The most explosive hashtag I've seen so far, the #yesallwomen hashtag propelled millions of women and men to take to twitter and start a dialogue about sexual assault and violence against women. In the wake of several attacks made against women the past month, the most shocking being the shooting in Isla Vista in the US and the killing of a pregnant woman in Pakistan for apostasy.
The #yesallwomen hashtag was derived from the Isal Vista shooting but it is relevant in any circumstance. The accounts of misogyny and everyday sexism were being tweeted, thousands per minute. It lead to the creation of a few associated hashtags such as #notallmen.
The #notallmen hashtag was a terrible distraction from the discourse at hands and ended up compromising the entire discourse. Besides this, there were many articles floating around from mostly conservative sources such as The Federalist, full of inaccuracies and misinformation.
The most common error to be commited, I find, is when people forget to check their own privilege. There are a few things in my life I will never be able to understand because I am a white woman. I can empathize, I can try to understand but I'll never truly feel the discrimination that some people go through their entire lives.
In any and every case we always need to assume that we do not know of the pain of others, that we can only truly know our own pain. We cannot judge someone else's pain so we cannot judge the violence committed against a group or against a person.
We can also never forget that discrimination should be looked at keeping in mind the idea of cultural relativity. What happens here, in Europe or in the United States is, in no way, comparable, to the atrocities committed against humanity in countries such as Burnei ( who just passed their anti-gay law), Pakistan, Nigeria etc.
Secondly, I think the other grave mistake was a mistake that is so common it is starting to be annoying. Feminism is the strive for social, political and economic equality of the sexes. Nothing less, nothing more than this. We do not hate men. Well, some feminists hate men but most of them do not. We are here to strive for equality, to improve each other and ourselves. What good can we do if we are constantly bickering with one another?
