The twittersphere has reacted to the mysoginistic details of the Santa Barbara mass killing with the #YesAllWomen campaign.
The name of the hashtag is as a response to the #NotAllMen campaign… the one that tried to drive home the point that not all men are woman-hating lunatics. That we shouldn’t try to make this senseless tragedy about anything more than a disturbed young man going off the deep end.
In some ways, this is true. We can’t extrapolate that because this man had a deep rage toward women that ALL men have a deep rage toward women. But he didn’t grow up and come of age in a bubble. We can use some of the details of his particular case to understand that there is a lot of woman-hating in our culture – a lot of objectification and sexualization and impossible standards of beauty and behavior – that inform how men feel about women and how women feel about themselves.
The shooter was apparently active in the “pick up artist” community, an industry full of “gurus” that sell videos, seminars and books teaching “the game” of how to get women and get laid. For years, women’s rights groups have been raising alarms about the misogynistic language employed in this community, which labels women targets and “alpha” men the predators that go out and get what’s theirs: sex. The shooters manifesto and YouTube videos were filled with “pick-up artist” lingo.
The #NotAllMen campaign attempts to state the obvious. Any woman who has ever loved a man – a husband or lover, a son or a brother – knows that not every man is like this shooter. But the #YesAllWomen hash tag asks a different question: do men know that EVERY woman feels the effects of misogyny? Not in some theoretical, “70 cents on the dollar” sort of way, but in a daily, personal, sometimes menacing and scary way.
It’s worth a look if you don’t. Click here to see the latest on the Twitter #YesAllWomen conversation.
And I think this guy said it best:
Enough w/the #notallmen defense, men. Women KNOW we’re not all like that. Stop stealing spotlight w/whining & support women. #YesAllWomen
— Mark Ghanimé (@markghanime) May 29, 2014
