“Your body, my choice.”
As I listened in horror, my phone slipped from my hands, but I made no movements to reach out and grab for it. It felt as if I was frozen in time, unable to make any reactions or movements.
When I entered social media at age 12, I believed it to be a safe haven. I was able to reach out to other individuals who had the same interests as me; I could connect with my old friends and be updated on my cousin’s lives from across the world. Yet as I dived deeper down onto the internet’s content, I was faced with more of the “dark-media,” more conscious about the filter-less comments being made on videos and posts. From telling women to go back to the kitchen, to threatening to rape women for making a statement about their views, my presence on social media only made the aggravating comments more and more prevalent on my feed.
Many fight back on the feminists today, claiming that the patriarchy is dead, that women already have equal rights. Yet, women still walk in fear from their house to their car, gripping their keys as a weapon; women still travel in groups because it’s easier to fight off rapists in groups than as a single walker; women still earn $0.84 for every dollar a man does, yet when she is successful in earning the same amount, she slept her way to the top.
The fight for equal rights is still real, especially in today’s world, where social media contributes to a lack of empathy and acts as a platform to spread more fear. The fight I participate in is not just for my generation, but also for my future daughters and nieces, so they don’t have to live in a world of fear, where they’re deemed as lesser than simply for their gender.
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