#whydogirls is just another way guys have found to shame women for being women

Recently a friend of mine tweeted, innocently and fairly enough, ‘#whydogirls need to wrap their hair up in towels when they finish showering?’. Bless him, he doesn’t know the annoyance of cold wet hair soaking the back of your t-shirt and neck, and so it was a fairly innocent question. I’ve many times seen boys get confused by things from how we manage to use mascara without poking our eyes out to how we all seem to intrinsically know how to plait hair. I clicked on the hashtag, wondering what else guys wondered about us, and to my horror was greeted with sexist tweets, all basically shaming women for doing everyday things or merely existing whilst not being male.

https://twitter.com/WL3FromDC/status/743294504971558913

https://twitter.com/hayden22russell/status/734816589464371200

Some derided women for having ‘ten bodies’, meaning they slept with ten people. Why shouldn’t anyone have slept with ten people – men and women alike are free to do whatever they want with their bodies, and no one should be judging them for their decisions.

https://twitter.com/campaignmundo/status/701944825172639744

https://twitter.com/Schafer_32/status/734803777073610753

Others went for the classic insult, usually levelled at anyone who had drunk something at Starbucks, posted their meal on Instagram, or used a Snapchat filter. For a start – no one tries to be basic, because no one is a basic as that implies they are uninteresting and unoriginal. I also never have understood these activities being limited to woman because you can’t honestly tell me that you’ve never seen a man in Starbucks?

#whydogirls keep being online and not initiate a talk??

— Manav Saxena (@cyclonerider45) May 15, 2015

#WhyDoGirls have low self esteem

— $hort Dawg (@Davail__) February 23, 2016

This confused tweet came from someone who clearly can’t see the daily tearing down women are subjected to just for existing may play a small part in that.

The sad thing is, although #whydogirls was top trending on Twitter yesterday, it wasn’t even the only hashtag that slammed women. It doesn’t take long to find a whole host of hashtags on the site directed at shaming women, including “#girlsbelike” which included hundreds of tweets pushing the idea that girls were stupid in the things they say or do.

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But the even more worrying aspect for me when I stumbled across #girlsarestupid and #girlssuck – a hub of thousands of tweets apiece – was that it was predominately girls trash talking other girls, and basically trying to distance themselves from women as a whole.

I have NO sympathy for girls who go back to guys when they got treated liked shit. #GirlsAreStupid

— Meg Kolde (@megkol12) April 25, 2016

A lot of them showed zero sympathy for other girls and women, and a lack of understanding of people’s situations. Tweets often seemed to show the same message – see something you consider stupid and immediately condemn it without considering the context of those women’s decisions. It’s very easy to judge women for decisions that you consider bad, but a better suggestion would surely be to support them so they don’t feel like that is the decision they can make.

Feminism means staying united and supporting other women, regardless of the choices they make about how to conduct their lives, and whilst a hashtag is simply a way of sharing your opinion, the consequences of putting this message out there may be that women in difficult positions feel they can’t come to one another for help, in fear of being judged.

https://twitter.com/MeghanAugust/status/759597474428231682

Women are told they have to be a certainly way – elegantly sip wine, watch films rather than sport, and never be cleverer than the guy they are seeing. But it doesn’t matter whether you love wine or beer, sport or films, because the fact that it is your choice and that it is respected is what is ultimately important.

#whydogirls why the fuck is this a hashtag? Remove some ribs and suck yourselves off 🌸

— Scotty 2 Thotty (@_Duke_Of_Spook_) May 15, 2016

#whydogirls have to take anyones crap

— Amber (@ambernash22) May 23, 2016

The only good thing that I could see from these tweets were when women turned them on their heads and responded to show they wouldn’t take anyone – male or females – crap.