Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 February 22

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Miscellaneous desk
< February 21 << Jan | February | Mar >> February 23 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


February 22[edit]

"a significant number of the yes all women tweets implied that" - meaning?[edit]

I saw this video (3:33) and I listened to the woman that said "I don't think all men are potential predators or rapists - a significant number of the yes all women tweets implied that.". I don't understand the meaning of the emphasized part (maybe it's because I'm not a native English speaker). ThePupil17 (talk) 22:51, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The hashtag #yesallwomen is used by some Twitter users to highlight sexism and harrasment that women face. The woman in the video is saying that many of the tweets using this hashtag are generalizing men, making it seem that they are all potential predators or rapists. - Lindert (talk) 23:07, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think it should have been written "a significant number of the 'yes all' women tweets", indicating those who believe that all men have the potential, if I'm parsing it correctly. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:01, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Clarityfiend: You are not parsing that correctly. The original hashtag was "not all men" which is short for "not all men are like that" (Which doesn't necessarily mean rapists, but refers to sexism, misogyny, discrimination, domestic violence, what I would like to euphemistically call poor dating etiquette et cetera). Later another hashtag was created #yesallwomen (meaning: Yes, all women experience sexism and harassment, discrimination, misogyny and poor dating etiquette et cetera). The woman in the video claims that a significant number of the #yesallwomen tweets implied that all men are rapists. This claim is (obviously) false. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 10:54, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There's also obviously a crucial difference between "all men are rapists" and "all men are potential rapists". The latter statement is kind of a truism. Anyone could be a rapist if you know nothing about them. The same goes for "all women are potential rapists" - Lindert (talk) 11:17, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Lindert: You forgot to mention aliens. All aliens are potential rapists. I just read about a hundred of #yesallwomen tweets (which isn't very impressing considering they are limited to 140 characters) and none of those tweets claimed that all men are rapists. I admit that the sample size is a bit small, but still... The woman in the video makes that claim, even though it is easy to disprove, because she has an agenda. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 11:21, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@The Quixotic Potato:When you're trying to disprove a claim, you need to state the claim accurately. She never said that any tweets called all men rapists. Again, you're leaving out the word 'potential'. Now I don't think her actual statement was particularly meaningful or even true, but you are attacking a strawman here. - Lindert (talk) 11:38, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Lindert: True. New version: none of the ~100 #yesallwomen tweets I just read implied that all men are potential predators or rapists. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 11:42, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Back to the linguistic question, without regard to the questions people are answering that didn't need to be because no one asked. The way to parse the statement is "a significant number of the 'yes all women' tweets implied that" because 'yes all women' refers to a specific kind of tweet, one with the hashtag #YesAllWomen. See the Wikipedia article titled YesAllWomen if you want to know more about the hastag. --Jayron32 14:36, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you all. To be honest I had no idea what it is "yes all woman" till the moment that you tell me about, and this the first time that I know about that. I don't use tweeter also, it's less popular in my country, so when I listened to her sentence that I mentioned it was for me like Chinese language :) ThePupil17 (talk) 15:23, 23 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]