The internet has been the forum of choice for some of the most hateful, hurtful sentiments ever expressed by human beings. And that’s not just limited to YouTube comment sections. Twitter can sometimes seem like a godless, gore-splattered wasteland where the only “law” is chaos. As veteran users of the social media platform can attest, there are certain words that angry up Twitter’s blood. One of those words is “feminist.” This year has seen the release of a female-led Ghostbusters and the announcement of Ocean’s 8, a distaff reboot of Ocean’s Eleven. Both have been, to say the least, controversial. So when the hashtag #FeministAMovie started trending on Thursday, it was not altogether a surprise that the trolls came out in full force. Over at The Daily Dot, now that the dust has cleared, Nayomi Reghay presents a roundup of the best and worst #FeministAMovie tweets.
It is Reghay’s argument that those female-centric remakes and reboots are still necessary, and #FeministAMovie proves it. It’s true that there were some funny, perceptive tweets along the way, like this one:
And this, too:
But, for the most part, #FeministAMovie quickly devolved into a regressive chauvinist nightmare and remained that way all day. Fat jokes were common.
Another popular theme was feminists’ supposed aversion to sexual intercourse. One is reminded of Julianne Moore’s speech in The Big Lebowski: “It’s a male myth about feminists that we hate sex. It can be a natural, zesty enterprise.” But that’s not how Twitter was seeing it on Thursday.
Reghay also found this similar tweet from 2015.
Reghay points out that “you can’t say ‘feminist’ without people obsessing over female grooming habits.” And obsess they did.
Yeah. So that’s how Twitter handled it when the topic #FeministAMovie came up. Maybe the entire internet needs to go somewhere quiet and reflect on this for a while.