Facebook and Misogyny

Facebook describes itself as a “social utility”.

It says so since it is a networking site, (social networking people call it) that connects people across all boundaries, and gives everyone the opportunity to express and speak their hearts out.

Computer games, emails, messaging, chats, video chats, blogs and then finally a combination of all these, Facebook.

And this perhaps is what made Facebook such a huge success.

Well, it therefore is a social utility, but is everyone utilizing it?

Logging in, it asks, what’s on you mind?

I log in my Facebook account, and there are end numbers of misogynist posts. For instance, Girls do this, they do that, they are such and such, they are money seeking, they dump guys, this that. Or there would be posts poking their voluptuous bodies, imitating them as objects and similar stuff.

And the worst bit is these posts have 1000+ likes and “haha”, “lol”, “rofl” comments, inclusive of many girls.

Some of the recent such posts that I saw are –

 A picture that shows four faces, on the left side there are two faces, of girls (both are the same) and below it reads, Rs. 1000, while on the right are two faces, of boys (totally different) and below it says, Rs. 500.

Another picture that shows a couple in the car with the lady’s mouth tied up, and below its written, “the new method to avoid 90% accidents.

There is a post (read JOKE), A boy is asked which laptop do you have, and he answers, this company, this that, GB, MB, memory, etc and when a girl is asked which laptop do you have, she would say, “A pink one”. Haha?

Further, there are many morphed images, depicting women, with bruised faces, and it says, “like if you are against hitting women”, then, there are morphed images with women, saying this happened to her, she died, she was raped, etc, along with a variety of similar other posts.

My complaint to all these posts and pictures is not initially to the one posting them, but people who like them, especially girls. Girls, who speak so much about feminism, about raising their voices, who talk of standing against misogyny, but end up liking and promoting these senseless, wasteful posts. And then it is to the guys, who create pages and become the admin to posting such nuisance. If they really are so prudent and tactful, why not administer a socially relevant cause, sound less insane, and act truly masculine.

I heard it on some radio channel, “why do you want us to increase the length of our skirts, when you have reduced mentalities?”

Conclusively, I would say, Facebook really could have been a great social utility, that it initially was, but gradually it is only becoming a tool for these guys to lay out all their frustrations, and what is the worst part of this story is, girls liking these posts and promoting the crap.

About the Author: This is a guest post by Ojaswini Srivastava. Ojaswini is a Second year English literature student at Delhi University. She writes on various issues across many blogs and magazines.