It was quite a month, and largely thanks to anti-feminist creepy dudes.
I say no to rape-promoting meetups in my city
Let’s put some numbers on this. RoK has 11,000 followers on Twitter, with 12,500 “liking” the RoK Facebook page. Roosh himself has nearly 18,000 Twitter followers. The Quantcast page for RoK’s January site stats show 1.1 million unique global visitors and 3.7 million pageviews. RoK’s advertising page suggests a sponsored post would garner “5,000 – 15,000 views”.
And immediate online reach isn’t where this ends. The attitudes and ideas promoted by people like Roosh V are tacitly reinforced by far too much mainstream culture. The dudes reading Roosh are telling their friends about it. They’re going out in public and putting Roosh’s teachings into practice. This can, literally, only end with women being psychologically bullied and manipulated and physically assaulted.
Look at the “distinctive content” TVNZ was seeking for DUKE. Look at NFL, professional wrestling, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Gotham, Agent Carter (I’m ignoring the ridiculous men-with-heavy-machinery offerings because I already fill that need with Gold Rush). First off, this is basically a channel designed for me and we all know I’m a rabid man-hating feminist.
Secondly … this is exactly the kind of content our free-to-air channels should have been showing for years but haven’t. Sorry for the overuse of italics, but I could’ve told TVNZ that this was the kind of content they needed to be showing off the top of my head.
After watching several of my Twitter buddies disbelievingly live-tweet the ridiculous proceedings around the Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan the other night, I had some thoughts. The good folks of Twitter liked them, so I decided to expand on them in a post. Here it is!
The responsibility for stopping abuse lies with each of us. When we all stand together at an event like this, it sends a message. It draws a line about what is and isn’t acceptable.
But we have to follow this up with the much harder work of getting the message out in our communities and challenging the people who share these harmful attitudes. They aren’t just strangers on the internet: they can be our friends and coworkers and family members.
Make no mistake: free tertiary education is a leftward step. And it’s about time.
I also blogged about the fact that good policy costs money, and our problem with masculinity – or rather, buying into sexist framing about men and violence.
Stephanie Rodgers 