In further proof that Twitter’s memory is goldfish short, controversy erupted last night over the hashtag #FeministsAreUgly, which was invented by two feminists of color all the way back in August of 2014. Last night, it exploded into controversy all over again, in a truly unholy convergence of 4chan trolls, a bad Twitter update, and young white feminists who didn’t quite get what was going on.
The hashtag was invented by Lily Bolurian and @cheuya:
Several times over the past few months, though, people have discovered #FeministsAreUgly, assumed it was propogated by evil sexists, and shared “retorts” like this, featuring photos of pretty, famous, mostly white people:
In other words, the hashtag became an opportunity for people, many of them young white cisgender women, to battle fully imaginary trolls—and thus attract real ones—by showing off their dewiest, doe-eyed, sexiest Selfies for Equality. Sharing a hot photo can be a joy, but fellow Jez writer Jia Tolentino correctly identified what was going down as “the social justice thirst trap.” It inspired responses like this, from British writer Laurie Penny:
Which is true. Beauty and morality aren’t tied together. Being conventionally unattractive has no bearing on a person’s inherent worth. It literally would not matter at all if every feminist on the planet was genuinely, legitimately “ugly.” It wouldn’t change a goddamn thing. In reacting so hard to accusations of “ugliness,” we veer dangerously close to turning ourselves into Bizarro World Ann Coulters here, observing that “all pretty girls are right-wingers.”
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