Head-clearing Weekend

@Jessay, I could only read like the first line of that. That dude is creepy.

I didn’t see the programme, just the blog, but yeah people like that are never so confident when not behind a computer screen. I couldn’t stomach his writing, when people are as fractally wrong as all than and still write with that achingly smug tone, it makes me want to throw up.

So.. since there’s probably no such thing as OT in this thread, and since the Biblicall fall comes up now and again for discussion on this board: I’m just reading some papers of Christine Korsgaard for a lecture I’m gonna hold on Friday, and she discusses Immanuel Kant’s “Conjectures on the Beginnings of Human History”. (Haven’t read that paper by Kant myself, so I’m just taking this from Korsgaard). In that paper, Kant discusses Genesis. Now he didn’t take Genesis literally – he was a Christian, but a big believer in science, and merely annoyed by the fact that at his time, there were no proper scientific theory of how the various species came about. So the following should be read in a more allegorical way:

Genesis says this about Eve’s decision to take the forbidden fruit: “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate”. Kant’s idea was that this represents the birth of rational thinking. Eve sees various REASONS for taking the fruit, and that’s what rational thinking is all about; one does things for reasons, rather than just acting on instinct. But a rationally thinking creature lacks the innocence other creatures has – we necessarily divide actions into right and wrong and things into good and bad, since we must do so in order to make reason-based decisions. Kant also thinks there’s something tragic about a rational creature which is still far from perfect; a creature that recognises things as being good and bad and still does the bad from time to time. And that’s why the birth of (imperfect) rational thinking is also a fall.

I just thought that maybe you’d find this take on the fall interesting.

I’m not saying that anyone deserves to be cyber bullied, but I do think that young girls should be more aware that when they post things online, they are posting them for everyone to see, and not everyone is going to agree with you 100%.

Agree with them about what? About their insistence on maintaining ownership of their own bodies, rather than handing it over to the nearest Moral Guardian?

That being said, I think slut-shaming could be cut back quite a bit if girls were educated more about the Internet.

No.

More Biscuity goodness.

Okay, made it from bus to office. I will explain my “no.”

Slut shaming happens because of the common belief that girls and women 1) having bodies, and 2) making decisions about their bodies are both punishable offenses. If we tey train teenagers and young women to be “good women,” slut shaming won’t stop. It will just be directed at those girls who don’t do as good a job pretending. Or, if everyone behaves like they’re “supposed” to, slut shaming will become about something else. Slutty hairstyles. Slutty ankles. It’s the attitude of the bullies that is the problem, not that the victims are too attractive as targets.

“That being said, I think slut-shaming could be cut back quite a bit if girls were educated more about the Internet.”

How old are we talking here? Because slut-shaming = No. But Internet safety? Kids really need prev spotting radar, and to know how much info is too much info. Of course “do not share your address” and “don’t post pictures on open forums” are kind of a ways away from slut-shaming.

Basic point — don’t give the bullies and pervs enough info that you can’t just walk away when they get too upsetting/skeevy/whatever. But me and my insomnia are about to turn into an Internet safety PSA. So g’night guys!

Also, those pervs can all go get swabbed with Legos.

Dvärghundspossen — *strokes chin as if stroking a beard* interesting

@viscaria
If it were as simple as eliminating all bullying I would agree with you 100%. I agree with you that it is a serious problem but like you said, if it wasn’t risqué photos it would be something else. People will always find ways to judge others, if not for one thing than for another. Changing the attitude would be great but until we find a way, but there’s no reason these women should have to endure online harassment because of it. It’s not keeping women’s bodies off the web, it’s about protecting yourself from assholes.

@Starla, I apologize again for my morning grumpiness. I guess what I’m trying to say is, we can’t protect everybody. We can just redirect the bullying towards different young women.

Viscaria already said most of what I would have said, but just to add on a bit – another problem with the idea that if you just take precautions then the slut shaming will be directed at a different target is that sometimes even that doesn’t work. I was occasionally called a slut by other girls when I was still a virgin and had never even kissed a boy, just because I had big boobs at a young age (this is a thing that happens a lot to girls who develop early). When girls do all the things they’ve been told to do to protect themselves and people give them shit anyway, it leaves them feeling like they must have done SOMETHING wrong, which really isn’t helpful at all. It also creates a culture where we automatically look for what the girl/woman did wrong, rather than talking about the person who did something to her and why they did that.

I should also add to this debate the fact that women and girls are constantly bombarded with the message that they need to be sexy and attractive to be worth something.

Young teenage girls in particular are very vulnerable to these messages as they are still figuring out who they are, who they want to be and coming to terms with the new bodies that puberty is thrusting upon them.

They are constantly surrounded with pictures of celebrities and models etc. in bikinis or skimpy clothes being portrayed as sexy and desirable and worthwhile so who can blame them if they take the message that this is what they have to do to be considered attractive and worthwhile?

Half the time the “sexy” or “provocative” pictures etc. that teenage girls post on facebook or whatever are showing far less skin than the average Calvin Klein advert.

How are teenage girls supposed to react when they see the boys they like, their classmates and friends drooling over Victoria’s Secret models? Isn’t it totally rational to think “If I want these boys to like me and if i want to be validated in their eyes shouldn’t I behave like these women?”.

And then they stick a picture of themselves in a bikini on facebook and they get attacked and called a slut, a whore and all that shitty jazz, just because they behaved in the way they thought they had to behave in order to be liked and validated?

So I don’t think we should vilify 15 year old girls for putting some pictures on facebook and call them “stupid”, everyone is stupid at 15, that’s part of the problem, remember when you’re still young you don’t have the life experience or the brain development needed to fully be aware of the consequences of your actions or to be able to fully analyse and weigh up the pros and cons of the things you do.

Educating young women and girls about online safety, of course yes, a hundred times yes. But shouldn’t we also teach all young people about not bullying? About not slut-shaming? That the value of women and girls lies not just in her body and sexual attractiveness but that those who choose to show it off are not any less people or deserving of respect?

Shouldn’t we be attacking a media and a society that portrays such a narrow standard of beauty as the ideal, one that objectifies women and constantly uses the female body and female sexual desirability as a marketing tool?

Shouldn’t we be examining the messages that these young girls are being bashed around the head with day in and day out and work towards countering them?

That should be what we are doing, not shaming children and vilifying them. There is so much hate towards teenage girls in society, this particular form of slut shaming is just feeding into that.

Perhaps I’m touchy about this because I’m not very long out my teenage years myself and I had to go through all this shit myself, though I was slightly sheltered as I didn’t get facebook or spend much time on the internet until 15/16.

Yeah, agreed. The tendency to blame girls and women for doing what their culture has told them will make people think well of them, and then mock them for being upset when what they get instead is abuse, really irks me. Obviously this is particularly ridiculous when we’re talking about teenagers, who don’t have their full cognitive faculties yet.

It also bothers me when girls or women are described as being stupid for doing something that’s clearly influenced by culture, as if that somehow means that we should care less about what happens to those girls/women. If we genuinely think that someone is stupid enough to be easily taken advantage of shouldn’t we be more rather than less protective of them because of that?

(I’m also less patient than usual with this kind of blame the victim stuff, having just seen someone on a feminist blog describe women who get labiaplasty as “rich dim ditzes. You’d think you could at least rely on people who identify as feminists to avoid victim-blaming and gendered insults, but apparently not.)