#YesAllWomen

In this blog post, I wanted to address a topic that has come up a lot recently even at lunch time or in my independent study period.  The concept and terms of feminism have come up a lot, and there seem to be three distinct demographics, from what I have witnessed:  first, there are the women who address feminism, whom I deem, as radicals.  These women usually operate under the assumption that all men are oppressive and hate-driven and that women have gained little to no status improvement.  This is the minority faction.  A large portion seem to exist in the second demographic- women should be equal to men and that is it.  Equal pay, equal job opportunities, equal anything and everything.  But many, however, cannot explain where the line of equality lies.  The third demographic is where the creators of #YesAllWomen lie.  The hashtag came up after a shooting at U of California, Santa Barbara, where the shooter (a man) expressed the notion that he retained the right to shoot women who spurned his advances. 

The wave hit overnight- by the morning after, over a million Tweets appeared with the hashtag #YesAllWomen in response to the #NotAllMen hashtag.  #NotAllMen aimed to express that not all men are psychopathic killers who objectify and view women as property.  #YesAllWomen did not disagree, which is where the distinction between the second and third demographics of feminism lie.  The notion that not all men are the perpetrators, but ALL women are the victims.  Every woman is forced to think immediately for her safety when she meets a guy, has to carry her keys between her fingers in the dark parking lot, and has pepper spray in her purse.  I looked into the movement about a month ago, and as we read A Thousand Splendid Suns, I was absolutely floored by the connections of the characteristics. 

Women everywhere were shown by #YesAllWomen that they were not crazy or alone just as Mariam and Laila did for one another under Rasheed's oppressive hand.  They learned that they should not have to live in fear for their lives every day, and that they were worth more than Rasheed made them out to be.  It is horribly sad, to me, that the western world claims to be so much more civil to women than the Middle East or than Asia, but women here are still oppressed every day.  It is almost worse to have a problem but not recognize it, and that is what #YesAllWomen aims to do.

Gina Denny, a friend of the woman who created #YesAllWomen, states "while, yes, we know not every single man is part of the problem of violence against women, it is all women who must deal with the fear of catcalling and any other type of harassment and sexual assault."