Sometimes people ask me about the difference between Facebook and Twitter and why I prefer Twitter.  Usually my answer is: I prefer Twitter because it’s more fun and less work.  I use Twitter for comedy and entertainment news and I use Facebook to keep in touch with people I actually know.

Tonight my answer is: On Twitter, over the past 9 hours there have been almost 200K tweets about violence against women using the tag #YesAllWomen… and probably hundreds of thousands reply tweets not using the hashtag that express solidarity and support but also replies from men telling women to “calm down” and “nobody cares” about how they were raped or assaulted.  It is really powerful to go and read what women are sharing tonight.  It’s sad that it is a “trending topic.”  It should be a “nonexistent topic.”  Violence against women simply because they are women happens literally every day in our country.  Every woman I know, including me, has experienced a man (usually acquaintance, friend, loved one, or trusted one; sometimes a stranger) believing he is entitled to her body in some way without her consent, with varied outcomes ranging from non-verbal and non-touching to more… extreme.

Tonight my answer is: I prefer Twitter because I am far more likely to delete this Facebook post* than I am to delete my tweets on the subject.  Which, in my opinion, says something about the quality of interaction on Facebook vs the quality of interaction on Twitter.  I don’t believe social media can solve our nation’s problems, but I do believe that making people aware that the problems exist is the first step toward a solution.  So if one night of “trending” can decrease the number of men who are unaware of the pervasiveness of the incidents described on Twitter tonight and the number of women who stay silent out of fear, then that is a start to the conversation.  We can’t get this poison out of our society overnight, but if we continue to hide it then the senseless loss of life and dignity will continue.

For any of you non-Twitter users, here’s a link to the #YesAllWomen thread for your perusal.  By default it will show “top tweets,” but you can click “all” at the top if you want to see all the tweets.

And FYI, the reason for the specific phrase “Yes all women” is that it is a reply to the common excuse “but not ALL men abuse…”  When saying this, men think they are being supportive or helpful in the conversation, but what they are really doing is trivializing the issue because it doesn’t directly affect them.

* Edit/Footnote: Further evidence to support my point… I never ended up posting this as a Facebook post.