Politics, sexism and Facebook culture

Submitted by Matthew on 4 June, 2013 - 9:21

It’s fair to say that Facebook and Twitter have changed the face and shape of left-wing organising in Britain, particularly organising young people and students.

As well as posting about the music you like, what you’re eating, and what colour you’ve dyed your hair, you can post about your views: either on your profile, or in numerous groups.

Sometimes political discussion on social networking is fruitful and enlightening. Sometimes it descends into personal, sectarian, and boring fights that are had over and over again and are of little use to socialists except those who think they will build up some sort of profile and use that to silence people. Which isn’t very socialist.

It can also be a means for people to act in less than honest or comradely ways — setting up fake accounts to slander others or discrediting organisations for no good reason.

But at the same token Facebook has made it easier to find people, talk to people, advertise events and organise group discussion and it’s hard to think about what we would now do without it.

Rather than seeing Facebook and Twitter as “good” or “bad” for organising, the sensible thing for socialists to do is to use them as another form of media in the same way that we publish papers, phone people, and use email.

Last week we saw a spate of male university students creating “Rate Your Shag” Facebook pages and posting quotes about sexual performance and body type alongside people’s real names.

Socialist-feminists are not prudes; we are not against sex, casual or otherwise. We are not in general for censoring sexually explicit material.

These pages, though, were an invasion of the privacy of students of all genders; they reduced the sum of someone’s “worth” to what someone else felt they experienced in a casual encounter; they were judging and shaming people based on sexist, ableist body norms and were generally slut-shaming.

A few years ago it could’ve been me being mentioned on those pages, as a sexually-active university student. A horrible thought, and my sympathies go to anyone who was negatively affected.

This isn’t an “internet problem” though, but a problem of pathetic, heteronormative, sexist, and otherwise heavily gendered attitudes towards sex and sexuality. With or without the internet, we would still have bigotry and oppressive attitudes — the only way we will get rid of them is through liberation and socialism.
It is not that uncommon to hear boys and men in the street talking about women being “pigs”, scoring women out of ten, and berating or praising each other based on who they’ve pulled.

And it’s also not uncommon to hear girls and women talking about whether or not they will be judged for sleeping with someone on the first date, whether or not they will be labelled a “slag” for sleeping with someone casually, or what is an “acceptable” number of sexual partners to have had.

Society at large, including a lot of people in our class, still views women’s sexuality negatively and women as sex objects.

We should be using new media and social media in order to put forward our ideas to anyone who uses them (not just young people) and to challenge capitalism as well as sexism and other bigoted opinions in society.

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.