(Originally posted to the Community section of MyMedia)
Now for some levity.
Male writer for Slate tweets, “Advice to parents: teach your daughters to say “no” firmly and mean it. Men sense women’s willingness to yield.”¹
Women on twitter: Do you even know how many women are killed by men they said “NO” (firmly and clearly) every year?
Male writer: ‘Actually’ I wasn’t talking about sexual assault, I meant like Maxine Waters exchange with Steven Mnuchin.²
Women: Oh, you mean when she had to repeat 39 times “Reclaiming my time” as he spoke over her; then when she had to ask the MAN with the gavel to explain the rules to Mnuchin after she had just explained them to him, and STILL he didn’t actually answer the question?
Male writer: These women and their “twitter outrage!”³
And this, for those in the back, is why parents need to teach their SONS, that they need to listen to what women are saying, not what they want women to say.
This is why parents need to counteract current society’s message that talking over women, ignoring women, objectifying women, never listening to what women are actually saying, putting their own wants and likes over those of all women, is normal.
This is why parents need to explain to their sons that women are not responsible for boys’, male teens’, or men’s actions against women.
This is why parents need to make clear that, “she made me do it” is never a reason nor a justification to violate the rights of women.
~ * ~
² Second tweet in response to the pushback he got:
³ Third tweet:
Her Hands, My Hands 
It’s exchanges like this that make it necessary for me to keep padding on my desk. My forehead couldn’t stand the impact otherwise.
Same.
Saletan from Slate said that?? I’m wholly surprised…and I’m going to go unfollow him. I think his heart was in the right place, but he did argue from a diminished perspective (i.e., he is the only one with the right POV).
My understanding is that he has this pattern of behaviour–plus, once dozens of women tell him he’s wrong, he refuses to back down, going instead into a “hysterical women” and “spare me the twitter outrage,” basically demonstrating why he’s utterly wrong: saying no does nothing unless the other person *hears* it.
Outrage Twitter. I loved that when I saw it. It was an immediate sexist remark when women disagreed with him. (Not to mention how when women quite loudly and simply said no to him, he wasn’t willing to listen. That spoke louder than his original tweet.)
This.
I am without words.
Okay, I have these these words. I raised three sons. I am a strong, opinionated women. They married strong, opinionated women. And now, they have between them, three strong, opinonated daughters. Even though they are young, the attitude is clear.
I hope there is a correlation there.
On a somewhat related note, it seems that the voice of women and minorities are constantly being silenced.
In particular, I am referring to young adult novel called the black witch which has been criticised for being racist, misogynistic and homophobic by people of colour and women.
Of course, right-wing media outlets are taking this opportunity to snare people have legitimate problems with this book, take a look at the comments here for example
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2017/08/the-toxic-drama-on-ya-twitter/#comment-397879
Anon, I’m unsure whether you are saying that the Passive Voice is a right wing outlet, or whether you are implying surprise over the outraged butthurt authors’ comments there.
I have no opinion, nor care, whether the first is true or not, I rarely read anything over there.
As for authors being butthurt over criticism by the groups they ‘don’t care about’ (as stated in several comments there, as well as in the Vulture piece quoted), is not only not new, but it’s precisely what fuels this series of posts in my own blog.
I meant the second, that authors don’t seem to realise how what they write can have a negative effect on minorities, there is a kind of selfish undertone to the whole thing that makes me uncomfortable, Author should be able to write what they want but The writing does have consequences.
Absolutely!
Freedom of speech (or creativity) does not mean freedom from consequences (or criticism). Sadly, it’s very easy for people from every walk of life to take the position that any criticism of their work or behaviour is censorship.
I don’t participate on the YA book community myself, but I’ve seen many example of adults–writers, writer-adjacent, readers–pile on, on teens who speak out. It’s…pretty gross.