Men can Menstruate: The Importance of Understanding the story behind the #IfMenHadPeriods hashtag

So a Twitter ruckus has been created, supposedly within the "left wing" diversity centric side of the social media platform. It's been said that a liberal feminist Dr Jennifer Gunter created the #IfMenHadPeriods hashtag to imagine what it'd be like for cisgender men if they had a period. Her tweet said "#IfMenHadPeriods pads would be free". Which is a fair comment within the context of the debate surrounding access to sanitary products in allowing them to be readily available to all women regardless of social class, nationality and geographical location. It is realistic to suggest that if all men went through periods, there would be government funded sanitary product programmes in place to provide them with the necessary relief from embarrassment. Since the Establishment remains mostly patriarchal, even in the West, it would still hold true that part of the reason why government subsidised tampons are opposed by men is because male taxpayers are affronted by the idea of paying for basic hygiene measures even if it might make their wives/girlfriends feel better.

After the initial tweet, mockery then ensued after there were calls for Dr Gunter's tweets to be promoted. Many feminists thought that pictures of men pissing up walls with blood and writing their name (rather stereotypical of masculine "laddish" behaviour) were fine to disseminate across Twitter. As a satirist I do find such images rather reflective of societal attitudes, at least for a portion of Western society where men do tend to piss in the street despite being told not to. Then it was that time in the tweeting cycle when notorious Conservative Alt-Righter Steven Crowther just had to get involved and blame feminists for "wanting free stuff" and that this was "embarrassing"- the usual garbage you get when there's a battle between left and right over women's bodies. What Mr Crowther doesn't understand is that menstruation does get stigmatised in many countries across the world, especially in Africa, where women can often have very little access to toilet facilities and running water, let alone sanitary products. WaterAid actually ran a series of vids entitled If Men Had Periods to highlight this very issue. They then ran a survey which found that 70% of woman believe menstruation would not be stigmatised if men went through the menstrual cycle. This is no laughing matter: it demonstrates just how misogynistic society remains when they discriminate on the basis of biological difference. I believe the UK government should fund sanitary products for all women but that they should definitely be free of tax. This should now happen thanks to an online petition campaign created by Laura Coryton a 22 year old activist in May 2014 called "Stop Taxing Tampons, Period" to end 5% VAT on tampons which gained over 320,000 signatures, and which despite being initially opposed by EU bureaucrats is likely to be scrapped because we are leaving the EU. Manjit K Gill, founder of menstrual dignity charity Binti International said that if the Tory Govt carries out their proposal to scrap the tax it will mean that "homeless women in the UK may no longer have to use socks, rag or newspaper" to soak up blood discharge. Even male MPs such as Labour's Paul Sherriff believe that the tax cut should be passed onto female consumers (which means seeing a reduction in tampon costs overall) and that if the tax cut isn't passed on, he would propose amendments to the Finance Bill to provide for a windfall tax for female consumers. A progressive measure proposed by a cisgender men! Who can believe it?? Yet none of the tweets on the #IfMenHadPeriods hashtag seem to refer to such discussion, which is a great shame!

I guess what Dr Gunter and Mr Crowther didn't expect to happen next was for trans activists to take so much offence at the hashtag. They were quick to point out the major flaw with this hashtag when you take it seriously: some men do have periods because trans men who are only at the start of their transition journey will continue to have periods. But let's go one step further: non-binary/queer/gender-fluid people have biological organs which mean they end up going through the menstruation cycle bleed too. And not every trans man is comfortable with the idea of going through hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery. So they will continue to have periods for the rest of their lives. Let's go even further: What about intersex people? What about cisgender women who can't have periods due to medical reasons? Does that make them any less of a woman? Not if they identify as a woman. Yet these people never get mentioned within the debate by trans and feminist tweeters. It seems to be an Either/Or binary that gets created: you have to be trans to be defended from attack and trans exclusory feminists (TERFs) can't help but be derisory towards trans people but only those who have gone through surgery! TERFs are ultra-critical of trans women, accusing them of being "panto dames" who mutilate themselves to create their own fantasy woman image by using their own body to do it. Essentially they fetishize trans women and make transition a mostly sexual based decision. However TERFs tend to be rather quiet when it comes to trans men and their need for sanitary products. Indeed I've seen several tweeters who have damned trans men for daring to change their gender and tell them if they're so bothered about their periods they can get sanitary products readily because they'll "automatically gain more money" due to their change in gender which very rarely happens till the person has at least produced a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) and changed jobs anyways!

What is important for trans activists and intersectional feminists who happen to be trans to see is that the Alt Righters and Conservatives couldn't wait to get stuck in and use the hashtag as a way of delegitimising feminism and SJWs as well as discriminating against the trans male community as a whole, accusing them of "lying" because they refuse to adhere to an immutable dual gender binary and they go against "doctors" because of this. Most TERFs happen to be conservative minded so it's no surprise they are ready to back Alt-Righters to enforce bigotry and prejudice. Yet trans activists need to see the whole picture with regards to the hashtag; that it wasn't initially created to cause offense to the LGBTQIA community but to highlight awareness of sanitary product provisions. Alt-Righting TERFs expected trans activists to be immediately dismissive of this. They wanted to see that trans activists don't have a sense of humour. So the best trans activists can do is to try and shake off the criticism, highlight the follies that are brought out by such a hashtag and perhaps get people to realise the importance of seeing beyond the dual binary system. Some men do menstruate, they care about sanitary provisions being available for all women. TERFs have to accept their caring attitude and accept that even cisgender men like Paul Sherriff can care about women's issues. Then maybe we can all have a laugh at blood spurting up the wall satirical pictures. Maybe.

Teen Celeb Fandom Congregations and Meme Overloads :Understanding the Logic Behind Modern Twitter Parties

Positive Meme doing the rounds on Caster Seymenya support hashtags

Everyday there seems to be a new celebration on Twitter; a form of covert prestige (memeing) hashtagging of which slightly older twenties folks like myself will never truly be part because the partying seems to be centred around the cult of YouTube, TV and Pop music celebrities, usually based in the US.  Hearing of an endless stream of celebrities being praised or dissed as per the prejudice of one Twitter user galvanising support from a bunch of other tweeters bemuses some tweeters and angers others. Often the Alt-Righters, thinking of their own prejudiced agenda, bark that "Twitter Parties are full of morons trying to act like uneducated sheep" and even self-confessed left-wing commentators have asked what the real "purpose" behind a Twitter Party is meant to be, as they believe they are created over "trivial issues" such as trying to find out whether Louis Tomlinson of 1D fame is "OK" or the most recent #MichaelHit7MillionParty which I've discovered is part of the 5S0S fandom racketeering circuit. They bemoan that these hashtags are trending over the more grown-up ones such as #LabourHustings events during the current UK Labour Leadership race between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith or the recent #Brexit ones confirming whether someone had voted Remain or Leave being overtaken by #DogsAtPollingStations which was a comic attempt to defuse some of the tension that had been generated during the Brexit campaign and to amuse those that had already voted or couldn't vote during that Thursday.  Who'd really object to seeing images of cute canines smiling and woofing outside drab "Polling Station" signs?

I think critics have taken a rather harsh line with Twitter hashtagging recently. They are unwilling to understand that social media parties are essentially a new way for fans to express approval/disapproval as a collective and to follow/communicate with one another in the future through sharing their positive (or negative) views about a celebrity or group. One has to remember the early days of mass teenage fandom, when Beatles fans had to show their love by standing out for hours in the pouring rain to wait for John et al to emerge from their hour gig or to send letters of admiration that would too often be censored by Brian Epstein (their slightly overbearing manager) before being given to the Boys to sign/acknowledge and send back appropriate replies. Nowadays fans have the right to take advantage of a variety of channels of which to communicate with one another. The question is whether these channels can be open to abuse and allow legitimised threats and trolling under the radar? When does fan trolling/defending go too far?

MemeFest: A New Form of Satire?

A Meme of my very own special creation!

Internet Memes being used on social media party hashtags have courted a certain level of controversy over the past couple of years in the social media platform world. Meme generators have made the ability to captain existing and new pictures easy for even the most amateur of Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook users, so the variety and abundance of them is difficult to ignore. Critics of meme-users state that it is not a "digital artform", it doesn't "make a statement worth reading" and are used to try and silence opponents before a conversation can even begin. Some Memes can be classed as witty if the creator has taken the time to try and properly associate the image with the message they wish to convey; for example I created a "A Merry Can Fail" meme using the famous Mr Willy Wonka picture from the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film when Twitter users in the US started mass complaining about NBC cutting their Rio Olympic Opening Ceremony coverage short and sending it out on a 1 hour time delay despite the BBC broadcasting live coverage of the same ceremony even at 12am! You can be thus satirical with a meme if you choose to be; it can get mass appeal laughs when posted at the right time and on the right hashtag where you know it will have most impact.

However, one person's laughs at a meme can be another person's displeasure, especially when memes are used for malicious reasons- e.g. to make explicit death threats against opponents or mock their race/sexual orientation/gender identity/age without sufficient context as subtext around the meme. For example, the popular Harambe Gorilla meme was recently placed on Ms Leslie Jones's website after she was hacked and had nude pictures and personal information stolen from her iCloud account (25th August 2016). Many tweeters who defended Ms Jones implied this meme was used because it has an implicit racial undertone (as gorilla images have been used in the past to state to black people they are subhuman to white people) as well as an ironic Alt-Right appeal to those who hold Harambe up as a "heroic animal figure" apparently shot to prevent him from killing a three year old child at Cincinnati Zoo. As Aja Romano has noted in his article on the Harambe Meme in Vox (17th August 2016) it had a much wider appeal than had at first been recognised: "If you were a progressive, the Harambe meme gave you a chance to mock what you viewed as the hypocritical haranguing of the mainstream whilst avoiding real issues of social justice and  if you were a conservative, the Harambe meme gave you a chance to mock liberal hysteria".  I may have interpreted the meme differently from others by taking offence but from responses I've read it seems my emotional response was not in the minority. So if a majority of tweeters take explicit offense to a meme image posted on social media, should the meme be automatically deleted by the Twitter Safety team or should a person automatically report the image when they see it so it can be referred and then blocked when the team have reviewed consensus evidence? Should memes be removed at all if a person claims they were exercising freedom of expression and didn't primarily aim to cause offence? Should a meme creator be prepared to take down their own image if they see it causes offence? Such questions are raised regularly in my mind when I see certain memes and I often wonder whether I have a duty to report the meme or tweet the person disseminating it to express disapproval or whether to stay silent and ignore the meme in the future. If ignoring racist memes is showing complicity with them, perhaps in the future I have to be more vocal/active in showing disapproval. Should the same standards be applied to Twitter hashtags and parties too?

The Origins of the Twitter Party?:
Thus it's rather interesting to note then that Twitter party memeing was originally designed as a way of promoting a company, product or political group in order to gain followers and highlight and disseminate its key message. Twitter parties were meant to be the modern, perfected, globalised form of the "Meet n' Greet" sessions put on to raise that hype to improve the potential future market success rate. Some hashtag parties (not branded as parties) in 2016 seem to achieve this to a certain degree; I'm reminded of #LincsHour which aims to promote Lincs based companies and bloggers to a wider Twitter audience (Mondays 8-9pm) and promoted content hashtags such as #TryMeFree, created by Coca-Cola to get potential consumers interested in the improved Coke Zero Sugar drink which they say #TastesMoreLikeCoke.

Yet left-wing tweeters are angry that marketing content hashtags designed to create "buzz" can be promoted to trend higher than the free hashtags that those tweeters have made. It can get even more vindictive when they discover a political party has paid Twitter to promote a partisan hashtag close to an important electoral event; this was seen most clearly when the Labour Remain social team promoted #StrongerIn in the last few days before the Brexit vote and Brexiteers saw this as a sign by Twitter to try and manipulate the outcome of the election to favour Remainers who they believed were more "Pro-Big Business and Banks" than for the "ordinary people". Such narrative gained them favour among some undecided social media voters but was based on feeble ground: if Vote Leave had realised the full potential of social media marketing and generating a positive modern buzz they would have used the Promotional content tool to do this. You can't berate a social media team for being conscientious or clever in their attempts to disseminate a message in the same way you can't be angry at meme creators for trying to be comic or satirical or teens wanting to idolise their latest crush via a Twitter party using virtual attendance tweet confirmation.

If we are wanting to be smart about social media platform optimal utilisation, it may be a good idea to start coming up with more positive meme campaigns containing serious messages, in the same way hashtagging has started being used as a tool of empowerment- e.g. the recent conversation started by a tweeter with #WhatAltRightMeans because they wanted to highlight the dangerous anonymous nature of Alt-Righters and how they may hold the key to winning or losing the US Election or #EndTheStigma relating to confronting prejudices behind those suffering with mental illness through telling their personal stories; the hashtag took UK Twitter by storm on a Tuesday evening last month and got UK politicians and care providers talking about possible future solutions to help end such stigma. If we start embracing the semantic narrative of hashtagging for teen audiences, perhaps older users may be able to spread these positive messages further; engage a wider audience and keep a conversation going by tracking a hashtag that you create and you could raise awareness of that issue better than you could ever have imagined. And that's the real "logic" behind successful, modern Twitter parties!
 

Hacking Ms Jones, Closet Homosexuals And Politicos : An Act of Empowerment or Act of Revenge?

"Playing doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking"- Richard Stallman.

Hacking; a world of people who are hacked off by societal actions of some person or group or another. Traditionally hackers have been held up by the left as paragons of virtue for exposing government/establishment vices to the "ignorant masses" to protect them from making "ill informed decisions" or expressing "incorrect sentiments". Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange are examples of high-profile hackers who have risked their lives and "given up" their  freedom to expose hypocritical actions that have been carried out by the US, UK and other world Governments to spy on ordinary citizens for no other reason other than to try and collect data that is on the whole not useful in helping those governments to fight corruption or terrorism. Chelsea Manning is actually being sued by the US Govt because she attempted  to commit suicide whilst being held in an all-male prison despite being transgender. The message from her legal team showed that she wished she'd been able to keep her "medical information private, so she could focus on her recovery" but US Govt's actions prevented her from doing that.  US Govt officials didn't bother helping to encourage Ms Manning to dispel those suicidal thoughts and embrace her new identity by facilitating her move to a female prison but it is great to see that Ms Manning is now attempting to do by writing articles for Medium from behind bars, despite not having direct Internet Access. Her article recounting her fears being a transwoman out of prison was gut retching to read, but it shows that hackers can be emotional, thoughtful and caring, qualities that weren't readily ascribed to hackers despite their "god like status".

Yet recent cases involving anonymous troll hackers of private celebrity accounts and government databases has exposed an uncomfortable truth for PC defenders on the left: some hackers only hack because they want to cause harm to individuals and not to make the Establishment more accountable, diverse and accepting of differences. Where do and where should hackers draw the line morally?

Exposing Individuals Willy-nilly:

Ryan Grenoble, a Huffington Post reporter and technical specialist has recently stated: "Radical transparency is no excuse for outing people, naming teenage rape victims and disclosing health records". The Associated Press (AP) investigation itself has uncovered evidence that showed WikiLeaks failed to filter out documents including:

• a document claiming a "Saudi man was gay" (despite the fact that I'm sure plenty of the hackers know homosexuality carries the death sentence if discovered and that guy had not consented to that information being made publically available.) WikiLeaks denies they released that information and came from the US Govt figs 2015 and being "re-run" for the election.
• 22 other people affected were in Saudi Arabia; The Guardian (Wed 24th August 2016) contacted these people to let them know their information had been released; they highlight the story of "a partially disabled woman who had gone into debt to support a sick relative" and had kept it secret from her family. She said "What is the use in publishing my story?"
• marital records stating whether a bride was virgin or not (since when did the public need to pass judgement on a person's state of purity in the Western World?)
• health documents indicating whether a person's partner had HIV (in which case the persons affected would tell others they slept with but not in the public interest for everyone else to know HIV status).
• 2 cases of documents naming teenage rape victims (when those rape victims are entitled to anonymity from persecution under UK law let alone US law).

I don't understand the significance of such a slack organisation needing to hack into Govt systems to collect this sort of information. Compliance systems can't seem to be working appropriately at WikiLeaks, otherwise the only information being published would be truly "in the public interest". And I'm sure any hacker with half a liberal braincell (if they are indeed as liberal as they've stated in the past) would know sexual health information, even if it involved politicians like Trump or Clinton is not in the public interest if it is released without the consent of the individual(s) concerned. We don't need to know who's out the closet and who's stuck in Narnia with ... because it's not our business to determine how individuals wish to identify sexuality wise and how they wish to disclose it and who to disclose it too. It's no secret there are many more LGBTQIA people in the world than what the mainstream media would have us believe. Equally it is disgusting that an organisation aligned with Mr Assange would support disclosure of teenage rape victims records. Perhaps it's related to his cognitive dissonance surrounding his "understanding" of rape that may explain why he saw fit to allow such information to be released. I know he may have gone through years of "persecution" for being accused of rape but he's never truly answered the questions surrounding his refusal to wear a condom so I'm not particularly surprised why he feels vengeful against those victims who need anonymity whilst trials are conducted which is guaranteed to them under current legislation in the UK. So when does hacking constitute nothing more than an act of revenge? And if "innocent people "get hurt as a result of enacting that revenge, are they nothing more than "collateral damage"? Has Hacking of individual information become more about fulfilling a fetish for data stealing, than truly  being in the public interest?

The Hacking of Ms Jones:
Some hackers believe that celebrities are "undeserving" of a private life because they have chosen to get paid for serving the public interest for entertainment, whether it be playing a black feminist Ghostbuster in a "controversial" all female Ghostbusters remake, or being a porn star making teacher-student seduction movies for dissemination on XTube et al. It seems that celebrities are no longer entitled to express their own opinions, especially if they are on issues they care deeply about. Mention an opposition to "free speech without consequence" and ironically get your fingers burned in the process. Now I don't condone some of the tweets that have been purportedly sent from Ms Leslie Jones's Twitter account to bait white people into expressing racist views. I've seen them on Twitter and some referring to the crappiness of a DJ because he's white or that "white women look the same" probably wasn't in the best possible taste. I'm not sure that she'd properly drawn the line between being comic/satirical and being racist/offensive but let's be honest that line is difficult to draw even though her account is personal which she has headed with information about her profession. I'd naturally assume when I see "stand up comic" on a Twitter handle I'd know some tweets may be distasteful to me but may seem comical to others.

What is clear to see is that Ms Jones has been the victim of a sustained, brutal cyberbullying campaign on social media platforms that have focussed specifically on her race which has culminated in a hacking of her iCloud. Strange that the hackers have gone for her nuke pics and chosen to distribute them on social media and their defenders have stated that this was "in the public interest". I'd never take nude pics of myself to show another person as I realise the risk of being hacked and it doesn't particularly interest me to take them but I have no interest in viewing nudes to avenge the supposed acts that Ms Jones "faked" to get conservative, Alt-Right blogger and "free speech" activist Milo banned off Twitter permanently. Did people really need to know that she takes them in the first place? Viewed within this narrow prism, hacking is seen as nothing more than a revenge attack by those determined to make Ms Jones feel "sorry" for her previous actions. Yet I've still not seen any comments that would indicate she is prepared to apologise for causing "possible offense". So it looks like the slut-shaming hack has failed big time. So hackers who are using their skills and experience to exact revenge on celebrities for their viewpoints aren't really doing the hacking to empower the public, they're doing it as an act of revenge. Very petty!

Hacking Politicos: Exposing the Democrat National Convention (DNC):
So away from the hacking of individual accounts (which on the whole seems fairly dubious) when is it acceptable to gain access to political party information to "empower the public" to make the right decision in an election cycle? WikiLeaks's main raison d'etre after all is to "bring censored or restricted material involving war, spying and corruption into the limelight". So revelations about Bernie and Hillary's primary campaigns, correspondence with CNN and other mainstream media networks could vaguely be classified as being in the public interest. Bernie voters may have had a right to know about the direction the party was going in to support Hillary's candidacy as the primary season progressed, especially as there is evidence to suggest DNC staffers were keen to question Sanders on his faith/beliefs (May 2016) with an implicit nod to that potentially damaging his candidacy hopes.

The resignation/sacking of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wassermann Schultz was justified in that she failed to prevent the systems from being hacked in the first place, let alone her official email circulating stating "Bernie Sanders will never be President", a bias which should not have made clear until the end of the primary cycle. But I do wonder what WikiLeaks hoped to achieve by leaking certain emails/documentations in the first place. I don't think their aim of "fighting corruption" was particularly achieved with the July leak of documentation that openly had "two dozen social security and credit card numbers" displayed on that documentation. Since when was it in the public interest to know those numbers (unless you want to use them for fraudulent purposes?) The Guardian has reported that 2 of those people have been "targets of identity thieves following the leak" and that one "was a retired diplomat who said he also had to change his number after being bombarded with threatening messages". Similarly the recent leaked email stating Hillary Clinton searched for a dementia drug to try and combat her "decision fatigue" is ill-judged considering the stigma attached to developmental disorders such as dementia at this current time. This leak reeks a bit of political bias, where hackers and WikiLeaks attempt to discredit a candidate through the referencing of one incident that many older people who fear they may have dementia or are suffering fatigue. The fact that the message refers to "decision fatigue" in the first place is suspect; I doubt many would have explicitly stated their fatigue was due to decision making!

We will never know for definite who carried out the hacking of the DNC servers although several sources believe it was a self-styled Romanian hacker called "Guccifer 2:0" who is working for the Russian authorities to discredit Hillary (although the Romanian language he was using during the interview seemed "clunky" and seemed to point to evidence of him using an online translator). Regardless of authenticity it does seem clear that Assange is prepared to use a range of hackers without checking fully the authenticity of documentation or motives of the hackers themselves. So again, there is a feeling that the hacking activities of some politicos may be an act of revenge based on socio-cultural prejudices against a woman who has no favourable opinions of Putin or Russian regressive policies rather than truly being in the public interest.

Conclusion:

We need to stop seeing all hackers as automatically "heroes of the Left". Hackers have their own agendas, inspired by their socio-cultural and political views and so will ultimately only target victims that oppose their views in a strong way. That's their cognitive dissonance in action. I guess some people will go against their mainstream views in the vain hope of gaining a "rad" reputation that none will actually see in the flesh. WikiLeaks protects hackers from prosecution and indignation by offering them the same level of anonymity that they wise to deny to teenage rape victims or closeted LGBTQIA people in Muslim countries. That's why I'm not surprised that some WikiLeaks hackers will be extreme left-wing as well as Alt-Right supporters. Free speech, freedom of information they want at any cost to decency and compassion. It's the sort of attitude we desperately need to condemn and reform. Hacking is not always a correct act of Free Speech, and when people's privacy is restricted or even destroyed by trolls hell bent on fetishistic revenge, there has to be consequences to those acts. If hackers can be traced via their internet imprints, then they have to be exposed and prosecuted under the Data Protection Act/ Equality Act in the UK to deter those trolls from trying to emulate their success to gain a sense of credibility they may not get in other spheres of their lives. Hackers have a right to demonstrate their skills but why not encourage them to put their skills to good use by establishing hack-security firms such as Gregory Evans's Hacker For Hire or showcase creativity such as "Jules's" IkeaHackers.net, an online social community which "Jules" created to share her and others’ modified uses of IKEA products (e.g. a dish drain repurposed as a tie rack and a dresser-turned-bathroom-vanity). Hackers can be empowering figures, provided they refrain from persecuting and baiting individuals/celebrities online who may share different viewpoints from themselves.