We still haven’t reached a place in the society where women can stop looking over their shoulder and be completely oblivious of men and their advances. Besides attacks in the real world, digital spaces too have become a source of trolling.
One such incident is shared by Twitter user @sswyrs, where he described the utter misogyny of his boss. The boss apparently called a head shot of a woman on Linkedin, ‘slutty’.
[Thread] My boss made a comment today along the line of “I don’t get how women can complain about how they get treated when they do shit like this.” I turned around and to see what he was talking about, and he was looking at a thumbnail of a profile pic of a woman on LinkedIn.
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
The guy who saw this completely normal picture of a woman on Linkedin was confused about his boss angrily commenting on it.
She was a nice looking woman – it was a head and shoulders shot of her wearing a grey t-shirt and smiling at the camera. It was as generic as you could get, which is what LinkedIn likes for profile pictures. I was totally baffled and said “Shit like… what?”
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
Even when the boss opened the full size of the picture, the guy still couldn’t get what he was referring to.
He clicked on it to open it full-size, like he thought I just wasn’t seeing it well enough and said “This!”
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
I said “Taking selfies?”
He said “Taking selfies like THAT.”
I was still absolutely fucking lost, so I asked him to explain.
He said “Just, like, slutty pictures.”
“Slutty” is obviously a dumb af hypermisogynistic construct, but let me repeat – it was a headshot of a woman wearing a gray t-shirt. The only skin on her you could see was her face and collarbones. I was STILL LOST and he was getting annoyed like I was being deliberately dumb
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
The picture, which showed the woman smiling while wearing a plain T-shirt was described as slutty by his boss.
I was getting annoyed right back, so I told him to just explain what he meant. He talked for a minute about how if you’re going to post pictures like that, you deserve what you get. I was incredulous and reiterated to him that it was literally just a picture of a smiling face.
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
The man asked his boss to define ‘slutty’ to which he replied ‘way over the top sexy and obviously down to fuck.’ And this comment was just about a headshot of a woman who was smiling in a fairly normal picture.
We had this go round for a few minutes – him going come on, you know what I mean, me going no, I literally don’t. Eventually, I told him to define the word “slutty”. He said “way over the top sexy and obviously down to fuck.” I asked him what about that picture said that to him.
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
But after shaming the woman, the boss obviously reached back to square one calling the woman ‘insanely hot.’
After going in circles for about ten minutes he finally goes, “Well, she’s insanely hot.”
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
There it was.
This man saw a THUMBNAIL of a picture of an attractive woman, and decided that not only was she a “slut”, but that her presumed “behavior” meant she deserved any harassment or assault she experienced – and felt this strongly enough to say it out loud, unprompted, and AT WORK.
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
A woman has her smiling face on her profile. A man she has never met sees it and instantly feels rage and disgust. He believes she invites and deserves harrassment/assault.
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
All because she dared to be attractive in a public space.
He concluded his entire thread by saying out loud something that confirms the biases and danger every woman faces every day.
@ men: Don’t you ever ask women why they’re afraid again.
— Sawyer (@sswyrs) June 14, 2019
