> Facebook was born during a night of incredibly misogyny. The idea of comparing women to farm animals, and then to each other, based on their looks and then publicly ranking them. It was a revenge stunt, aimed first at the woman who'd most recently broke his heart (who should get some kind of medal for not breaking his head) and then at the entire female population of Harvard.
What a bunch of pretentious self important nonsense. Fact is, from age 12 to age 25 or so, both men and women are incredibly superficial and petty and immature in their relations to each other. There's probably a lot of reasons why, but I think one big reason is that young people spend these days spend very little time on things that actually really matter, thus aren't relating to each other on topics that actually matter. So both genders descend into social pettiness pretty quickly and easily in their younger years.
Young men and young women both act petty. But these days, it's very fashionable to point out all the sexism... on men's parts. Applause lights go on. "Yes, fight that evil male sexism!" It's like, okay, there's a bunch of 20 year olds drinking too much and jockeying for attention and being to mean to each other and then throwing up for all the liquor... neither men nor women at that age seem particularly enlightened to me, but people like to be very grave and serious about "this horrible sexism among men today." It's seems like feminism succeeded at all its objectives, but was doing so well that it just kept going. Nowdays any immature male behavior is portrayed as a sign of some deep cultural problems. Immature female behavior? What, no, that doesn't happen. What are you, a sexist or something?
Edit: Reply instead of downvoting. I disagree with the author's perspective and think he's spouting cliches that don't match reality or improve things. I listed a counter perspective. You're welcome to disagree with me, share your thoughts.
I was one of the people who downvoted you (though it looks like the crowd is back on your side again), so here's an explanation:
First and mostly unrelated to your post: I have big issues with the Social Network's accuracy in its storytelling. Besides all the things that were completely made up, it's very telling that Sorkin in the OP states that the voiceover from the Facemash sequence was completely factual, with only minor things removed from Zuckerberg's blog posts. In fact, if you track down the original blog posts on Scribd, you'll find that Sorkin inserted several of the most offensive sentences, such as the crack about the Erica character's bra size, and also including the sentence "Do you think that's because all BU girls are bitches?", which Sorkin seems to be attributing as a quote in the OP but were not in the blog posts. So when I talk about Zuckerberg's misogyny, I'm talking about the misogyny of the character named Mark Zuckerberg that Aaron Sorkin made up for the movie, not Zuckerberg himself, as I'm convinced the two are mostly unrelated.
So all that said, the stuff movie-Zuckerberg does in the Facemash scene is blatantly and unambiguously misogynistic. He blogs about his ex-girlfriends bra size, he calls her and all other girls attending BU a bitch, and creates a site allowing you to publicly compare the hotness of various women using pictures obtained without their permission. These acts demean women, portray them as just sexual objects, and are essentially misogynistic.
What's bizarre about your post is that you didn't dispute any of those things. Instead, you presented an argument than women and men are equally petty and immature, and then an argument for how the feminist movement has led to an over-interrogation of male sexist behavior while ignoring similarly problematic female behavior. You can make those arguments, but the fact that you did so in reply to the paragraph you quoted strongly implies that you believe that the actions portrayed in the movie were not sexism and not misogynistic. You seem to be characterizing the things movie-Zuckerberg did as just "a bunch of 20 year olds drinking too much and jockeying for attention and being to mean to each other", as if those were the reasons why people saw movie-Zuckerberg as misogynistic.
I agree that feminists are often too quick to see male sexism in places were it isn't there, but that doesn't mean that male sexism doesn't exist. It's one thing to think that feminists go too far, and another thing to go on a rant about the excesses of feminism when confronted with a (fictional) example of actual sexism. The things movie-Zuckerberg did were sexist, and if you disagree with that, and it seems like you do, I'm honestly a little disturbed.
Another important inaccuracy to add to the catalog of accidental-on-purpose mistakes in the Facemash sequence: the actual Facemash was gender-blind. I'm sure in practice a lot of its appeal was for men looking at women, but male students' looks were rated and compared on an equal footing.
> These acts demean women, portray them as just sexual objects, and are essentially misogynistic.
How do you know that the real "Erica Albright" didn't make misandrist comments about the size of his genitalia or his inability to measure up to rowers? Those kinds of comments happen all the time to nerds (just look at any Jezebel discussion thread), and are exactly the equivalent of male dissing of female attractiveness.
In reality, women's groups fought what would become Facebook tooth and nail. Had Zuckerberg stopped doing what he did after the words of the strong womyn at Fuerza Latina, he'd have been a social outcast through college. Is the takeaway lesson here really to pay obeisance to the enforcers of conventional wisdom?
> I'm talking about the misogyny of the character named Mark Zuckerberg that Aaron Sorkin made up for the movie, not Zuckerberg himself, as I'm convinced the two are mostly unrelated. So all that said, the stuff movie-Zuckerberg does in the Facemash scene is blatantly and unambiguously misogynistic.
You and I both know it's a fictional character, but Sorkin is acting like it's not:
"These women--whether it's the girls who are happy to take their clothes off and dance for the boys or Eduardo's psycho-girlfriend are real. I mean REALLY real."
> What's bizarre about your post is that you didn't dispute any of those things. Instead, you presented an argument than women and men are equally petty and immature,
Yes. In the real world, yes. But Sorkin's pretending his movie isn't fiction. That's the problem - he's saying it's really real, I'm saying his movie and righteous indignation doesn't reflect reality very well.
Well OK, if your argument really was "Sorkin created a fake caracter that acts really misogynist in order to make a political point about feminism that I disagree with", and not "what was shown in the movie wasn't misogyny, just college boys being equally immature as college girls are!", then I must say I am more than a little surprised, but tone is hard on the web, so I'll give you be benefit of the doubt.
Immature female behavior? What, no, that doesn't happen. What are you, a sexist or something?
Immature female behavior is actually celebrated. Look at Sex and the City, which is all about four middle-aged, presumably successful women acting like vapid teenagers, and this is supposed to be empowering and inspiring.
Immature male behaviour is celebrated as well. Look at all the tv shows that portray some men as boys who haven't been able to put away their video games and other toys. They too act like vapid teenagers ;/
True, but if you criticize the 'Sex in the City' immaturity, you are lambasted. If you criticize the immature male behavior, you are celebrated. [in popular culture]
> (It's only fair to note that the women--bussed in from other schools for the "hot" parties, wait on line to get on that bus without anyone pointing guns at their heads.)
You seem to be pretty riled up over this subject but it doesn't seem directly relevant to the article in question.
Please read the guidelines, where it says, "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good..." You're currently at 3 points, 15 minutes in.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The perspective you mentioned is well-known to anyone. (At least I hear it more often than I hear from actual feminists.) If people want to spend their time responding to you, they will; there's no need to generate long debate threads.
You've been here 170 days? Well, welcome, but it's fairly standard practice to add a quick edit to let people know you're looking for discussion instead of trying to stir up trouble after attempting to write a thoughtful-yet-controversial comment. It shows you're looking to have discussion instead of just get a rise out of people.
> The perspective you mentioned is well-known to anyone. (At least I hear it more often than I hear from actual feminists.) If people want to spend their time responding to you, they will; there's no need to generate long debate threads.
Except the author of the article that was just posted, you mean? That's what I was commenting on. And anyways, discussion on a discussion site seems like a good thing, and not something to be discouraged.
What a bunch of pretentious self important nonsense. Fact is, from age 12 to age 25 or so, both men and women are incredibly superficial and petty and immature in their relations to each other. There's probably a lot of reasons why, but I think one big reason is that young people spend these days spend very little time on things that actually really matter, thus aren't relating to each other on topics that actually matter. So both genders descend into social pettiness pretty quickly and easily in their younger years.
Young men and young women both act petty. But these days, it's very fashionable to point out all the sexism... on men's parts. Applause lights go on. "Yes, fight that evil male sexism!" It's like, okay, there's a bunch of 20 year olds drinking too much and jockeying for attention and being to mean to each other and then throwing up for all the liquor... neither men nor women at that age seem particularly enlightened to me, but people like to be very grave and serious about "this horrible sexism among men today." It's seems like feminism succeeded at all its objectives, but was doing so well that it just kept going. Nowdays any immature male behavior is portrayed as a sign of some deep cultural problems. Immature female behavior? What, no, that doesn't happen. What are you, a sexist or something?
Edit: Reply instead of downvoting. I disagree with the author's perspective and think he's spouting cliches that don't match reality or improve things. I listed a counter perspective. You're welcome to disagree with me, share your thoughts.