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As it turns out, the website EmmaWatsonYouAreNext.com – a site on which nude images of Emma Watson would have supposedly been leaked as revenge for her daring to speak out in support of (extremely male-friendly) feminism – was a hoax aimed at 4chan.
The site originally displayed a countdown timer with an image of a crying Emma Watson.
Once the countdown ran out the site redirected visitors to rantic.com where Rantic tugged quite firmly and shamelessly on readers’ heart strings, begging all to help try “shut down 4chan”.
Rantic might refer to itself as a “social media marketing enterprise”, but really they appear to be nothing more than a hoax themselves, with links to fake news site FoxWeekly. You can read more about this here.
Make no mistake, whoever is behind Rantic has no interest in protecting women from the misogynistic cesspool that is 4chan.
Instead, women’s bodies and dignity are being used as playing pieces in some sort of perverse and disturbing game.
I’m reminded of a quote in Anita Sarkeesian’s videos about sexism in games,
“In the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team, they are the ball.”
So EmmaWatsonYouAreNext.com might have been a hoax, but Rantic did not create 4chan's gleeful reaction to the promise of the photo leak, or their rabid fury at Emma Watson for daring to be a feminist. That was all their own. As this Vox article reported,
It says volumes that there are people who really, truly believe that naked or sexualised images of Emma Watson would make anything important she has to say about feminism invalid.
Why on earth would a picture of Watson clearly enjoying sex be the end to her feminism campaign? How could a sexually liberated woman possibly be a bad example of a feminist?
Because the underlying belief is still that sex is something that men get or “win” from women rather than something men and women share. Sex is still treated as something men should be proud of, and women should be ashamed of.
The idea is that a woman who has sex has somehow “lost” to men, and therefore cannot be a feminist.
That’s why there’s often so much aggression against women as opposed to the glorifying of men in many narratives surrounding sex. It’s all “sluts getting fucked” vs. “alphas playing the game”.
It’s all so horribly unnecessary, and ultimately hurts everyone involved, including the poor men and boys who really do seem to believe that no woman could possibly really enjoy and want to have sex with them.
But perhaps 4chan think it’s specifically the sexual violation of stealing Watson’s images and leaking them against her will that will hurt her campaign.
What these 4chan users don’t seem to get is it won’t and it can’t.
You can use violence and violation to hurt people who are saying things you don’t like, but it won’t help your cause to win. It will just show the world how despicable your cause is.
If anything, 4chan is helping feminism.
The myth that feminists are women who hate men is anti-feminists’ biggest and most effective lie, and Emma Watson’s campaign is a threat to that lie. That’s why anti-feminist misogynists on 4chan are so angry.
But by showing they still believe the best way to respond to and silence a woman saying something they don’t like is to threaten sexual violation, they’ve just proven and emphasised exactly Watson’s point:
Feminism is not about hating men. It is a fair and justified response to gender inequality, and it’s still important.
And everyone who believes in what’s good, right, and just, men and women alike, need to fight back against those who actively hate women, who want to hurt, abuse, and silence us, so that we can establish gender equality for all.
Follow Laura on Twitter or visit her blog.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
The site originally displayed a countdown timer with an image of a crying Emma Watson.
Once the countdown ran out the site redirected visitors to rantic.com where Rantic tugged quite firmly and shamelessly on readers’ heart strings, begging all to help try “shut down 4chan”.
Rantic might refer to itself as a “social media marketing enterprise”, but really they appear to be nothing more than a hoax themselves, with links to fake news site FoxWeekly. You can read more about this here.
Make no mistake, whoever is behind Rantic has no interest in protecting women from the misogynistic cesspool that is 4chan.
Instead, women’s bodies and dignity are being used as playing pieces in some sort of perverse and disturbing game.
I’m reminded of a quote in Anita Sarkeesian’s videos about sexism in games,
“In the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team, they are the ball.”
So EmmaWatsonYouAreNext.com might have been a hoax, but Rantic did not create 4chan's gleeful reaction to the promise of the photo leak, or their rabid fury at Emma Watson for daring to be a feminist. That was all their own. As this Vox article reported,
It says volumes that there are people who really, truly believe that naked or sexualised images of Emma Watson would make anything important she has to say about feminism invalid.
Why on earth would a picture of Watson clearly enjoying sex be the end to her feminism campaign? How could a sexually liberated woman possibly be a bad example of a feminist?
Because the underlying belief is still that sex is something that men get or “win” from women rather than something men and women share. Sex is still treated as something men should be proud of, and women should be ashamed of.
The idea is that a woman who has sex has somehow “lost” to men, and therefore cannot be a feminist.
That’s why there’s often so much aggression against women as opposed to the glorifying of men in many narratives surrounding sex. It’s all “sluts getting fucked” vs. “alphas playing the game”.
It’s all so horribly unnecessary, and ultimately hurts everyone involved, including the poor men and boys who really do seem to believe that no woman could possibly really enjoy and want to have sex with them.
But perhaps 4chan think it’s specifically the sexual violation of stealing Watson’s images and leaking them against her will that will hurt her campaign.
What these 4chan users don’t seem to get is it won’t and it can’t.
You can use violence and violation to hurt people who are saying things you don’t like, but it won’t help your cause to win. It will just show the world how despicable your cause is.
If anything, 4chan is helping feminism.
The myth that feminists are women who hate men is anti-feminists’ biggest and most effective lie, and Emma Watson’s campaign is a threat to that lie. That’s why anti-feminist misogynists on 4chan are so angry.
But by showing they still believe the best way to respond to and silence a woman saying something they don’t like is to threaten sexual violation, they’ve just proven and emphasised exactly Watson’s point:
Feminism is not about hating men. It is a fair and justified response to gender inequality, and it’s still important.
And everyone who believes in what’s good, right, and just, men and women alike, need to fight back against those who actively hate women, who want to hurt, abuse, and silence us, so that we can establish gender equality for all.
Follow Laura on Twitter or visit her blog.
Follow Women24 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
