#drawaline

Another reason I fucking love Benedict Cumberbatch. 

Matt Damon has been saying that the men who haven’t been raping/molesting/inappropriately touching women should be praised for y’know, not being rapey and grabby, for having basic human decency. Someone on twitter was saying how if someone broke a dish, Damon would show up and ask you to say what a good job he did for NOT breaking dishes that day. 

Matt Damon, I’m going to quote the ancient one....IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. 

But the rage directed at Damon, a privileged white man who has the world laid out for him on a golden platter (I’m speaking as a woman who lived in a refugee camp for over a year to escape persecution and death in the Middle East...I can expand on that if you wish). 

It’s. Not. About. You.

This is about women, this is about the daily struggles of women. Women who wake up every morning and think “oh is my boss going to grope today?” “am i going to get blackmailed into submission?” “is my boss going to be condescending today?” “how much blatant disrespect am i going to have to put up with before i explode?” 

For a lot of women, this is a reality, this is every day.

Matt Damon, it’s not about you. 

But as most things, this reminded me of BC. I will forever and always blow his trumpet when it comes to the work he did for the Syrian refugees and for the graceful way he dealt with Weinstein. 

Damon had/has NOTHING to lose when the allegations against Weinstein started. Cumberbatch, on the other hand, had a movie coming out, had started the press tours, had introduced the movie at TIFF. TCW was set up to premiere just in time for Oscar nods, and even though the TIFF reviews weren’t kind as a whole, they all agreed that Cumberbatch delivered and he was generating Oscar buzz. 

Cumberbatch had A LOT to lose. And yet, he SPOKE UP. he could’ve quietly gone along, no one would have really blamed him and we would all have attributed his silence to him being a private person and never really jumping into inner-Hollywood drama, and being a busy daddy of 2 young babies and a busy actor and budding producer with his own company to run. 

And yet! 

HE SPOKE UP.

Almost immediately, he was one of the first actors to come out and he kept his statement focused on the victims, NEVER talking about himself except to say that he was disgusted. 

I hated Damon the second he said that he found Weinstein’s actions to be deplorable now that he had a daughter....Meaning that it was ok for Weinstein to do what he did when Damon had no daughters. Meaning that it’s ok as long as it happens to someone else’s daughter? 

But then you have Cumberbatch, with 2 boys. With Damon and the rest of Hollywood’s logic, he should’ve kept his silence then, encouraged his boys to do as they wished. EXCEPT HE DIDN’T. His boys will grow into men, read their father’s statement, see the campaign he participated in, and know the difference between right and wrong, between acting like a decent human being and well, acting like Weinstein (and Trump...and Lauer....and Rose...and Spacey...)

And the DAY that TCW was set to release, this movie that got pushed back, that meant BC lost a chunk of the year, lost the US market, he participated in a campaign that empowered and encouraged WOMEN and VICTIMS to speak up without ever, ever, ever putting himself into the equation except to lend his voice. his articulate, loud, methodical voice. 

How lovely is that? Just let yourself think about the statement he made.

So Matt Damon wanting praise for not being a rapist makes me love Benedict Cumberbatch even more. 

As a woman, as a victim, and as a budding advocate, I choose to praise BC in the way that he will never praise himself. 

Know why? He’s a decent, human being. 

He is a good man.

(I realize I’ve been writing essays on here latey but I’m going to be out of court for like 3 weeks and the advocate in my head is getting bored)

Politicians have been seeking ways to approach and dive deep into our daily lives; and we have the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal to prove it. With the rise of social media, it couldn’t escape the fate of being politically engaged as politicians and political parties are taking advantage of it to win our hearts (votes).

According to Kalsnes (2016), Internet has become a popular medium for political communication during election campaigns, especially for social media platforms which have been hailed for their participatory and interactive potentials. In such way, politicians and political parties get to communicate directly with their potential voters without bypassing other media, which often the case, altered the original message. In addition, a study shows that, in general, the segment of 60 years and above trusted politicians more than the segment of 30 years and below; however, ironically, the most distrustful, young voters tended to trust politicians more in social media than in other media and communication channels. Hence, social media acts as a political tool to penetrate and win the younger generations’ hearts (votes).

Now, even though it sounds like social media is nothing but a toy played by various politicians in political contexts; social media also offer opportunities for discourse about social issues on a global scale. According to Petray & Collin (2017), social media platforms allow for citizen journalism of protests as they unfold, without the lag and editorializing of traditional media, as exemplified by #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter protests in the US and during the #Egypt uprising. Such acts gave an opportunity for normal citizens to counter the decisions made by those in powerful positions, limit their power (in some ways), and seek for a fairer judgement. Besides that, social media is also being utilised for the feminist movement such as Time’s Up, #MeToo, and #drawaline.

However, these trending hashtags, endorsed heavily by celebrities, could raise some issues especially among the younger crowd (I’m saying kids age) who without proper developed judgement. Here, I would like to share my very personal encounter with the above statement:

So, I was fangirling Harry Styles few months ago (October 2017 maybe) by stalking his Instagram and I came across a picture of his fans holding up the LGBT pride flags at one of his concert. So apparently the star had loudly and proudly brought out the rainbow flag in every of his concert to support the cause which urged his fans to follow the actions. This apparent very heart-warming post was tainted when I looked at the comment section: a fan of his asked why he wasn’t holding up the #BlackLivesMatter sign too as it is “trending” now (the comment was then deleted). And to my disappointment, other fans attacked her because of how she questioned Harry’s action, and no one seems to educate her on how a social movement is not a “trending” thing as it ties closely with lives and deaths.

Hence, even though the use of social media to spread a cause can reach out to audience on a global scale, it might also create a wrong impression, especially for the younger crowd, to follow a movement blindly without understanding the root of it just because it is “trending”.  

Well, it is a brilliant move for politicians and political parties to utilise social media as their platform to target young voters. Not only that, social media also provide us an opportunity to be heard by those in power as it gives us a voice to question the decisions made by higher authorities. So, politics, as much as I want to run away from the chaos, it is everywhere just like our parents.