#socialmedia

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I took a hiatus from facebook. When I mention that to people, it is almost like I told them I ate my dog for dinner. How in the world could I do such a thing? Truth be told I did it because I got tired of how much time I'd waste reading other peoples opinions, tired of the mixed emotions that comes with people's (as a friend says it) facebragging, and honestly the straw that broke my camel's back, I got tired of listening to a friend complain about family life but then every status update on facebook would be about how awesome family life is. It feels like facebook isn't reality for most people but an opportunity to show off or try to one-up everyone else.  I most likely wouldn't put up with this behaviour with friends in person so why put up with it online? I do occasionally log in because someone mentions an article posted in someone's feed that I should read or when I need to find someone's contact information. Of course, I haven't given up social media completely, I do have instagram, which is more my speed since I love viewing people's photos and I still waste a lot of time on pinterest and various blogs.

What I don't have is Twitter but I was tempted recently to join after the events in California over Memorial Day weekend and the #yesallwomen campaign that emerged. Of course I've been pondering some big post about #yesallwomen. It is a topic that is near and dear to me. Being part of the creation of a sexual awareness center on my college campus is one of my proudest accomplishments. Almost 20 years later and that center has thrived and grown and while my initial reaction is pride I realize what I should feel is disappointment; disappointment that the center is still around and that it thrives because girls on campus need it.  There have been some great blog posts, articles, and interviews about the reaction to the events in California and the #yesallwomen campaign  and I don't know that I can add any great insight. I feel too far removed in my small cosmos of family life in Texas to really be a part of the conversation anymore.

I am a mom of two boys and two girls and as I try my best to raise them to be kind, generous, thoughtful, happy contributing members of society. Daily they are reminded to respect elders, each other, their friends, strangers. At some point though (and sadly it is happening sooner with JT rather than later), I will start talking about more than just friend relationships and in reading the #yesallwomen comments I realized  that I will spend my time instilling in my boys to respect the girls they date, to listen when they say no, to never hit a girl but then I will turn to the girls and teach them to protect themselves, to learn to fight, to always be on guard.

I might be in my small family cosmos and not part of the larger conversation right now but I will do my part with the four young minds I have and hopefully they will take what I say and learn from the relationships I have to help make changes so perhaps when they are in college there won't be any need for sexual harassment centers on campus or maybe they will be a voice that helps make changes that we need.

If you have spare time, there are some though provoking tweets associated with the #yesallwomen (there are some not so great ones too). And as I learned don't have to join twitter you can just go to twitter.com and search a hashtag. There are also lots of media outlets have compiled some of the tops tweets.