TO ALL GIRLS THAT — USE THE DOG FILTER ON SNAPCHAT :https://t.co/gpy5FEeirw
— YaLocalWhiteBoy (@NoHoesGeorge) April 9, 2016
The filters on Snapchat have given us laughs, horrors, and one even offended us with it’s racist blackface undertone. The app gives you plenty of options: to face swap, to become distorted, to speed up or slow down a video, and to puke a rainbow. There’s also the filter that turned you into a cute puppy and another one that puts a crown of flowers over your head. To most, this would all seem like fun and games but for a specific group of males (and a few females too, for reasons I cannot fathom) it’s become the latest tool to slut shame! We saw it when the puppy filter first surfaced and for some reason, it really aggravated some of the men on Twitter. They said things like, “She’s a hoe if she got the puppy filter as her profile pic!” or “You know if she uses the puppy dog filter, then she’s a hoe!” Then, after the puppy filter was removed and replaced by a flower crown filter, the same sort of thing happened! “The flower crown filter is the new hoe filter!!” As you can see, there is no correlation. It makes absolutely no sense to a practical person. How does a filter determine a women’s sexual activity?
RULE #215: SHE A HOE IF SHE — USES THE DOG FILTER ON SNAPCHAT
— HOE RULES (@HOERULES) February 19, 2016
The word “hoe” or “ho” is used to slut shame and degrade women for their alleged promiscuity. Slut shaming is the degradation of women for being sexual and/or wearing revealing clothing. It contributes to rape culture and victim blaming. The reason why a lot of women aren’t taken seriously when rape claims are made is largely due to slut shaming and the idea that promiscuous women are always at fault. We know slut shaming is wrong, we know we’re sick of seeing it. We have argued until we were blue in the face that a woman who is comfortable with her sexuality is not a slut, whore, hoe, etc… We’ve defended ladies who have a lot of sex and we’ve defended sex workers. We have been working overtime to assure that a woman’s value is not dependent on the amount of sex she has had- either now or in the past. But slut shaming women has been taken to a whole new level with these Snapchat filters. It feels like a slap in the face to the movement, it feels like regression. Bottom line, it feels like women aren’t genuinely able to enjoy anything without people seeking it out and attacking us for it.
Why aren’t women allowed to exist without being shamed for it?
It seems like we are put down for just about anything; from selfie taking, to enjoying video games and comic books, for using cute filters on Snapchat, to even something as humanly basic as craving attention.We are always surrounded by opinions from others who claim we need their validation to exist. We can’t like a band without men claiming it as us seeking out attention from men, we can’t enjoy superhero movies without men claiming that we are only doing it so they will like us. At the end of the day, women are just being women. They aren’t using Snapchat filters to catch male attention or to seduce anyone, they aren’t picking up new hobbies and interests to impress a boy. The very existence of the female population does not rely on male approval and validation. We don’t want it from them. We don’t want a male opinion on what we choose to do with our faces and bodies on social media. We aren’t going to let men destroy the things we collectively enjoy doing as women and teenage girls. And we aren’t going to stop doing these things just because they take up an issue with it or get aggressive over it.
This idea that just because a majority of girls are enjoying something (whether it be a new filter or a boy band) means that there is something inherently wrong with it just doesn’t make sense. There is no reason to devalue or degrade something just because the mass majority of the female population are infatuated with it. That’s internalized misogyny. Putting down an item, idea, group or trend because women like it and you feel like it is not masculine to appreciate it is illogical and misogynistic. You do not need to be threatened by the fact that women might actually like something more than they could ever like you. You do need to insult something just because women like it and you feel like crushing it with your big, manly fists is the masculine thing to do. On the other hand, you don’t have to feel embarrassed to enjoy the same things we do or voice your appreciation for them. Last I checked, puppies and flowers were for everyone, not just girls. These things are meant for ALL of us to use and enjoy, why are you letting perceived gender roles get in the way of that and creating hostility? These filters weren’t created just for the male and female binary. It wasn’t about that UNTIL you guys made it about that. Why can’t we all just enjoy the technology we have and make good use out of it before it’s gone? Why can’t we choose to create memories with these filters instead of creating another divisive line between men and women? Our generation was supposed to be more open minded than that. Our generation was supposed to be better than that.
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