If you’re a woman, you probably know what it’s like to be slut-shamed. You’re probably used to everything from ‘that skirt’s too short’ or ‘that top’s see through’ to ‘your cleavage is hanging out’, or ‘you may as well be naked’.
You might even get the odd unsolicited dick pic.
It’s tough being a woman in a culture where we’re expected to simultaneously wear as much and as little as possible and be as virginal yet promiscuous as we can if we’re to be what our misogynistic brethren deem ‘desirable’. Because of this, we should know better than to slut-shame men in return when we are so aware of the damage it can cause in the victim’s personal life. Yet, that’s exactly what Babe’s band of three reporters decided to do.
Most of us will probably know Babe as an off-shoot of The Tab, but in their latest video captioned “We hit up guys on Tinder to see how long it would take to get a dick pic…”, Babe demonstrated a double standard that revealed them to be incredibly problematic.
In the video, three excitable women match with men on Tinder in the usual way, exchanging cheesy chat-up lines to get a conversation going. But then, in an unbelievable show, these women proceed to race against the clock to see how quickly they can convince their unsuspecting matches to send dick pics, all the time criticising the men for being forward. ‘Horny’, one types, to which she receives a series of sexually forward messages.
Her response? ‘Wow, these guys are, like, savage. You don’t even know me.’
Yes, he’s a bit slimy, but you literally just told him you were horny. No worries though, because soon you’re going to get him right back. By sharing his poorly blurred-out dick pic, along with his poorly blurred-out profile picture and name, and having a good laugh about it. On a huge social media platform.
Of course, lots of men are guilty of pestering women for explicit images over apps such as Tinder, but that does not give women the right to target random men and humiliate them in such a public place. It would perhaps be a different story if the dick-pics featured in this video were unsolicited; examples of the very real harassment that women on tinder and other dating apps are used to. However, the photos sent were directly asked for, undermining the harassment that does exist.
There is nothing wrong with sending nude photos to someone who has expressed enthusiasm for seeing said photos. Sharing intimate images of another person without their consent is, however, a crime.
Slut-shaming, as this behaviour indeed falls under, is never OK. So many women have fought for women’s rights, to be treated on an equal footing with men, and for this? Say what you will, if those Babe reporters were men seeing how quickly they could get nudes from women, laughing at them and sharing their pictures in such a shabbily censored way, there would be uproar. There is a long way to go before we achieve gender equality, but this is not how we will get there.
Image: freestocks.org via Flickr
