"10 tweets that reveal the bullshit female writers have to put up with." A Professional Female Writer Who Makes a Living by Complaining

"10 tweets that reveal the bullshit female writers have to put up with." 

A Professional Female Writer Who Makes a Living by Complaining about Tweets

There is always something really amusing when reading an article such as Erin Canty's recently published work "10 tweets that reveal the bullshit female writers have to put up with." which was published by the highly esteemed, philosophical deities at UpWorthy.com. 

After reading several of her articles, I have come to the conclusion that Erin Canty is your typical college-educated professional blogger that makes a living by writing the same articles that every professional blog writes, and 90% of the time her articles are nothing more than her incessant complaining about how hard life can be. Of course, I am never one to say that certain people of certain groups face different challenges and face different societal expectations, but what really solidifies Erin Canty as nothing more than an average Buzzfeed journalist is the fact that she doesn't have any solutions. She only wants to complain, but she either doesn't know how to make changes or she doesn't care to try and change anything. In these scenarios, I typically side with the latter, especially since writers such as Erin make their livings off of the things that they complain about. 

In her article, which is literally nothing more than a collection of random, somewhat anonymous tweets, one can see the damage that the philosophies that writers such as Erin subscribe to can have on certain groups of people. I'm going to dissect Erin's article piece by piece in order to help explain the lunacy of it all. 

Erin begins her article with some classic faux outrage against a group of people that doesn't necessarily exist;

"This may not seem like breaking news to most of you, but apparently, quite a few people still can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that women write and publish works of fiction, nonfiction, journalism, and research every single day."

This is one of the many unoriginal ways in which writers such as Erin begin to garner interest in their writings; they create a group of evil people full of hatred and then write articles criticizing them, or "showing them who's boss." Luckily for us, Erin does both here, but we will get to that towards the end of this blog post. For now, I'll focus on the imaginary group of people that Erin has "apparently" learned about in the past couple of days. 

It is ridiculous to assume that there are large amounts of people that cannot come to terms with the fact that there are professional female writers in the world. Did she forget about the incredibly successful Twilight series written by Stephanie Meyer, a woman with a net worth of over $125 million? Dare I say it, but what about Erika Mitchell, or maybe her more famous moniker of E. L. James, the writer of the Fifty Shades trilogy with a net worth of over $80 million? These are two women who were so wildly successful in their craft that their art has become a household name. I for one think it is incredibly impressive that an erotic, BDSM fantasy novel (or so I have been told from the book reviews as I have not read the book) became something so popular that I still see it mentioned in the news or in other major pop culture references to this day. One might argue that Erika Mitchell and Stephanie Meyer aren't facing some sort of sexist outrage from evil men on the internet because their books were written mostly for a female audience, but to assume that there is a common disapproval of women in the book industry in the age of Harry Potter, a multi-billion dollar franchise that was invented by J. K. Rowling, a woman, is absolutely ludicrous and false.

Other Incredibly Successful Female Writers:
Danielle Steel 
Toni Morrison

Mary Higgins Clark
Maya Angelou
Alice Walker
Jhumpa Lahiri
Joyce Carol Oates
The list is really really long

Perhaps Erin knows of the successful women that have laid a path for an entrepreneurial success as an independent writer, but she has simply decided to pretend that they don't exist. I think it's also possible that Erin has decided to use her creative writing skills that she has gathered over her many years to instead create a universe where women have it too tough to be able to succeed because of what evil men say to them. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that Erin most likely believes whole-heartedly in what she is saying in her article, but I must give her credit as she, like any highly esteemed journalist, has garnered ten solid pieces of evidence to support her provocative claim.

According to Erin's research, Joanne Harris, the author of Chocolat and a person who somehow was able to become a successful writer despite all of the mean things that evil men have told her, received a threatening and unprovoked attack:

"Joanne Harris, author of more than a dozen novels, including the hit 'Chocolat,' which was adapted for the screen, called out this discrepancy [discrepancy meaning the vast imaginary intolerance of professional women writers] on Twitter.  

After one tweeter said, 'Men sacrifice interests for family. That's a fact. I think it's a mistake to believe otherwise,'..."

So this is how it all started. An evil man who has masked himself behind the anonimity of the internet for the purpose of attacking defenseless women on the internet has assaulted Joanne with his hateful words. "Men sacrifice interests for family," pump the fucking breaks right their pal. Did you just really? Don't you know it's 2017? But oh, it gets better when he hits her with the "I think it's a mistake to believe otherwise." Why hasn't this man been arrested for rape with his criminal words? Who is this masked internet troll? I bet he is nothing more than an overweight teenager living in his parents' basement.

The man who wrote this tweet's name is Michael Topic, and he currently runs an in depth blog where he discusses various topics in which he has experience, including but not limited to music, composition, fiction and non-fiction writing, product management, music technology design, and et-cetara. This is unfortunate for Joanne, since where she may have first assumed that she was only dealing with a common keyboard warrior, she quickly found herself in a hot debate with an educated renaissance man; furthermore, this renaissance man was ready to bring out the big guns fast. Honestly, I don't know how someone could say something so heartless and hateful such as "Men sacrifice interests for family." Doesn't he know that men are selfish? Doesn't he know that our society doesn't actually expect men to care about their families at all? I'm a father, or I will be a father this coming august, and I can tell you from personal experience that all men are selfish bastards. Hell, I'm giving up my old dream of becoming a professional cellist and transferring schools to get a different degree that will potentially land me in a career with better pay, and you better believe it is all for my own self interests. A lot of people have said to me, "Man, it really sucks to see you give up on something your so passionate about to take care of your family," to which I always scoff at and reply, "You fool! Don't you know that I'm only doing this for my own self interest?! I'm not a woman, I'm a selfish man!" Oh, those poor, naive imbeciles.

Alright, enough of the personal history; when reading this part of the article, one must be wondering why an evil man such as Michael Topic would attack a woman like Joanne Harris out of the blue in such a disgusting manner. I conducted some of my own research into the feud, and discovered that Michael was actually joining in on a discussion where Joanne had made a tweet that was receiving a wide array of replies, one of which being that of the infamous LBAllen:

What is this serpentine witch I see before me? Is that a woman saying that she could not justify spending time on her professional writing career due to her self interest of writing a novel clashing with her need to raise her family? Well my readers, I suggest you sit down before you fall down, as I am about to expose an extreme case of patriarchal brainwashing. Here one can observe a truly disgusting display of self-oppression; the serpent, disguised under the name LBAllen, is explaining to Joanne that she ended her writing career because she decided that it wasn't worth the time and effort if she wasn't receiving a profit, and in a bizarre exposition of lunacy, she seems to suggest that this decision was made entirely on her own as she believed that her family was more important to her than her dream of becoming a writer. The poor thing, at the time she didn't even know that she was going to receive a truly impressive logical smack-down from the philosophy queen Joanne:

Joanne smartly counters with an excellent point; men aren't expected to make sacrifices for their families! Men are selfish! And to further solidify her argument, Joanne's excellent critical thinking has led her to the conclusion that if men are selfish, then women should also act selfishly! Women don't need to justify why they are spending more time on a personal interest and ignoring their family, since men are evil and do it all of the time! It makes such perfect sense, and it's almost as if Joanne has ascended to some kind of philosophy queen Nirvana and is graciously sharing her sacred knowledge with the rest of the world so that it may better itself. Here one can see that the argument is over; LBAllen has been successfully shamed for giving up a hobby/unprofitable career path to focus more time on her family. The battle is over. Checkmate, evil men. 

But lo, what yonder light mounts over Joanne's logical demesne? Is that what I think it is? It's Michael Topic, and his tweet has finally come into context! So his tweet, as full of hatred as it is, was actually a response to an off-topic sexist remark made by Joanne to shame a woman who made her own decision to spend more time focusing on her family; however, I think I recall Erin Canty depicting Joanne as the victim of making sexist remarks in her fable of an article. 

Now, I would assume that Joanne, after reading Michael Topic's reply and understanding that billions of men worldwide work jobs that they don't enjoy so that they can provide their families the means to live a happy life, however, she decides to double down on her sexist remark;

And thus, the hashtag #ThingsOnlyWomenWritersHear was born, as claimed by Erin in her article. Now, if there was a rational argument behind Joanne's statements, I might be able to understand where she's coming from; however, little does she know evil men are legally required to make sacrifices for their families regardless of what they choose to do, and the legal ramifications for not doing so far exceed any amount of mean tweets she could receive. Just to humor myself and my readers, I'll go ahead and rattle some off.

Regardless of whether or not a man wants to have a child, a woman who has become pregnant with a child that the man has fathered will expect that the man will be helping pay for the child's development in some way, shape, or manner. If he doesn't wish to be involved in the child's life because he doesn't want to be a father, he will still be legally required to pay child support for the full duration of the child's adolescent life, provided that the man is making enough money to financially support himself and the mother has requested such access. Furthermore, if the man decides later on down the road that he wishes to see the child that he has been supporting against his will, he might be denied access to visitation, and he may never be able to see his son or daughter until he or she has surpassed the age of eighteen. I do understand that there is a variety of reasons as to why laws are passed, but one of the primary reasons for the creation of law is that humans have come together as a society and agreed upon the morality of the question at hand, and the expectations for upholding that standard of morality have been set forth by written mandate and threat of prosecution. As a society in the United States, and any other country that has similar divorce law, we not only expect men to make sacrifices for their family, but in many cases we legally require them to do so whether they would like to or not. If they don't, then they get the popular label "dead beat dad." Now of course, divorce law is much more complicated than this simple description of child support, especially since child support is requested and not always received, and it can be awarded to either a custodial father or a custodial mother, but by the mere existence of these statutes does Joanne's sexist remark begin to fall apart. 

Another famous example is that of a historical tragedy, the sinking of the Titanic. Out of the 2226 passengers, 324 survivors were women, 56 were children, and 323 were men. If one were to consider the amount of survivors by these three demographics, one might first assume that the survivor outcome by gender may seem fairly equal, but when the survivor count is compared to the amount of passengers of the three demographics that had originally boarded the ship, there is a different story to be told. 75% of the women on board were able to successfully escape the sinking ship, but sadly only 50% of the children were rescued. The men, however, must have seemed fairly insignificant to the rescue crews as only 19% of them made it out alive. One must wonder why such a large amount of men were left to die during this tragic event, and maybe perhaps the evil men were too busy indulging themselves in their social-criticism-free self interests to notice the water quickly filling the cabins; however, during this time there was a famous phrase coined due to the moral dilemma of a vastly populated ship that accommodated few lifeboats for the preparation of an emergency. During this era, there had never been ships as large as the Titanic, and the people's inexperience with large-scale crowd control and rescue procedure for maritime emergencies coupled with outdated laws governing the amount of required lifeboats for a ship of this size created a heart-wrenching scenario in which the crew of the ship had to carefully decide who got a spot on the lifeboat. The story goes that when the realization that the Titanic was going to go under began to set in, an officer had asked Captain Edward Smith this famous question; "Hadn't we better get the women and children into the boats, sir?" The officer's suggestion to the captain popularized the phrase "Women and Children First" in American newspapers, a famous unwritten rule of maritime ethics in which women and children are the first priority during a rescue operation. Now, it may seem silly to say that because almost every newspaper pushed this phrase heavily after the news of the tragedy of the Titanic reached land, it means that the phrase is treated as common knowledge and general rule of thumb; however, it is a real unwritten expectation that has existed in literature and practice as far back as the early 19th century. In regards to the Titanic, the men that were saved were branded as cowards for placing themselves on a lifeboat before all of the women and children were taken out of harms way. This specific attack on character was incredibly successful when used against men such as Joseph Bruce Ismay, the chairman and managing director of the company that was responsible for the creation of the infamous ocean liners such as the Olympic, the Titanic, and the Britannic. The story of Joseph is quite troubling, as he was one of the main orchestraters of the rationing of lifeboats during the sinking of the Titanic; the story goes that in the area that he was managing, he made sure with due diligence that all of the women and children under his control had taken up every last available spot in the lifeboats. When he finished boarding the passengers and leading them off to safety, he looked around for any woman or child that he may have missed but was unable to find any in his immediate area. When he returned to the final lifeboat to send it off on its way to rescue, he saw that there was one last spot available that he would be able to squeeze into, and the passengers of the lifeboat graciously invited him to join them with the boat's launching. When Ismay was rescued, the prominent majority of news media viciously attacked him for taking the spot on the lifeboat, and he was labeled a yellow-bellied coward for his rescue because he did not follow the principle of "women and children first." Now, of course there are two sides to this coin, since Ismay was the man who made the decision to lower the Titanic's amount of lifeboats from 48 to 16 since 16 was the lowest amount required by the current maritime law, but in the time of crisis he managed to save many lives. Regardless, it is quite appalling that Ismay was publicly demolished in nearly every news outlet simply for being a man that had allowed himself to live. He did make the fatal mistake of removing the lifeboats, but I think it would be unfair to judge him with such disdain, especially since at the time the people truly believed that the Titanic was virtually unsinkable. The main point of the Titanic as an example of societal expectations of men lies more in the method of rescue; "women and children first." I was taught this when I was very young by the school I went to, and our program spent a good week or two on the history of the Titanic with a huge amount of implication placed on the rescue policy. I would say that this is a very big societal expectation men have in which they are mandated by a universal unwritten code of conduct in which during a time of crisis, they are expected to save their families first and sacrifice their own self-interest, even if it is the interest of staying alive.

Some of the readers may be coming to the conclusion that I am complaining about societal expectations of men to sacrifice their self-interests or to sacrifice themselves for their families or the families of others, but that's a bit on the contrary. If I am in a situation where my wife, my son, and I are all in mortal danger, and only two of us will be able to survive, I would proudly sacrifice myself for my beloved family, and I think most fathers would say the same thing. I make sacrifices for my family every day and I know every other father out there does too (however their are always exceptions to a rule, however I believe when considering the amount of fathers in the world, these exceptions are rare). To further counter Joanne Harris's asinine remarks, when men put their own wants over the needs of their families, they are scrutinized very heavily, as they historically have been for several centuries. The Titanic is only one of many cases in western history where women and children were chosen to survive a tragedy while the men were considered with less importance for the focus of rescue. 

I could provide many more examples of the societal expectations of men, but explaining common sense is an arduous process. I'd much rather go back to ripping into Erin Canty's article.

As I stated earlier, Erin Canty provided ten solid pieces of evidence to back her original claim that female writers are constantly under attack of microagressions in the professional industry. Hopefully the reader is now aware of my sense of humor and understands that I am using the term "solid piece of evidence" to describe ten tweets. I could go ahead and explain why none of the tweets matter or should be taken seriously, but I would hope that the point I would make would be blatantly obvious to most people reading this article. If the reader would like to here the number one reason why articles such as Erin Canty's  "10 tweets that reveal the bullshit female writers have to put up with" should never be taken seriously under any circumstance, I would invite the reader to go ahead and skip to the end, as the rest of the article will be the dismantling of a selection from the ten tweets. Essentially, there are some tweets in the article that aren't necessarily worth the discussion either because they are too personal and/or vague, or for the reason that I will give at the end of the post.

Tweet Number 2

One of the major flaws in articles such as these where there's an attempt to collect a wide variety of super deep, super meaningful, and totally edgy tweets is that all of the messages are incredibly vague. I could argue both for and against Sisona Ryder CR's tweet based on the scenario, but the statement has been left broad and vague on purpose to achieve a better level of artificial empathy from its intended audience. 

Another example of this tactic is one of my favorite things I hear from many that use Twitter and it goes a little something like this; "Don't listen to him, he's a climate denier." It always makes me chuckle a little to myself due to its intentional vagueness and idiocy. What in the world is a "climate denier?" Someone who denies the existence of the climate? I'm certain whoever is being labeled as such isn't schizophrenic. Maybe "climate denier" refers to a disbelief in climate change? Surely the person being labeled believes in the changing of the seasons. Maybe the person thinks that the Environmental Protection Agency is over-regulating companies, and the outcome of the regulations are doing more harm economically and less good environmentally than another method of environmental protection that has potential to generate a healthier climate over a long period of time, and that is why they are being called a "climate denier?" I have asked friends of mine what it means to be a "climate change denier," but I never really seem to get a straight answer, but I am getting off topic. 

What if the girl in Sisona's story is riding a bike and then decides to join in a bike race? Then sure, I bet everyone in the world who has ever ridden a bike will be able to identify with the protagonist in some way. What if Sisona's book was a coming-of-age story where the protagonist was making a big leap from being a girl to becoming a woman? Well then of course boys aren't going to be able to identify with that. Boys do not know what it is like to become a woman. What if Sisona's book is about a young girl who falls in love with a vampire, and the vampire is really hot, but he's in an ancient family feud with a pack of werewolves, and one of the werewolves is really hot too, and the girl just can't decide which one is the right one for her, and then the vampire kisses her on the neck or whatever I haven't actually read the book... Boys can't identify with that. Most boys don't know what it's like to fall in love with the perfect boy. I guess a homosexual boy would have an easier time identifying with the protagonist, but homosexuality is not an equivalent for the different thought processes and emotions that girls experience in relations. There are some things that boys and girls will probably never understand about each others' brains. This is not a criticism, nor am I saying that one gender has a better brain than the other, but it is a scientific fact and more importantly just plain common sense to understand that their are chemical and physical differences between boys and girls' brains and that they may function differently in similar scenarios. 

Is this a bad thing? Not at all, it's what makes the societal relationship between men and women so beautiful. Men cannot survive without the women's thought processes, and women cannot survive without the men's thought processes. The genders need each other to solve complex issues due to the fact that the two will attack problems from wildly different angles, however this does not mean that the two genders will necessarily understand each other or be able to identify with each other every time such a situation arises. I really cannot stress this enough; this is not a bad thing. I think every married man has a "my wife/partner is nuts" moment, and every married woman has a "my husband/partner is crazy" moment. Although a wife and a husband may have a serious fight over these differences in thought processes, the true beauty of the relationship between the genders is the love they have for one another and how it triumphs over the anger of the initial disagreement to create understanding for one another. We're different beings biologically and mentally, but love makes us get over each others' shit.  

For some of these Tweets, I wanted to look up the owner of the Twitter handle and see what work they've put out so that I could promote their writing, but for @SisonaCR, I couldn't find any actual published written material, unless I'm mistaken or hadn't looked hard enough. I did however find a YouTube channel that's entirely dedicated to the Mass Effect video game franchise, and more specifically the recently released Mass Effect Andromeda title. I don't play video games, but I heard it was okay.

Tweet 3

To the readers that are female, let me ask you this; have you ever had a moment where you have been confronted by an evil man that is trying to mansplain all over you with his patriarchy and evilness, and you've had to tell him something along the lines of, "You're not a woman, so you don't know how it feels to be a woman?" I know that Joanne Harris has:

Isn't it okay to recognize the fact that a female writer may be creating a protagonist that's based on a faux understanding of the opposite gender? If I, as an evil man, should be expected to understand that there are certain aspects to the female mind and the female body that I will never be able to understand, isn't it understandable to request that women do the same self reflection for men? Could it be that someone has told Andrea McAuley something along the lines of "Hey, I read some of the book you're writing, and I don't think you've quite nailed the feelings and emotions that men experience. Maybe you should switch the character to being a female so that the psyche and the character match up a little better." Is it really plausible that Andrea is using a real quote here?

I guess the readers that sympathize with Erin Canty's article will probably disagree with me and state that she was clearly chastised for writing a male protagonist, and the patriarchy dictates that only evil men are allowed to write for evil men protagonists.

Andrea McAuley has a blog with different styles of writings and some author interviews.

Tweet 4

Is there really anything wrong with men not wanting to read a book that women would like to read? I really like to fish, and one of the great parts about fishing is the ruggedness and the grit. I used to fish for great big carp in our neighborhood lake, and the fish were so big that they would snap the line when they got too close. When the carp got about a foot or a foot and a half away from the shore, I would pass the rod off to a friend of mine or place it under something heavy depending on the day and then jump into the water to wrestle the fish out with my bare hands. When I say huge carp, these fish were about four feet long and maybe two feet thick. I might be exaggerating, but then again everyone exaggerates with a fishing story, but my point is that it was almost like wrestling with something with about the size and the strength of a medium sized dog, but the dog had no arms and legs and it was covered in a thick layer of mucous that it excreted from its scales. 

I'm not going to say that this is an activity that no girl or woman would enjoy doing, but I think it's fair to say that a majority would not actively seek participation in wrestling in the knee-high mud in four feet of water to get a carp that would most likely just be let back into the water after it was caught (some people would kill them for us because carp are considered an invasive species and a pest that destroys natural habitats due to having no natural predators and an ability to turn a pristine, healthy lake into a muddy mess full of rotting duckweed and dead bass). Does that mean I am going to force women to enjoy it? Absolutely not. Does that mean I'm going to be offended when a friend's wife tells me "but none of us [women] would want to do that!" Of course not, my skin is a little thicker than that. Perhaps the friend's husband was suggesting that she increase her target audience to make her book more widely marketable and therefore profitable, although the beauty of art is that she doesn't have to listen to him. The beauty of both objective and subjective criticism is that offense is never given, only taken. 

There will always be people that won't be interested in reading or appreciating an individual's art. Is that wrong? Absolutely not. It's the nature of art. I currently play in a funk band with my roommate and my beautiful and funky fiancée. The three of us take part in the writing process together, and since we are all classically trained musicians of some degree, we enjoy challenging ourselves by making the music rhythmically and harmonically complex. In the world of music, the general rule of thumb is that the more complex the music is, the harder the music is to listen to. This doesn't make the music better or worse than other music, but it does mean that not everyone will be willing to listen to it like the three of us would. I have been told by so many people that the song with a 5/8 waltz doesn't sound right, but the three of us know that it's not supposed to. We like how it sounds just a little bit off and a little bit wrong, but does that mean I am going to be upset when somebody tells me "But none of us [people who don't like complex funk music] want to listen to that?" No, because I'm not entitled.

I want to know why there are people out there reinforcing the idea that mean words can cause real damage? If I was Lexie Dunne's friend, I would say to her that she has a choice on whether or not she is willing to listen to her friend's husband and take him seriously. She also has a choice on whether or not she's willing to take her singular, isolated experience with one man and apply it to explain every man in existence. 

Lexie Dunne runs a blog and has written a book about a female superhero titled Superheros Anonymous.

Tweet 6

Although I am hoping to transfer schools and pursue a different degree, I currently write and perform music as a professional pursuit. If I went to a record label, a venue, or to a gig contractor and asked them for childcare as a part of my payment, I would be laughed at and humiliated. 

I've explained this in a different blog post, but one thing the Twitter society seems to always forget is that a job's salary is dependent on the market value of the skills or trade needed to do that job. I hate to say this, although it should be common sense, but a writer's salary or income is entirely dependent on the quality and status of their work. If someone is a "professional blogger," they're not going to get child care. If someone has written a book that sold 10,000 copies, they're not going to get child care.

Furthermore, from my understanding writing is primarily a free-lance career, meaning that most of an individual writer's income is going to come from their ability to sell and market their own work to publishers, or their ability to entrepreneurialize their own skill and self-publish/market themselves. 

Very rarely would anyone get child care as a free lancer. They either work hard to gain the money needed to pay for child care, or they use whatever government assistance that is afforded to them. Also, most people don't get child care as a part of their salary just because they are a woman. 

In regards to Anna Yeatts' tweet, the statement is once again far to vague to make a critical assessment as to whether or not her quality of writing deserves payment in the form of expensive child care services. If she does have a job currently that has considerable market value, such as one that requires a rare degree or one that requires considerable experience in her field of work, perhaps she should try to negotiate with her employer to add an extra stipend for child care services. If she doesn't have a job, then she is making her money on her own and is responsible for paying for the service on her own, just like any free-lancer, entrepreneur, or business owner. These kinds of statements always rub me in the wrong way. It displays a certain sense of entitlement; she believes that she deserves a very costly compensation for her work, but it's the nature of capitalism for employers to pay their employees a fair wage so that they don't risk their competitors paying their employees a higher wage. Once again, I have explained this concept in great detail in a separate blog post, and it is tiresome to repeatedly type out the basic principles of free market capitalism. 

Anna Yeatts is a writer, editor, and publisher that runs an online writing workshop boot-camp. Sign up now.

Tweet 10

And here's the finale; it wouldn't be a quality opinion piece without a threat to the dissenters. Just remember, evil men; in the words of E. Latimer, "Do as We say, or we will make it our personal goals to destroy your careers." I'm paraphrasing, of course. 

This is the final tactic of the traditional method of argument for the cultural Marxist school of thought. It starts out with using derogatory and demoralizing terms instead of rational arguments, and in the case for faux-feminist piece such as this selection of tweets disguised as an article, the insult would probably be "mansplaining." I did see that tossed around on twitter while I was collecting my information for this blog post. Mansplaining is the term used when men argue against sexist terms made by women, and technically I am "mansplaining" while writing this sentence due the the sexist nature of the term "mansplaining." It's a term that combines the words "man," and "expalining," and although some might try to suggest that the term is meant to be used for when a man is talking over a woman so that she is not allowed to argue, it is actually used as a way of convincing women whom prescribe to such ideologies that men explaining is sexist, and that the women should disregard and ignore men that explain their views or opinions. E. Latimer has decided to skip the insults though, and she's gone straight into phase two of the cultural Marxist's bullying tactics. She is using the "vague threat that contradicts everything that has just been said in the article" tactic, which is something that is not only somehow widely successful in driving away people who do not agree 100% with the views of the #ThingsOnlyWomenWritersHear movement, but also great at reinforcing the echo chamber that is created around the hashtag. 

If there are lots of women agents/editors, then who is saying all of these nasty things to the women writers? Why don't they just work for the women agents/editors that supposedly won't say nasty things to them? I thought only evil men say nasty things, right? Wouldn't the women be able to band together and create their own writing industry that was entirely made up of women writers, editors, publishers, agents, and etc. so that they could bypass all of the mean things that evil men do? Is the reality of maintaining a professional writing career much more complicated than whether or not a writer experiences contact with a sexist person? Is there any benefit to repeatedly telling women that they are treated unfairly no matter what they do? Does it create a sense of futility among women that prescribe to these ideologies, as if they'll never be successful because something outside their control is always at fault for their inability to progress? If there are lots of women agents, is there something else holding women back from dominating the writing industry? 

These are questions that I'd be interested in hearing Erin Canty answer. After all, it is a huge part of her career to write about the evil things that evil men do to hold back women from ever being successful, so I'm sure she has some valuable insight. And I am certain that her insight definitely would not be based on the fact that she needs manufactured outrage to survive as a professional blogger. 

Twitter News is Garbage and Should Not Be Taken Seriously Under Any Circumstance

Whenever I see a trending story about how something was "getting really big on Twitter and Facebook" or whatever, my blood begins to boil. Remember when I said at the beginning of this blog post that I would go ahead and explain why every article such as Erin Canty's should be thrown in the garbage? 

Everything on Twitter and Facebook should really just be assumed as fake. There is really nothing I hate more than mass media regarding a tweet or facebook post as anything more than fiction. All of the girls who posted under the hashtag #ThingsOnlyWomenWritersHear could all be lying. None of it could be real, unless they provided some form of evidence or proof. All the time, there are news stories about how "racist assaults at colleges are on the rise, we can totally prove it because we have a bunch of facebook posts," and I hate to be the bearer of bad news but they're all fake. No matter what it is, it's going to be fake. Here's why;

If it is a real person posting something, then they need to provide some sort of proof. If they don't provide any proof or evidence, then what they posted should not be regarded as anything more than fictitious words. The person could post something nice, such as "I hope everyone has a great day," but the reality of social media is that there's no evidence of whether or not the person who owns the login for that account even had control of their computer at the time. Their friend who saw that the account was left open on a computer in the school's computer lab could have posted it for all I know. Take every facebook post with a table spoon of salt.

If the person is not real, then they are a robot. There are a lot of robots on social media. One in ten twitter accounts is a robot and not a real person. Theses robots are owned by large marketing companies that get paid to force things to "trend" or go "viral" by posting the same one or two different tweets hundreds of thousands or millions of times. For example, if I had a soda that I wanted to sell, and I wanted to sell it to the millennial generation since I thought they might really like the flavor, I would pay the marketing company a couple of thousands of dollars so that the bot accounts could post "Gosh this is a tasty drink #newsoda" three hundred thousand times in the span of three days. This would force my soda to go viral, which not only makes the soda seem more popular than it is, but it makes it seem as if the public has already decided that the drink universally tastes good, and more people will be willing to try it out. The fake social media accounts are used to sculpt public opinions for monetary gain. 

How does this relate to Erin Canty's article? Political groups do the exact same thing for their political ideologies. It's a way of subconsciously convincing people to switch over to one side. The DNC might make #trumphatesmcdonalds go viral, since it is not legally libel, and they don't like Trump. The GOP might make #antifaisaterroristorganization go viral, since it is not legally libel and they don't like Antifa. In reality, the DNC and GOP both do whatever the heck they want with the bots because they never get caught paying for these kinds of things. 

This is an example from a Mexican protest. I don't know much about the photo, but is was the first image that popped up when I searched "twitter bots pushing hash tags."

Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and sometimes even millions of automated accounts that are less than a day old each posting the exact same text literally seconds away from each other. It's all manufactured outrage. It's not real, but it's a great way of tricking people in thinking that they are being oppressed by something else. 

Perhaps I will go into more detail on this in a future blog post, and if I do, I won't use the first image that popped up on the image search as an example.

Thanks for reading until the end.