- Was the Twitter boycott an appropriate response to the online threats prominent women were receiving?
- Should Twitter have done more in response to those threats?
- Should young women in 2013 take an interest in feminism? Do young women need to 'reclaim' feminism?
- Why has the internet been effective in feminist campaigns?
- What is your opinion on page 3 of the Sun still featuring a half-naked young woman in 2013?
1. Was the Twitter boycott an appropriate response to the online threats prominent women were receiving ?
The quote; "To be frank I don't know how Twitter is going to cope without me. People will just have to pull through somehow without me tweeting a picture of a baby hedgehog or linking to some Funkadelic." in my opinion sums up the whole argument about the Twitter boycott. A lot of 'high-profile women' stopped using Twitter on a Sunday to protest against the death and rape threats they received, while the protest should be done by all means as no person should go through bullying in any type of way, I don't believe not tweeting for a day would make a difference, people will still tweet abuse to you and will not take your opinions in regard, some may stop but most will continue, had the protest been about people helping report against online misogyny, it would have made a bigger impact than not tweeting for one day did, For me the Twitter boycott was not an appropriate response to the online threats women received. 'Tweeters' can live on day without people tweeting, had it gone on for longer it could have made a difference or if there was a better approach to this it could have also made a better impact.
2. Should Twitter have done more in response to those threats ?
In simple terms, Yes. No person should have to go through any type of bullying especially bullying while online, and the simple way to put these threats is just bullying. Making death and rape threats while sitting behind a screen does not make a person bigger in any way. It just adds to their inadequate life style and shows the type of person they are, and as the stereotype goes that women are not as strong as man, no man should sent such disturbing stuff to a woman as a minority may not be able to handle it, which could later on could affect the person majorly. In my opinion, Twitter should not only ban these users but they should also report them to the authorities. A person should not be receiving death threats while sitting behind their screen nor should they receive it at any given time but their will always be a minority that still do send silly threats and Twitter should take a stand and ban these users and further go on to ban these users too.
3. Should young women in 2013 take an interest in feminism ? Do young women need to 'reclaim' feminism ?
Yes and No. There is two ways to argue this point, many people say that we are in a 'Post feminism state' and that there is no real reason left for feminism to remain. This could be true as many believe women have got what they wanted and needed. Women are now seen equal to men, many are getting paid the same and most are seen as equal and not discriminated with the following acts coming into play; (all which come under the Equality act 2010),
- the Equal Pay Act 1970
- the Sex Discrimination Act 1975
- the Race Relations Act 1976
- the Disability Discrimination Act 1995
- the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003
- the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003
- the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006
- the Equality Act 2006, Part 2
- the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007
have helped women in being paid nearly the same as men, moreover seen as equals. However, the 'no' argument is seen as a big one, even with all these acts in place, are women still being seen as just a use for domestic uses. Daily we see in the newspapers how a family has discriminated against a gender, and usually in Asian families we see how young girls are brought up to cook, clean and make kids. This is the role seen for many young girls and even before they are born, their fate is decided and this is what they will do. So for me we still do need feminism but not the extreme feminism we saw quite a few years ago but it still has to exist to make sure that women are being treated the same as men.
4. Why has the Internet been effective in feminist campaign ?
The internet is a big media platform maybe even the biggest. With the increase of social networking sites, talking to people and getting the word around has become much easier than it was 20/30 years ago, one tweet is all it takes to get a topic started and this topic may trend worldwide on sites such as Twitter, we saw how fast the 'Find Kony 2012' issues went viral and the video was seen 98 Million times and this was just a video posted on Youtube, The same thing has happened with so many other issues, new and digital media has given people a platform to work with and get messages around the world quickly and all it would take is a message from someone high profile such as Beyonce and this issue could go viral and people would start taking the issues concerning Feminism seriously and would make a difference pretty quickly so the Internet has been effective in the feminist campaign due to the way how fast something can go viral and through word of mouth on social networking sites.
5. What is your opinion on Page 3 of The Sun still featuring a half-naked young woman in 2013 ?
After the Hillsborough incident in 1989 and the way The Sun reported it, made people lose a lot of respect for such a big selling newspaper. Mocking the dead made people boycott the The Sun and many still do, and after that you'd think that there would be no way that The Sun could go morally lower than this, but that is not the case. Showing a picture of a half-naked girl to the whole of Britain is wrong. Being such a big newspaper and it being in majority of newsagents. There is nothing stopping a child from opening this newspaper and seeing the images on the front. The Sun is not a porn magazine so it should not feature Porn, there is no age restrictions on newspapers but on The Sun there should be until they remove pornographic images from the newspaper.
1) To what extent do you agree with Rosin's hypothesis that women are taking over modern society? Give examples in your response.
Rosin'a hypothesis that women are taking over modern society made a statement instead of asking a question, Rosin argues that women are taking over modern society and there's nothing men can do as through Darwin's 'Evolution theory' she may believe that women are evolving to be the better and stronger sex as they can easily adapt to any job and have been adapting and always will. This statement however is very far fetched. Only 24% women are the household bread winners meaning that men majorly overhaul women as 76% of men are the breadwinners. As it may as it is that women are performing better than men in education, men are still ending up in better jobs, and are easily able to adapt to a majority of jobs put there way so in my opinion I do not agree with Rosin that women are taking over modern society, it still may be favouring men but it could shortly change.
2) Can we find examples in modern media that support Rosin's suggestion that women are taking charge? You may wish to argue the opposite - that men still dominate the media scene.
One major example for showing that men still dominate the media scene is Rupert Murdoch, the owner of a vast number of media companies such as The Sun and Fox. Murdoch has been dominating the media scene for many years and he is only one example of many male that dominate the media, however as we see Hollywood is still a even mixture. We see the same amount of female actresses as actors. Men are sometimes paid more though. In the hit show; 'Two and a Half Men' we saw how Actor Charlie Sheen was earning $2.5Million per show whereas other female actors earned nothing close to this, even after his controversial sacking we saw him replaced and his replacement was earning the same as him. This could also be argued two ways as Jennifer Aniston was getting a crazy amount of nearly $1Million per show of 'Friends'. So therefore even though it may seem like men and women are treated equally in the media, we see occasional domination but one sex which may usually be men.
3) Research Judith Butler's approach to feminism. How might Butler respond to Rosin's writing in The End of Men?
Judith Butlers approach to feminism would come across very differently to Rosin's approach, the 'Feminist theory' is something which is attacked by Butler in just the opening of her book 'Gender troubles' Butler would say that it is wrong to divide society into 'men' and 'women' and gender is not biologically fixed, by dividing men and women, feminists accidentally reinforce the idea of differences between the two genders. Butler also believes that gender roles are 'a performance' and that male and female behaviour is socially constructed rather than the result of biology so Butler would go against Rosin's theory of 'The end of men
