Maybe the tide is turning to link all the daily hate, abuse, and disrespect toward women with this young man’s horrific act. Females have a right to not live in fear of male violence and we mean YES ALL WOMEN.
From the New Yorker BlogThe Power of #YesAllWomen
Rebecca Solnit on the Santa Barbara Massacre & Viral Response to Misogynist Violence
Santa Barbara is grieving after a 22-year-old man killed six college students just after posting a misogynistic video online vowing to take his revenge on women for sexually rejecting him. The massacre prompted an unprecedented reaction online with tens of thousands of women joining together to tell their stories of sexual violence, harassment and intimidation. By Sunday, the hashtag #YesAllWomen had gone viral. In speaking out, women were placing the shooting inside a broader context of misogynist violence that often goes ignored. In her new book, “Men Explain Things to Me,” author and historian Rebecca Solnit tackles this issue and many others. “We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it’s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern,” Solnit says. “Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”
Let’s call the Isla Vista killings what they were: misogynist extremism
For some time now, misogynist extremism has been excused, as all acts of terrorism committed by white men are excused, as an aberration, as the work of random loons, not real men at all. Why are we denying the existence of a pattern?
Another Article on the #YesAllWomen
The person who created the hashtag hoped to show that even though not all men are violent, objectification is widespread:
Guys, I’m going to be tweeting under the #YesAllWomen hashtag. Let’s discuss what “not all men” might do, but women must fear.
— Kaye M. (@gildedspine) May 24, 2014
