Why are you so offended by a hashtag?

All of us are familiar with how social media, sharing posts, hashtags and the like, are the new normal when conveying an idea, a message, or on a bigger scale, a protest.

There are two hashtags I want to mention, #menaretrash, and #BLM. Before I start, I completely support these hashtags and what they stand for, as well as the causes behind them.

What I have never understood, is how people are somehow offended by them. Let’s take the first one, for example, #menaretrash. I live in South Africa, and this hashtag gained major traction after there wad a speight of violent attacks and rapes of women and young children.

Most of the time, the hashtag was accompanied by someone, usually women, expressing their need for men to stand up against other men, call them out for perverted and unwanted behavior towards women, and stand with women in their fight against gender-based violence.

Nothing unreasonable about any of this.

What came of it was surprising, to say the least. While most women used it as part of their way of expressing their disgust and sadness at yet another murder of a woman, another rape, many men stepped in and voiced how offensive the hashtag was towards them.

Somehow, a very simple hashtag, with a very simple meaning, was somehow turned into an attack on all men. I never once felt offended by it, mainly because I know I am not someone who perpetrates any of these heinous crimes, neither do I encourage or accept anyone who does.

The cries of “Not All Men” were soon flooding Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Why this needed to be said was a mystery to me, as knowing just a tiny bit about the hashtag would tell you that they don’t mean all men, but they do want all men to pay attention to their plight.

All of sudden, the hashtag was less about the disgusting crimes against women, and more about men being offended that they were being called rapists or women beaters (where these thoughts came from still baffles me).

The point is, instead of understanding the hashtag, its message, and its cause, people took it at face value, and then immediately decided that because they weren’t included, they had to have been the target of it.

This takes me to #BLM and the “All Lives Matter” whiners. Please, for the love of God, tell me when anyone said no other lives matter, and only black lives matter?

I’ll save you time, no one has said that.

So why exactly is every #BLM post met with a slew of “All Lives Matter” comments? This isn’t even rhetorical, I don’t know, you just sound like an idiot and proving in 10 words or less that you have no idea why the BLM movement exists or what their goals are.

How difficult is it to understand that BLM is just about protecting black people who are being unfairly treated, that’s it, it’s so simple. Yet, you are still going to make it known that you are against it, or disagree with it?

I read something that said imagine being at a funeral, your mom or dad has just died, and every time you mention that they were the best parent or the greatest mom or dad you could have asked for, multiple people stand up shouting “All parents are important!”, “All mothers are great!”.

That’s basically the context, and that’s also how stupid saying “All Lives Matter” sounds.

But once again, it’s another simple hashtag, with a simple message and goal, that is somehow offensive, purely because people think it’s an attack against them because they aren’t included in it.

I don’t even really know how to explain this, I’ve never been offended by a hashtag, and I can’t imagine how vapid you have to be, to be offended by one.

Anyway, if any of you are part of the “Not All Men”, or the “All Lives Matter” crew, just stop, you sound silly, these types of movements need support, not some bridge troll trying to find a way to be offended by them.