By Shelley Westerson
You may have seen the #yesallwomen trending on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter recently and have wondered to yourself, what’s this all about? Some would call it a feminist movement for women, but that is a much too simple explanation of what the hashtag stands for.
The #yesallwomen movement started in the wake of the Santa Barbara shootings. Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old City College student, wrote a 141-page manifesto explaining his motivation for rampaging through the streets of Isla Vista with over 400 rounds of ammo, killing seven people, including himself. He also made a YouTube video that went viral after the shootings.
“You girls have never been attracted to me,” said Rodger in his video. “I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It’s an injustice. I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy and yet you throw yourselves at these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman.”
Here we have an example of society’s influence. Media and culture tell men what is normal, what it means to be a man and what expectations to have when it comes to women. When men–like Rodger–fall short of what society expects from them, they struggle to accept themselves. Sure, Rodger had a history with mental illness (among other things), but that is not what the #yesallwomen movement is about. It is the pretentious feelings of entitlement and the normalization of misogynistic ideals that are the problem. It is the unforeseen rape culture that has been developed in our country that is the problem.
Elliot Rodger’s attitude of male sexual entitlement didn’t resonate well with women, not only in the United States, but around the world. That is when the #yesallwomen movement started.
Tweets like these were being composed and retweeted all over the twitter-sphere. Women saw this as an opportunity to share their experiences of sexual assault, harassment and discrimination. The #yesallwomen spread worldwide, with over 1.2 million tweets as of May 26th, according to Hashtags.org.
It was originally meant to combat the #notallmen, which had many tweets saying how not all men are violent. The #yesallwomen used #notallmen to further prove their point.
The movement is about changing these views we have in society, dissipating these gender norms that we thrust upon our children from a young age and owning up to the fact that gender inequality is still a problem. Women are still not comfortable reporting sexual assault, and this is not an issue that men are violent, but one that is much deeper and enrooted in our current society.
This tweet pertains to an article I recently wrote about how to protect yourself as a woman:
It is the culture of victim blaming, how women get labeled with words like “friend zone” or “slut” for how they choose men in their lives and all these sayings that have now become societal norms.
It is the way we teach and talk to our boys along with the way we treat women that needs to change, and nothing says it more perfectly than this tweet from a father…
Bottom line, what I interpret the movement’s message to be is that we–as a society–can do better.