By Maria DiPasquale, Staff Writer, Emerson College
Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time on the Internet has dealt with the reality of trolls, people who seem to be fucking with everyone for no apparent reason. In the past couple of weeks, there has been a good deal of trolling happening on my Twitter timeline. But for once, it was the kind of trolling I could get behind. It was feminists trolling the trolls.
Lately, feminists have been using hashtags to create trending topics that comment on patriarchal culture. One of the best things about these hashtags is that they do what anti-feminists like to claim feminists cannot do: be funny. Not only are the jokes funny, but they are funny feminist jokes. There is a common distinction among the feminist community between a rape joke and a rape culture joke. Rape jokes are not okay, but rape culture jokes are acceptable and constructive because they attack the debilitating sexist culture that feminists are trying to dismantle. These hashtags do the same thing. They use the ridiculous rhetoric of the opposition to make powerful statements about what is wrong with the patriarchy of our society.
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Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time on the Internet has dealt with the reality of trolls, people who seem to be fucking with everyone for no apparent reason. In the past couple of weeks, there has been a good deal of trolling happening on my Twitter timeline. But for once, it was the kind of trolling I could get behind. It was feminists trolling the trolls.
Lately, feminists have been using hashtags to create trending topics that comment on patriarchal culture. One of the best things about these hashtags is that they do what anti-feminists like to claim feminists cannot do: be funny. Not only are the jokes funny, but they are funny feminist jokes. There is a common distinction among the feminist community between a rape joke and a rape culture joke. Rape jokes are not okay, but rape culture jokes are acceptable and constructive because they attack the debilitating sexist culture that feminists are trying to dismantle. These hashtags do the same thing. They use the ridiculous rhetoric of the opposition to make powerful statements about what is wrong with the patriarchy of our society.
Read More Here