For years, woman have tried to reclaim things that have been unfairly taken from them. It seems there has always been a front to fight on, from the right to decide what we want to do with our own bodies to the backlash many of us receive for the way we choose to live our lives. To add to all that, expressing frustration and anger over the situations women face has never been easier. Perhaps that’s what led to the most recent controversial hashtag on twitter: #WasteHisTime2016.
In this hashtag, women outline scenarios for how to break men’s hearts or hurt them emotionally. Many saw this hashtag as women being cruel and unfair. Hashtags were formed in retaliation (which always seems to happen, doesn't it?): #WasteHerTime2016 and #SingleIn2016. Some men began to claim that this hashtag demonstrated why they had trust issues or that these were the same girls who would be upset at being single come Valentine’s Day.
The irony is that these situations seem familiar. That’s because a lot of the women writing the tweets claim to have based them off of the very things men did to them. Which begs of society to consider what’s worse: A hypothetical hashtag or a way of life that’s so engrained in our society that people don’t even realize women constantly go through these very same situations. The more I read about the hashtag, the more it seems like yet another way that women are trying to reclaim what was taken from them; in this case, their emotions.
Many are calling the hashtag feminist while others argue it’s just the opposite of that, which only serves to show how diverse the definition of feminism has become. At its core, however, the definition is simple- it’s the belief that men and women are socially, economically and politically equal. The reason this becomes so complicated is because some people see certain actions women take as trying to put themselves above men while those women see what they’re doing as evening the scorecard or giving men a taste of their own medicine.
This raises a lot of questions.
Is it fair to turn the tables? What is true equality? If women start doing what men have always done will we reach equality or will men simply start to believe that women are the ones being unfair?
Most importantly, perhaps: Will we ever get to the point where women are free to be as equally kind or cruel as they want? Because the privilege here is obvious- if one group of people’s cruelty is the norm, while another group simply discussing doing those same things is a huge controversy, it’s clear which group has the power.
This hashtag will pass, these things always do; so instead of considering it a short lived rebellion, think of it as another building block on the path to more much needed discussions.
