooden spoon out of your ass and cook me something, fuck."
 

"Put a dick in it females or get back to the kitchen."

"
i know this is a joke page. but seriousley women are fucking retarded. only good for rooting. coz the birds i know cant even cook fucking shit cunts"

Additionally, there are plenty of other racist comments mimicking the page title such as, "I'm not racist, racism is a crime, and crime is for aboriginals."


Note, there are multiple versions of this page, some other ones besides the one I linked are here, here and here.

 Page #4: "Dropping a spoon and naming your Chinese kid after the noise it makes"


Amongst 99% of the comments spouting "ting, ching chong hurhur" there's also wonderful comments such as this one, "I named mine Squints, does that count?"

Don't think I need to explain the racism behind this, but encase you want some reading, check out this wiki entry here.


Happy reporting!