Scrolling through my timeline on Twitter every morning is the equivalent of me reading my morning paper. Twitter is an outlet for people to share their voice and opinions to their followers in 140 characters or less. I’ve always seen Twitter as a positive thing for people in terms of self-expression and being able to share thoughts that are on your mind without fear of being judged.
This week I noticed a new trend on Twitter. Girls at colleges and universities everywhere began posting pictures of themselves and writing their school name followed by ‘girls twitter.’ The first school that I saw doing this was FAMU. The hashtag was #FAMUGirlsTwitter. I thought that this was a great thing at first. Saw people from schools all over retweeting it and celebrating the beauty within this institution. Members and non-members of FAMU alike celebrating each other’s beauty. A rare sight. Then it spread closer to home to Bethune Cookman University. Then, as I was laying my head to rest and checking Twitter before bed this past weekend I saw one of my followers post #StetsonGirlsTwitter. Finally, we were participating in something.
I, of course, thought it was brilliant and kept waiting for more Stetson women to celebrate their beauty. Then I decided to click and search through the hashtag and see what I would find. I came upon a total of three Stetson girls who were brave enough to participate in this hashtag challenge. Two of whom were incoming freshman. The rest of the posts I saw were all pretty much hate. One Stetson boy (and I say "boy" because a real man would not disrespect women in this way) said:
“Please don’t do a #StetsonGirlsTwitter… It’s only like 9 of y’all that look good.”
This coming from the same boy that praised FAMU girls for doing the very same thing, bashing on his Stetson female peers. I would think flagrant hate like this would be ignored but his tweet was favorited and retweeted by at least a dozen Stetson males (so he is not the only guilty party in this situation). At this point, I felt all my anger towards the Stetson male population increase exponentially. This is not the first time Stetson women have been bashed on social media by our male classmates. The blatant disrespect and intolerance that Stetson men have for their female counterparts is utterly disgusting.
The same guys who constantly bash Stetson women over social media are the same ones who constantly appear in our inboxes and direct messages. That’s funny. Why are you attempting to speak to a ‘Stetson Female’ who you constantly put on blast on social media? It's people like this who are the root of many girls’ self-esteem issues. It's people like these who make girls feel self-conscience when they post a selfie. It is people like this who constantly enforce the notion in female’s heads that we aren’t pretty enough. Since I have been at Stetson I try to push the misogynistic hate aside and just ignore the childish peers who make it their goal to make girls feel bad about themselves. But this has gone on too far, too long.
People may see that post as a joke. But it is not. It is an indication of all that is wrong with the mentality of the Stetson male population. I’m not saying all Stetson males share these sentiments as the previous mentioned tweet but an alarming number does. What I can’t understand is what harm is it to post a selfie that you feel beautiful in with that hashtag. Why can’t you share your self-confidence and beauty with the rest of twitter?
Was going to save this for twitter but 140 characters doesn’t do this rant justice. I’ll be posting my #StetsonGirlsTwitter post in the morning.
