Harassed over online stereotypes
Art hoes and crazy bitches
Door Veronika Bajnokova
By Veronika Bajnokova
Veronika Bajnokova
Nineteen-year-old Camila wears thick eyeliner, horn-rimmed glasses, and dark clothing. Not that remarkable, except that her style shows similarities with an aesthetic that has been dubbed ‘art hoe’ – quirky girls with a colourful indie look who wear Dr. Martens boots and Kånken backpacks. ‘When I meet someone new, they say I’m one of those art hoes and ask me if I do TikTok dances.’
She’s also often compared to e-girls – an electronic girl, one that exists only on the screens. The term is often used as an insult for women perceived to be seeking out male attention online. Even though her Instagram page is full of pictures from art museums and selfies in which she poses fully clothed, she’s received so many inappropriate messages based on her looks that she was forced to switch to a private profile.
That’s bad enough in itself, but Camila, a marketing management student, has found that this harassment over online trends bleeds over into real life as well.
‘I was once texting with a guy who had similar aesthetics to mine’, she says. ‘And he seemed genuinely interested.’ When they sat down in the park after a walk, he put his hand on her thigh immediately and started moving it upwards. She stopped him. ‘I told him I was uncomfortable. But he went “I thought you were freaky”’, Camila says. ‘He got really mad at me, saying I couldn’t present myself like this on Instagram. I couldn’t dress like this and then reject him.’
Dehumanizing
Camila didn’t understand what it was about her that screamed ‘freaky’ or ‘kinky’. And she’s not the only one to have experienced this. Take Marta, a law student from Croatia. Art has always been important in her life; she plays the piano and loves singing. She wears skirts with knee socks. ‘So I got called an art hoe.’
When I meet someone new, they ask me if I do TikTok dances
The term was coined in 2015 by artists of colour in the ‘Art Hoe Collective’ who aimed to challenge the commercial art scene while also reclaiming the derogatory term ‘hoe’. While art hoe has become a buzzword, the original collective disbanded and the message lost its original meaning.
Marta had been chatting with a classmate during an exam review in one of her law courses and decided to go out with him afterwards. But when she found his Instagram profile, his bio read: ‘Art hoe enthusiast.’
She was reminded of all the guys in high school who used to call her that: ‘I immediately thought, Jesus Christ, please, I don’t want to deal with this again. It feels dehumanising. Everything is generalised and everyone is put in a box.’
Lack of content moderation
Platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok ‘expand, enhance, and exaggerate’ unacceptable behaviour both online and offline’, agrees UG media specialist Marianne Franklin. ‘Someone uploads their bad behaviour online and downloads somebody else’s behaviour.’
But, she says, it’s not really new. She did her doctoral research on gender and technology in the nineties and believes that ‘these are new reinventions of an ancient form of harassment’. ‘Sexual harassment is alive and well. Women who dressed alternatively in the nineties met with violent responses in the streets. You didn’t need social media for that to happen.’
The big problem with social media, she says, is the lack of content moderation. There’s no keeping up with the ‘size, scale, and speed’ at which online harassment keeps spreading and leaking into the offline world.
Mental illness
The fact that we have the internet on our phones and therefore always at the tip of our fingers has a big impact on how we interact with others, Marta thinks. ‘We have more access to other people’s experiences and thoughts. And that makes everyone feel like they know you, because you’re similar to this one person they saw online’, she says.
Someone uploads their bad behaviour online and downloads somebody else’s behaviour
She’s also found that the fetishising of mental illness on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or X (formerly Twitter) – the subject of recent research – has real-life consequences. In her teens, she experienced a mental crisis and had to take antidepressants for a while. She told a friend about her struggles, someone she felt ‘pretty close’ with. But when she opened up to him, he said to her with a cheeky smirk: ‘I like crazy bitches.’
Her friend’s remark made Marta feel ‘uncomfortable and disrespected.’ But she was also scared to tell him he shouldn’t say stuff like this to women, because of her experiences with other men: ‘I was at his place and I was scared of what he might do.’
She felt put in a box, she says, and she thinks social media is to blame for offensive generalisations often made about women who struggle with mental health: ‘Guys come up to me and think I must have daddy issues’, referring to memes about women without a father figure. ‘I actually have a great relationship with my father.’
Latina women
‘Men feel so okay saying stuff that should stay inside their heads’, twenty-two-year-old Isabella from Brazil agrees. She has to deal with this kind of behaviour all the time, and puts the blame on influencers like Andrew Tate, who went viral with his misogynistic comments about women. ‘Over-sexualisation in the media makes men think that their behaviour is okay.’
She is completely fed up with the stereotypes of oversexualised Latina women she keeps seeing on social media. ‘If you search Brazilians on Instagram, the same videos that are on PornHub will appear. Social media just gave access to everything that was on Pornhub and then made it trendy.’
They think we’re just going to drop our panties and start fucking everyone we see
Isabella came to the Netherlands two years ago to study law and has since grown tired of Dutch guys telling her they ‘only make out with Brazilians’. ‘Me and my friends sometimes don’t even mention where we’re from, because the moment we tell guys we’re Brazilian, their eyes start to shine and they stop being respectful.’
This past April, on King’s Night, Isabella was dancing with her friends at the Sunny Beach nightclub. A Brazilian song came up and a random guy came up to her and asked: ‘How much do you charge?’
‘It was surreal. When we’re dancing, guys think we do it to seduce them and not because we like to dance. Brazilian women are seen as sexual beings, like we’re just going to drop our panties and start fucking everyone we see.’
Regulations
The problem is the business model on social media, says Franklin. Algorithms meant to keep users’ attention for as long as possible perpetuate stereotypes faster and more widely than ever before. ‘Sex sells’, she says. ‘It always has. But it’s just shocking that men still think they can get away with this.’
Change might be on the horizon, though. Although people like X owner Elon Musk argue that content moderation is just a fancy word for censorship, European regulators are now starting to push online platforms to take responsibility for harmful content and take content moderation more seriously. Social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X have been subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act since August 2023, and as of February this year, every online platform with users in the EU has to comply with its rules.
And it’s high time too, Franklin feels. ‘Freedom of expression is not an absolute right. You cannot just say whatever you like and not suffer consequences. So don’t upload your sexist shit’, she says. ‘Put it in your own hard drive. In other words: keep it in your pants.’
Camilla and Isabella are pseudonyms. The editors know their real names.