gender, race and the political economy of feminist online activism

Jessie Daniels, PhD

Women’s Studies Colloquium – Graduate Center-CUNY

May 8, 2013

“’Our version of consciousness-raising groups’:

Gender, Race & the Political Economy of Feminist Online Activism”

Twitter: @JessieNYC

#digitalgc #fem2 #femfuture

introduction

sexism & misogyny exist

women are blogging

many to challenge sexism & misogyny

36.2 million women

15.1 million publishing

21.1 million reading & commenting

(white) men get invited, praised, listed

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media use shifting

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“We work for free and then pass this on... (to younger women). We must create a new culture of work, a virbant, feminist economy.”

~ Vanessa Valenti & Courtney Martin, The Future of Online Feminism

situating myself

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2009

“Without an explicit challenge to racism, white feminism is

easily grafted onto white supremacy and

useful for arguing for equality for white

women and possibly for white gays and lesbians

within a white supremacist context."

feminist bloggers study

interviews

digitally augmented ethnography

getting paid for blogging

the political economy of #femfuture

raises a set of questions

1. what kind of labor is online feminism?

2. how is race implicated inonline feminism?

3. what kind of activism is online feminism?

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“Maybe we can just be ‘weekend feminists’ with day jobs managing other websites or driving taxis, but when writing about feminist issues is what we want to do for a living, why shouldn’t we be able to?”

~ Elizabeth Daley

what kind of labor isfeminist blogging?

critiquing #femfuture

how is race implicated infeminist blogging?

“There is a dangerous ignorance in assuming #FemFuture is a first, a

start, or new.” ~ Jessica Marie Johnson, PhD

in-person meeting “closed”

online dialogue “open”

“It’s painful and embarrassing for white feminists to be called out around race and racism, but the

obligation to learn how to deal with those emotions productively is a

cost of privilege.”~ Jaclyn Friedman

hacking #femfuture

what kind of activism is online feminism?

epistemological activism

is online feminism digital labor?

"Social movements in the Information Age are essentially mobilized around cultural values. The struggle to change the codes of meaning in the institutions and practice of the society is the essential struggle in the process of social change in the new historical context, movements to seize the power of minds, not state power.”

~ Manuel Castells, 1997

how is race implicated?

what kind of feminism?

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Twitter: @JessieNYC

#femfuture #fem2

Thank you!

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