Pussy Riot Grrrls- how the internet is spreading the word

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Frances Shaw on "Australian Feminist Blogs and Online Discursive Activism"

"Presenting the findings of research into Australian feminist blogs, this talk combined social movement theory and new media studies to provide new ways of conceptualising online networked activism. Shaw discussed the centrality of political talk in these networks. She argued that feminist bloggers are engaged in acts of political creativity, or discursive activism.


Discursive activism is defined as active engagement with and intervention in mainstream discourses in order to create social change. In this talk, a number of questions and provocations were introduced about how online social movement activity should be conceptualised. This will raise questions about the appropriateness of public sphere theory, and explore the implications of the concept of discursive activism for research into online social movements."(OMG! Scholarly Talks)

Australian feminist blogs and online discursive activism from peterjohnchen on Vimeo.

Frances Shaw's powerpoint presentation is available to view here on OMG! Scholarly Talks.

Video was accessed from OMG! Scholarly Talks. More scholarly talks available on the site. 

Why 'Feminars'?

“Half the world’s population, but not with half the share of wealth, wellbeing and opportunity. And certainly, women do not get half of media attention, or an equal voice in expression – only 22 percent of the voices you hear and read in the news today are women’s.” [Women in the News: Gender Wire, IPS]

Today, cyberspace allows women to be online and use the media just as much as men. In America, 54% of adult females (42 million women) use social media at least on a weekly basis. Their top interests are entertainment, food, health/wellness, and recipes/cooking. Fashion/beauty/shopping comes in fifth. Online media is a matriarchy, with women composing the majority of nearly every major social media outline. Women are also twice as likely as men to blog and to use blogs as a source of information, advice, debate, and opinion sharing.  34% of women use social networks to get information, while 20% of women are looking for advice and recommendations.

In the past, the feminist cause has inspired to fight for change through the story telling of tales of social injustice. In the 1970s, consciousness raising was all about sharing stories.

Nowadays, the Internet allows women the opportunity to participate in feminist debate and discursive activism without feeling restricted by their gender as online feminism works as a thriving hub of contemporary feminist action. It pushes the envelope for how to even think of feminism across the globe: from North Africa to Australia, storytelling is now uploaded to millions through online media in helping women prevent harassment, mobilize campaigners, discuss policy or lobby the government. Online media is the medium; women’s issues are the message. 

However, modern markets require modern strategies to capitalize on ways of sharing information on online media. Women have been connecting and sharing online for years, yet it can be a struggle to keep pace with the constantly changing social frontier. Web activists are creating online communities that encourage women to voice their opinions, and then pointing those women towards ways to take direct action. In this way, online media acts for ‘web activism’ as a funnel to organise.

Feminars seeks to examine how online media acts as this funnel. We are especially interested in doing comparative analyses of the active online movement through social media and blogging sites as tools for voicing women’s issues. Online media tools include:

• -        Facebook’s role in social networking, discussing women’s issues though ‘pages’ and ‘groups’ and how Facebook has been a hindrance
• -        Twitter’s role in allowing women to share their opinions, links and starting campaigns
• -        Blogsphere- how it has started a surge of feminist discussion
• -        Websites like Jezebel, Feministing, Mama Mia and The Dawn Chorus: their role in reshaping contemporary women’s issues to be more accessible and relatable to all genders.
• -        Youtube’s role in shaping Women’s issues through videos and links
• -        Other content includes: Articles, Interviews, Transcripts of Scholarly Talks, Links, Images, Polls and Questionnaires, Forums, Digital Art and Animation

Some of the topics we will explore in our feature include:

• -        Cross-Generational and Cross-Cultural Feminism, Post-Feminism and Anti-Feminism
• -        Feminist Humour
• -        Women’s Health
• -        Media Representations of Gender

-         The purpose of Feminars is not just to talk about feminist topics, but to explore how the online media space can actually enhance this discussion through media tools. We want to encourage critical thinking, self-examination and changes in broader social discourse through an insight into how online media encourages or perhaps hinders this process.

We hope to engage with our target audience of primarily young women, and then on a broader scale, all women and men, to reflect on the Internet’s ability to touch on issues relevant to the community as a whole. Though we do analysis, in the end we hope to see how online media sends people away from those sites rather than trapping them there!

The Internet: What Did It Do To Feminism?

Welcome to Feminars!

Feminars' aim is to create a webspace catered towards women (and men) who want to understand the role of feminism in the online world better.

We will also give advice on how they can use online media to promote feminist ideas and contribute to discussions.

Our target demographic will be primarily younger-generation women (similar to us) who have an interest in the changing environment of online feminist discussion.

Our blog is going to give them a medium through which they can explore feminist ideas online, how they're expressed and how they can become a part of the wider online global discussion.

It is a difficult theme to address. There has been discussion that we may be living in a post-feminist society, wherein being a feminist can be confused with being excessively and unnecessarily political. It also raises ideas about post-feminism irony, where facebook groups about women staying in the kitchen are taken lightly, as they are presumed to be plays on 'old-fashioned' anti-feminist beliefs not considered to be popular anymore.

However, post-feminism irony can still incite genuine offence and degradation, as observed in the backlash to an anti-feminist rape joke made by popular comedian Daniel Tosh in July 2012. The joke encouraged many people to take to the Internet, expressing their disapproval of his insistence that it would be funny were a female member of the audience was gang-raped; however, many of the women who retaliated online were bombarded by accusations they were taking things too seriously and to lighten up as it was just a joke. Women's rights online are not well-defined; hence the intense backlash to the strong feminist responses. 

So whether we truly are in a post-feminist society (where everything is equal and women should be laughing at jokes about them in the same way men should) or not is up for debate, and something we'll definitely be tackling in our blog.

It's an idea that's already been cleverly explored in the 'Is This Feminist?' tumblr, which has a wonderful sense of humour that we'll definitely be trying to incorporate a similar sense of into our blog. Feminism can be a heavy topic, so we will be utilising light humour in order to lessen this effect.

There are lots of feminist blogs already in existence, and they're definitely inspiring to us in helping us form our vision for Feminars...

• There's LOL-feminist, a blog dedicated solely to jokes and memes relating to feminism, the humour of which we should be incorporating into our blog occasionally.
• The very famous Jezebel site - quite sarcastically funny, but also one of the more timely and news-based feminist blogs.
• And The Dawn Chorus, an Australian-focused feminist blog focused primarily on essays related to current affairs. 

We'll be trying to incorporate the aspects from these blogs that work for our goals for our project. Ultimately, Feminars should be timely, respectfully light-hearted, and with some essays/transcripts/seminars thrown in as well.

The one thing we've noticed missing from these blogs, however, is a specific focus on women online. There's clearly not a shortage of us, as stock images will show:

And that's how Feminars will be different. 

We want to examine exactly how women are represented - by others and by themselves - in the online world, as feminist theory can become complicated, especially in the seemingly rule-less environment of the Internet. 

We hope that our niche focus and modern topic material will resonate with our demographic, and we will be encouraging their interaction with the blog through mediums appropriate to them, utilising facebook, twitter, comment boxes and polls in order to make this as interactive as we can. 

It's about connecting a widespread online audience and capturing their interests in an intelligent, entertaining blog. 

It's by women, for women.

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Images courtesy of joe-ks.com and FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Presentation Feedback: 

To commission or not? Class consensus (thankfully) says yes.

How will potential users find us?

Through our use of social media, such as facebook, twitter and interaction with other blogs and websites.

What are the persistent hashtags that women use online for feminist debates?

#thingsmencallme campaign

The only way we will be found on twitter is through hashtags. Consequently, it's important to know both persistent and trending hashtags so as to maximise interaction.

Additionally, building networks through twitter and knowing the main twitter peeps is crucial to getting our blog out there.

Could we interview people who have had experiences in these areas? Marieke Hardy, Mia Freedman, Nina Funnell etc.

 

Introducing Feminars: Not Just A Rant 'n' Rave!

Tasnuva Bindi

As a starting point, we agreed that the crux of our blog is how the Internet has allowed feminism to remain an active social movement in a time where progressive technological change has impacted the way society and politics operate. We would discuss, specifically, how various social media and blogging sites (e.g. Jezebel; The Dawn Chorus; The F Word) are being used as a space for discursive political action; their influence on the way people discuss and debate gender and gender-related issues; and their implications on individual and community identities. What will make our blog different is that it will focus on women and how women engage in online discursive activism. 

Feminism: An Uncomfortable Topic? 

 

Image source: www.youaredoingthatwrong.wordpress.com

Having pitched the idea to several people, it became clear from their responses that the subject of feminism is one that evokes certain ideas and assumptions about women who pride themselves as feminists – for instance, one person mentioned that “feminists tend to be self-righteous and victimised in their personality, so make sure your blog isn’t a typical, annoying feminist rant ‘cause I probably wouldn’t read it and neither would most people unless they’re internet trolls who’ll just roam around your site to tease and harass you!”. This opinion and several other similar ones were voiced, somewhat surprisingly, by young women who seemed to have a particular aversion to what they believed to be feminism – ‘an oversensitivity to everything’, ‘trivial and unnecessary politics’, ‘a pride game’, 'active hypocrisy' and even 'sexism in reverse’. Based on these viewpoints, it seems that there are a good number of young women who have misunderstood feminism. This is not to point a finger at them for not understanding; after all, there are plenty of women who call themselves feminists when in fact, they are sexist - the very thing that feminism fights against - and so it is quite understandable why some young women have formed such a negative opinion of feminism. The good thing here is that our blog will help change that. One of the advantages of online discursive activism is the very fact that it's online - the Internet is not restricted by time and place; it is accessible from various technological devices and is a popular medium among young people. 

On further reflection, we felt it would be a good idea to make our blog diverse to accommodate the interests of various audiences (i.e. men and women, feminists and non!). Although controversial topics will be discussed, we don’t want the entirety of our blog to be about the ways in which women are objectified, bullied or degraded through the media; rather, we would touch on all kinds of contemporary gender-related issues that would apply to audiences whether they are male, female or intersex. Essentially, our blog is three-fold – we are: 1) creating a space for conversation; 2) introducing conversations (i.e. providing the readers with food for thought); and 3) changing conversations (i.e. presenting various viewpoints on existing issues and encouraging self-examination). In this sense, we are not only talking about online discursive activism but engaging in it!

 Not Just A Rant 'n' Rave!

 

In additon, our blog will have its positive, celebratory and light-hearted sections, where we will disseminate positive and inspirational news stories, post questionnaires and polls and even open a forum for blog authors and readers to share pictures, videos, jokes and stories.

Feminist Humour

 

In their article, 'Between Feminism and Funny(mism)', scholars Limor Shifman and Dafna Lemish (2010) point out that, given the number of Internet users involved in reading, creating and circulating gendered humour online, it is surprising that there isn't much literature that touches on the topic. And so, inspired by a few articles I read online – i.e. ‘Wisecrack: Feminism and Comedy’, ‘Seriously, Feminists Humor is Hilarious’ and 'Mad World: Who's afraid of (being) the big bad feminist?' that talk about feminist humour and how people perceive it - I thought it would be interesting to dedicate one section of our blog to discussing the production and circulation of feminist humour on the Internet. This is not to be mistaken with sexist humour; and I say this because often sexist jokes against men are labelled as 'feminist humour' - for instance, see John Mark Ministries 'Feminist Humor'. On the one hand, the motivation behind circulating such humour is the fact that there is a long history of women being the butt of sexist jokes; however, fighting fire with fire (or in this case, sexism with sexism) may not necessarily be an effective strategy for encouraging changes in broader social discourse. It only reinforces the kind of behaviour that women are so often offended by. Or perhaps this is just another case of mislabelling? 

When I think of feminist humour, I think of comediennes such as Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho - women who touch on controversial topics using admirable wit. Similarly, satire will be one of the approaches we use to inform, entertain and educate our blog readers on controversial topics.

Wanda Sykes
Image Source: www.theage.com.au

Margaret Cho
Image Source: www.images.suite101.com