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#YesAllWomen: This Is Not About You

#YesAllWomen is not about you: It’s about us. The conversation encourages empathy in a debate clouded by cognitive dissonance. Listen and learn.

Dear Random Man of the Internet. If you are feeling marginalized, targeted, oppressed, or objectified by the #YesAllWomen hashtag that has been trending on Twitter since the Isla Vista murders last week, here is a dose of reality. This is not about you. And you need to listen.

This morning I tweeted the following:

#YesAllWomen encourages empathy in a debate clouded by cognitive dissonance. Listen and learn.”

And you immediately responded:

“No it doesn’t. It indicts men. Exploits tragedy where mentally ill man who hated all humanity killed 3 men. All to advance an agenda.”

This seems a common sentiment and it is a validation of my original tweet: The cognitive dissonance felt when confronted with the reality of how our society treats women causes men to feel like victims of unjust treatment – a role reversal they immediately speak up about. Which is exactly what women are doing with the #YesAllWomen tag. You are right, Random Man from the Internet, there is an agenda here: Women want to be treated like human beings, not objects. And whether you feel you are part of the problem or part of the solution it is your obligation to check your ego and privilege at the door, hear them out, and see the world from their perspective. Your feelings on the matter are not relevant here. This is not about you.

Empathy and the Shared Experience

When a person shares their human experience with us and gives us a glimpse of what the world is like from their perspective, we are privileged to listen. Our ability as humans to share in the experience of others, to empathise, and to adjust our world-view and our behaviour accordingly is what makes us a social species. It is part of what makes us who we are.

When the experience shared is one of fear, frustration, anguish, and pain, we are obliged to listen and to give our support. #YesAllWomen is that; on a scale we have never seen before.

#YesAllWomen is the collective sharing of the human experience from the majority of the human race: Those that identify as female. It is a glimpse of what the world is like for a group that is marginalized, targeted, oppressed, objectified, and sexualized by the very society they are a part of. And when they speak up, we owe it to them to shut up and listen, take their message to heart, stand with them, and take a long hard look at ourselves.

#YesAllWomen: It’s Not About You, It’s About Us

#YesAllWomen is not about you: It’s about us. We can’t continue down a path that forces half of us to live in fear, constantly looking over their shoulders, and knowing that no matter how hard they work, they will be judged on their gender before they get judged on their merits.

#YesAllWomen is not an indictment of you as a person, nor of all men or any other group. It is an indictment of a society and societal norms that are as anachronistic as they are morally wrong. It is a demand that all voices be heard and that we put our cognitive dissonance aside. Look beyond yourself and help shine a light on systemic injustices imposed on our fellow human beings.

Listen and Learn

To all the women out there, yes, all women. Please keep talking. We are listening and we stand with you.

Take an hour out of your day to read the ever expanding #YesAllWomen tag. Take a few steps in her shoes and realize it is not about you. It is about humanity.

 

By Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a staff author at LinkedIn Learning and lynda.com specializing in WordPress and web design and development and an instructor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He is a popular speaker and educator on all things design, web standards and open source. As the owner and Web Head at Pink & Yellow Media, a boutique style digital media company in Burnaby, BC, Canada, he has created WordPress-based web solutions for multi-national companies, political parties, banks, and small businesses and bloggers alike. He also contributes to the local WordPress community by organizing Meetups and WordCamps.

7 replies on “#YesAllWomen: This Is Not About You”

Hello Morten,
yesterday I downloaded and installed your wonderfully beautiful WordPress theme Simone. Thank you for that.
And the first post I wrote and posted today was on #YesAllMankind, about that this #YesAllWomen movement needs to be taken serious. Especially by us, men.
So I was really surprised that when I clicked the link today to your website, to find a similar post on top of your website. And I couldn’t agree more. So thank you not only for the theme, but also for your great insight in this topic.

Hi Morten,
I just have to echo the comment by petepel, and I thank you for posting this.
This is a planetary issue, although there remain cultures and religions that put women at the bottom of the ladder of importance. I won’t mention any of those cultures or religions, but I’m sure many know of them. I can’t believe in this century, that we’re still talking about this. You’d think that our ever-expanding society, world-wide, would have come to grips with this and would have done away with it by now.
The fact that this has become such a huge thing on Twitter, is even more amazing. If those tweets did not have a name or an avatar attached, they would be more or less without sex, and likely treated much differently.
Let’s go back to early computer programming and start over. Not Hello Man. Not Hello Woman. But, Hello World!

Thanks for your input on this very important issue that shouldn’t be ignored. A person should not be judged on his or her sex, race, or political orientation under any circumstance. It really amazes me that people can be so presumptuous as to think they have rights to such immoral and immature behavior. Where do they get the nerve to voice it in public?

Ha! I chose to leave the comment from “Replica Ray Ban Aviators” in just because of your comment. This is a perfect example of a new type of spam that randomly puts together sentences from multiple different sources and mixes in key terms they want to target. I get about 2000 of these comments per day and 98% of them get caught and deleted automatically. Sadly 2% get through and are seen by the public.

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