The objectification and sexualisation of women in social media and how it affects people

What forms of social media show the most rape culture?

Social media is a huge influence in today’s society, it can be used for spreading positive messages such as self-love and body acceptance. However because of its strong influence it can be used to push detrimental and negative thoughts onto people. Woman are being sexually objectified and harrassed through social media. We have found that tweets posted on Twitter and statuses put on Facebook are the most objectifying to women and promote rape culture more so than other types of social media.

Some examples we found include... 

Facebook and Twitter have both been accused of promoting rape culture, by not taking down a post because it did not "violate their terms of service" on grounds of "this advocates harm or mocks injured victims". It is EXACTLY what that post is doing. Promoting the rape of lesbian women and mocking the victims, is a severe epidemic for the lgbtq+ community, as is promoting the rape of and mocking of prostitutes.

       

What is a case where rape has been put on social media and glorified?

A example of this happened on August the 11th 2012, known as the Steubenville High School rape case. In this situation a high school girl who was under the influence of alcohol was publicly and repeatedly sexually assaulted by her peers, several of them documented the horrible acts and put them on social media. The photos and videos were shared on facebook, instagram, twitter and youtube, shared again multiple times, the boys making it look “fun” and “socially acceptable’. People quickly took to social media posting horrible comments indicating that it was the girl's fault because she was partying with a bunch of teenage boys. Some members of the community blamed the girl for her own rape and blamed her for casting a negative light on the football team and town. Here are some examples of victim blaming on media.

       

What are the effects of rape culture on social media in real life?

Rape, is unfortunately a common, yet still horrible occurrence, you don't need to look far into it to know that hundreds of women are raped each day, many of whose attackers do not receive any punishment at all. This happens every minute and because of its unfortunate commonness people feel they can normalise rape and try to act as though it is less serious than it is, and many do this through social media because it reaches so many people, especially many younger, more impressionable individuals. The effects of people normalising rape and acting as though it is ‘no big deal’ can have drastic effects, from people simply treating women like dirt because they think they ‘belong to them', to men actually raping women due to thinking it is ‘ok’. This should never happen but due to people spreading their opinions via social media some people may form their own opinions on what is ok or not.

Another effect is victim blaming on social media, this implies that rape is the victim's fault and that women need to make sure they don't get assaulted instead of men being taught (or having the basic morals) not to rape. This is also a huge setback for feminism as it reinforces that ‘men can do no wrong’ and ‘women are the problem’.

This type of social media opinion sharing can have highly negative affects as I just reviewed. Overall rape normalisation, glorification, victim blame and support for abusers never has any positive outcome and can seriously affect people’s opinions and safety.