Have you ever ventured into a corner of the internet where reality appears ever so slightly altered? In which everything appears in place as normal, with the exception of some very minor details? I am not referring to \u201cdeep web content\u201d or even the oddly surreal \u201cmillennial humor.\u201d Instead, I am addressing an issue that is before our very eyes. It is a phenomenon that the Rusyn community is by no means exempt from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An idea came to mind as I scrolled through Facebook and noticed a reoccurring theme on Rusyn-centric pages. That is, beautiful women, often in traditional dress, posing suggestively for the camera, oftentimes beckoning the viewer. In a sense, it is usually no different from actual adult content. But why? Let us first acknowledge an alarming trend that has become increasingly prevalent since the rise of social media. In recent years, sexual content has blended very subtly into once family-friendly spaces. At first glance, it is intended to appear as regular, \u201csafe for work\u201d content in order to bypass censorship on a given platform and perhaps even channel a wider audience. One of the most widespread examples of this phenomenon went viral in 2017 when thousands of YouTube \u201ckids\u201d channels were exposed for the distribution of sexual and other inappropriate content. Though this might not usually be as deliberate as the mentioned incident above, many times, the results from it are still the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Returning to the context within our own community, the pages themselves are not limited to sexually explicit content alone. Instead, they appeal to a wider audience by posting food, landscapes, and interior design \u2013 making it all the more disturbing, leading to the impression that reality has somehow been altered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This brings me to my next point of what I call \u201cthinly-veiled sexism.\u201d I would argue that no modern population or special interest group has been spared from it. I am referring to what social media users encounter on a daily basis, which isolates women from the rest of the world. It is a social phenomenon that has caused femininity to be viewed in a prescribed sense rather than one subjective to the individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is firstly, overall, a mere act of convenience for men: the idea that all they need to do is scroll through their social media feed and have immediate access to women\u2019s bodies. I would argue that even in cases where women consent and earn capital from the content produced, it is not always as simple as consent alone. In a culture where sexuality is highly glamorized and rarely discussed intricately, it is easy to consent to a decision that has been portrayed in a one-sided manner, disregarding any potential consequence. We can compare this to the media\u2019s romanticization of the \u201cgangster\u201d lifestyle, which portrays gang membership as flaunting piles of cash, wearing gold jewelry, and going to clubs (with a lesser focus on the effects of drug use, prison sentences, and the high mortality rate of young gang members).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The widespread availability assumes the archaic notion that men are \u201cinherently sexual\u201d by nature and that women are inherently sexualized. It goes without saying that in the past and still today, men have been excused for their sexual misconduct because they are believed to have an animalistic \u201cweakness\u201d towards women outside of their control. Oddly enough, fewer people than one would expect emphasize factors like psychological illness and lack of personal responsibility. Entitlement has instead been given in place of repercussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, what is done by a man is more likely to be viewed as the \u201cdefault,\u201d whereas the \u201cequivalent\u201d done by a woman is expected to be somehow feminized, if not completely sexualized. Let\u2019s return to the theme of traditional Rusyn dress, two separate photos\u2013 one of a man and a woman. Which photo is more likely to display sexual undertones? The man might be posed simply by a woodpile, gazing into the distance as he holds an ax. But the woman, on the other hand, may be churning butter with her full chest on display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The latter is indeed sexualized, but both images evoke a time when prescribed gender roles were a given, unlike today. I would actually argue that occupational opportunities are one of the few differences between today and the mid 20th<\/sup> century. Whereas in the 20th<\/sup> century, the repression of women was largely centered around a domestic setting, we have simply added onto the list of gendered expectations. It is no longer enough to be a mother, wife, or even a working woman. The concern now stems namely from the social insistence on exaggerated femininity, especially for young women. The idea that liberation means hypersexuality, no matter the social and physical consequences. That we must have a carefully curated \u201caesthetic\u201d and personality: our clothing should follow a color scheme, our social media handle should be a romantic-sounding name, and our personality should be taken from a female character or influencer that we are told to idealize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us not forget that it is also in poor taste to publicly post sexualized images in an open space where children, elders, and sexual assault survivors can encounter them. It is easy for some to assume that \u201cwe are all adults and we can handle it,\u201d \u2013 but this is oversimplified thinking. For one, there is no guarantee that only adults see these images. Further, we should not presume that all adults hold a \u201csex-positive\u201d mindset. Countless people (of all gender identities and ages) are victims of sex crimes. For many such individuals, sexualized images are not an empowering statement but a bitter reminder of what caused them immense, personal suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More broadly, let us not fall into the trap that other communities have fallen into via the internet. Photos remain an issue, alongside regular text posts and \u201cmemes.\u201d For anyone who uses Twitter or Instagram, you might see other communities participating in similar groupthink behavior. Some will brag that their women \u201chave the most class and elegance,\u201d while others will claim that their women are the \u201cmost feisty.\u201d I want to note that none of these are, in fact, \u201ccompliments,\u201d but archetypes in which women are assumed to fit neatly into. Slavic women are just one of many ethnicities fetishized by western media (portrayed as either femme fatale <\/em>or the \u201cperfect village wife\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n More importantly, there remains no \u201cdeeper\u201d argument to be analyzed once the post has been read or the photo has been viewed. A Twitter user believes Rusyn women are the most beautiful\u2026then what? Such social media trends gain traction because they are some of the most low-effort attempts to bring attention towards a group of people. But consider someone who is not Rusyn or familiar with the culture at all. They might think, \u201cOkay, great. But who are these Rusyn people? Where do they even live? What have they contributed that\u2019s worth learning about?\u201d Low-effort, opinionated posts can be amusing for a short period of time, but that which is more extensively researched and argued will ultimately be a more lasting source of information. Is this not a social media problem in a more general sense? There is no doubt it most definitely is. However, as Rusyns, we must not make social media trends our main focus when we do not yet even have a comprehensive definition of \u201cRusyn.\u201d What separates our experience from other ethnic groups is that an overwhelming percentage of our fellow Rusyns do not, nor care to recognize us as a distinct people, culture, or even language. So we should not assume that what brings awareness to other groups of people will necessarily do the same for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issue is not merely that these posts exist<\/em>, but the disproportionate number of them compared to ones of intellectual capacity. The Rusyn people have plenty of contributions to highlight. We have seen a resurgence in political theory, language-learning resources, literature, folk art, and music, to name a few. Yet, in the minds of many, any publicity is good publicity. Quantity over quality. It is easier for a person to quickly find photos and add a short caption. In using immediate outward identifiers of culture, such as clothing and food, the viewer gains instant gratification, with no extensive paragraphs or statistical information insight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We could very well also consider this phenomenon as a form of \u201cslacktivism\u201d in regard to promoting Rusyn culture. Not only this but the commodification of our people \u2013 following the trends that we observe everywhere else on the internet because they have proven results. We are, to put it bluntly, using women as a business model, not unlike mainstream areas of the internet. Humanity and personal identity have been tossed aside for the sake of short attention spans and male entitlement. Repression and dehumanization are anything but unheard of to the Rusyn people. Why then should we encourage \u2013 either passively or outwardly \u2013 that which disgraces and exoticizes the female experience in both our own ethnic community and beyond?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emily Gall writes on the portrayals of Rusyn women online and their connection to older ideas of identity within our society. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","iawp_total_views":22,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[46,12,52],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-emily-gall","tag-opinion","tag-women"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n