Feminist Organizers’ Experiences of Activism

Author(s):  
Kaitlynn Mendes ◽  
Jessica Ringrose ◽  
Jessalynn Keller

Chapter 4 draws on semi-structured interviews with 18 organizers of Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and Who Needs Feminism? The chapter interrogates key experiences and the affective dimensions of starting, running, and managing a feminist campaign. The chapter outlines four key arguments: First, we posit that organizing feminist campaigns involves highly affective, invisible, precarious, and time-consuming labor. Second, we demonstrate how involvement in these campaigns can inspire “feminist awakenings” among organizers. Third, we suggest that while mediated abuse is a common experience, it is not universal; rather it operates on a continuum, and evokes varying responses from its victims, including being motivated to continue their activism. Finally, we map how feminist activism is often exhausting and draining, and individual and collective care strategies are needed to prevent activist burnout.

Author(s):  
Kaitlynn Mendes ◽  
Jessica Ringrose ◽  
Jessalynn Keller

In this chapter, we outline our conceptual framework, addressing key theories that underpin our analysis, including, affect and related concepts, including affective solidarity, networked affect, and affective publics. We also introduce key terms from critical technology studies, including platform vernacular and other concepts relevant to the political economy of social media. After providing further information on the six case studies described in the Introduction, including their reason for selection and methods used, the chapter details our unique methodological approach, which draws insights from a range of interdisciplinary tools, including feminist ethnographic methods, thematic textual analysis, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and online observations.


Author(s):  
Marianne Clark ◽  
Deborah Lupton

The implementation of physical distancing measures and lockdowns across the globe to control the spread of COVID-19 has led to the home becoming a focal point of exercise and fitness activities for many people. A plethora of digital tools were hastily assembled to help people workout at home or in spaces close to home: including apps with workout suggestions, online videos and livestreamed fitness classes. In this article, we draw on our empirical material collected through semi-structured interviews and virtual ethnographic home tours with Australian adults to explore the ‘pandemic fitness assemblages’ generated with and through their improvised pandemic fitness practices inside and outside their homes. These materials illustrate how bodies, digital and non-digital technologies, and place and space came together and help to surface the affects, sensations and embodiments that emerged. We describe how people’s re-imagined fitness practices contributed to daily routines, transformed the atmospheres of the home and yielded affective experiences of escape. To do so, we think with sociospatial and feminist materialism theoretical frameworks that emphasise the generative relationships emerging between human and more-than-human forces and entities. Our analysis further illuminates the situatedness and relationality of these heterogeneous forces and considers how they come to matter within the broader sociomaterial context of COVID-19.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 1827-1848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine R Linabary ◽  
Danielle J Corple ◽  
Cheryl Cooky

Scholars have argued that digital spaces are key sites for feminist activism, which can be seen in the emergence of “hashtag feminism,” or the use of social media hashtags to address feminist-identified issues through sharing personal experiences of inequality, constructing counter-discourses, and critiquing cultural figures and institutions. However, more empirical research is needed that examines both the possibilities and constraints of hashtag feminism. Through a qualitative analysis of 51,577 archived tweets and semi-structured interviews, we trace the ways #WhyIStayed creates a space for feminist activism in response to victim-blaming related to domestic violence through voice, multivocality, and visibility. More specifically, we critically analyze postfeminist discourses within #WhyIStayed in order to examine contradictions within the hashtag event as well as how these postfeminist contradictions shape possibilities for feminist activism online.


Author(s):  
Kaitlynn Mendes ◽  
Jessica Ringrose ◽  
Jessalynn Keller

In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways digital spaces are often highly creative sites where the public can learn about and intervene in rape culture, little research has explored girls’ and women’s experiences of using digital platforms to challenge misogynistic practices. This is therefore the first book-length study to interrogate how girls and women negotiate rape culture through digital platforms, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and mobile apps. Through an analysis of high-profile campaigns such as Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and the everyday activism of Twitter feminists, this book presents findings of over 800 pieces of digital content, and semi-structured interviews with 82 girls, women, and some men around the world, including organizers of various feminist campaigns and those who have contributed to them. As our study shows, digital feminist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and a variety of digital platforms are used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes. Furthermore, although it may be technologically easy for many groups to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain emotional, mental, or practical barriers that create different experiences, and legitimate some feminist voices, perspectives, and experiences over others.


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (spe2) ◽  
pp. 9-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emília de Carvalho Coutinho ◽  
Alcione Leite da Silva ◽  
Carlos Manuel Figueiredo Pereira Pereira ◽  
Alexandra Isabel Almeida ◽  
Paula Alexandra Batista Nelas ◽  
...  

This study aimed to assess the care received and the barriers faced by immigrants and Portuguese pregnant women in Portugal. This is an exploratory qualitative study, resorting to applying semi-structured interviews to 60 immigrant and 22 Portuguese women. Content analysis supported by QSR Nvivo10 program was used. The study was approved by an Ethics Committee. The results showed four categories related to affective dimensions-relational, cognitive, technical-instrumental and health care policy for pregnant women. As for the barriers in health care, these were mentioned by some of the expectant mothers, especially immigrant women. Almost all, both immigrant and Portuguese, pregnant women were satisfied with the health care.


Author(s):  
Liz Owens Boltz

Historical empathy has increasingly been recognized as a multidimensional construct that involves both cognitive and affective dimensions. Research suggests that engaging learners with diverse historical perspectives in activities like debate, writing, and role play can be more effective for historical empathy than traditional instruction. Although several studies have investigated the effectiveness of these strategies, little is known about the effectiveness of games in promoting historical empathy. Through observation, recorded game play, and semi-structured interviews, this chapter examined how historical empathy manifested as eighth graders played a videogame about World War I (Valiant Hearts). The findings indicate that specific elements of game play may foster particular dimensions of historical empathy better than others, and that some dimensions tend to arise spontaneously while others require (or even resist) prompting.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ásta Jóhannsdóttir

Iceland's performance on the Gender Gap Index has been outstanding in the last nine years. It now has a reputation for being one of the most gender equal countries in the world. However, local feminist activists argue that challenges to full gender equality remain. Underlying both the dominant gender equality rhetoric and feminist activism is a neoliberal, postfeminist sensibility that all are free to choose their most preferred body practices and that empowerment is a fact. There are, however, more subtle indications that young people's views of body hair practices, hinging around binaristic gender norms, are more ambivalent than that. This paper investigates how body hair practices are performed among young Icelandic people. The theoretical framework draws on feminist, poststructuralist, and affect theories. The data was collected between 2012 and 2016 and consists of semi-structured interviews with young women and men, group interviews with five young women based on co-operative inquiry, and an instrumental case study focusing on the issue of body hair practices. The analysis shows that shame and disgust remain entangled with practices around body hair among both men and women. It is gendered in that women's bodies are under more surveillance than men's. The paper concludes that, notwithstanding feminist activism and gender equality rhetoric, policing around body hair practices still exists in contemporary Icelandic society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 1389-1403
Author(s):  
Jessica Brown ◽  
Kelly Knollman-Porter

Purpose Although guidelines have changed regarding federally mandated concussion practices since their inception, little is known regarding the implementation of such guidelines and the resultant continuum of care for youth athletes participating in recreational or organized sports who incur concussions. Furthermore, data regarding the role of speech-language pathologists in the historic postconcussion care are lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this retrospective study was to investigate the experiences of young adults with history of sports-related concussion as it related to injury reporting and received follow-up care. Method Participants included 13 young adults with history of at least one sports-related concussion across their life span. We implemented a mixed-methods design to collect both quantitative and qualitative information through structured interviews. Participants reported experiencing 42 concussions across the life span—26 subsequent to sports injuries. Results Twenty-three concussions were reported to a parent or medical professional, 14 resulted in a formal diagnosis, and participants received initial medical care for only 10 of the incidents and treatment or services on only two occasions. Participants reported concussions to an athletic trainer least frequently and to parents most frequently. Participants commented that previous experience with concussion reduced the need for seeking treatment or that they were unaware treatments or supports existed postconcussion. Only one concussion incident resulted in the care from a speech-language pathologist. Conclusion The results of the study reported herein shed light on the fidelity of sports-related concussion care management across time. Subsequently, we suggest guidelines related to continuum of care from injury to individualized therapy.


2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Mellman ◽  
Laura S. DeThorne ◽  
Julie A. Hengst

Abstract The present qualitative study was designed to examine augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) practices, particularly surrounding speech-generating devices (SGDs), in the classroom setting. We focused on three key child participants, their classroom teachers, and associated speech-language pathologists across three different schools. In addition to semi-structured interviews of all participants, six classroom observations per child were completed. Data were coded according to both pre-established and emergent themes. Four broad themes emerged: message-focused AAC use, social interactions within the classroom community, barriers to successful AAC-SGD use, and missed opportunities. Findings revealed a lack of SGD use in the classroom for two children as well as limited social interaction across all cases. We conclude by highlighting the pervasive sense of missed opportunities across these classroom observations and yet, at the same time, the striking resiliency of communicative effort in these cases.


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