There was a time when I would go on Facebook and find men sharing the same post of a picture of a teenage girl having sexual relations with her boyfriend at the time. The boyfriend was angry by her because she decided to not be with him anymore and started dating somebody else. As a result, he posted this picture on his page calling her derogatory names in order to ruin her reputation. This post spread throughout Facebook with people defending her while others had called her a hoe. She was probably too scared to say something or felt angry over the fact that a guy that she trust with was capable of doing this. What he did is called revenge porn which he could have been accused of but instead seen as a hero for some people. I don’t know about you but there is still a lot of change that still has to occur for women to feel respected just like how men are.
Digital Rhetoric is a way to persuade and inform people through the internet. However, there are negative consequences that come with trying to convince a group about a certain topic, in this case, women. Men are painted as hero’s for their own community when they demean women and are to scared to say anything to the women face so they run to the internet. When women don’t want to be with them, they try to persuade others that they are hoe’s by posting intimate pictures that was supposed to be the eye’s of the guy and the girl.
In the chapter “Rape Threats and Revenge Porn:Defining Sexual Violence in the Digital Age”, the author, Jordan Fairbairn, discusses how rape threats and revenge porn on the internet are viewed to not be as substantial as domestic violence as it “described as humiliation, but not violence” (241). She creates a connection between the definitions of sexual violence to what women feel with dealing with sexual violence and how similar they are. Fairbairn brings up the case of Hunter Moore who was fight for running a site named isanyoneup.com, “where he encouraged men to share naked photos of women, along with their names, age, location, and links to their various social media profiles” (238). He was not acquitted for what happened but later was charged for hacking into people emails for photos, which was a major stepping stone for women of cyber sexual violence. But that is obviously not the end of it as there are still cases of revenge porn, for example Blac Chyna who left her husband and he posted videos of her with other men on Instagram. People would often put the blame on the woman because of her decisions during the relationship and justify the guys actions.
Revenge porn is not the only thing that women have to face on media. It’s not just men but also people behind many of the biggest search engines that uses the stereotypes of women to define beauty and sexualize them. The usage of ethos is what lets them to be able to persuade so many since they are such huge companies that are meant to be where people will receive their information from. The first thing that pops up when you search for beautiful women on google search engines, you’ll have different white women with straight hair and not one picture of colored women. I think that’s why so many girls are pressured to straighten their hair and destroy their beautiful natural hair, so they can fit into this category of beauty. The first thing that pops up when you search for black girls is different pornsites, which doesn’t showcase their beauty but instead sexualizes them. Melanin has started to become a trend in the media but for those that have to live in their skin color have to deal with the stereotypes that come with it, compared to white women that are just tanning. These women have to go online and see that their skin color is just being objectified as sex. Sofia Noble points out this observation in one of her talks, discussing how many stigmas and stereotypes are represented throughout media giving out this incorrect information about women. She rather have people get their information from libraries instead of using search engines to make sense of the world.
Digital rhetoric has let people be able to communicate what they desire but it also has led people to believe such stereotypes of women and be able to categorize women as sexual objects.
Fairbairn, J. (2015). Rape Threats and Revenge Porn:Defining Sexual Violence in the Digital Age. In EGirls (pp. 229-247). University of Ottawa Press.(2016, June