Finsta and the madonna/whore paradox
The internet allows women to be vocal about a lot of things — but not sex.
I would be more comfortable, and likely less stigmatized, posting about suicidal ideation than about personal sexual preferences.
Raise your hand if you’re a lady with an anonymous Twitter. Raise both hands if you have a “finsta.” Clap twice if you’re sick of having to compartmentalize parts of your life because of goddamn respectability.
Me, too.
I’m a millennial. Ever since the days of AOL Instant Messenger (RIP), I have used the internet to connect to people in my life, many of whom would have remained relative strangers without the blessing of the social networking. AIM, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tinder, Whisper — since the early days of dial-up and message boards, the internet has consistently provided platforms through which millennials could bond over their shared experience, and even make positive change.
Where there is a lack of sex education, there are websites and apps that provide that much-needed information. Where issues go ignored or uncovered by the mainstream media, there are freelance, self-starting photojournalists and reporters documenting the truth, with unprecedented access to publishing and promotional mechanisms. Where there is depression and anxiety, there are online support groups, full of sympathetic users eager to share their experience, strength and hope.
The world is literally at our fingertips, and we are able to connect with a global community in unprecedented ways.
Perhaps most particular to millennial culture is the use of memes to deal with things like our collective frustration at low wages, rising housing costs, and the general doom and gloom of our present world. Over time, we have evolved from simply captioning a picture for a laugh to commenting on some of our darkest fears and insecurities, via an easily-sharable image file.
As I have moved from adolescence into “adulting,” I have noticed that memes increasingly trend toward the nihilist, the absurdist, and — some have argued — the Neo-Dadaist. Millennials use memes in much the same way as the Dadaists did: to express (and process) our disillusionment with the systems we were told to put our faith in.
For myself, and many others in my generation, this has been cathartic. Depression and other types of neurodivergence have become normalized through the use of memes. Through memes, we have tackled and challenged ideas of success and happiness, the building blocks of an ‘American Dream’ we’ve heard a lot about, but never seen. We’ve been encouraged to express the deepest, darkest, most private parts of ourselves by sharing images with words that make very little sense out of context. Millennials don’t have to write up a deeply-detailed personal account of our troubles; we can just share a depression meme about depression, caption it “same,” and instantly tell others — many virtual strangers, but also somehow not — that they’re not alone. The fact that millennials are able to create this kind of collective healing through absurdist art is honestly the coolest thing about our generation.
But what about sex?
Have we achieved a similar level of openness and collective healing when it comes to sexuality? Can we talk about dicks and pussies the same way we can talk about depression and suicide? In our highly-sexualized society, one would think that it would be acceptable to talk online about our sex lives, the way we now do our neurochemical idiosyncrasies and virtually every other facet of our lives.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re there yet.
Consider this: I work in an extremely laid-back nonprofit environment. Most of my colleagues are millennials. We are as close as coworkers can be, friends on Facebook, etc. Most of us routinely share memes about stress, disillusionment, debt — about all the general, universal struggles of adulting.
All but one.
When I go to post something explicitly sexual, I have to think twice, even going so far as to block my coworkers (and others I know professionally) from seeing my posts.
Sure, I can post relatively toothless Planned Parenthood graphics about safe sex without any major fallout, but when it comes to sharing a sexually-graphic meme I relate to, I must censor myself. I must divorce my sexuality from the rest of my life. I would be more comfortable, and likely less stigmatized, posting about suicidal ideation than about personal sexual preferences.
The online environment is particularly and uniquely hostile to women. A man posting a meme about his sexual preferences, even a post that’s explicitly degrading to women, might raise a few eyebrows among his coworkers, but more often is overlooked or not noticed in the first place. Men generally do not have to think too much about self-censoring when it comes to sexuality. But a woman being explicitly sexual online might cause coworkers to think that lines have been crossed, leading into shaming, victim-blaming territory. I wrote previously about how an older male coworker used an article I posted about pegging as an excuse to sexually harass me. My boss later told me that, after consultation with our lawyer, it was advised that I be more careful about what I post. The message: women should not discuss sexuality in an online public forum if they don’t want to be punished for it through violence or harassment.
Most women recognize the disconnect between the relative openness of the internet and the taboos still associated with sex talk. We get used to going to the internet and consulting the hivemind for advice and consolation, even just to brag, but we are stopped short when the topic is sexuality. Some forums are more friendly than others; to wit, Twitter is generally looser and carries less stigma. But often, we are forced to create fake or anonymous accounts to express the true extent of our sexual desires or fears. We know that posting sexually suggestive pictures on a profile associated with our real identities would carry consequences for social relationships, safety, even employment.
But we imagine a world where we can say what’s on our minds, then we create those spaces anonymously. We create “Finstas” (short for “Finstagrams,” fake Instagrams), and we post almost-nudes and rant about our latest hookup experiences. We create fake Twitters, which in turn leads to fake email addresses, fake phone numbers, and an inability to retrieve our accounts if we forget the password. We flock to Tumblr or other platforms that feel more authentic and safe. Our desire for self-expression in the face of censorship gives rise to the use of apps like Yik Yak, an anonymous version of Twitter that eventually collapsed under the worst inclinations of its users. We toggle effortlessly between our palatable, public-facing selves and our authentic, sexual selves.
If Judith Butler was right and gender is a performance, women deserve an Oscar.
Women are slowly pushing the boundaries of sexual self-expression on the internet. Memes related to sexuality are slowly making their way from the edgier Tumblr world to the more mainstream platforms of Facebook and Instagram.
But the internet continues to be a hostile place for women. Take the double standard regarding nipples on Instagram (please), or Facebook’s numerous, well-documented failures dealing with sexual harassment. Most recently, sex workers have had their safety jeopardized by FOSTA-SESTA, a law that targeted the online platforms sex workers use to safely vet their clients before an encounter, often — as is the case with Backpage — the same platforms law enforcement officials use to combat legitimate sexual trafficking. So, while trafficked minors who once would have been found through Backpage by law enforcement languish unseen and unheard, sex workers lose agency and independence, giving abusers like pimps the opportunity to slip back into their victim’s lives.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
As our use of the internet evolves and changes, the line between public and private will continue to be blurred. Sure, there is still a place for sexual privacy and boundaries in professional relationships. But we must work to ensure that standards of sexual propriety are the same for men and women. And as always, we must work to create a more sex-positive environment, wherein discussions about sexuality are normalized as a natural part of the human experience.
#SexPositiveWorld
There are thousands of things you can do to get involved and help contribute to a more loving, sex-positive world. Clearly, we’re not getting there unless we work for it.
But a good first step for yourself might be to take a look at The Sex-Positive Pledge. The website provides a brief overview of the problem of sex-negativity and its consequences, as well as highlights organizations and businesses that have committed to sex-positivity in 2018.
And, of course, you can take the pledge, and download the embeddable ‘take the pledge’ badge/icon, to display on websites, social media, etc. We hope you do.
