Mendes Ringrose Keller Digital Feminist Activist

i
Digital Feminist Activism

ii
Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

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Digital Feminist Activism

GIR LS AND WOME N F IGH T BAC K
AGA I NS T RA P E C U LTU RE
K A I T LY N N   M E N D E S
JESSICA RINGROSE
and
J E S S A LY N N   K E L L E R
1
iv
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mendes, Kaitlynn, 1983- author. | Ringrose, Jessica. | Keller, Jessalynn.
Title: Digital feminist activism : girls and women fight back against rape culture /
Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, Jessalynn Keller.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2019. |
Series: Oxford studies in digital politics |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018028842 (print) | LCCN 2018049113 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190697860 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190697877 (Epub) |
ISBN 9780190697853 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190697846 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Rape—Prevention. | Men—Social aspects. | Sexism. |
BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Political Advocacy.
Classification: LCC HV6558 (ebook) | LCC HV6558 .M46 2019 (print) | DDC 362.883—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018028842
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
v
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1. Introduction: Digital Feminist Interventions 1
2. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Studying Digital

Feminist Activism 24
3. Documenting Harassment, Sexism, and Misogyny in Digital

Feminist Spaces 42
4. Feminist Organizers’ Experiences of Activism 73
5. Twitter as a Pedagogical Platform: Creating Feminist Digital

Affective Counter-Publics to Challenge Rape Culture 100
6. Hashtag Feminism: Sharing Stories with

#BeenRapedNeverReported 125
7. Teen Feminist Digital Activisms: Resisting Rape Culture

in and around School 145
8. Conclusion: Doing Digital Feminist Activism 175
Notes 191
References 193
Index 213
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Acknowledgments
There are many people we would like to thank. To start, thank you to the Arts
and Humanities Research Council, UK for funding the project “Documenting
Digital Feminist Activism: Mapping Feminist Responses to New Media
Misogyny and Rape Culture” (grant number AH/L009587/1). Without them,
this book wouldn’t have been possible. We would like to extend an enormous
thank you to our research assistants. Emilie Lawrence from UCL Institute of
Education helped us with many aspects of the research including our literature
review, collecting digital content, conducting individual interviews and focus
groups at our research school. Matt Bee from Leicester University was also es-
sential in collecting data for the project. Thanks also to everyone who provided
critical feedback and support on our writing, particularly Tanya Horeck, Akane
Kanai, Bianca Fileborn, Katie Warfield, and the two anonymous reviewers who
provided useful feedback on our book proposal.
The ideas in this book were presented at several national and international
scholarly conferences where we received important feedback that improved
many aspects of this book. Thanks to the fantastic audiences at the following
conferences for enthusiastically engaging with our research: 2015 Society
for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference; the 2015 Console-ing
Passions Conference; the 2016 Canadian Communications Association Annual
Conference; Affect and Social Media Symposium, University of East London,
March 2016; Ask First: A Symposium on Creating a Culture of Consent at
the University of Calgary, October, 2016; #NotAskingForIt Rape Culture and
Media Symposium, Middlesex University, February 2017; Gender, Sexuality
and the Sensory Symposium, University of Kent, May 2017.
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1
Introduction
Digital Feminist Interventions
For over a decade, feminist scholars and critics have sought to challenge the idea
we are living in a “postfeminist” moment where feminism is irrelevant, dated,
and even dead (Gill 2007; McRobbie 2009; Mendes 2011b; Scharff 2012;
Ringrose 2013). This postfeminist sensibility, yoked to the neoliberal values of
individualism, self-regulation, and entrepreneurialism (Gill and Scharff 2011;
Gill 2016), has not only fostered an environment in which collective social ac-
tion is discouraged in favor of individual change, but one in which rape culture
and misogyny remain prevalent in common cultural narratives. Despite this,
postfeminism requires girls and women to withhold their critique of patriarchal
ideas (McRobbie 2009), and those that refuse are often ridiculed or chastised
for having no sense of humor, or are seen as fighting for more than their share of
rights (Gill and Scharff 2011; Mendes 2011b). Yet in spite of this, it is clear that
new formations of feminism and diverse feminist communities do exist and are
being reimagined and expanded through the use of new media. This visibility of
contemporary feminist politics is heightened both by the opportunities afforded
by digital media technologies and our current cultural moment, whereby femi-
nism is increasingly popular (Banet-Weiser 2015; Banet-Weiser and Portwood-
Stacer 2017; Gill 2016; Keller and Ryan 2018).
In today’s “feminist zeitgeist” (Valenti 2014; Gill 2016), feminist ideologies,
initiatives, critiques, and even celebrities have attained significant levels of
visibility within popular media cultures (Darmon 2017; Hamad and Taylor
2015; Gill 2016; Rivers 2017). From pop singer Beyoncé dancing in front of
an illuminated screen reading “FEMINIST” at the 2014 Video Music Awards
(Valenti 2014; Keller and Ryan 2018), to “feminist” special issues of popular
magazines such as ELLE (Keller and Ringrose 2015), to Dior’s “WE SHOULD
ALL BE FEMINISTS” T-shirts launched in their 2017 Spring/Summer cam-
paign, feminism is increasingly visible and consumable in mainstream culture
1
2
2 d i g i ta l f e m i n i s t a c t i v i s m
(Banet-Weiser 2012). In recent years, feminist activism has also attracted public
attention. For example, viral hashtags such as #MeToo, #BringBackOurGirls,
#YesAllWomen, and #BeenRapedNeverReported have highlighted the ongoing
problem of violence against girls and women, while over 200 global SlutWalk
marches demanded an end to victim-blaming and rape culture in 2011 (Mendes
2015). Most recently, we’ve seen Women’s Marches challenge the sexism,
racism, and xenophobia of the Trump administration (Przybyla and Schouten
2017), and commercial magazines such as Teen Vogue advocate for reproduc-
tive justice and LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) rights
(Keller 2017).
The increased visibility of these activist initiatives is largely due to the ways
that digital technologies are being used in creative and innovative ways to fur-
ther feminist aims since the turn of the century. For example, in 2005, a group of
seven New Yorkers created the website Hollaback! to combat street harassment.
Now active in 31 countries, Hollaback! has been crucial in shaming perpetrators,
raising awareness, and encouraging people of all genders, sexualities, and
orientations to challenge street sexual harassment in diverse local communities.
A decade later, a Canadian teenager reprimanded for wearing a crop top to
school, used the hashtag #CropTopDay to organize a protest day in which over
300 girls wore belly-baring tops to school (Keller 2018). This protest combined
digital technology and school-based action to challenge the ways girls’ bodies
are policed and subject to gendered body shaming and “slut-shaming” in
school settings (Ringrose and Renold 2012). The teens used Twitter as both
an organizing tool and as a platform to circulate alternative narratives about
school dress codes, producing a space where teenage girls were seen as feminist
activists—political identities they are often denied (Harris 2004; Kearney 2006;
Keller 2015). Finally, just as were finishing this book in late 2017, the hashtag
#MeToo began trending on Twitter. This hashtag, like many others before it
(#YesAllWomen, #NotOk), provided women with an opportunity to share per-
sonal experiences of sexual assault and abuse, and in doing so, showcased the
pervasiveness of such practices, while sparking dialogue and debates about how
to challenge them.
These are three examples of the innovative ways girls and women are using
participatory digital media as activist tools to dialogue, network, and organize to
challenge contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. In doing so, these
activists expose, critique, and educate the public about sexism and offer counter
discourses to the “popular misogyny” that Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015) argues is
increasingly prevalent in twenty-first century media culture. Yet, despite these
often highly visible forms of activism and the growing body of research inter-
ested in digital feminist activism (Baer 2016; Clark 2016; Fotopoulou 2016a;
Keller 2012, 2015; Rentschler 2014; Shaw 2012b), little research has yet to
3
I n t rodu ct ion 3
explore girls’ and women’s experiences of using digital platforms to challenge mi-
sogynistic practices and dialogue.
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. Based upon a 21-month study
funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, we address four pri-
mary research questions: What experiences of harassment, misogyny, and rape
culture are girls and women responding to? How are girls and women using
digital media technologies to document experiences of sexual violence, harass-
ment, and sexism? Why are girls and women choosing to mobilize digital media
technologies in such a way? And finally, what are their experiences in using dig-
ital technologies to engage in activism? We address these questions through an
analysis of the following six case studies:
• Hollaback!—a website where users share stories of street harassment and

“map” locations of harassment using GPS-based technology.
• Everyday Sexism—a website where the public post personal accounts of
sexism.
• Who Needs Feminism?—a Tumblr site where users upload photos of
handcrafted signs explaining why feminism is necessary.
• The Twitter anti-rape culture hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported.
• A diverse range of international self-defined “Twitter Feminists” (women
and some men) who regularly use social media platforms to challenge rape
culture.
• A London school-based feminist group who collectively challenge rape cul-
ture and misogyny online and inside the institutional space of schools.
In order to capture the experience of doing digital feminist activism, this proj
ect combines multiple methodological approaches, including qualitative
content analysis, thematic analysis, and ethnographic methods such as in-
depth interviews, focus group interviews, surveys, and observations of online
communities. Across the six case studies just listed, we conducted semi-structured
interviews with 78 girls and women and 4 men from diverse international
contexts, and analyzed over 800 pieces of digital content, including blog posts,
tweets, and selfies. Our study was primarily aimed at collecting the voices and
experiences of subjects who were building relationships to and with feminism,
and the majority of our participants self-identified as girls and women, although
as noted previously, we also worked with four self-identified feminist men. It is
critical to note however that throughout our research we take a de-essentializing
approach to gender identity and recognize the fluid and mobile nature of gender
classifications particularly in the digital environments we are studying. We do
4
not treat girl or women therefore as naturalized or essential categories (Butler

1991). The cyborgian nature of digitized environments continuously unsettles
our ability to view, classify, and measure identity categories as naturally tied to
sexed, raced, or otherwise identifiable bodies (Haraway 1991). Nonetheless we
do take a position that sexual violence is heavily gendered (Phipps et al. 2018),
with those occupying feminized bodies bearing the brunt of sexism as well as ho-
mophobic, transphobic, and other forms of hate. Nonconforming “male” bodies are
often shamed (Pascoe 2005), for example when performing feminism, as we will
explore in c hapter 5.
To work across these complexities, our methodology draws on traditions of
social media ethnography (Postill and Pink 2012), while simultaneously con-
sidering questions of personal experience, power, and difference that anchor
feminist research methodologies (Hesse-Biber 2012; Shaw 2013; Taft 2011; van
Zoonen 1994). Our aim throughout this book is to provide insights into some
of the unique challenges we faced throughout the research process, including
those at practical, emotional, and psychological levels. These challenges include
complexities around conducting intersectional analyses in anonymized spaces,
where markers of identities (such as racial or gender identities) and embodiment
is often hidden or deliberately erased. Moreover, conducting research from a
bottom-up approach, and the ways we as a research team were trolled, presented
both opportunities and difficulties. We hope then that this book contributes to a
deeper understanding of how feminists can study digital media cultures that are
often fluid, dispersed, and challenging to define and access as researchers.
Although we are not alone in studying the diverse and vibrant means through
which feminists have embraced digital technologies to challenge rape culture,
what makes our study and findings unique is not only our attention to how
these digital tools are being used, but our mapping of the experiences of those
involved. While we contend it is important to ask questions about the content,
context, and uptake of digital feminist activism, this book presents a unique in-
tervention by attending to how these initiatives are felt and experienced by those
who participate and organize them. The book draws heavily on theories of af-
fect, including concepts such as affective solidarity (Hemmings 2012), affective
publics (Papacharissi 2015), and networked affect (Hillis, Paasonen, and Petit
2015), applying them to empirical evidence that extends beyond macro-and
micro-level data analysis to explore the lived experiences of digital feminist
activists as they challenge rape culture. We also revisit key concepts used by dig-
ital media studies scholars, such as communicative capitalism (Dean 2009) and
platform vernacular (Gibbs et al. 2015), considering them from a feminist per-
spective and asking what they might offer to studies of digital feminist activism.
We develop four key arguments throughout the book. First, we argue that
engaging with feminism via digital technologies transforms our participants’
5
I n t rodu ct ion 5
lives. We showcase the powerful—if sometimes only ephemeral or temporary—

connections, solidarities, and investments in social change generated through
these sites. In doing so, we complicate notions that social media encourages
fantasies of change, rather than genuine material transformations and activism
(Dean 2009; Fuchs 2009). Here, we document the ways digital platforms give
people an opportunity to voice previously hidden experiences of sexual vio-
lence, making sure they are seen, heard, and validated. For others, digital fem-
inist initiatives were opportunities to learn more about feminism or connect
with global communities of like-minded people whom they otherwise would
not have met. In several places throughout the book, we demonstrate processes
of “digitally mediated consciousness raising”—showcasing how participating
in digital feminist campaigns is pedagogical—and can provide a better under-
standing of feminist politics and acts as a low-barrier entrance for other types of
(feminist) activism and political engagement.
Second, we highlight how digital feminism is far more complex and nuanced
than one might initially expect. We identify how a range of digital platforms
and campaigns are used in a multitude of ways, by different groups, for a va-
riety of purposes, which are hard to predict and change over time and space.
For example, we might anticipate that people take advantage of the immediacy
afforded by digital technologies to share recent experiences of sexual violence,
when in fact many are using these to report historic experiences from several
months, years, or even decades previously. Crucially, although much recent work
focuses on high-profile campaigns that attract mainstream media attention, the
book draws attention to the many hidden, private, and “under-the-radar” ways
feminists, particularly teens in school, challenge rape culture. We thus argue for
the importance of attending to grassroots, bottom-up approaches to digital ac-
tivism that are overlooked in much contemporary scholarship.
Third, although it may be technologically easy to engage in digital feminist
activism, we showcase a range of barriers girls, women, and men encounter.
In addition to the ways in which gender, class, age, and ability shape participa-
tion, we identified other factors including confidence, technological savviness,
emotional resilience, and social status that create vastly different experiences
with digital feminist activism. Furthermore, while much mainstream attention
(rightly) focuses on a range of mediated abuse and trolling directed toward girls
and women online, we showcase various digital literacies developed by our
participants to mitigate these risks and effects. Rather than simply leaving online
spaces, many developed complex strategies to cope with the various pressures
and challenges they encounter.
Finally, this study makes visible the often intense labor involved in digital
feminist activism, which is highly precarious, affective, invisible, and time-
consuming. While most participants described their involvement as largely
6
fulfilling and life-changing, these experiences varied widely between groups.

Mapping these experiences enables us to highlight the nuances and complexities
inherent in doing digital feminist activism, which may be overlooked, hidden, or
invisible via textual media analyses alone. As a result, we argue that digital fem-
inist activism can only be comprehensively understood via affective, material,
technological, and cultural lenses. In sum, digital feminism should not be merely
understood via digital artifacts, but through social and cultural processes and
their entanglement with technologies.
As an interdisciplinary research team, we see these findings as being useful
to scholars across the social sciences and humanities, including media studies,
gender and queer studies, education, sociology, criminology, girls’ studies,
and cultural studies. However, we hope that this research is also of interest
to those outside the academy. The arguments we make throughout this book
lend insight into the recent #MeToo phenomenon and contribute to many sa-
lient debates about gender and sexual violence in mainstream media culture,
including the politics of disclosure, online trolling and harassment, and pop-
ular feminism.
In the remaining sections of this chapter we will introduce the scholarly foun-
dation for this book, focusing specifically on the contemporary social and cul-
tural context in which our case studies operate. The interdisciplinary nature of
this study previously mentioned means we engage with key concepts from the
fields of digital media studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, sociology, and
education studies. The concepts or terms that we explore and define here in-
clude rape culture, lad culture, cultural activism, hashtag feminism, and mediated
abuse, concepts to which we now turn.
Naming the Problem: What Is Rape Culture?

The first published use of the term “rape culture” can be found in the 1974
book Rape: The First Sourcebook for Women (Connell and Wilson 1974). Here,
the feminist authors recognized that despite improvements in laws regarding
sexual assault, women’s status in society would not improve if “the sexual con-
duct of a woman remains the basis upon which her character and her credi-
bility are determined” (Connell and Wilson 1974, 132). This book, like others
that followed, challenged victim-blaming myths stating that women provoked
rape through their dress and behavior, and biologically determinist views that
constructed an aggressive male sexuality as erotic, healthy, desirable, and in-
evitable (see Brownmiller 1975; Herman 1978). In mobilizing the term “rape
culture,” second wave feminists were able to point to the structural conditions
7
I n t rodu ct ion 7
that allowed for the continued perpetuation of not only sexual violence against
women, but the sexual double standard that privileged male sexuality while lim-
iting women’s sexual agency.
While mostly absent from popular vernacular for several decades, the term
has recently emerged into popular discourse once again, becoming a rallying
point for feminist activism since 2011 (Mendes 2015). Rape culture has been
described by contemporary feminist scholars as a culture in which “sexual vi-
olence against women is implicitly and explicitly condoned, excused, tolerated
and normalized” (Powell 2015, 575). The “violence” directed toward women
here is firmly embedded within social and cultural practices (Buchwald, Fletcher
and Roth, 2005; Sills et al. 2016), including:
[R]‌rape jokes, sexual harassment, cat-calling, sexualized “banter”; the

routine policing of women’s bodies, dress, appearance, and code of con-
duct; the re-direction of blame from the perpetrator in an assault to the
victim; and impunity for perpetrators, despite their conduct or crimes.
(Keller, Mendes, and Ringrose 2018, 24)
The term “rape culture,” then, constitutes a “complex set of beliefs that encourage
male sexual aggression and supports violence against women” (Buchwald,
Fletcher, and Roth 2005, 11). Although we argue that rape culture operates
globally, we of course recognize variations in terms of legality, prevalence, and
acceptance of its manifestations in different sociocultural contexts. A key dimen-
sion of rape culture that we explore in this book is what the philosopher Linda
Alcoff discusses as a widespread “epistemic fallacy,” “epistemic injustice,” and
“implicit bias” around women’s experiences of sexual violence and rape. Alcoff
(2017) argues that women are “denied presumptive creditability. It is unclear
whether the global epidemic of sexual violence is the effect of this, or its cause
but it ensures that accusers will not be believed.”
A structural disbelief is therefore built into cultural biases around rape and
sexual violence. When victims speak out they put themselves at risk to be
discredited and further abused. In this book, our aim is not to try to answer
what we cannot yet know—that is how the widespread practices enabled by
digital media to speak out and gain a visible public platform may be potentially
shifting the parameters of this experience of disbelief, and therefore also shifting
public discourses around sexual violence toward empowering women. Rather
we offer in-depth accounts of how the speaking out in digital forms is experi-
enced. Therefore, our account shifts from the philosophical or representational
questions about the reception of speaking out, to the experiential and qualitative
dimensions of doing so, borne out of our ethnographic research.
8
Closely linked with rape culture, but pertinent particularly within the British
context, is the notion of “lad culture” (Phipps et al. 2018). We want to unpack
the concept of “laddism” that has been circulating in Britain since the late twen-
tieth century, and describes a form of working class masculinity predicated in
part on legitimating sexual violence. In a recent report for the National Union of
Students in the UK, Alison Phipps and Isabel Young (2013) define lad culture as
a “group mentality articulated through activities such as sport and heavy alcohol
consumption, and characterized by sexist and homophobic ‘banter’ ” (28). Lad
culture is criticized for being dismissive of women, as well as being premised
on the objectification of women. Furthermore, it has been seen as normalizing
and encouraging sexual assault (Phipps 2015, 2). Many male sports teams
from universities in the UK have been severely penalized for being seen as en-
gaging in lad culture, and the behaviors it represents. As Jackson and Sundaram
(2015) write:
“Lad culture” was seen as a “pack” mentality evident in activities such

as sport and heavy alcohol consumption, and “banter” which was often
sexist, misogynist and homophobic. It was also thought to be sexualized
and to involve the objectification of women, and at its extremes rape
supportive attitudes and sexual harassment and violence. (1)
Lad culture is important to our study because it frames how our UK-based
young feminist research participants describe their experiences of hege-
monic masculinity in high schools, and their attempts to subvert it ( Jackson
2010). Although there are certainly overlaps between lad and rape culture, the
nuances in terminologies indicate the ways sexism and misogyny are evoked in
different ways, depending on the cultural context. As we will go on to explore,
lad culture can translate into the digital space as a form of mediated misogyny.
We point to new forms of toxic masculinity and mediated misogyny that are
flourishing online later in the chapter. What is significant, however, is that
alongside the proliferation and normalization of rape culture, we are seeing
an unprecedented popularization of feminist responses that stake new experi-
ential and epistemological claims about women’s experiences of gendered and
sexual violence.
From Postfeminism to Popular Feminisms

For over three decades, feminist academics from multiple disciplines have en-
gaged with the concept of postfeminism (Gill 2016). During this time postfem-
inism has been articulated in differing ways, most notably as a historic shift to a
9
I n t rodu ct ion 9
period after feminism, a backlash against feminism, and an epistemological shift

incorporating postmodern theory (Tasker and Negra 2007; Gill 2007, 2016;
Rivers 2017). Today, most scholars understand it as a mediated “sensibility” that
celebrates individualism, choice, and agency while neglecting structural causes
of inequality (Gill 2007). Aligned with neoliberalism, postfeminism demands
that women engage in practices of self-discipline and surveillance of the body as
a way to demonstrate their sexual subjectivity in the heterosexual marketplace
(Gill 2007, 2016; Gill and Scharff 2011). Angela McRobbie’s (2009) concept of
the “double entanglement” within postfeminism acutely represents how post-
feminism allows certain privileged, white, cis-gendered women to come for-
ward and participate in public life on the condition that they withhold critique
of patriarchy. Thus, in a marked contrast to feminism, postfeminism dictates that
women should be individually empowered, but not political—a distinction that
hints at the regressive nature of postfeminism.
The visibility of contemporary feminism today complicates some aspects of
this postfeminist sensibility (Keller and Ryan 2018), yet we suggest the need
to remain critical of the ways in which the term “feminism” is being deployed
within popular media cultures today. Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015) uses the term
“popular feminism” to describe the prevalence of feminism across the contempo-
rary media landscape since 2010—from how journalists regularly ask celebrities
if they identify as feminists (Renninger 2018), to the slew of bestselling feminist
books (Taylor 2016), to special “feminist” issues of commercial magazines such
as ELLE (see Keller and Ringrose 2015). Indeed, Hannah Hamad and Anthea
Taylor (2015) argue that today’s discursive struggles over feminism are staged
in and through popular media culture, a context that raises important questions
about the relationship between the flourishing of popular feminism, postfemi-
nism, and the capitalist marketplace (see also Mendes 2017).
Catherine Rottenberg (2014) interrogates this relationship, arguing that a
form of “neoliberal feminism” has emerged within American culture, whereby
feminist discourse merges with the neoliberal imperatives of individualism, self-
governance, and self-transformation. Thus, neoliberal feminism is easily incor-
porated into the existing Western social, cultural, political, and economic order,
where neoliberalism is hegemonic. Neoliberal feminism has become a dominant
form of popular feminism, informing bestselling books such as Sheryl Sandberg’s
Lean In (2013) and advertisements such as Dove’s Campaign for Beauty, both of
which suggest that individual women must empower themselves to be full and
equal members of society. It is this de-emphasizing of the collective, in favor of
the self-governed, empowered feminist subject that is at the core of the neolib-
eral feminism described by Rottenberg (see also Banet-Weiser 2012).
More recently, Sarah Banet-Weiser and Laura Portwood-Stacer (2017) mo-
bilize the concept of the “traffic in feminism” to make sense of contemporary
10
popular feminism, including not only an aestheticized feminism such as the

ELLE feminist issue we described previously, but also the commodification of
feminist critiques of such phenomenon. They call out the “market-based produc-
tion and reproduction of a feminist politics—a popular feminism—that seems
to explicitly recognize that inequality exists while stopping short of recognizing,
naming, or disrupting the political economic conditions that allow that ine-
quality to be profitable” (896). In doing so, Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer
problematize the ways in which popular feminism works to privilege and benefit
some women and their feminism, while failing to change the economic, social,
and political structures that continue to hold most women—especially those
who are women of color, queer, poor, or disabled—in positions of disadvantage.
Yet, other scholars are more optimistic about the opportunities afforded by
popular feminism. Anthea Taylor’s (2016) work on feminist “blockbusters”—
or commercially successful feminists such as Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan,
Sheryl Sandberg, and Naomi Wolf—highlights the ways that the neoliberal
practice of self-branding and resulting commercialization have been integral to
well-known feminists for decades, and adds that “we should not presume that
this is inevitably limiting to feminism” (7). Taylor argues that highly branded
celebrity figures have long played a key role in persuading the public “of the ne-
cessity of feminist modes of knowing and being” (3), and thus been central in
creating and sustaining a discursive space for feminist issues and ideologies. For
Taylor then, the popularity of feminism—and feminist figures—functions ped-
agogically, educating the public on the importance of feminism and about fem-
inist issues.
While Taylor’s work focuses on women who have become famous because of
their feminism (rather than famous women who come to adopt a feminist iden-
tity), we should not underestimate the power of celebrities to “validate the legiti-
macy of feminist ideas and politics in a way that feminist movements themselves
may never be able to do” (Zeisler 2016, 132). Scholars have warned against
dismissing popular iterations of feminism because of their “imperfections”
(Banet-Weiser 2015; Taylor 2016), or assuming that their popularity inher-
ently makes them “corrupt” or “inauthentic” (Taylor 2016, 31). Instead, as
Taylor warns, it is incorrect to assume that a feminism not “implicated in sys-
tems of celebrity and commodification is morally superior to those that more
blatantly exhibit this investment” (2017, 30). She, along with others (Banet-
Weiser 2015) do however indicate that issues such as popular feminism’s lack of
intersectionality must be addressed, particularly the ways popular feminisms all
too often ignore struggles of class, race, and sexuality (Loza 2014; Munro 2013).
Alongside these celebrity feminists, bestselling feminist books, and branded
feminist merchandise, feminist politics have been thriving online. In fact, to many
scholars and activists, the recent resurgence of feminisms can be credited in part
1
I n t rodu ct ion 11
to the rise of digital technologies (see Keller 2012; Mendes 2015; Zeisler 2016).
This includes an explosion of feminist blogs, e-zines, newsletters, YouTube videos,
and social media accounts—activity that has been said to constitute a fourth
wave of feminism (Baumgardner 2011; Munro 2013; Rivers 2017). Regardless
of whether the term “fourth wave” is justified (see Keller 2015), these contem-
porary “tech-savvy and gender-sophisticated” (Baumgardner 2011) feminists
are engaged in projects such as digitally archiving experiences of sexism
and hostility, fostering a collective call out culture, amplifying marginalized
communities, and mobilizing digital tools to highlight the continued need for
(intersectional) feminism—practices that we address in this book.
While the platforms may have moved to the digital sphere, like the second
and third waves before them, fourth wave feminists continue to be interested
in challenging political, social, and economic structures that uphold and (re)
produce inequality and oppression (Munro 2013). This includes familiar is-
sues around sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, and racial in-
equality (Crenshaw and Thomas 2004). It also includes new ones that account
for changes in reproductive technologies, workplace practices, an ever-evolving
media landscape, and the dominance of neoliberal ideologies and commodi-
fication in society. Fourth wave feminists also maintain their commitment to
intersectional understandings of oppression and are informed by post-struc-
turalist gender theorists such as Judith Butler. Ealasaid Munro (2013) suggests
that the fourth wave can continue the work highlighted in second and third
wave activism but in a more tolerant manner that promotes inclusivity and
intersectionality, arguing that “the political potential of the fourth wave centres
around giving voice to those women still marginalized by the mainstream”
(2013, 4).
This context frames the analysis in this book as we grapple with what it
means to do digital feminist activism in the twenty-first century: How does
the increased “traffic in feminism” (Banet- Weiser and Portwood- Stacer
2017) in a social media landscape post-2010, that is markedly different from
the media environment of the mid-late 2000s, complicate how we understand
the practices of feminism? In other words, we may ask how do the self-defined
feminists who promote and proliferate feminisms in multiple and complex
ways across digital cultures change the wider media and cultural landscape?
Indeed, part of the work of this book unpacks the experiences of women, girls,
and men who are actively embracing, performing, and doing what they under-
stand to be a feminist identity through their digital networks.1 By exploring
their experiences, we can move from a level of analysis of mass media repre-
sentation of feminism to the lived experiences of media “produsers” (Bruns
2008). In doing so, we will not only argue that social media platforms have
produced new spaces for debates over feminism, opportunities for feminist
12
“awakenings,” and spaces to challenge rape culture, but spaces to challenge

the dominant postfeminist sensibility that closely links feminism to various
markets.
The case studies we examine in this book can be understood then as pop-
ular feminism in action. They also reflect the porous nature of digital feminism
activism, which often translates into nondigital material forms. Books such as
Laura Bates’ (2014) Everyday Sexism and Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy
Cosslett’s (2014) The Vagenda: A Zero Tolerance Guide to the Media were in-
formed from their web-based activism, and the success of these projects in turn
made these commercial books possible. In this sense, we approach digital femi-
nist activism as intertwined within a larger media ecosystem whereby feminism
is increasingly visible, popular, and profitable.
Mediated Misogyny
Throughout history, whenever there has been a resurgence in feminist activism,
there has been a backlash (see Banet-Weiser 2015; Faludi 1992; Mendes 2011a,
2011b; Negra 2009). Although the backlash from the 1980s onward has been
well-documented (Faludi 1992), scholars have shown that these discourses
emerged much earlier than previously thought, and demonstrate how notions
of feminism’s illegitimacy and redundancy were not constructed overnight, but
took years to achieve hegemony (see Mendes 2011b). Recognizing the cyclical
nature of attacks against feminism, Andy Zeisler (2016) writes:
We’ve heard this all before, and we’ll hear it again before too long. The
cycles of media backlash and “postfeminism” roll on, not because the
arguments have changed all that much, but because they still encom-
pass a broader social anxiety about women, men, sex, power, achieve-
ment and more. (167)
Indeed, alongside the mediated visibility of contemporary popular femi-

nism, we’ve also seen what Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015) calls a “popular mi-
sogyny,” an anti-feminist sentiment that simultaneously permeates media
culture, crystallized in such incidents as the online harassment of actress
Leslie Jones or the rise of Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). There is a growing
scholarship focusing on the ways the changing media landscape and rise of
digital technologies has enabled the flourishing of such misogynist vitriol
against feminism and even specific feminists (see Citron 2014; Cole 2015;
Jane 2014a, 2014b, 2017; Mendes 2015; Penny 2013; Poland 2016; Powell
and Henry 2017; Shaw 2014). Indeed, this landscape is now being referred
13
to as one of “mediated misogyny” (Vickery and Everbach 2018). As Rosalind

Gill observes:
[F]‌or every uplifting account of feminist activism, there is another of

misogyny; for every feminist “win,” an outpouring of hate, ranging from
sexual harassment to death threats against those involved; for every in-
stance of feminist solidarity, another of vicious trolling (2016, 613).
So, although the technology is new, the language and hatred toward women is
not (see Penny 2013; Shaw 2014). Furthermore, sexism and misogyny are often
compounded with other forms of hate such as racism, homophobia, and ableism
(Banet-Weiser and Miltner 2015; Shaw 2014). And while such hate speech on-
line has been widely recognized as problematic, it is nonetheless normalized
and tolerated, often in fear of curbing civil libertarian values such as freedom of
speech (Banet-Weiser 2015; Harvey 2016; Herring et al. 2002; Penny 2013).
Despite the scholarly and mainstream attention to the proliferation of popular
misogyny online, there is little consensus over terminology. While the media
often uses the term “trolling” to encompass a wide range of abuse, others have re-
ferred to it as specifically gendertrolling (Mantilla 2013; Lumsden and Morgan
2017), flaming (Herring et al. 2002), cybersexism (Penny 2013; Polland 2016),
cyber violence (Herring 2002), online sexual harassment (Chawki and el Shazly
2013), e-bile ( Jane 2014a), misogyny online ( Jane 2016), networked misogyny
(Banet-Weiser and Miltner 2015), and gendered cyberhate ( Jane 2017). For the
purposes of this study, we recognize the merits in many of these terms, but also
their restrictions. For example, we prefer the term “mediated” rather than “dig-
ital” or “cyber,” because we aim to highlight how this abuse transverses online
and offline spaces. For example, when feminist cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian
received threats online based upon a series of feminist YouTube videos she
produced, she was forced to leave her home and hide. Sarkeesian’s experience—
and that of many other girls and women—results in “real life” trauma that is not
contained to the digital sphere.
In our analysis, we try to differentiate from experiences where sexual vio-
lence is used to intimidate feminists. In other cases, hatred and vitriol are evi-
dent in ways that could imply “misogyny” but are not sexually violent. In other
instances, there is evidence of low-level “banter,” more of everyday sexism,
which is described by our participants. We try to unpick the complexity and
specificity of the interactions to shed greater light on discursive trends apparent
in our participants’ experiences of navigating sexism not only online but off-
line as well. Moreover, we also pay attention to women and girls’ intersecting
identities and other aspects they may be experiencing abuse around such as eth-
nicity and sexuality. For this reason, we find that terms such as “gentertrolling,”
14
or “gendered cyberhate” or “mancyberhate” fail to capture the intersectional na-

ture of our participants’ experiences. As a result, rather than adopting one term,
we use several to capture the wide range of practices and experiences we report,
but are partial to “trolling” because it was widely used among our participants,
and “mediated abuse” because it captures a wide range of practices.
Research into how digital feminist spaces are subjected to misogyny and
abuse is not new. Ellen Balka (1993), for example, traced the history of four
feminist forums from the 1980s, all of which experienced male harassment at
some point as a result of their choice to discuss feminism in a public forum.
In 2002, Susan Herring et al. documented feminists’ strategies to manage trolls
in online forums. More recently, scholars have argued that online vitriol is an
increasingly worsening problem that silences women in public discourse and
has a “deleterious effect on the civility of the public cybersphere” ( Jane 2014a,
531). The abuse documented includes name calling, rape and death threats,
and doxxing—all ways of ensuring women feel unsafe in spaces that they have
contributed to or created. Rather than understanding this abuse as personal, we
need to understand such interactions as symptomatic of a broader social issue
involving issues of gender equity and other intersecting axes of oppression ( Jane
2014a; Regehr and Ringrose 2018).
In addition to threats of physical violence, other types of abuse come in the
form of hurtful, appearance-related judgments that fall back on narrow beauty
norms, and sexual shaming. So, while social media sites such as Twitter and
Tumblr may present new terrain for interactions, undergirding this is persist
ent sexism that considers women and their views inferior to that of men. This
viewpoint is supported by Karla Mantilla (2013) who argues that “the ad-
vent of online communities has enabled new forms of virulent sexism” (563)
to emerge while noting that they have “much in common with other offline
targeting of women such as sexual harassment in the workplace and street ha-
rassment” (568). Women being subjected to sexism, abuse, and hostility, then,
is not a new phenomenon—the internet, and digital technologies have simply
provided new avenues for this abuse to be transmitted. As Adrienne Shaw
highlights, “people are jerks not only when they are in anonymous Internet
spaces, but also when they are in spaces where they can get away with being
jerks” (2014, 274). Thus, while we recognize that the mediated and digital are
both key means of perpetuating and disseminating gendered abuse, many of
the practices documented here stem from offline interactions such as sexual
harassment, stalking, and verbal abuse. And although not every woman who
participates in online (feminist) spaces shares these experiences, journalist
Laurie Penny notes, “it’s many of us, and it could be any of us” (2013). This
15
knowledge of the impact that (fear of) online abuse encourages is something
that scholars are increasingly attuned to.
A key issue concerning the abuse of women online and the hostility of so-
cial media sites is, as Danielle Keats Citron (2009) explores, the public’s ten-
dency to trivialize the harm that cyber gender harassment can exact. Victims
are presented “as overly sensitive complainers” while those inflicting harassment
are treated “as juvenile pranksters” (Citron 2009, 375–76; see also Banet-Weiser
2015). This plays into the rhetoric that women are highly strung, emotional,
and just can’t take a joke. Kirsti K. Cole (2015) and Miranda Ganzer (2014)
both outline the common response to reports of trolling and abuse; that women
should ignore threats or remove themselves from social media sites (see also
Lumsden and Morgan 2017; Jane 2014b). The assumption that “victims can ig-
nore or defeat [abusers] with counter-speech” (Citron 2009, 375–76) creates an
environment where victims are asked to remain silent about their experiences,
of “get out of the kitchen” if they can’t stand the proverbial heat (Lumsden and
Morgan 2017, 11).
This victim-blaming attitude burdens women with the responsibility of
modifying their behavior and actions to placate attackers. This includes asking
women to make their accounts private, block trolls, or simply ignore the abuse.
Yet blocking or ignoring the abuse also only deals with behavior retrospectively,
it does not prevent the abuse from being read or internalized by the victim be-
forehand. Finally, imploring women to just ignore abusive comments renders
the e-bile trivial and something that can be dealt with by simply logging off
or choosing not to engage; this is dangerous advice in terms of the long-term
implications of mental health and burnout that we will address throughout
the book.
Furthermore, as Laurie Penny astutely notes, it is no longer productive to
talk about the internet as a separate, somewhat less real space. As she argues,
“The Internet is public space, real space; it’s increasingly where we interact so-
cially, do our work, organize our lives and engage with politics, and violence
online is real violence” (2013). Instead, such victim-blaming attitudes have led
to women being discouraged from reporting harassment, and law enforcement
officials from taking these complaints seriously (Citron 2009). Women may end
up feeling so isolated that they withdraw from online communities altogether
or limit their online interactions. Victims of mediated abuse have also reported
feelings ranging from violation, irritation, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, vulnera-
bility, and unsafeness to feelings of distress, pain, shock, fear, terror, devastation,
and violation ( Jane 2014a; Penny 2013)—emotions that resonate with many of
our study participants.
16
Resistance to Popular Misogyny

and Mediated Abuse
Although we argue that there is a crucial need to understand the manifestations
of popular misogyny and mediated abuse, what propelled our project was to ex-
plore and document feminist resistances to these practices. It is the experiences
of such resistance that formulate the heart of this book. We are not alone in our
interest. In recent years, there has been an explosion of scholarship focusing on
the range of tactics that women (and some men) are using to make visible and
challenge rape culture, misogyny, and harassment (see Baer 2016; Drueke and
Zobl 2016; Olson 2016; Powell 2015; Rentschler 2015; Ringrose and Lawrence
2018; Williams 2016). These studies provide evidence of the ways digital spaces
are often highly creative sites where the public can simultaneously learn about
and intervene in rape culture (Horeck 2014; Mendes 2015; Rentschler 2014;
Shaw 2013; Thrift 2014).
While being vehicles for incivility, misogyny, and abuse, digital platforms
such as blogs, Twitter, and Tumblr simultaneously offer women a platform where
they can communicate, form communities of support, engage in consciousness-
raising, organize direct action, disrupt the male gaze, and collectively call out
and challenge injustice and misogyny through discursive, cultural, and political
activism. As Hester Baer argues, these new digital platforms offer “great poten-
tial for broadly disseminating feminist ideas, shaping new modes of discourse
about gender and sexism, connecting to different constituencies, and allowing
creative modes of protest to emerge” (2016, 18).
One of these modes of protest has been called “hashtag feminism,” referring
to the ways in which feminists use the hashtag function (#) on Twitter to pro-
duce communities of conversation among disparate Twitter users. Hashtags
work to thematically group topics, allowing users to easily locate discussions
on particular topics. For example, as we discuss in chapter 6, in the wake of
the sexual violence allegations against Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi,
girls and women tweeted their own stories of sexual assault, using the hashtag
#BeenRapedNeverReported. The hashtag discursively connects all users who
include this hashtag in their tweets, producing what Nathan Rambukkana calls
“hashtag publics,” who operate to collectively share ideas and experiences,
demand change, organize action, and make their voices heard via digital
networked communities (see also Clark 2016; Khoja-Moolji 2015). As in
#BeenRapedNeverReported, hashtag feminism has often been used to intervene
in oppressive discourses, particularly ones that challenge rape culture (see Clark
2016; Cole 2015; Rentschler 2015; Rodino-Colocino 2014). Thus, Twitter has
become an increasingly important space where “victims of inequality can coexist
17
together in a space that acknowledges their pain, narrative, and isolation” (Dixon
2014, 34). In this sense, hashtag feminism is the “latest iteration in a long history
of feminist conversation-expansion tactics that politicize personal experiences
with all forms of patriarchy, including media” (Clark 2014, 1109).
The promise and potential of hashtag feminism lies in the way it offers an
easily consumable, brief way of addressing feminist issues that are transfer-
able across media platforms. Popular hashtags such as #MeToo, #YouOkSis,
#YesAllWomen, and #RapeCultureIsWhen become ways for women to talk
back to the hostility, misogyny, and sexist practices surrounding rape culture,
sexual harassment, and everyday sexism. While some hashtags, such as the ones
mentioned previously, were formulated by feminists as a campaign in and of
themselves, scholars have also documented the ways feminists have “taken over”
hashtags meant for other purposes, often through humorous means (see Horeck
2014). Tanya Horeck’s (2014) study of the feminist takeover of the hashtag
#AskThicke is one example. Initially established as a Q&A session with singer
Robin Thicke, the hashtag ended up being a space where feminists collectively
convened to call out the sexism and trivializing of sexual violence in the lyrics
and contained tweets such as;
@LaurenHarsh1: #askThicke If one of your songs played in a forest and

no one was around to hear it would it still be sexist and gross?
@JoLiptrott: #AskThicke When you’re not busy objectifying
women, making light of rape and justifying sexual violence, how do you
like to relax?
The use of humor and call out culture to shed light on the absurdity of victim-
blaming narratives was also evident in the #SafetyTipsForLadies hashtag (see
Rentschler 2015). Feminist humor asserts the value of hijacking spaces of dis-
cussion and commentary online, articulating feminist critique in ways that are
both informative and make people laugh (Rentschler and Thrift 2015). With
the case of #SafetyTipsForLadies, feminists called out the victim-blaming
focus of most rape prevention campaigns, shifting attention from the issue of
women “staying safe” to humorous tweets that mock the advice found in tradi-
tional rape prevention discourse. Tweets joked that women should don chain
mail, ski masks, and sleeping bags to avoid rape, using hyperbolic exaggeration
to reveal the irrational victim-blaming logic behind the idea that what women
wear makes them more susceptible to sexual assault. The hashtag activism of
#SafetyTipsForLadies sits alongside other practices such as feminist memes to
illustrate how humor should be taken seriously as a “weapon of cultural critique”
(Rentschler and Thrift 2015, 331) that nurtures a politics of joy and resilience
18
in the face of sexism, rape culture, and its apologists (see also Lawrence and
Ringrose 2018).
Because of Twitter’s popularity, journalists are increasingly using the plat-
form to find news stories, aggregate information, and identify and interact with
sources (see Boersma and Graham 2013; Hermida 2010; Marwick and boyd
2011). The popularity of hashtag feminism has also become a news story itself
(see Latina and Docherty 2014; Lyons, Robinson, and Chorley 2014). In 2014,
Time Magazine ran a piece entitled “Behold the Power of #Hashtag Feminism”
(Bennett 2014), which claimed that hashtag feminism was responsible for taking
“issues frequently confined to small circles—feminist circles—and bring[ing]
them to the masses.” And it is common to find articles on popular sites such
as The Huffington Post, ELLE, Marie Claire, MS., BuzzFeed, and Mic.com on
popular or important feminist hashtags, such as “21 Hashtags That Changed the
Way We Talk about Feminism” (Blay 2016; see also Chen and Jha 2013; Hunt
2015; Lindsay 2014; Norman 2015; Ramsden 2016).
In addition to mobilizing hashtags, scholars have paid attention to the
use of feminist blogging (Crossley 2015; Keller 2015; Mendes 2015; Shaw
2012a, 2012b), and feminist memes on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr (Bore,
Graefer, and Kilby 2018; Kanai 2016; Rentschler and Thrift 2015; Retallack,
Ringrose, and Lawrence 2016; Trakilovic 2013). These spaces have been cru-
cial for educating the public about feminism and its history (Seidman 2013),
developing feminist identities (Keller 2015, 2016), and fostering feminist
action and community (Crossley 2015; Mendes 2015). Crucially, much has
been said about the potential of digital feminism to do intersectional femi-
nism better and challenge racialized, heteropatriarchal ideologies. Adrienne
Shaw (2014) for example, argues that we should celebrate the digital produc-
tion being done by people who have been traditionally marginalized along
the intersections of their gender, racial, sexual, class, national, and religious
identities. She identifies the ways that dominant discourses remain dominant
precisely because “marginalized voices are excluded, histories of outsiders are
forgotten, and those with access to the means of cultural production define
culture” (2014, 276). Instead, she notes the ways that digital tools provide
these marginalized communities new means through which to “posit counter-
discourses in a way that can and has spread widely” (2014, 276). Twitter for ex-
ample, has been widely credited as providing an outlet for Black and Minority
Ethnic (BAME) communities to highlight injustices and inequalities without
having their message reframed through the mainstream media (see Brock
2012; Clark 2016; Williams 2015). However, as debated by Loza (2014, n.p.)
in her discussion of the hashtag #SolidarityisforWhiteWomen, the question of
exclusionary digital feminist politics keeps resurfacing, raising questions we
explore in this book:
19
Is mainstream feminism destined to remain the terrain of white women?

Or can the digital media praxis of women of color, their hashtag femi-
nism and tumblr activism, their blogging and live journaling, broaden
and radically redefine the very field of feminism?
While digital feminism has many advocates who champion the power and
influence of utilizing social media as a political tool to disseminate informa-
tion and bring feminism to the masses, it is not without criticism. Although the
internet has been credited with creating “feminist pockets” or “zones” (Piano
2002) in cyberspace to develop feminist interventions—discursive or otherwise
(Carstensen and Winker 2007), others have highlighted the ways inequalities
continue to persist in online spaces (see Cole 2015; Fischer 2016; Fotopoulou
2016; Latina and Docherty 2014). For example, Jessie Daniels (2016)
demonstrates how women of color’s significant contributions to digital femi-
nism are often erased in mainstream media accounts of the movement, while
white feminism is often bolstered online through prominent feminist campaigns
such as Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” initiative and Eve Ensler’s One Billion
Rising. Others (Loza 2014; Thelandersson 2014) have also highlighted the ways
in which BAME women have been criticized for using social media to challenge
white supremacy within digital feminism, reproducing problematic narratives
that blame women of color for being aggressive, difficult, and disruptive.
Thus, while digital feminisms may certainly enable wider groups of women
to participate (Keller 2012), they do not “miraculously provide transformative
civic and political engagement because intersecting oppressions, particularly
the centrality of whiteness in organizing, continue to permeate online activism”
(Fischer 2016, 756). As a result, while new media technologies undoubtedly
provide opportunities for increased participation (for some groups at least),
they continue to remain embedded within social, political, cultural, and eco-
nomic processes that marginalize and oppress certain groups of people (Fischer
2016). These technologies have also been credited for reproducing Western-
centric, imperial conceptualizations of “others” (Khoja-Moolji 2015), not to
mention reproducing heteropatriarchal, racist, ablest ideologies (Fischer 2016).
As a result, digital technologies hold “simultaneously promising, yet precarious
capabilities” to produce social change (Fischer 2016, 758; see also Fotopoulou
2016; Latina and Docherty 2014). This is particularly pertinent given the reality
of digital exclusions.
D I G I TA L E X C L U S I O N S
In nations such as the UK, scholars have identified a “digital underclass,” who
are not effectively taking up available connections (Helsper 2008). As Aristea
20
Fotopoulou (2016) argues, digital exclusions are not always black and white;
instead, they are more “sophisticated and concern the frequency of updating on-
line presence and producing more interesting content in social media” (1000).
In this way, we might imagine the digital underclass of feminists to include a
wide range of people, from young women who lack access to technologies,
to older women who lack skills, social support, and access to digital devices
(Fotopoulou 2016). It also includes those unfamiliar with feminist vocabularies,
language, and vernacular practices online, which change over time. The need to
abbreviate new terms because of platforms such as Twitter’s character limit, has
led to the rapid introduction of terms such as WOC, TERF, SWERF, and Cis
among others—terms that can be overwhelming for some (Munro 2013). With
this emerging language, and new ways of interacting and engaging online,
Latina and Docherty (2014) rightly ask: “who might be being excluded from
participating in feminist activist discourse . . . by way of not knowing the lan-
guages that are being spoken?” (1104).
With these exclusions in mind we approach our case studies carefully, under-
standing that while we celebrate the support, solidarity, and activism produced
by girls and women online, we recognize that there are many others who cannot
participate, or whose voices are marginalized in such digital spaces.
Chapter Breakdown
To conclude this introduction, we present a map for what readers can expect to
find in the rest of the book. In c hapter 2, 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.
We also use the chapter to detail our unique methodological approach, which
draws insights from a range of interdisciplinary tools including feminist ethno-
graphic methods, thematic textual analysis, semi-structured interviews, surveys,
and online observations.
Chapter 3 presents results from a qualitative content analysis and thematic
textual analysis drawn from four case studies: Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, Who
Needs Feminism?, and #BeenRapedNeverReported. The chapter presents one
of the first attempts to analyze these popular feminist campaigns by answering
the question of what kinds of experiences of harassment, misogyny, and rape
culture the public are sharing on feminist digital platforms. We begin here to de-
velop an argument that we carry throughout the book—namely that digital fem-
inist activism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect,
21
and is used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes—drawing on a range of

different conventions or “vernacular practices” (Gibbs et al. 2015). In addition
to paying attention to the kinds of experiences that are seen as legitimate (or
not) to post, the chapter attends to which voices are visible. Taking a cue from
critical technology studies, we attend to emerging vernacular practices that we
argue have been shaped by platform architecture, affordances, and conventions,
which work to simultaneously encourage and discourage certain narratives from
certain groups of people.
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. Interviews were secured with people such as
Everyday Sexism’s founder Laura Bates, Hollaback!’s Executive Director Emily
May, and Who Needs Feminism?’s Professor Rachel Seidman, and outlines four
key arguments: First, we posit that organizing feminist campaigns involves highly
affective, invisible, precarious, and time-consuming labor. Second, we demon-
strate 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; 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 in-
dividual and collective care strategies are needed to prevent activist burnout.
In chapter 5 we explore survey findings from 46 Twitter users, and a sub-
sample of email, Skype, and in-person interviews with 21 of these respondents to
explore how they challenge rape culture and engage in feminist activism in their
everyday lives. The findings provide complex insights into the perceived benefits
of how feminists are using not only Twitter but a diverse interconnected range
of social media platforms to engage in their digital activism. Participants dis-
cuss the benefits of Twitter for their feminism as it affords them greater connec-
tivity, speed, immediacy, and global reach to share and debate ( Jenkins 2012).
The easy sharing of feminist news and information were important pedagogical
processes enabled through Twitter, central in raising awareness around issues
such as rape culture by enabling greater visibility (boyd 2014) and attention to
the issues. A deep sense of affective collectivity and solidarity enabled through
connecting with “like-minded” others around these issues (Hemmings 2012;
Papacharissi 2015) was seen by many as literally “life-saving.” Our findings also
include responses from four self-identified feminist men, shedding light on their
complex experiences of negotiating and performing feminist identities online.
Despite the widely understood benefits of social media, participants recounted
challenges of participating in digital activism on Twitter, including instances of
hostile anti-feminism and episodes of sexually aggressive gendertrolling. We
2
outline their emergent strategies for coping with technologically mediated mi-
sogyny. Overall, we illuminate the significant role Twitter is playing in the doing
of networked feminism (Rentschler and Thrift 2015) by making new formations
of specifically digitized and mediated (Kember and Zylinska 2012) feminist pol-
itics and life possible (Ahmed 2017).
Chapter 6 focuses on an explicit and newsworthy example of a high-profile
rape culture “event” generated in part by Canadian girls’ and women’s use of the
Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported in fall 2014. Using the hashtag,
hundreds of girls and women shared the reasons they didn’t report their sexual
assault in 140-character tweets that documented disturbing incidents of sexual
assault by partners, family members, friends, and acquaintances. We explore
how this feminist hashtag developed in response to the public allegations of
sexual violence made about then-popular CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi,
which trended for several days on Twitter, and ultimately moved across the
media landscape, producing a robust public discussion about sexual violence
and rape culture. Drawing on thematic analysis of #BeenRapedNeverReported
tweets and interviews with eight women who contributed to the hashtag, we an-
alyze the “affective solidarity” (Hemmings 2012) produced along this hashtag
and the ways it created new lived possibilities for feminist identification, expe-
rience, organizing, and resistance. We contextualize this analysis within a larger
Canadian media culture to position the hashtag as both a discursive and affec-
tive intervention into hegemonic public discourse about rape culture and sexual
violence.
Chapter 7 explores how teen girls are using social media to engage with in-
stitutionalized and systematic forms of sexism, sexual objectification, and ha-
rassment constitutive of not only what can be termed rape culture but also lad
culture and toxic masculinity as it manifests through cultural norms of mas-
culinity in secondary schools in the UK, US, and Canada. The chapter draws
from interview data with 27 teenage girls including 8 girls from our survey
sample in chapter 5, 3 teens who participated in the Canadian #CropTopDay
campaign, and 16 girls from a London-based high school feminist club who
participated in focus groups. The individual and focus group interview data
is supplemented with media artifacts—examples that were either purpose-
fully selected (such as the #CropTopDay tweets) or shared with us by our
participants (through a scroll-back methodology on phones where we col-
lected screen shots of online conversations, for instance). We demonstrate
a range of digital activism practices that girls have developed, such as using
feminist hashtags to join in wider feminist debates, using Twitter as a back-
channel to protest school assemblies and lobby school administration; and
collectively running a joint Twitter handle as part of their school feminist
club. We examine how platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and
23
iPhone group chat provide different opportunities and vernaculars for girls
to challenge rape culture collectively and individually. By focusing on the
minutia of instances of activism that do not make the news, such as moments
when girls challenge a rape joke on Facebook, collectively operate a feminist
hashtag, or negotiate instances of trolling, we offer a unique and different
insight into activism that unpacks the nuances of using social media for ac-
tivism as a teenager attending school, including how social hierarchies be-
tween girls may be magnified through social media interactions. Our findings
suggest that schools are ill equipped to deal with the range of issues raised by
girls’ digital activism, including issues of conflict and experiences of trolling
and mediated abuse, suggesting schools should try to work with and harness
some of the educative potentials of social media for social change.
The book concludes with chapter 8, which summarizes our key findings and
case studies and outlines directions for future scholarly inquiry. The conclu-
sion draws out the implications of our findings to explore affective and mate-
rial changes in the lives of girls and women. We discuss how our research has
revealed a range of new connectivities among girls and women and consider
and show the main aspects of what digital feminism can do. We consider these
potentialities in light of recent surges of victims speaking out against sexual vio-
lence in #MeToo and #TimesUp.
24
2
Theoretical and Methodological
Approaches to Studying Digital
Feminist Activism
Building from our introduction, which mapped contemporary debates around

the status of feminism, including discussions of postfeminism, popular femi-
nism, and fourth wave feminism, including how the digital is positioned in these
debates, this chapter explores the multifaceted theoretical and methodological
approach taken in this book. We locate this research as unequivocally interdis-
ciplinary, informed by not only media studies, but feminist theory, gender and
queer studies, education, sociology, criminology, girls’ studies, and cultural
studies. As such, we see this work as contributing to a wide body of scholarship
across multiple disciplines and audiences.
We start this chapter by outlining an interdisciplinary feminist literature on
affect that we have found useful for elaborating the embodied and emotional
intensities of practicing feminism activism (Ahmed 2017). We link this to media
studies research looking at the mediatization and digitization of affect through
connective technologies (Papacharissi 2015), to consider how this creates new
feminist political possibilities through diverse digital mediums. Next, we discuss
how critical technology studies and the political economy of social media lend
key insights into digital media user’s experiences, practices, and conventions,
and are shaped by the digital environment’s underlying infrastructure, which is
in turn “shaped by and shaping political, economic, social, cultural, and other
institutional forces” (Harvey 2016). Here, we examine theories of digital plat-
form affordances and their attendant vernaculars (Gibbs et al. 2015), which we
have found helpful for thinking about a range of shifting conventions that are
characterizing contemporary feminist digital activism.
In the last section of this chapter we explain our unique hybrid methodo-
logical design, which drew on a range of methods for studying digital cultures
(Postill and Pink 2012). These included close observation of several online
24
25
Theor etical and M e t h odol og ical Approach e s 25
communities, surveys, semi- structured interviews, and qualitative content

and thematic analysis. We explain why we employed these diverse and creative
methods to capture the complex, nuanced, and often less visible side of everyday
digital feminist activism.
Affect and Feminism

In recent years, there has been an “affective turn” (Clough and Halley 2007) in
feminist scholarship, which attends to the importance of emotion and embod-
iment, or “everyday affects,” in shaping gendered lives (Ahmed 2017; Stewart
2007). We anchor our research in several key concepts from this large body of
work that specifically addresses the relationship between affect and politics, a
central concern given our research focus.
Sara Ahmed’s work has informed much of our theorizing throughout this
book. We draw on Ahmed’s (2004, 2010, 2017) conceptualization of an “af-
fective economy” to understand the ways in which feminism is experienced,
circulated, and responded to by our study participants. Ahmed uses the example
of the feminist killjoy to illustrate how affect sticks to particular bodies, an idea
that we build upon through this book as we explore how our participants navi-
gate their affective relationship to feminist politics. Taking a cue from Ahmed’s
(2017) most recent book, Living a Feminist Life, we explore how feminist politics
are positioned as a form of problematic “willfulness,” in which feminists must
learn to manage and negotiate as they practice feminism in their everyday lives.
For example, this is particularly apparent in chapter 5 as the Twitter users discuss
their experiences of combatting resistance to their feminism. And while Ahmed
also discusses the exhaustive nature of being willful and engaging in the “diver-
sity work” of feminism, we follow this line of thought in analyzing the affective
labor in which the feminist activists we interviewed regularly engage.
Ahmed’s conceptualization of feminists as “affective aliens” is also useful to
our project, putting a name to a feeling that many feminists encounter when
they engage in feminist politics or challenge everyday patterns of masculine
dominance, such as those found in the rape and lad cultures that we docu-
ment in this book. In c hapters 5, 6, and 7, we explore these painful processes
of resisting everyday sexism as well as sexual violence, and the emotional toll
it takes. Finally, we’ve found Ahmed’s development of the notion of feminist
“snaps,” or critical breaking points when feminists break with older power re-
lations to stake a claim or voice a protest, to be generative. We find this con-
cept useful for considering key moments where digital culture provides an
opportunity to report on experiences of sexism and sexual violence, such as in
26
#BeenRapedNeverReported, or experiences of coming to feminist conscious-

ness and push back from friends, family, and strangers. Indeed, this idea of fem-
inist snap might aptly characterize the current moment of #MeToo and Time’s
Up, a consideration we explore in the conclusion.
In our research, we found a complex discursive terrain marked by a range of
different ideas and formations of feminism, as our participants struggled with
vehement anti-feminism as well as the co-optation of feminism into what we
referenced in our introduction as postfeminism (Gill 2007, 2017). Our analysis
pays attention to these dynamics in how our participants discuss their feminism,
qualify types of feminism and activism, and suggest multiple strategies of fem-
inist digital engagement. We explore the dominant discourses (Gill 2007) that
are shaping a range of digital feminist practices such as blogging (Keller 2015),
tweeting (Ringrose and Renold 2016b), and Tumblring (Retallack, Ringrose,
and Lawrence 2016), seeking to understand the affective dimensions of these
discourses as they shape the lived practices of our participants. Our research pays
attention to the effusion of different affective registers at play as diverse feminisms
are being practiced, performed, and negotiated by our participants. For instance,
in considering the meaning and impact of digital feminism in the lives of our
participants, we found Clare Hemmings (2012) concepts of “affective disso-
nance” and “affective solidarity” particularly useful. Hemmings articulates affec-
tive solidarity as arising from a shared affective dissonance among women who
crave feminist social change. Rather than building solidarity based upon identity
politics, Hemmings proposes a collective feminist politics that draws on a shared
affective experience that may arise from questioning the status quo. She writes:
Affective dissonance cannot guarantee feminist politicization or even

a resistant mode. And yet, it just might . . . that sense of dissonance
might become a sense of injustice and then a desire to rectify that.
Affect might flood one’s being and change not only how the house and
its circumstances are experienced and understood but how everything
else is seen and understood too, from this time on. (157)
Hemmings’ concept of affective solidarity then, much like Ahmed’s writing pre-
viously discussed, allows us to consider how the affects produced within our
case studies hold the potential to be transformative, while recognizing that this
is not an inevitability.
NETWORKED AFFECT
While feminist theories of affect provide a foundation in our research for un-
derstanding the practice of living and doing feminism, there is a growing body
27
of scholarship exploring affect in media cultures, and specifically, how the

affordances of digital media are affective. For example, Adi Kuntsman (2012)
discusses the “affective fabrics” of digital culture, mobilizing Ahmed’s affec-
tive economy lens to interrogate the circulation of text and emotion online.
Kuntsman introduces the idea of reverberation to explore how text and emotion
travel inside and outside of cyberspace, inciting intensifications of emotions, as
well as generating new “psychic states” and possibilities for “resistances” and
“transformations” (2012, 2). This possibility of transformation through the cir-
culation of text and the different valences of emotion as “affective intensities” via
digital networks (Ringrose 2011) is particularly relevant for our study.
Another key text that we draw upon extensively is Zizi Papacharissi’s book,
Affective Publics (2015), which builds upon danah boyd’s (2007) work on
“networked publics” to articulate how the technological affordances of social
networks such as persistence, replicability, scalability, and searchability are
affective:
Social media facilitate engagement in ways that are meaningful. Most

notably they help activate latent ties that may be crucial to the mobi-
lization of networked publics . . . their impact is always subject to con-
text to how these super surfaces connect to the infrastructural core of
a regime be that a democracy, autocracy or a political system in transi-
tion. On a secondary level, networked publics are formed as crowds co-
alesce around both actual and imagined communities. The connective
affordances of social media then not only activist the in-between bond
of publics but enable expression and information sharing that liberates
the individual and the collective imaginations. . . . digital among other
media invite and transmit affect but also sustain affective feedback loops
that generate and reproduce affective patterns of relating to others that
are further reproduced as affect—that is, intensities, that has not yet
been cognitively processed as feeling, emotion or thought . . . haptic,
optic and tactile, but also the computational capabilities of media
invite particular modalities of affective attunement. (Papacharissi
2015,  20–23)
Papacharissi is heavily influenced by Deleuze’s notion of bodily capacity and

how digital media shapes and attunes these, highlighting the notion of “affec-
tive intensities” (see also Ringrose 2011). We explore affective attunement in
our research and how different types of digital feminist practices enable specific
forms of capacities, including feelings of connection, shared understanding,
safety, resolve, and many more. The way the digital spaces enable different
capacities depends on the type of digital platform (a website, a Tumblr site, or
28
a Twitter account or hashtag), which we explore in detail. Papacharissi (2015)

argues, “Affect is inherently political. It provides a way of understanding humans
as collective and emotional, as well as individual and rational, by presenting
these states as confluent rather than opposite” (16). Drawing on a wide range of
theories, Papacharissi suggests that affect is particularly useful in understanding
politics within digital cultures, as “it does not conform to the structures we sym-
bolically internalize as political,” such as conventional modes of protest activism
or governmental politics (19). Where Papacharissi looks at Twitter content
and media representations, this study draws on affect to explore the qualitative
dimensions of experiences of living and practicing feminism in digital spheres
as well as the affective aspects of anti-feminism and postfeminism as we see this
playing out in our research.
The concept of “networked affect” (Hillis, Paasonen, and Petit 2015) is
another influential concept for this study, which references the networked
capabilities of social media, which has disrupted conventional boundaries be-
tween the individual, the social, and the political through vast webs of connec-
tive streams of consciousness. Ken Hillis, Susanna Paasonen, and Michael Petit
(2015) argue that the technological is not only instrumental, but generative,
of new forms of intensity, sensation, and value. This is extremely important for
considering how feminist consciousness is expanded and extended through its
speed and connectivity “in the network” (Rentschler and Thrift 2015, 331).
Intensity, sensation, and value help us think about the ways digital technology
changes the degree and nature of experience of feelings or emotions and the
ways feminists are using digital networks to communicate and participate in re-
sistance and political debate. Sensation, meanwhile, directly disrupts the idea of
an online/offline divide and the digital as only experienced cognitively, paying
attention to the sensations of the embodied digital technology user that shape
how they experience feminism through digital networks, as we will aim to do.
Hillis, Paasonen, and Petit’s framework applies the actor-network framework
of Bruno Latour (2011) to explore how the individual who is plugged into digital
devices is always more than human and more than an individual, further noting
that agency is distributed not only between humans but between humans and
technology: “actors are in a state of constant interaction, learning and becoming
and are always connected to other actors and factors” (in Hillis, Paasonen, and
Petit 2015, 10). We apply this lens to interrogate how networks create new forms
of more-than-human agential relations among feminist activists. Examples in
our book show hashtag connectivity being digitally generated between feminists
through uses of Twitter to engage in feminist campaigns against sexual violence
(see also Rentschler 2014). We can also see how the digital networks enable the
solidifying of group experiences of feminism through our teen feminists who
use Twitter and chat functions to communicate and develop their feminist views
29
beyond the material spaces of school, and even operate a joint Twitter account
that creates a collective digital identity. We document how this is experienced
and negotiated given the extension of their school feminist group into a visible
public Twitter presence that generates a range of affective peer conflicts.
Value and networked affect indicate a complex set of relations ranging from
how specific platforms are designed to capitalize on key facets of users’ iden-
tity. For instance, we reflect on how some platforms are “friendlier” to feminism
and specific age groups. Moreover, we think about how new regimes and modes
of engagement are promoted via some digital networks, such as new cultures
of disclosure of sexual violence enabled on Tumblr or Twitter, or new forms
of feminist humor and languages of resistance made possible through Twitter
affordances (see also Mendes, Keller, and Ringrose submitted; Rentschler and
Thrift 2015; Ringrose and Lawrence forthcoming).
T H E P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y O F M E D I AT E D   A F F E C T
There is a robust body of scholarship addressing the political economy of digital
culture, including social media. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to
provide a comprehensive overview here, later we highlight key ideas from this
literature that is most pertinent to our project. Much of the political economy
research challenges the optimistic perspective on Web 2.0 digital culture as
participatory, democratic, and collaborative (see Bruns 2008; Jenkins 2006;
Shirky 2008), and instead questions the ways in which ownership structures
and their ideological power shape both the media technologies and their uses.
To wit: Christian Fuchs (2009) argues that social media platforms have both
an ideological character and a commodity form. He describes how platforms
operate ideologically to advance capitalist individualization, accumulation, and
legitimization via the privileging of the individual profile and the false pretense
of social media as a democratic forum. He writes:
If democracy is understood as the production of information by all that

has no significant political effect and leaves dominant power structures
untouched, then an ideological way of legitimating existing modes
of domination is present. Everyone can then voice his or her opinion
on the Web, but nobody will really care about it because the real
decisions are still taken by the elite groups. The information produced
then constitutes an endless flood of data, but not significant political
voices. (83)
Jodi Dean (2005, 2009, 2010b) makes a similar argument with her concept of
“communicative capitalism,” highlighting the ways in which democracy and
30
capitalism have converged within networked communications and entertain-

ment media, often depoliticizing politics in the process. Communicative cap-
italism, according to Dean, is marked by the process of celebrated democratic
values taking material form in networked communications technologies:
Ideals of access, inclusion, discussion and participation come

to be realized in and through expansions, intensifications and
interconnections of global telecommunications. But instead of leading
to more equitable distributions of wealth and influence, instead of ena-
bling the emergence of a richer variety in modes of living and practices
of freedom, the deluge of screens and spectacles undermines political
opportunity and efficacy for most of the world’s peoples. (2005, 55)
For Dean (2005), it is the constant circulation of (media) content coupled with
the fantasy of participation and the ability to feel “political” through practices
such as signing an online petition that forecloses any real prospect for social
change. The critical technological approach to social media and its means of
extracting value and new markets from users is relevant for our research, and
many of our findings complicate some of Dean and Fuch’s assertions. Indeed, as
we outline in c hapters 4 to 7, although most of the digital feminist activism we
study may result in no tangible changes to policy or law, it directly changes and
shapes the experiences, interactions, expectations, and views of our participants’
everyday lives in profound ways.
Although we may diverge regarding some of the ideological dimensions
of social media, our research raises concerns about the unpaid immaterial
labor that social media users produce for platforms such as Facebook. Fuchs
articulates how in engaging with these platforms, even for activist purposes,
audiences become a commodity sold to advertisers through monetized data
that generates substantial profit for media companies (see also Terranova
2000). Tamara Shepherd (2014) and Kylie Jarrett (2014, 2015) argue that
the commodification of social media audiences must also be understood
through a gendered lens—arguments that we find compelling. According to
Shepherd (2014), the commodity audience produced through social media
is explicitly gendered, whereby gendered stereotypes are mobilized to pro-
duce user categories that are then targeted through gendered advertising.
Jarrett (2014, 2015) also points out how the immaterial labor embedded
within social media practices must also be understood as gendered labor in
that it is often invisible, unpaid, and affective. The affective intensities of en-
gagement in social media for Jarrett hold (an often unrecognized) value in
capitalism, which she describes in relation to clicking the “Like” button on a
friend’s Facebook status:
31
The affective intensities generated in these interactions provide a re-

ward, and through that a legitimacy, for continued engagement with
the site. These seductive pleasures, which are legitimate disciplining in
neoliberal consumer capitalism, work to encourage continued contri-
bution to the site, assuring the dominance of Facebook in terms of its
market dynamics of data mining and brand-value. But these affective
intensities also encourage the further generation of such sensations
within commercial contexts. (23)
In this sense, we must recognize how affect works simultaneously, in both radical
(such as in affective solidarity as we discussed earlier in this chapter) and status
quo ways, a tension that we grapple with throughout this book.
José van Dijck (2013) also draws on political economy to argue it is the
curated social connections produced by and through social media platforms
that are particularly profitable for social media companies. Writing about the
sophisticated algorithms used by companies such as Facebook, she maintains
that “sociality coded by technology renders people’s activities formal, manage-
able, and manipulable, enabling platforms to engineer the sociality in people’s
everyday routines” (12). By commoditizing relationships, connectivity serves as
an important resource for companies, generating key data that is monetized and
sold to advertisers. In this sense, van Dijck, much like Latour, reminds us that
the connections we create online—whether through Facebook “shares,” Twitter
“followers,” or Instagram “likes,” are not solely the product of our human and ra-
tional agency, and that profit motives undergird the ways in which we are steered
by algorithms to engage (or not) with particular digital content.
These political economy critiques suggest that we need to be cautious
in celebrating the opportunities created by social media to engage in femi-
nist political action. Indeed, when a feminist hashtag goes viral, such as the
#BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag (see c hapter 6), it is profitable for Twitter.
Likewise, as Shepherd et al. (2015) highlight, online hate (including misogyny,
racism, and homophobia) is also profitable, creating value for platforms that work
as a disincentive to enact policies that combat such practices. Consequently, we
approach our analysis mindful of theses tensions and with a particular eye to-
ward the types of sociality engineered by platforms, a topic we turn to in the
following section.
A F F E C T I V E P L AT F O R M V E R N A C U L A R S
While scholars have been writing about “online feminisms” for the past several
years, there has been little analysis of the multiple practices of doing feminist
activism that have emerged out of differing digital platforms such as Tumblr,
32
Twitter, or Instagram, each unique in terms of their sociotechnical affordances

(see Retallack, Ringrose, and Lawrence 2016; Kanai 2016; Ringrose and
Lawrence, in press). Indeed, as scholars such as Carrie Rentschler and Samantha
Thrift (2015) point out, “social media platforms may foster different ways of
doing feminism” (350). In acknowledgment of this, this book deliberately
focuses on a range of case studies that account for different ways of doing fem-
inism, ranging from participating in highly visible feminist campaigns (such as
Hollaback!) to micro-, hidden, and “quiet” forms of activism (such as closed
WhatsApp group chats). We also carefully selected case studies that operate
across various platforms, including websites, blogs, Twitter, Tumblr, and
Facebook—platforms that are underpinned by varying technological structures,
or affordances.
This concept of “platform vernacular” (Gibbs et al. 2015) refers to a range
of common conventions (including discursive, stylistic, and visual) that de-
velop among specific digital spaces. Platform vernaculars become a key con-
cept used to understand a multitude of feminist engagement via differing
social media platforms. Although designers certainly imagine the ways
users will engage with the platform itself and others on it, scholars such as
Katie Warfield (2016) argue that platform vernaculars emerge from within
social networks, whereby meaning and affective value become constituted
and established through both use and context. Alexander Cho (2015) also
elaborates on this idea, mapping how the platform vernacular of Tumblr
produces particular affective engagements among queer users. In describing
the way in which Tumblr privileges reblogged images that circulated quickly
throughout the network, Cho writes:
The authorial locus on Tumblr is not the act of creation; it is the act
of curation. The experience of Tumblr is less like reading a LiveJournal
blog and more like walking through a million different constantly
shifting galleries—both may contain serious emotional heft and per-
sonal investment, but the latter relies much more on aesthetics, intima-
tion, sensibility, and movement—in short, affect. (46)
Here, Cho’s analysis points to the particularities of Tumbler’s sociotechnical

affordances in producing distinctive affective registers that are an integral part
of the Tumblr experience.
This concept is also useful from an intersectional view point, in thinking
about who is able to speak (or not), about which issues, on which platforms. We
must also recognize that there is not a singular vernacular practice, but many that
develop among platforms, and they change over time. As a result, although our
3
analysis focuses on the dominant vernaculars, we will draw attention to counter-

vernacular practices as they emerge.
So far, this chapter has laid out key theories that inform and influence our
approach to and analysis of data. The rest of this chapter lays out our methodo-
logical approach and further detail about case study selection.
Methodological Approach: Researching Digital

Feminism and Affect
At its core, this project is interested in understanding digital feminist activist
practices—from the experiences of organizing and participating in them, to
how digitally mediated activism shapes offline activist practices. As an interdis-
ciplinary research team who come from media, cultural studies, and education,
we were simultaneously interested in analyzing activist practices that were large-
scale, well organized, and/or highly visible within the public sphere and those
practices that were more low profile, invisible, and/or hidden from public view.
As a result, informed by varying disciplinary approaches, we drew together a
range of methodological tools that form a unique “research assemblage” that op-
erate as distinct yet connected case studies to capture a wide range of complex
and nuanced practices among feminist activists (Ringrose and Renold 2014). In
studying feminist activist practices, we aim to not only understand these as indic-
ative of the ways in which digital technologies are increasingly used to document
and challenge rape culture, but in which these everyday experiences are now
mediated. As a result, we employ an “in situ” (Gray 2009) approach to studying
media, whereby the object of study is not solely the media text itself, but “the
processes and understandings of new media among people within the contexts
of their use” (126–127). By adopting this methodological approach, and by
drawing from a range of diverse methods and starting points, we are better able
to map complex relationships between users’ multiple media engagements and
their social and cultural context, thus enabling us to better understand digital
media from our participants’ perspectives.
In this sense, while there has been a growth of scholarship examining how
and why feminists are using digital media technologies to respond to sexism, mi-
sogyny, and rape culture (Keller 2015; Mendes 2015; Rentschler 2014; Thrift
2014), little is known about their experiences of such engagement (for exceptions
see Keller, Mendes, and Ringrose 2018; Ringrose and Renold 2016a). This book
fills this gap via the use of ethnographic methods, including close observation
of online communities, surveys, and semi-structured interviews, in conjunc-
tion with qualitative content and thematic analysis, to better understand digital
34
feminist activist practices. Before explaining the rationale for our approach and
talking about our use of methods, we will first outline the study’s conceptual
design.
A STUDY MAP
As many scholars will attest, the conceptualization and design of any given
project is challenging. This was certainly the case for this research. Based on
a 21-month study funded by Britain’s Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC), we were interested in both “mapping” the diversity of contemporary
feminist digital initiatives and understanding the experiences of those involved.
To provide some context: when we began to conceptualize this project back in
2012, highly visible feminist campaigns such as SlutWalk and Hollaback! were
grabbing national and international headlines, and going viral in the feminist
blogosphere. At a time when feminism is clearly “having a moment” (Gill 2016,
611), the surge of digital feminist initiatives provided both an exciting opportu-
nity to explore both the highly visible and hidden feminist campaigns, which we
knew were taking place globally. Although as a research team we had expertise
in studying media representations of feminist activism (Mendes 2011, 2015),
and the experiences of small, unrepresentative groups of feminist leaders and
activists (Keller 2012, 2015, 2016; Mendes 2015; Keller and Ringrose 2015;
Ringrose and Renold 2012, 2014; 2016a), we were interested in combining our
related, yet diverse expertise to produce a larger, complex, and more nuanced
conceptualization of digital feminist activism than what we had thus far seen in
existing research.
We chose a case-study approach because it provides scholars with a wide
range of tools to study complex social phenomena (Baxter and Jack 2008). As an
“in-depth multifaceted investigation,” case study approaches use a range of tools
to closely study a phenomenon, often drawing from multiple data sources and
methods (Feagin, Orum, and Sjoberg 1991). While case studies can be selected
because they are representative of broader phenomena, they can also be chosen
because they are unique, hidden, or under-researched (Feagin, Orum, and
Sjoberg 1991). A case study approach was thus ideal for this project because it
enabled us to investigate multiple digital feminist campaigns, with varying levels
of visibility, with different user-types, and using a range of data sets and methods
as necessary. For example, while previous research has focused on feminist
leaders or groups and those who consider themselves to be feminist activists
(see Keller 2015; Mendes 2015), we were also interested in those who may have
only occasionally participated in feminist digital activities, and who may not
consider themselves or their actions “activist” in nature (Ringrose and Renold
2012, 2016a). We were also committed to capturing those who participated
35
in or organized high-profile campaigns, as well as including those whose work

remained largely hidden or unnoticed.
Indeed, it is worth remembering that feminists have long been engaged in
“quiet” forms of activism—activism that seeks cultural or ideological, rather
than overtly political or economic changes (see Shaw 2012a; Maddison 2013).
Women have, and continue to be, excluded from the traditional public sphere
(Young 1997). With the rise of toxic masculinity and MRA rhetoric, women
continue to be intimidated by men in both on and offline spaces, with the ag-
gression leveled toward them leaving many feeling unsafe and vulnerable (see
Ging 2017). As a coping strategy, many have turned to “quieter” types of ac-
tivism to avoid drawing unwanted attention to themselves (Clark-Parsons 2017;
Mendes 2015). This has historically included practices such as women-only
consciousness-raising groups, diary-writing, zine writing, fiction, theater, craft
circles, graffiti, culture jamming, and more recently, digital tools such as blogs,
websites, and social media platforms. Via our connections with feminist groups in
school settings, we were therefore also keen to include some of the “hidden” uses
of social media by young people to call out sexism, including closed Facebook,
WhatsApp, and iPhone groups and low-profile Twitter handles. These are prime
examples of activist practices that we know to be prominent through our pro-
fessional and personal networks, yet are challenging to access as researchers and
have gone undocumented in existing literature.
In addition to including both the “hidden” and “highly visible” feminist
campaigns, we purposefully selected those that made use of a range of digital
platforms including blogs, bespoke websites, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter.
While all our case studies originated in the US, Canada, or the UK, many
reached beyond national borders, and solicited participation from women, girl,
and men all around the world. As white, middle-class, cis-gendered women,
we also deliberately sought out case studies that, at least on the surface, spoke
about issues such as intersectionality, and privileged a wide range of voices
and experiences. Nonetheless, we recognize that these six case studies are
by no means fully representative of the rich and diverse range of feminist ac-
tivism, particularly by women of color, LGBTQ+, and non-English speaking
communities.1 Furthermore, despite their public claims to intersectionality, we
acknowledge criticisms of some of our chosen campaigns, such as Hollaback!,
for in fact reproducing white feminist frameworks around street harassment (see
Rentschler 2017). While aware that our sample omits key campaigns that center
explicitly on Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) or LGBTQ+ identities, we
argue that given restrictions in labor, time, linguistic skills, and money, these six
case studies nonetheless present a useful starting point through which we can
understand digital feminist practices and their affective dimensions. The six case
studies selected for this project and their rationale can be seen in Table 2.1.
36
Table 2.1 List of Case Studies, Reason for Selection, and Methods Used
Case Study Reason for Selection Methods Used
Hollaback! Anti-street harassment project; Semi-structured interviews;

selected because of its visibility qualitative content analysis;
in the mainstream media and textual analysis
feminist digital cultures. It also
professes to have an intersec-
tional understanding of street
harassment
Everyday Sexism A website and hashtag where Semi-structured interviews;
participants can anonymously qualitative content analysis;
share experiences of sexism; textual analysis
selected because of its visibility
in the mainstream media and
feminist digital cultures.
Who Needs Feminism? A Tumblr and Facebook site Semi-structured interviews;
where people share images of qualitative content analysis;
signs explaining why feminism textual analysis
is still relevant; visibility in the
mainstream media and feminist
digital cultures, and because this
project seemed particularly
appealing to school age girls.
Twitter anti-rape- Selected because of their visi- Semi-structured interviews;
hashtag #BeenRaped bility in the mainstream media online observations; qualita-
Never Reported and feminist digital cultures. tive content analysis; textual
analysis
Everyday Twitter Rather than focusing on any par- Survey; email interviews;
Feminist Communities ticular campaign, we recruited in-depth Skype and face-
self-defined feminists from to-face interviews; on-
Twitter. These used a range of line observations; textual
digital platforms but primarily analysis
Twitter to challenge rape culture.
School-based Feminism Young feminists challenging rape Focus groups; Skype indi-
Club culture within institutionalized vidual in-depth interviews;
school contexts. Including girls online observation; textual
from a school-based feminist club analysis
who operated a joint Twitter ac-
count, demonstrating online/off-
line experiences of rape culture.
37
Although establishing the conceptual framework and rationale for this study
was one challenge, figuring out how to approach our case studies was also diffi-
cult. As a result of the various nuances among our six case studies, their intricate
differences, and the general “messiness” of studying digital cultures (Postill and
Pink 2011), we necessarily adjusted our sample size, sampling techniques, and
methods to maximize the data for each case study. Our multipronged approach
left us with an abundance of highly rich data—thus, in addition to making im-
portant theoretical and methodological contributions, it also makes an im-
portant empirical contribution to our understanding of contemporary digital
feminist activism.
Because of the methodologically pioneering nature of this work, we dis-
cuss our use of methods later in this chapter, but use each chapter to outline in
greater detail how each case study was designed, and the research carried out.
Our concluding chapter brings together insights gleaned along the way, so that
future scholars can better understand how we might study digital media cultures
that are often fluid, dispersed, and challenging to access as researchers.
A F E M I N I S T A P P R O A C H TO R E S E A R C H
It is unsurprising, given the focus of this book, that the research was approached
using feminist perspectives and methodologies. As Sue Curry Jansen (2002)
suggests, gender shapes much of our life experience and should be a major con-
sideration, not a variable if we are to understand “the multiple and multifaceted
ways that gendered patterns of communication and gendered distribution of
power are variously constructed and replicated by different social institutions
and structures of knowledge” (37). According to Marjorie L. DeVault (1996)
feminist research is that which incorporates or further develops feminism’s
insights. Our explicit focus on feminist resistances to sexism, harassment, mi-
sogyny, and rape culture align with this approach, and while we are excited by
much of the activism we’ve studied, we remain committed to critical analysis of
our chosen case studies.
It is of course important to recognize that both experiences of and resistances
to rape culture are influenced by the intersectional nature of oppression, which
operates along a number of axes including, but not limited to race, gender, sexu-
ality, ability, age, and class (see Crenshaw 1991; hooks 1981; Loza 2014; McCall
2005). Although intersectional analyses have always been important, some have
argued that in an age of Trump and Brexit, which prioritize exclusionary pol-
itics and policies, is more necessary than ever before (Gill 2017; Gökarıksel
and Smith 2017). This is particularly true in light of continued criticisms sur-
rounding the whitewashing of contemporary feminist protests, and the erasure
of non-normative figures within media representations (see Boothroyd et al.
38
2017; McNicol 2015; Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood 2017). An intersec-

tional analysis thus allows us to think about which feminist issues are (in)visible,
and how rape culture manifests itself, is challenged, and experienced among dif-
ferent communities, while thinking about issues of embodiment in supposedly
disembodied spaces.
As such, we add our voice to those who argue the need to conceive of dig-
ital spaces as real spaces and built environments, in which the “disadvantaging
of particular groups is not incidental but the logical product of designing our
online spaces for certain publics at the exclusion of others” (Harvey 2016, 1;
Penney 2013; Warfield 2016). This study contributes to a growing body of schol-
arship that problematize simplistic binaries between “online” and “offline” life
(see Clark-Parsons 2017; Jensen 2012; Rentschler 2017; Ringrose and Harvey
2017) and showcases the slippage of experience and affect between them.
Finally, feminist research has been distinguished for its promotion of a re-
flexive tone—a tone that forces researchers to place their own histories and
experiences inside the cases they explore, the questions they ask, or the people
they study. This reflexivity provides context to why the data is approached in a
particular way, as well as sheds light on their analysis of subjects, or topics under
study (Harding 1987). Because women’s voices have historically been excluded
from much scholarship, a key element of feminist scholarship is to find out more
about women, and to give a fuller and more accurate account of society by in-
cluding them, their experiences, and voices (DeVault 1996; Nielsen 1990). In
this case, we are not simply interested in giving voice to women, but to feminists,
regardless of gender. Indeed, ours is the first study to include some empirical
evidence from self-defined male feminists, and the various challenges they en-
counter as they live feminist lives. Because of the complexity of our research de-
sign, and our desire to capture “multiple dimensions of social life” (McCall 2005,
1772), we have drawn from a range of interdisciplinary tools and approaches to
capture the experiences, voices, perspectives, and representations of activists
and activism, which we outline in following sections.
ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS
The employment of ethnographic methods to explore social relations through
Web 2.0 platforms and other new media technologies is a fast-developing field
(boyd 2007), offering researchers the opportunity to “contextualise media
engagements as part of a broader social terrain of experience” (Gray 2009, 14).
Feminist researchers have long favored ethnography as a methodological ap-
proach that allows for active listening, relational knowledge, and reflexivity as
a significant part of the research process (DeVault and Gross 2007; Rubin and
Rubin 2005). As feminist researchers, we find this ability to understand media
39
use within a broader cultural and social context to be essential to understand

feminist media activism’s transformative potential—a key project goal.
One of the primary ways in which we employ ethnographic methods in this
project is through our use of close observation of the feminist communities
forming around each case study. This at times involves “liking” a feminist cam-
paign on Facebook, following a particular Twitter handle or hashtag, or regularly
“checking in” on a website to keep updated on new content. According to John
Postill and Sarah Pink (2012, 130), following or liking is an important act be-
cause it “opens you directly to the sharing of others,” and thus allows you to see
how others interact with these accounts. These “entangled” processes (Postill
and Pink 2012) are essential for researchers to immerse themselves into the
cultures they are studying (Deacon et al. 1999), and we as researchers frequently
shared and “archived” key events or initiatives via our own Digital Feminisms
Facebook page and Twitter handle.
Semi-structured interviews have also been a preferred method for the growing
body of research on girls and young women (see Currie, Kelly, and Pomeranz
2009; Keller 2012, 2015; Ringrose 2013; Taft 2011; Zaslow 2009). Feminist
researchers have used semi-structured interviews as a means of privileging,
defending, and promoting the voices of research participants (Mitchell and
Reid-Walsh 2008), many of whom are traditionally marginalized due to age,
gender, class, sexuality, occupation, race, and so forth (Keller 2015). Jessica
Taft (2011) argues that ethnography provides more “detailed, textured, and
complicated data that is lively and engaging [and] incorporates the voices of a
group whose words and ideas are not quite what most readers expect, giving
space for their own understandings and interpretations” (193). Consequently,
we employed semi-structured interviews with 82 girls, women, and men to gain
an understanding of how feminist organizers and participants felt about and
conceptualized their participation in digital media initiatives. These perspectives
are essential to analyze how participation in online feminist activism shapes the
everyday experiences of the women and girls involved.
Although most interviews were conducted one-on-one, in our school-based
research we conducted three group interviews with 16 research participants;
alongside in-class observations of a London secondary-school feminist group.
This aspect of our research is extremely salient since access to institutionalized
spaces such as schools is difficult to secure, and only achieved by drawing upon
our previous contacts with school leaders. Here we used digital methods such
as scroll back on the participants’ mobile phones to capture salient content in
screen captures (Robards and Lincoln 2017). Chapters 5 and 7 also provide
insights that were difficult to access as researchers, because we took an open ap-
proach to surveying self-defined feminist activists via Twitter, gaining research
access to girls, women, and some men whose “everyday” feminist practices and
40
views may never be represented through news media or even high-profile femi-
nist platforms.
In addition to our use of ethnographic methods, we also employed qual-
itative content and thematic analysis on a discreet sample of digital data
for four of the digital feminist campaigns (Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism,
#BeenRapedNeverReported, and Who Needs Feminism?). This was done to
provide insight to our first research question: What experiences of harassment,
misogyny, and rape culture are girls and women responding to in digital spaces?
Q UA L I TAT I V E C O N T E N T A N A LY S I S
As a popular quantitative tool within (feminist) media studies, content analysis
is often employed to analyze large amounts of data, its meanings, symbolic qual-
ities, and content (Deacon et al. 1999; Krippendorff 2004). Content analysis
also establishes a procedure to find what is relatively constant and what might
change over time, which can provide important insight into key features, discur-
sive and thematic patterns, problems, and solutions in online activist practices.
Because all content has been subjected to the same explicitly defined criteria,
content analysis ensures a degree of reliability in establishing media patterns and
representations (Deacon et al. 1999). As a widely used tool, content analysis can
be quantitative or qualitative in nature.
Quantitative content analysis generally involves statistical analyses of the
data using complex models and measures. Qualitative content analysis on the
other hand still involves coding data but does not undergo rigorous statistical
analysis (Bhattacherjee 2012). Instead, qualitative content analysis is interested
in presenting simple frequencies on aspects such as themes, frames, discourses,
tone, and so forth, which are used to complement and provide a frame of ref-
erence for other forms of textual analysis, such as thematic analysis. Unlike
some recent studies (see Papacharissi 2015), this project does not adopt a “big
data” approach—instead, we have drawn a relatively smaller sample size to
enable more qualitative analysis of data. In total, we analyzed over 800 pieces
of digital content including tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, Tumblr posts, and
other submissions to digital feminist campaigns. In most cases, we used various
random sampling strategies to collect this data, while in other cases, we asked
research participants to purposively select highly rich media texts to highlight
both the everyday and extraordinary accounts of their activism. While we are
hesitant to make generalized claims from our data, it nonetheless provides us
with some understanding of emerging trends and practices in relation to the
types of experiences shared in digital spaces.
41
T H E M AT I C A N A LY S I S
Thematic analysis is a popular method used across a range of disciplines, which
seeks to identify and analyze patterns of meaning in data (see Braun and Clark
2006; Joffe 2012). Historically, thematic analysis emerged from other textual
methods such as content analysis, which also seeks to establish categories in
texts ( Joffe 2012). However, unlike content analysis, which only analyzes what
is manifest in the content, thematic analysis was developed to identify latent
content. As a result, it is a useful method for analyzing the affective and sym-
bolic meaning in data ( Joffe 2012, 210). Thematic analysis is also a good fit for
this project because it can be applied across data sets, including textual artifacts
and interview transcripts. Within this study, all data, including digital artifacts,
open-ended survey responses, and semi-structured interviews, were analyzed
using thematic analysis.
While digital feminist activism has been a popular topic to study over
the past several years, there has been little scholarship that has critically
interrogated the difficulty in studying such practices. We have highlighted
some of these challenges here, while offering a unique multifaceted theoret-
ical and methodological approach that aims to meet these challenges in order
to capture the diverse, ephemeral, and affective practices of doing digital fem-
inist activism. In this sense, we contribute to a growing body of scholarship
concerned with feminist digital methodologies (Bivens et al. 2016, 2017) in
addition to providing key empirical data about how girls and women are
engaging with practices of digital feminist activism in twenty-first century
media culture.
42
3
Documenting Harassment,
Sexism, and Misogyny in Digital
Feminist Spaces
In 2005, New Yorker Thao Nguyen snapped a photo of a man masturbating

while sitting across from her on the subway. After getting little support from
police, Nguyen uploaded it onto the popular photo-sharing site Flickr, to
warn the public and shame the perpetrator. Not long after, the New York Daily
News published the picture on its front page. Inspired by Nguyen’s efforts to
challenge such behavior, a group of seven residents started a website called
Hollaback!, which, according to cofounder and executive director Emily May,
invited members of the public to share personal stories of “street harassment”
and eventually, “map” them using GPS-based technology. Over 10 years later,
Hollaback! identifies itself not merely as a website where the public can doc-
ument experiences of harassment in public spaces, but as a “movement” that
relies on a network of local activists to “better understand harassment, to ig-
nite public conversations, and to develop innovative strategies to ensure equal
access to public spaces” (Hollaback! 2016). Local Hollaback! chapters now
operate in 84 cities, in 31 countries, and in 19 different languages. The 2014–
2015 annual report documents the popularity of the movement, boasting over
40,000 Facebook fans and 17,500 Twitter followers. Over 11,000 stories have
been shared on Hollaback!’s digital platforms since the movement’s inception,
with roughly 1,800 stories being collected each year (Emily May, email to au-
thor, February 15, 2018).
Over the past decade, Hollaback! is just one of many digital feminist
campaigns that has been created and employed to document and disclose various
experiences of sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. Although Hollaback!, along
with Everyday Sexism, Who Needs Feminism?, and #BeenRapedNeverReported
have achieved high levels of visibility within mainstream culture, we in fact know
42
43
Documenting H ar assme n t , S ex is m , an d M is og y n y 43
very little about how the public use and disclose experiences to these sites (for
exceptions, see Dimond et al. 2013; Fileborn 2018). For example, while we
might assume that as an anti-street-harassment movement, Hollaback! provides
a place to share stories of “street harassment,” what sorts of behaviors does this
entail, how are disclosures “curated” (Fileborn 2018), and who is most likely to
contribute to this site?
Drawing on a qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis of 784 pieces
of digital content from four case studies: Hollaback! (n=159), Everyday Sexism
(n=175), Who Needs Feminism? (n=150), and #BeenRapedNeverReported
(n=300), this chapter provides one of the first attempts to analyze these pop-
ular feminist campaigns by asking: what experiences of harassment, misogyny,
and rape culture are girls, women, and some men disclosing on feminist digital
platforms? The statistics generated from qualitative content analysis provides
insight into the kinds of abuse women and girls experience in their day-to-day
lives, but also the types of experiences that are seen as legitimate to post, and
the kinds of voices most heard on these platforms. As Wånggren (2016) notes,
“Storytelling is not neutral, but requires an ongoing evaluation of whose stories
are given the dominant place” (11). Our analysis also allows us to determine the
types of posts/voices/information not included in these platforms, highlighting
issues of access and privilege in doing digital feminist activism. This is signifi-
cant in helping us understand not only what modes and practices of engagement
these platforms are offering their users, but also what types of topics, discursive
strategies, and affects are foreclosed.
In addition to providing one of the first accounts of what experiences of ha-
rassment and abuse girls, women, and some men share on these sites, we re-
veal the “slipperiness” of these sites, and how they are often used in unexpected
ways. As a result, we use the data from this chapter to develop an argument we
carry throughout the book—namely that digital feminist activism is far more
complex and nuanced than one might initially expect, and is used in a multi-
tude of ways, for many purposes, drawing on a range of different conventions or
“vernacular practices” (Gibbs et al. 2015). Taking a cue from Zizi Papacharissi
(2016), our findings highlight why scholars should stop assuming social media
and digital platforms will produce the same results within different social
movements, and instead pay close attention to uncovering various nuances in
how these movements unfold, connect, and operate over time across digital
spaces.
The chapter begins by providing background information on the four case
studies we analyze in this chapter, before teasing out connections and differences
between them.
4
Hollaback!
Hollaback! is a nonprofit organization that seeks to end street harassment and “de-
velop innovative strategies to ensure equal access to public spaces” (Hollaback!
2016). Among our case studies, Hollaback! is unique because of the multiple
means through which users can share experiences of street harassment—
through textual descriptions of their encounter, “mapping” their harassment via
a GPS-based app, or uploading photos of their harasser or place of harassment.
When we conducted the analysis, the website was organized by six drop-down
menus: Home, Research, About, Resources, Take Action, and Donate.1 Thus,
while this chapter focuses on personal testimonials and how these stories func-
tion to digitally document sexual harassment, we want to emphasize that the
Hollaback! site also functions to educate the public about street harassment, dis-
seminate research, and promote the nonprofit organization’s various initiatives.
These include their HeartMob platform, which provides support for those
experiencing online harassment, and The People’s Supper, which provides safe
spaces for marginalized communities to share personal experiences of violence
in the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential election. Nonetheless, the website’s
original mission of sharing stories of gendered street harassment to problematize
it, and make its ubiquity visible, is what the organization is best known for, and
forms the bulk of their digital content.
Upon entering the site at the time of our data analysis, users could find a home
page featuring the most recent submitted testimonials of street harassment.
Organized in a reverse-chronological blog-style format, stories range in length
from a few sentences to several paragraphs. Below each post are widgets to share
the stories via a range of social media platforms, including Tumblr, Twitter, and
Facebook, as well as an option to leave a comment. Significantly, there is also a
button that reads “I’ve Got Your Back,” which enables users to engage in “click-
based expressions of care” (Rentschler 2017, 576). A figure below the button
displays the number of times in which it has been clicked. The button is a unique
design affordance of the Hollaback! site and could be considered a key means
of showing and quantitatively documenting the existence of “listening publics”
(Lacey 2013), which increase feelings of connectedness and solidarity with
others (Dean 2010a; Papacharissi 2015). As it is a movement that seeks to end
harassment in public spaces, we were interested in analyzing what experiences
of harassment contributors share to the site, and how they shape or are shaped
by platform architecture, affordances, and vernaculars. Our sample was drawn
using systematic random sampling of posts from January, April, and August each
year between 2006—when the blog went live, and 2015, when we carried out
the research. Retrieving every fifth submission, our search yielded 159 posts.
45
Who Needs Feminism?

In 2012, the Who Needs Feminism? campaign was launched. Initiated by 16
students enrolled in the “Women in the Public Sphere” course at Duke University,
it aimed to problematize the negative associations with the word “feminism.”
In addition to displaying posters around Duke’s campus, the students used the
popular microblogging site Tumblr to post photos of themselves holding signs
explaining why they need feminism. According to cofounder Ashley Tsai, the
campaign emerged because of the ways the class felt passionately about femi-
nism, but “couldn’t really talk about it outside of the classroom because no one
even knew what the word feminism meant, or they completely misunderstood
what it meant.” Since 2012, there have been over 5,000 submissions to the orig-
inal Who Needs Feminism? Tumblr site, and over 60 other universities world-
wide have started their own Who Needs Feminism? campaigns and separate
websites (see for example, UK Feminista 2014).
Tumblr is a microblogging site that both “curates” and “remixes” content
produced by others, and prioritizes visual images, making this photo-sharing
project an excellent fit for this platform (Kanai 2016; Ringrose and Lawrence
forthcoming). As Alexander Cho has argued, Tumblr is a platform that trades
in affect (2015). Although it makes use of the written word, there is “some-
thing else” being circulated through the “felt register of suggestive imagery,
one of intimation, assemblage, intensity and aesthetic” (44). Submissions
to this site are presented in reverse chronological order, and each submission
displays the number of “notes” associated with each post. In this case, notes in-
clude the number of times the submission was commented upon, reblogged,
or “liked.” Typical submissions range from several hundred to several thousand
notes, indicating the extent to which content is widely shared, and presumably,
affective.
One of the main conventions that define this site is the ways participants use
signs to articulate their need for feminism. This is part of Tumblr’s visual meme
culture, where an artifact is produced to narrate and document an event or
experience—in this case in the form of a sign held up in front of the contributor.
The sign itself is the focal point of most photos. Many are highly stylized, and
make use of different colors, sizes of print, bold, italics, and underlining of key
words. Amy Dobson (2015) has explored the development of “pain memes” on
You Tube as part of a visual culture where stories of abuse are narrated through
flash cards rather than speaking the event. This is the narrative form that takes
place on Who Needs Feminism?, where short passage script relates the expe-
rience through the visceral means of the handcrafted sign. In many ways, this
follows a long tradition of feminist craftivism that enacts activism through
46
traditionally feminized crafts such as drawing, sewing, and knitting (Bain 2016;
Kelly 2014). Here, the artful potential of the sign is evident via the use of tex-
ture, color, and embellishments. The material aspects of the sign and stylistic
aspects create new forms of vernacular signage practices, which convey emo-
tion and affect, which we argue elsewhere are important for making sexual vio-
lence both knowable and felt within our contemporary digital media landscape
(Mendes, Keller, and Ringrose submitted). The affective registers of Tumblr
are highlighted in the number of “notes” each post contains, compounding the
feelings of support one receives as the image is reblogged through the Tumblr
network.
Unlike other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Tumblr posts con-
tain no personal profiles and are usually anonymously authored. This is a
key affordance of the platform in that the possibility of anonymity invites
engagements where anonymity may be preferred. Consequently, Tumblr has be-
come a platform that is particularly popular with marginalized groups, including
people of color, queer communities, and girls and women. This also includes
youth (especially youth who are part of these marginalized groups), many of
whom are looking for digital spaces where they are “safe” to explore identities
and ideas that may be unwelcome elsewhere (Cho 2015; Thelandersson 2014;
Warfield 2016). As Who Needs Feminism? is organized in reverse chronological
order, we began our data collection on March 15, 2015, and retrieved every third
submission until we had collected 150 posts. The last submission was dated May
24, 2014.
Everyday Sexism
In 2012, 26-year-old British feminist Laura Bates launched Everyday Sexism
in response to the dominant postfeminist sensibility (Gill 2007; McRobbie
2009) suggesting that sexism is a thing of the past. The project collects personal
testimonials of diverse experiences of sexism, including workplace harassment,
sexual assault, body shaming, catcalling, and gender stereotyping, documenting
these stories in reverse-chronological order on its website. Visitors to the site
submit their own experiences through a submission box on the homepage, via
email, or Twitter (#EverydaySexism). Published stories, which can range in
length from one or two sentences to several paragraphs, are accompanied by
selected “tags” that describe where the incident of sexism occurred, such as
“workplace,” “home,” “public transport,” or “university.” Contributors can also
create their own tags, which categorize the incident beyond place; examples
include “boysareperverts,” and “courage.” While submissions are written
47
and published with the assumption that they’ll be read by a larger audience,
Everyday Sexism does not publish comments and contains no widgets to share
posts to other social media platforms. In this sense, unlike other initiatives such
as Hollaback! or Who Needs Feminism?, affective intensities and connections
fostered on this site are not readily visible or quantifiable. Instead, as we will
discuss later, participants engage in unique vernacular practices whereby the af-
fective intensities and connections are visible only within the discursive fabric of
the testimonials themselves.
Like the founders of Hollaback! and Who Needs Feminism?, Laura Bates
never expected Everyday Sexism to become popular, due in part to her lack of
funding and means to publicize the project “beyond my own Facebook wall”
(Bates 2014, 16), Yet, to Bates’ surprise, the site collected more than 1,000
entries from all over the world within its first two months. And although it was
originally established to “record daily instances of sexism” (Bates 2014, 18), it
soon became a place where women were sharing cases of “serious harassment
and assault, abuse and rape” (Bates 2014, 18) because, as Bates noted, there
wasn’t anywhere else for people to share such experiences. Organized in reverse
chronological order, Everyday Sexism, like Who Needs Feminism? lacks an ar-
chive. Instead, users can scroll back in time to previous “pages,” which typically
list between 10 to 15 entries. We began our data collection on June 6, 2015, and
going back 10 pages at a time, we selected every third entry, yielding a total of
175 posts. The last submission was collected on April 14, 2014.
#BeenRapedNeverReported
In the fall of 2014, the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag began to trend on
Twitter after allegations of sexual violence by prominent Canadian radio host
Jian Ghomeshi emerged (see chapter 6 for further discussion of this hashtag).
Initiated by two Canadian journalists, the hashtag publicly responded to
suggestions that Ghomeshi’s accusers were lying because they did not imme-
diately report his acts of sexual violence to the police. Contrary to a myriad of
myths around sexual violence and the ways a “typical” or “legitimate” victim
should respond, the hashtag sought to document the reasons that women do
not report sexual violence. In the coming days and weeks, many girls, women,
and some men used the hashtag to share their own reasons for not reporting
their assaults, creating an archive of 8 million tweets that document the preva-
lence of sexual violence. Using a designed algorithm, we randomly selected 300
tweets using the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag from November 2014 and
March 2015, the period in which the hashtag was most active.
48
What Experiences Are Being Reported

Although all four of our case studies in some way seek to challenge rape culture,
given their different areas of focus, our analysis of 784 pieces of digital content
showcase the diversity of experiences shared within and between these digital
campaigns. For example, as a movement that seeks to end harassment in public
spaces, it was no surprise that our entire sample of Hollaback! posts related in
some way to “street harassment.” In a similar vein, posts to Everyday Sexism
revolved broadly around issues of sexism and discriminatory practices, but also
tackled body shaming, policing, and other forms of violence. Despite the fact
that Who Needs Feminism? was not focused on one particular feminist issue,
the overwhelming topic addressed was violence against women. Although there
is no doubt that some of these campaigns invite certain types of experiences, the
next section will tease out some of the most prominent issues addressed across
our four campaigns, arguing that even within feminist platforms, some issues or
experiences are seen as more legitimate to post than others. In addition to paying
attention to dominant vernacular practices, the chapter also highlights some of
the unexpected and “slippery” ways these platforms were used, highlighting how
conventions can change over time.
STREET HARASSMENT
With the exception of #BeenRapedNeverReported, “street harassment” was an
experience shared by many contributors across the case studies. Although it
might be easy to assume “street harassment” is a monolithic practice, both ac-
ademic scholarship (see Vera-Gray 2016b) and our own analysis reveals the
complexities in the public’s understanding of this practice and what it entails.
Furthermore, as demonstrated by Liz Kelly’s (1988) continuum model of
sexual violence, all types of street harassment should not only be considered
harmful, but as forms of violence. When we took a close look at submissions
to Hollaback!, we found participants shared a wide range of practices including
being “catcalled,” groped, verbally abused, stalked, followed, or blocked;
or witnessing obscene gestures such as masturbation and flashing. By far,
“catcalling” was the most common practice reported here (n=74 or 47 percent
of Hollaback! posts), which included wolf-whistling, “lip smacking,” “kissy
noises,” horn-honking, comments such as “hey baby,” or attempts to strike up
a conversation with women in public spaces. As many contributors detailed,
these behaviors were frequently combined with comments about appearance,
or sexualized “banter” about what the perpetrator would like to do to recipients.
As one anonymous person wrote:
49
I was walking to my school’s student union when a man who appeared

to be another student accompanied by his friend started following me
and yelling things at me like “Ay yo gurl, lemme lick your butt.” And
they both laughed at me when I would turn back to look at them.
I didn’t know how to respond so I didn’t say anything and kept walking
till I got inside. It made me mad that I couldn’t feel comfortable on my
own campus.
Although “catcalling” is often regarded as harmless banter, or seen as a compli-

ment, it is clear from this submission above, and many more like it, that such
behavior creates deep discomfort, anger, and feelings of being unsafe, even in
institutionalized spaces such as university campuses. Scholarship has shown that
these deep feelings of anger and frustration can be powerful motivators in en-
couraging online disclosure in the first place (Fileborn 2017).
While behaviors categorized as “catcalling” were the most prevalent re-
corded in our Hollaback! sample, contributors also documented a range of
other practices including obscene gestures (flicking of tongues); men rubbing
or exposing themselves to women in public spaces (n=38, or 24 percent); being
followed, blocked, or cornered (n=32, or 20 percent); or being “leered at” (n=24,
or 15 percent). What is particularly significant is that victims rarely experienced
just one type of harassment, as demonstrated in this post:
I was getting a tram back home during rush hour and felt something
touching me from behind. I turned to see a man looking me straight
in the eye and decided to move away from him. Moments later I feel
it happening again but now the tram was so cramped I couldn’t move
away. I turned my head and the same man had followed me and was
groping me again. I didn’t know what to do as he smirked at me when
I began to panic.
Here, the contributor notes the ways she was groped and followed, pointing out
the ways her assailant was seemingly amused by her response, and presumably
the knowledge that there was little she could, or would, do. As discussed in the
literature review, scholars have paid attention to the role of entitlement in rape
culture—where men not only feel they have a right to access women’s bodies
but feel confident they can access them without fear of consequence (Mendes
2015). In this submission, the man was not deterred by the victim moving away
but followed her and continued to grope her despite being aware that his actions
were unwanted. This behavior is symptomatic of a rape culture, which was evi-
dent in a vast number of posts.
50
Although Hollaback! was certainly the platform in which various forms of

“street harassment” were shared, it was by no means the only one. For example,
street harassment was commonly used as a reason that feminism was deemed
necessary in Who Needs Feminism? submissions. As one contributor shared, “I
need feminism because when I was 12 a man followed me on the street whilst
touching himself on a motorbike. My dad said it was my fault for dressing too
revealing. I was wearing JEANS and a JACKET!” In a similar vein, Everyday
Sexism is replete with testimonials of street harassment, from men shouting,
“Got a nice pair!” to a woman as she cycled into work, to others challenging
the idea that catcalling is reserved for women who dress provocatively, noting,
“I often get cat called on the streets, wearing normal everyday clothes. Jeans,
t-shirt, trainers.” While harassment in public spaces was a common concern, so
too was the issue of violence against women.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
When looking across our sample, we noted that violence against women was the
single most commonly reported experience being shared among our case studies
(n=229, or 29 percent of total). Experiences of violence were shared in many
diverse ways, in part, influenced by various platform affordances. For example,
the platform architecture of Hollaback! and Everyday Sexism, which encourages
the public to “map” their experiences, and “share your story of sexism,” are likely
to have shaped vernacular practices of sharing specific, personalized, “incident
accounts” (Bletzer and Koss 2004) of sexual assault and violence. Sharing her
incident account on Hollaback!, Christine recalled, “I have been masturbated
at on the A and F trains and once on the Q, a man sat next to me, actually
grabbed my hand and placed it on his erection.” In addition to providing written
testimonies of their experiences, some Hollaback! contributors made use of the
photo-sharing capabilities, and either uploaded photos of men who attacked or
harassed them, or in some cases, of places where they were attacked or abused
(Figure 3.1).
While this level of detail was typical among Everyday Sexism and Hollaback!,
we noticed that in addition to providing these personalized experiences of
sexual assault, contributors to Who Needs Feminism? in particular, and
#BeenRapedNeverReported to a lesser extent, also shared other people’s
experiences of sexism, harassment, and violence. Although we recognize
our study is by no means representative, we were surprised to note that only
15 percent of our #BeenRapedNeverReported sample (n=45) shared personal
experiences of sexual assault. This low figure may be due to the shame and
stigma victims of sexual assault or harassment continue to experience. Instead,
talking generally about violence may be a less risky strategy for those who want
51
Figure 3.1 Image from Hollaback post. Author screenshot. Copyright permission

granted by Emily May of Hollaback!
to participate in wider discussions about rape culture without letting friends,

family, or acquaintances know about their experiences. As one Baltimore native
wrote on Who Needs Feminism?: “I need feminism because three of the last
four homicide victims in my city were women. (Be safe out there, Baltimore).”
By highlighting forms of violence directed toward other women, this contrib-
utor was able to identify violence against women as a serious issue, while using
her voice to speak for those who cannot. Although it is unclear whether this
contributor has experienced violence herself, Who Needs Feminism? neverthe-
less opens up space for those who wish to add their voice to the conversation
of why feminism is necessary, without the “risk” of having to disclose personal
experiences.
SEXISM
The third issue most commonly addressed was that of sexism or gendered
discrimination—a topic that varied in prominence across our case studies.
Unsurprisingly, sexism was regularly discussed in submissions to Everyday
52
Sexism whose purpose is to “catalogue instances of sexism experienced on

a day to day basis” (Everyday Sexism n.d.). Importantly, our analysis of 175
posts from the site demonstrates the multifaceted ways this term is interpreted
or understood. This includes stereotypes about “appropriate” gender roles or
“natural” abilities and ambitions (n=49, or 28 percent), sexually suggestive
comments and propositioning (n=39, or 22 percent), discrimination at work
(n=19, or 11 percent), and body shaming comments (n=9, or 5 percent).
When thinking about who the instigators of sexism are, common responses
included male peers, classmates, co-workers, customers, and employers. As
one school-aged girl shared, a group of boys asked her if she was “giving away
free blow jobs” when walking down the hall to class. Another participant
recalled being called a “slag” by a stranger “because I looked like I wanted
his cock in my mouth,” while someone else shared her experience of being
followed by a van of boys and asked if she wanted “to fuck.” In other cases,
strangers did not ask, but told women what they would do to them. As Louise
posted, “A man at Leicester train station shouted I will fuck you up your pussy
as I walked by today.”
Although most of the submissions dealing with sexism referred to sexism
against women, our analysis provided some insight into the ways these issues
were also experienced by LGBTQ+ communities. For example, within Who
Needs Feminism?, four submissions (3 percent of total) addressed discrim-
ination directed to trans communities or those who do not conform to tra-
ditional gender binaries. To wit, one contributor writes, “I need feminism
because transgender individuals face twice the national unemployment rate.”
Several LGBTQ+ contributors shared experiences of hate crimes, including
abusive comments such as being called “dirty lesbians” or “lesbo.” As one con-
tributor to Hollaback! shared, “I was called a faggot in front of Randall Library
at UNCW.”
What is clear from analyzing data from our case studies in general, but
Everyday Sexism in particular, is that girls and women experience sexism
and harassment not only from strangers, but from friends, family members,
peers, bosses, customers, and colleagues as well. Although lone “strangers” are
identified in most cases (n=63, or 36 percent), groups of strange men (n=25,
or 14 percent), male co-workers (n=15, or 9 percent), peers at school (n=14,
or 8 percent), and acquaintances and friends (n=11, or 6 percent) were also
identified as perpetrators. And while the exact location of sexism was “unclear”
in 14 percent of all Everyday Sexism submissions (n=25), this level of detail was
documented in many submissions. Looking through the data, 26 percent of all
submissions (n=45) took place particularly in public spaces such as parks or the
street (n=45, or 26 percent). As Sarah shared:
53
I was walking home from a bar in West London on Saturday night. I was
wearing black jeans, a top, a leather jacket, and sandals. As I waited
alone at some traffic lights, I heard applause break out outside a bar
just behind me, and a man shouted “WHAT AN ARSE, THAT IS AN
ARSE!,” whilst other men whooped and clapped. I didn’t turn around,
I was too upset and felt that responding would achieve nothing. Instead
I just crossed the road, embarrassed and blushing, and continued on my
way home, feeling vulnerable and degraded.
As is clearly demonstrated here, a dominant discourse in rape culture and lad

culture ( Jackson and Sundaram 2015) suggests that sexual harassment is simul-
taneously complimentary and playful banter that does no real harm.
How Do Participants Engage with the Site?

Now that we have highlighted some of the key issues being discussed across these
platforms, we will pay closer attention to how participants use these platforms
and engage with these sites. Taking a cue from critical technology studies, we
attend to emerging vernacular practices, which we argue have been shaped by
platform architecture, affordances, and conventions (see also Harvey 2015;
Star 1999), which work to simultaneously encourage and discourage certain
narratives from particular groups of people. In following sections then, we argue
that doing digital feminism does not merely involve sharing an account of a dis-
crete experience, but often setting the scene, explaining their responses, calling
out oppressive practices and structures, asserting their agency or vulnerability,
and attempting to forge affective connections and solidarities among readers,
making the most of what’s technologically available. Digital feminist practices
then, are far more complex than one might intuitively imagine, and are shaped
by the “materiality of the design of digital networks” (Harvey 2016, 11), which
in turn shapes emerging conventions, and curatorial and vernacular practices.
Setting the Scene
One vernacular practice that became particularly apparent in Everyday Sexism,
Who Needs Feminism?, and Hollaback!, was the ways contributors did not
merely share their experience, but took time to set the scene for the reader.
This involved practices such as providing information about where and when
their experiences took place, by which perpetrator(s), how the contributor
54
responded, and if anyone witnessed it or intervened. As Fileborn (2018)

argues, this is part of the “curatorial” process of disclosure in which participants
make careful decisions about what to disclose to whom, and how the narrative
is constructed. Although some of these practices can at times be found within
#BeenRapedNeverReported, we argue that Twitter’s character limit encourages
contributors to prioritize discreet “facts” over the detailed descriptions in the
tweet itself. That being said, participants sometimes found ways around the
character limit. At times this involved using thread-style posts in which the dis-
closure spilled over several tweets, but more commonly included hyperlinks
to other content such as blogs, where rich and detailed descriptions were
often found.
Here, we begin to articulate our argument that the architectural and tech-
nological affordances made possible on Twitter, Tumblr, blogs, and bespoke
websites lead to different articulations of sexism, rape culture, and sexual assault.
Yet, although the precise details of what was included may vary across the case
studies, the fact that participants often included information, such as where or
when the event took place, suggests scene setting is indeed an important rhetor-
ical practice—albeit one that serves a myriad of purposes. For example, these
details were at times used as part of “safety work” (Kelly 1998) to warn other
women of “hot spots” to avoid, and thus serve a pedagogical function to keep
other women safe. At other times, we argue that by including information not
only on their experience, but how they reacted, victims attempt to forge affec-
tive connections and solidarities, and at times, reframe themselves from being
a passive victim who is powerless to act, to an active agent who challenges such
behaviors.
W H E R E E V E N T S TA K E   P L A C E
When looking across the data, location often played an important part of the
narrative and emerging vernacular practices across certain platforms such as
Everyday Sexism and Hollaback! Although these platforms did not explic-
itly ask participants to share this information, we can infer by the detailed
descriptions that where the experience took place was an important part of
the story for many contributors. Identifying the location was particularly
important for Hollaback!, which in 2010 introduced its GPS mapping app,
allowing people to pinpoint exactly where their harassment took place.
Hollaback! is also our only case study whose website is distinctly organized
according to geographical lines, and participants are encouraged to submit
stories to their local Hollaback! chapter. In contrast, while location was at
times part of the narrative in submissions to Who Needs Feminism? and
#BeenRapedNeverReported, these were often more generalized (at a friend’s
5
house, at a party, in a nightclub), showcasing that while it has become a con-

vention to mention broadly speaking where the event took place, the plat-
form architecture does not encourage a vernacular practice of identifying
precise locations. For example, Who Needs Feminism? was more interested
in getting people to think about why feminism was needed in general, rather
than focus on why it was needed in specific spaces. In a similar vein, while
location was rarely mentioned in #BeenRapedNeverReported tweets, in-
formation about when it took place was an important rhetorical strategy to
showcase the extent to which sexual abuse has historically been hidden, and
thus highlight the need for this hashtag.
W H E N T H E E X P E R I E N C E TA K E S   P L A C E
Although temporality was not something we initially expected to analyze, nor
was it always possible, it became clear when we read through most of our case
studies that people were not simply reporting on contemporary experiences,
but were sharing, often for the first time, historic experiences that took place
months, years, or even decades before. As Marion wrote on Everyday Sexism,
“I am an 83-year old woman who could tell you incidents that have happened
to me from the time I was in 2nd grade in school, through high school, at work,
and even recently, believe it or not.” Although it is likely that people have felt
empowered to speak these “unspeakable things” (Penny 2014) in response to
high-profile investigations around powerful individuals and institutions (the
Catholic Church, Bill Cosby, Jimmy Saville, Jian Ghomeshi, Harvey Weinstein),
the emergence of new media technologies, and specific campaigns, including
our four case studies, have also provided networks of support and solidarity nec-
essary for finding one’s voice. Although when the event took place was not an
important part of each submission, it was a part of many, which we argue was
one technique used not only to “set the scene,” but to make visible the historic
pervasiveness and invisibility of sexism, harassment, assault, and rape culture.
When describing historic instances of sexism or abuse, many submissions began
with context such as “A few years ago” or “When I was x age.” For example, as
Amy began:
When I was 11 (now 18) I was touched under my knickers by my

sister’s boyfriend, who was then 16. He began the 6 months of assault
by hugging me randomly, which I simply thought of as a show of inno-
cent affection. It was when he began grabbing me when I was alone and
kissing me violently that I began to get scared. As an 11-year old, I had
no idea about the concept of sex, so I didn’t say anything, I also had no
idea that in the UK, this constituted a sexual assault.
56
Contributions such as this are significant for highlighting the vulnerability of

many victims, and their lack of language or frameworks through which to un-
derstand their experiences. So, while this girl intuitively knew that the attention
she experienced was wrong and “scary,” she neither fully understood its sexual
undertone and illegality nor was she immediately able to articulate it.
While historic cases of abuse, assault, and sexism were found across all four
platforms, they were perhaps most prominent in #BeenRapedNeverReported,
which is somewhat ironic given the ways Twitter has been praised for its imme-
diacy, allowing the public to communicate in real time (see Gerbaudo 2012).
As Mary shared, “Passed out @ party. 30years later @ school reunion a guy tells
me he assaulted me @ that party. I never knew. #BeenRapedNeverReported.”
As with #BeenRapedNeverReported, contributors to Who Needs Feminism?
rarely shared immediate experiences, likely because submissions to this site were
the most labor intensive, requiring participants to handcraft, photograph, and
upload a sign. Nevertheless, here, and as we will discuss further in c hapter 6, we
can see how despite the platform design that enables real-time updates, the nar-
rative convention was to showcase the ways girls, women, and some men indeed
kept hidden their experiences of sexual assault, often for prolonged periods. We
argue that highlighting the historic nature of their experience was central in chal-
lenging dominant beliefs that sexism, misogyny, rape culture, or sexual assault
have only recently emerged as a problem.
So, while highlighting the historical nature of their experience was an
important part of the narrative for many, we concurrently see many people
capitalize on platform affordances that enable them to quickly respond to
their experiences. This was particularly evident on Hollaback! and Everyday
Sexism—the former of which has an app that makes sharing stories easy,
simple, and immediate. The latter also encourages users to share experiences
via the hashtag #EverydaySexism. Here, it is common to see posts begin
with statements such as “this morning,” “today,” “the other night,” or “last
Friday.” Sharing her account four days after the event, one anonymous
contributor wrote:
My latest incident happened on Saturday, Dec. 30th, passing by con-

struction site on 3rd Ave. and 10th St. I felt “the leer” and gave the
worker the benefit of the doubt simply by nodding and looking away.
He proceeded to say creepily, “Oh, fuck, that’s a pretty pussy. Do you
take it in the ass?” I just kept walking and shaking my head.
By prefacing the post with “my latest incident,” the contributor makes clear
that the experience she recounts is not unusual but is just one of many recent
57
encounters. Indeed, research has shown that the “banality” of street harassment
in women’s everyday lives means it often only becomes “worth” disclosing if
there was something particularly noteworthy or unusual about their experience
(Fileborn 2018). Furthermore, drawing from the work of Liz Kelly (1988), we
argue that the inclusion of details such as the date and precise location of vio-
lence functions as a pedagogical tool for others, as “safety work,” warning women
about potential “danger zones,” spaces or times in which they should be wary or
take special care (see also Fileborn 2018). Indeed, if women learn that there is
construction taking place at a certain spot, others might learn to either brace
themselves for harassment, or take an alternative route. Although the intention
might be to help other women, it is important to be mindful about the extent
to which such preventative measures in fact exclude women from some public
spaces (as they choose to withdraw), or construct racialized “geographies of fear”
that have material consequences for how those areas are then policed, valued,
and regulated (see Rentschler 2017).
While providing information such as when and where sexism, harassment,
or violence takes place, another significant vernacular practice to emerge is the
ways contributors included details of their response to the incident, be it physical,
mental, or emotional. These detailed responses are part of wider strategies that
serve several functions: (1) to showcase (potential) harm, (2) to showcase their
agency, and (3) to solicit affective solidarities among readers through shared
affective responses (anger, sadness, fear, bitterness, confusion) in the hope of
bringing forth social change.
The Impact of Their Experiences

What is evident when reading through all 784 posts is the ways many of them are
emotionally laden—that is to say, these posts do not merely recount instances
of harassment, sexism, or reasons feminism is necessary, but they often share a
range of emotions, reactions, and affects that accompany their experiences. As
Bianca Fileborn (2017) argues, documenting the emotional harms of practices
such as street harassment is a deliberate curatorial strategy used by participants
to challenge notions that such practices are “minor” or not harmful, and to en-
courage “appropriate response” from readers (Fileborn 2018). For instance,
anger, sadness, hurt, and incomprehension were typical in disclosure statements
across all four case studies, although it should be noted that these emotions
were conveyed with different degrees of intensities. Across our data set,
participants made various use of capitalization, bolding, and exclamation marks,
and, depending on the platform, different colored text to highlight key words,
58
feelings, or views. While this practice could be found across the case studies,
it was particularly evident on Who Needs Feminism? Hosted on Tumblr—a
platform that prioritizes visual aesthetics, most signs found were highly stylized,
making use of different colors, size of print, bolding, italics, and underlining of
key words. As one participant on Who Needs Feminism? shared (Figure 3.2): “I
need feminism because I’m used to cat calling. I’ve been getting cat called since
I was 9 fucking years old!”
With 827 “notes” that include comments, reblogs, and “likes,” it is clear
this submission struck a chord with readers and produced a range of affective
responses. The anger and level of intensity is evident here with the underlining
of certain words used as semiotic tools to convey emphasis, as well as the use of
profane words such as “fucking.” Anger itself is named in another Who Needs
Feminism? submission that read: “I need feminism because when my dad told
me that once he hit my mom, she didn’t understand why it made me angry.” Here
the contributor proclaims and qualifies her feeling as one of anger at her mother
normalizing physical abuse from her father. By sharing this post, she also calls
upon the readers to recognize her father’s actions as wrong, and to feel her anger,
thus forging affective solidarities with other readers.
Figure 3.2 Image from Who Needs Feminism? Author screenshot.

59
FEELING FEAR
While anger was one common reaction across the four case studies, a number
of other emotions such as fear were also visible. In addition to feeling fear,
participants also discussed its accompanying physical reaction of freezing.
Posting on Everyday Sexism, one contributor not only explained how she was
groped while waiting for a bus, but how she froze with fear and was thus unable
to defend herself from the man’s advances:
I panicked and froze, he continued to move his hand but I was still un-
able to speak or move, I could hardly believe it was happening. He con-
tinued to grope me for what felt like forever and although I could feel
tears prickling in my eyes I was still unable to defend myself more than
to slide away slightly and try and try to defend myself with my bag.
Although it is commonly believed that in times of crisis, the body kicks into
“fight or flight” mode, the reality is that, particularly for women being assaulted,
a common response is for them to freeze (Lordrick 2007). As psychologists
note, when one party freezes, the other often takes this as a sign of “consent
to the assault (whether verbal, physical or sexual)” (Lordrick 2007, 6). When
victims look back on their assault, psychologists also note the ways that those
who freeze frequently berate themselves for not doing more to stop or prevent it
(Lordrick 2007; Lordrick and Hosier 2014). This mismatch between what they
believe they should have done and what they did sadly contributes significantly
to “post-trauma victim guilt and shame” (Lordrick and Hosier 2014, 89), which
is evident in many submissions. When recounting her experience of being “vi-
olently groped” at a busy train station in London, Suzanne shared her response,
both in the aftermath and in the long run:
I shouted after him but I was so shocked and scared I didn’t know what
to do and just got on the train to go home. . . . For ages I felt scared and
intimidated and travelling to and from work became incredibly hard for
me. I felt unclean and disgusting. Even 10 years on, I can still recall per-
fectly the feeling of him assaulting me.
As we have demonstrated, shame is a particularly salient dimension of rape

culture. Here for example, notions of uncertainty and disgust emerge—with
contributors talking about feeling “dirty” and “impure.” It is not always clear if
the disgust they face is directed toward their attackers (for the assault) or them-
selves (for not doing more to prevent, stop, or report it). That Suzanne continues
to feel “unclean” and “disgusted” 10 years later demonstrates the potency and
60
intensity of these dimensions of sexual shame surrounding sexual violence, and

the way that sharing the experience may provide the only way to interrupt and
reconfigure these affects.
PHYSICAL RESPONSES
In addition to freezing, contributors shared a range of other physical reactions
to their experiences. These ranged from confronting their harasser, running
away, giving dirty looks, and calling for help. In recording these responses, some
participants felt it necessary not only to show the ways they had been victimized,
but the ways they were fighting back against harassment, misogyny, sexism, and
rape culture, even only if in their own small ways. Perhaps sharing this informa-
tion was also to challenge the idea they were helpless victims, and a means of
regaining agency and control over their situation.
While participants’ reactions were often physical in the sense that they chal-
lenged abuse, others discussed the physical impact their experiences had on
them. This involves feeling sick, crying, getting stomach aches, and being left
speechless. In other cases, participants used physical metaphors to describe their
feelings: one contributor to #BeenRapedNeverReported talked about feeling
unable to “choke out” her own story of being sexually abused. Others talked
about “gut-wrenching” experiences. These examples point to the ways such
experiences have a range of affective implications—emotionally, physically,
and mentally (see c hapter 6 for further discussion). As a result, it was of little
surprise that participants addressed how various experiences impacted their
everyday lives—whether this involved taking precautionary measures when
walking home alone, avoiding certain places, changing their wardrobe, or even
quitting jobs.
T H E I M PA C T O F H A R A S S M E N T O N PA R T I C I PA N T S ’
E V E R Y D AY   L I V E S
As a rhetorical strategy, many contributors talked about the impact of harass-
ment on their everyday lives, likely to challenge the cultural scaffolding of
abuse that renders some practices more problematic than others (see Gavey
2005). The impact of harassment was evident in submissions where women
shared their persistent distrust in strange men. One contributor shared her
fear of a man who was trying to help change a flat tire, while another shared
how her fiancé refused to allow her to jog alone at night in case she is assaulted.
Yet another woman explained how she regularly crossed the street to avoid
groups of men.
61
When looking across our data set, we find these various contributions pro-
vided compelling evidence of the ways women’s lives have been impacted
by their experiences of harassment. In her 2007 book Full Frontal Feminism,
Jessica Valenti popularized the idea that all women live on a “rape schedule”
where they restrict or alter their lifestyles to avoid male violence, abuse, and
assault. Using this concept, we argue that digital feminist campaigns provide
ample evidence of how harassment, abuse, sexism, and misogyny often have
long-lasting impacts on victims, who alter their lives, routines, behaviors,
and schedules as a result (see also Vera-Gray 2016a). Posting on Everyday
Sexism, Joanna shared how her 19-year-old daughter quit her job as a cashier
after being continually harassed and propositioned by customers. Sharing
her story on Hollaback!, Afton explained how she quit her job as a street sign
holder after being constantly harassed (and pelted with food when she didn’t
respond). Numerous contributors also recalled the ways they avoid certain
places or take different routes to escape harassment. For example, posting on
Everyday Sexism, 17-year-old Amelia recounted how she now takes a longer
route to school to avoid a building site. Taken together, the data presented col-
lectively challenges those who might argue that “banal,” “low-level” practices
as catcalling or sexist comments are trivial, and instead evidences how they
harm women, prevent them from entering or fully participating in the public
sphere, and as a result, limit their ability to lead a full life (MacKinnon 2007;
Vera-Gray 2016a). Furthermore, we argue that by showcasing the impact of
rape culture on their everyday lives, participants are attempting to raise the
public’s consciousness and forge affective solidarities necessary to challenge
these taken-for-granted  norms.
While collectively showcasing the harm of such practices was one common
strategy, others took to these platforms to explicitly call out sexism and provide
more in-depth analysis of oppression.
Calling Out Sexism and Analyzing Oppression

In recent years, scholars have noted the ways tech-savvy feminists use digital
technologies to facilitate a “call out culture” of sexism, harassment, and misogyny
(Fileborn 2017; Horeck 2014; Lawrence and Ringrose 2018; Rentschler 2015;
Thrift 2014). This call out culture was also evident within submissions across
our case studies, but this vernacular practice was most evident in submissions to
Everyday Sexism, likely enabled by both the platform architecture that enabled
longer submissions, and the site’s raison d’étre of making sexism visible. Here,
we argue that sites such as Everyday Sexism were not simply used to share stories
62
of sexism, but to challenge the idea that we live in an equal society, and to better
understand the ways that inequalities, misogyny, and patriarchy operate and their
intended outcome. As a result, many of the stories submitted across our case
studies generate a sensibility and a conceptual framework with which to inter-
pret these experiences as both unacceptable and changeable.
When thinking about the strategies used to call out sexism or rape culture,
rhetorical techniques were often used, such as asking questions about how fair
and equal our society really is. Posting on Everyday Sexism, Noreen shared how
she had “lost count” of the number of times she was forced to “quickly change
the direction I was taking, run away or rummage for keys as a makeshift weapon
when walking alone.” On one occasion, she noted how a group of men laughed
as she avoided them and asked: “Why is the practice of rape avoidance by all
women accepted as normal if we live in an equal society?” The use of this rhetor-
ical question encourages feminist consciousness-raising among other readers,
inspiring them to question how such practices could really exist if we lived in
an equal society, free from patriarchy. In this way, Noreen challenges the dom-
inant postfeminist sensibilities that state that feminism is dead, redundant, un-
necessary, or passé (Gill 2007; McRobbie 2009; Negra 2009), encouraging
readers to make political their personal experiences in a rape culture (see also
Fileborn 2017).
While asking such rhetorical questions was one tactic used to highlight the
existence of sexism, others were blunt in their declarations. Recalling how a
female classmate was wolf-whistled during a student government campaign
speech, one contributor stated:
Those boys had the audacity to whistle at her like she was an object only
there for their desire. It’s the simple acts of blatant sexism that bother
me unbelievably. Serious harassment, such as rape, is of course a huge
problem but that will never truly end until the everyday acts end.
When looking at the language used, we see that contributors to both Everyday
Sexism and Who Needs Feminism? were not shy about using the term “sexism,”
and situating their experiences (or the experiences of others) firmly in this fame.
As one contributor to Who Needs Feminism? explained, “I need feminism be-
cause whenever I try to explain it to a male friend he’ll tell me that sexism isn’t
real, that women are whiny bitches, and that it’s the same as misandry.”
Aside from employing specific words such as “sexism” and “sexist,” other
contributors demonstrated their feminist consciousness by making use of pop-
ular feminist humor and words such as “mansplaining.” This term can be traced
back to an essay by Rebecca Solnit, who in 2008 penned an article titled: “Men
Who Explain Things.” Here, Solnit recounts the patronizing ways men constantly
63
explain things to women, with the assumption that they know very little. Using
this term, Roz submitted a post to Everyday Sexism stating: “Some army guy just
mansplained what NATO was. Thanks, man, I know.” Roz here is contributing
to wider discussions about the ways men condescendingly assume women have
little knowledge because they are women, and at least within this contribution,
responds sarcastically by saying “Thanks, man, I know.” While these submissions
explicitly recognize and identify sexism and inequality, and at times use popular
feminist concepts, not all go so far as to theorize why sexism, or mansplaining
exists, or how they maintain male power and privilege.
A N A LY Z I N G   S E X I S M
While it would be disingenuous to claim that these more nuanced analyses of
sexism and patriarchy are the norm, there were a range of submissions within our
sample that indeed provided such analyses. For example, after being subjected to
a torrent of verbal abuse by a man on a train, one Everyday Sexism contributor
did not simply identify her experience as “harassment” but labeled it “misogy-
nistic,” and a form of “gendered abuse”:
Got called a “fucking patronising slag” by a drunk middle-aged com-

muter on an East Coast train last night after mildly objecting to his loud
and obnoxious insistence that the young woman sitting next to me was
in his seat. He was revealed to be incorrect and shuffled off down the
train, but what alarmed me was how automatic and unthinking his mi-
sogyny was, and the underlying assumption that young women, even if
they are, unlike him, sober and in possession of the facts, must defer to
older men or else be called “patronising.” I’m incredibly angry that such
gendered abuse continues to be accepted by so much of the population.
I think (and hope) that this white middle-class businessman would have
thought twice before abusing a stranger in language that discriminated
on the basis of race, ethnicity or sexuality, but I’m angered that such mi-
sogyny is apparently so acceptable.
This contributor vents her frustration at how, unlike racist or homophobic

comments, which are generally seen as socially taboo, sexist comments are
considered socially acceptable.
Submissions such as the one previously mentioned demonstrate the ways
some contributors have long been aware of sexism and possessed conceptual
tools to identify and analyze it. Perhaps more interesting are contributions that
showcase how these various feminist platforms, particularly Everyday Sexism
and Hollaback!, played a crucial role in raising their feminist consciousness (see
64
also Fileborn 2017). This “aha” moment, or what Ahmed (2017) might refer
to as a feminist “snap,” in which readers realized their experiences were in fact
“sexism” and not just “normal behavior,” was evident in a handful of Everyday
Sexism submissions, such as that by 23-year-old bartender Aimee. Writing in
2014, Aimee shared how it was the act of reading stories on the Everyday Sexism
website that helped her recognize as sexist behaviors she regularly encountered.
As she explained: “Until I read this website I didn’t even class as what behavior
I was put through was Sexism.” However, after reading many contributions, she
reflected:
There was so many things I have read and now realize was just Sexism.
But as I’ve grown up it’s just been seen as normal behavior, or seen as a
joke and not to be taken seriously. Attitudes towards females are now
just being shrugged off and classed as “jokes.” Well that’s enough for me.
No more Miss Nice Woman.
Aimee’s revelation supports findings that show that reading and sharing
experiences of sexism helps problematize experiences contributors had previ-
ously considered a normal part of life (Dimond et al. 2013). For Aimee, this
change happened “both cognitively and emotionally” (Dimond et al. 2013, 7).
The change was cognitive because Aimee was able to identify her experience as
sexism, and emotionally because she realized she no longer had to accept it as
“normal” or “funny” behavior and she could refuse to continue to play “Miss Nice
Woman.” This cognitive awareness of gender inequality, sexism, and misogyny,
and the ways that participants “found” feminism via these digital platforms is
significant and will be elaborated upon in more depth in chapters 4, 5, and 6, via
in-depth interviews.
So far, this chapter has highlighted some of the key topics and vernacular
practices that have been developed among our four case studies. The rest of this
chapter seeks to better understand who contributes to these highly visible, main-
stream feminist campaigns.
Privileged Voices?
Although the internet has undoubtedly created new spaces for marginalized
voices, particularly feminist ones (see Keller 2015; Mendes 2015; Mowles
2008; Shaw 2012), we were interested in exploring the diversity of voices and
experiences shared on these platforms. For instance, to what extent were these
accounts dominated by young, white, middle-class, heterosexual women?
Or, do they provide spaces in which men, BAME groups, older, non-cis,
65
members of the LGBTQ+ communities feel they can also participate in and
share their experiences? This issue is particularly important given that sev-
eral of the organizers we spoke with for Hollaback!, Who Needs Feminism?
and Everyday Sexism clearly articulated the intersectional nature of op-
pression, and their desire to create safe spaces for marginalized groups and
communities to share their experiences (Bates 2014). For Hollaback! in par-
ticular, questions about race and privilege were raised in response to an inde-
pendently produced video, 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman, which
went viral in 2014. The video, which was not commissioned, produced, or dis-
tributed by Hollaback!, listed the organization as a place the public could turn
for more information on street harassment (May 2015). In the video, a white
middle-class woman walked through the streets of New York, while being dis-
creetly filmed. The video was heavily critiqued for featuring mostly black and
Latino men (see Meyerson 2014). While Hollaback! issued a response to the
video encouraging the public to recognize the intersectional nature of harass-
ment (Hollaback! 2014), this incident, and others like it, indicates the extent
to which the experiences of white middle-class heterosexual women continue
to occupy privileged spaces within feminist organization and activism and the
need for an intersectional analysis (see also Fileborn 2017; Hackworth 2018;
Rentschler 2017; Salter 2013).2
As a result, across all four case studies, we attempted to quantify the gender of
each contributor. In most cases, the gender was determined via the participant’s
name (if available), while other times the person made mention of female body
parts (breasts, “cunts,” “pussies”), or attire (wearing skirts, dresses). In several
cases, however, many contributors explicitly identified themselves as a man,
woman, or nonbinary person. For example, as one anonymous contributor on
Everyday Sexism shared:
Got through to the final stages of interviews for an exciting new job.
After the final stage I get a call from the HR department telling me they
loved me, but they are concerned that I am a mum to a young child and
therefore would not be able to stay after hours if required. Would they
ask a man that?
Similarly, sharing her story on Hollaback!, Lisa recounted a man yelling “Boo!”
right in her ear when walking past him and then asked, “Why? Because I’m a
young woman, Asian, by myself??” And within Who Needs Feminism?, one par-
ticipant displayed her gender when being catcalled on a busy bus, “I’m a 16 year
old girl and not a piece of fucking meat.”
Looking across the data, we see that women are the overwhelming
contributors to these sites (n=631, or 80 percent of all posts). However,
6
although men’s voices were less common, they were easy to identify be-
cause they often highlighted their gender explicitly, perhaps to demonstrate
the ways that harassment, sexism, and abuse also happen to them. Tweeting
with the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported, Jean-Paul wrote, “ENOUGH
IS ENOUGH! As a man who has been #raped, I needed to add my support
to this.” Another Hollaback! contributor published his story under the pseu-
donym “Threatened man,” and shared an experience of having his bum slapped
and being told, “nice ass baby,” when walking past a group of women. Although
the reader might assume the participant was male because he was assaulted by
a group of women, he still consciously marked himself as a (threatened) man
in this submission.
While it was at times common for women to also explicitly mark out their
gender, we argue that men or gender non-conforming individuals are particu-
larly prone to this vernacular practice in order to highlight the ways these issues
are not unique to women, but impact other groups as well. Male contributors
emphasized the ways they too experience catcalling, and other forms of sexism
such as being groped. Writing on Everyday Sexism, one male preempted his
testimonial by declaring: “I am a male professional working in financial in-
dustry (quite strange that I am here huh). I am also a victim of everyday sexism.
Seriously!” It is significant that within this contribution, the man felt his words
alone were not enough, and deployed other rhetorical tools such as exclamation
marks, and words such as “seriously” to convince the reader of his legitimacy.
By noting the “strangeness” that his voice is used on this platform, the man also
reinforces the ways sexism is often perceived as a women’s issue, and his desire
to challenge this normative assumption.
Men at times also used their contribution to highlight the ways hegemonic
masculinity is harmful for those who do not conform. As one participant on
Who Needs Feminism? shared (see Figure 3.3):
I NEED FEMINISM BECAUSE, as a male, I’ve always been told to

“be a man” when I didn’t fit into society’s definition of masculinity. As
a result, I’ve never felt like a “man,” and I’ve never felt “good enough.”
I need feminism because gender stereotyping is detrimental to eve-
ryone. I’m a man because I identify as one, not because society says
I am (or that I’m not), but I need feminism because I’m a PERSON
FIRST, MAN SECOND.
Yet, despite concerted efforts made by campaigns such as Who Needs Feminism?
to engage men within these platforms, our four case studies are overwhelmingly
populated by women’s voices. While we are loath to claim this as problematic,
particularly given the historic and persistent exclusion of women and their
67
Figure 3.3 Image from Who Needs Feminism? Author screenshot.
experiences from public life, men also suffer from rigid gender roles, and they
too need safe spaces to share their experiences.
P L AT F O R M S F O R W H I T E , C I S - W O M E N ?
In the case of Hollaback!, Who Needs Feminism?, and Everyday Sexism, we were
interested in trying to ascertain racial identities and sexuality of contributors.
For example, with Everyday Sexism, we caught a glimpse at the sexuality of
the poster by recording instances of homophobic comments directed to-
ward contributors (n=2, or 2 percent of total). While by nowhere near a per-
fect measure of a participant’s sexuality, that so few posts share homophobic
or transphobic comments indicates that Everyday Sexism is not necessarily a
space these communities turn to for support, raising questions about where
such spaces might exist. Although Everyday Sexism was not designed to seek
out experiences from particularly marginalized groups, Hollaback! was (Pasarell
2013), due to the high proportions of harassment directed toward women of
color and the LGBTQ+ communities. For example, Hollaback! Baltimore
68
organizer Melanie Keller discussed the ways the blog was a space where
people could share their stories, “specifically women and LGBTQ folks.” Keller
discussed in detail the way Hollaback! Baltimore developed a “Safer Spaces”
program that provides training for employees at local bars and cafes on how to
make these spaces harassment free, particularly for LGBTQ+ communities, and
pledges to take reports of harassment seriously. Those who complete the pro-
gram are then given a unique poster to display so that the public, particularly
“queer folk…know they can come in.”
Yet, despite their best efforts to make public spaces safe for LBGTQ+
communities, only 3 percent (n=5) of all posts in this sample shared experiences
of being harassed because of their nonconforming sexuality or gender identity,
suggesting this constitutes a non-dominant platform vernacular (Warfield 2016).
When included, these experiences ranged from standing up to transphobic
comments, being deliberately called the wrong pronoun (“he” instead of “she”),
and two lesbians being incessantly asked to kiss for a group of men. Within Who
Needs Feminism?, transgender participants accounted for only 3 percent of our
sample (n=4), although it should be noted that LGBTQ+ and transgender dis-
crimination were raised in a range of other submissions as reasons that feminism
was necessary. For example, one participant named a range of people, who, due
to their race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, were discriminated against, stating
“reproductive justice, transgender anti-discrimination, racial justice, LGBT
equality and reform of the criminal justice system—are all feminist issues!”
While research on storytelling has generally noted that those whose stories do
not conform to dominant narratives often feel silenced (Goering 1996), without
speaking to these communities, it is difficult to identify if this is the case here,
and is something we encourage future researchers to explore.
Although we were interested in determining the racial identity of contributors
to these sites, this proved to be challenging. Largely this difficulty was due to the
nature of the campaigns we studied, which solicited written accounts. Within
these narrative testimonials, people rarely mentioned their ethnicity unless it
was entwined with their experiences of sexism or harassment. Sharing her story
of being catcalled on Hollaback!, Jen noted the ways her harassment by a group
of men was not just gendered, but racialized as well. As they told her: “ ‘Girl I am
gonna f*ck you with some chopsticks.’ I’m half Chinese, and was appalled that
this brat had added racism onto the growing pile of sexual harassment.”
Assessing the race or ethnicity of participants also proved to be a challenge,
in part due to problems of reading these signs by visual cues alone. As a result, as
with gender and sexuality, we attempted to ascertain this information via discur-
sive markers, which were few and far between. In fact, the earlier example with
Jen from Hollaback! was one of the few clearly defined examples where racism
69
was explicitly intertwined with sexism. While we must be careful not to make
normative assumptions that just because race or ethnicity weren’t mentioned,
the participant must have been white, it is important to be cognizant of the
fact that online spaces reproduce unequal power structures and dynamics that
make up offline life (see boyd 2012). Other scholars have noted the ways that
diversity continues to remain a problem within feminist digital spaces (Fileborn
2017; Fotopoulou 2016; Harvey 2016; Keller 2013). Despite this, the growth
of “Black Twitter” (Brock 2012; Sharma 2013), or trans twitter hashtags such as
#TransLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and #BlackGirlMagic, challenge the “persist
ent harmful centering of whiteness in activist and feminist organizing” (Fischer
2016, 768), and deserve our critical attention. Although our analysis has been
able to demonstrate the ways BAME and LGBTQ+ narratives constitute non-
dominant vernaculars among our case studies, it fails to tell us why this might
be the case. We therefore encourage researchers to pay attention to the design
of digital spaces, and how these might encourage “invisible inequalities” to per-
sist (see Harvey 2016), as well as the experiences of marginalized communities
to better understand their particular vernacular needs (see Fileborn 2018;
Warfield 2016).
Slippery Feminism
Finally, we want to highlight one of the more unusual, and surprising findings
relating to how these various campaigns were used. When we began to de-
sign our coding schemes, we were surprised by the “slippery-ness” of some
campaigns, and how they were “hacked” (Warfield 2016) or used in a number
of changing and unexpected ways. For example, around one-quarter of the
#BeenRapedNeverReported tweets in our sample were not from individuals
sharing personal experiences of (not reporting) their assault, but from both
non-and for-profit organizations seeking to gain attention through the pop-
ular hashtag. Tweeting about the Canadian current affairs program The Agenda,
one staff member wrote, “We had a great panel last night on @TheAgenda
on #BeenRapedNeverReported. Available to stream now.” Another woman
produced eight tweets within our sample (3 percent) directing the public
to her YouTube channel, where she conducted interviews with women and
men who have been victims of sexual abuse. One such example read, “If you
truly want to get well, there is no going around your feelings and memories.
#BeenRapedNeverReported.” In a similar vein, four submissions on Who Needs
Feminism? (3 percent) were from a group initiating a Kickstarter campaign for a
feminist magazine called Parallel. Writing:
70
Do you see yourself reflected in the media you consume? Parallel mag-
azine is all about providing an alternative to the airbrushing and the
shaming, the heteronormativity and the gender binary we’re dealt as
the only way. Life through a feminist lens, by women, for women.
Digital feminist campaigns could also be seen as “slippery” for shifting over
time as different users respond to current events and adapt the campaigns
for their own purposes, which may or may not correspond with the original
intentions of its creators. For example, Laura Bates (2014) has written about her
surprise at the ways the public used her site not merely to address “low-level”
forms of harassment, but “serious” cases of violence and assault. Indeed, longer-
term analysis of these campaigns might usefully highlight if, or how, they morph
over time, or respond to other contemporary events.
For example, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, many people have
concurrently used #BeenRapedNeverReported and #MeToo, thus connecting
two related, but separate movements. For example, on October 22, 2017,
Dolores wrote: “#MeToo Raped at 18 a virgin. #BeenRapedNeverReported.”
People also took to Everyday Sexism in the wake of the scandal to report on their
(often historic) experiences of abuse, at times crediting the Weinstein’s fallout
in their decision to post. Alison, for example, recounted how despite explaining
to her manager at work how her male colleague constantly talked about sex,
commented upon women’s bodies, or who he would like to “shag,” the manager
never took any actions. As Alison continued, “Yesterday I was discussing the
Harvey Weinstein case with my ex-manager and we discussed this man again.
She told me that she now realizes she was wrong for allowing him to behave like
that and not challenging him.”
Our research also demonstrated slipperiness in vernacular practices over
time. For example, as the Who Needs Feminism? project changed from an
offline campaign in which posters were displayed around Duke University’s
campus, to an online campaign available to the public, we see a change in ver-
nacular practices. Contributors were initially photographed smiling, or with a
neutral expression, holding up the sign with their face in full view. Over time
however, it has become common for contributors to “hide” behind their signs
(n=68 or 45 percent of total), or to capture only the sign itself (n=62 or 41 per-
cent of total). Despite Tumblr’s prioritization of the visual, via these practices,
contributors have developed additional means of preserving some sense of ano-
nymity within an often-hostile digital landscape. A full view of the contributor’s
face was visible in only 20 posts (14 percent of total), perhaps in response to
the backlash and online abuse directed to those who have taken part. Within
our sample, most cases where the full face is in view, the expression is serious,
angry, or concerned. These expressions are significant for providing audiences
71
guidance on how to interpret the sign, and demonstrate the seriousness and ur-
gency of the contributor’s claim. It is only through more longitudinal analysis
of this campaign that we are able to witness this transformation, and thus en-
courage other scholars to similarly adopt this approach.
Conclusions
As the first of our findings chapters, we have sought to provide insight of what
experiences of harassment, misogyny, and rape culture girls, women, and some
men are disclosing via four high-profile feminist digital platforms. Using a quali-
tative content and thematic textual analysis, we have showcased how issues such
as sexual violence, harassment, and sexism are discussed across the case studies.
Furthermore, the chapter provides insight into what the public understands these
practices to include. Significantly, our research shows the complex and nuanced
ways terms such as “sexism” and “street-harassment” are used, and the multi-
tude of practices they encompass, from seemingly “low-level” “banter” to more
violent and extreme forms of abuse, stalking, and violence. Contrary to pop-
ular opinion that often dismisses these practices as ubiquitous and unharmful,
contributors shared the ways these behaviors were in fact deeply discomforting
and distressful, leading them to feel anger and fear, and in many cases, restricting
their participation in public life.
When thinking more broadly about how the public uses these digital feminist
platforms, our research showcases the diversity among digital feminist practices
and conventions, arguing that emerging vernacular practices are impacted by
platform architecture and affordances (see also Harvey 2015; Star 1999), which
work to simultaneously encourage and discourage certain narratives and groups
of people. Indeed, as others have shown, although digital platforms may pro-
vide “unparalleled opportunities” to disclose experiences of sexual violence,
the ability to harness and reap the benefits of online disclosure is largely un-
even (Salter 2013, 226; Fileborn 2018). As we will discuss in chapters 5 and
6, disclosing personal experiences can be emotionally laborious, and the labor
required in disclosing can outweigh potential benefits (Fileborn 2018).
Contributing to a growth of research on digital disclosures of sexual vi-
olence (Fileborn 2017, 2018), the chapter paid attention to the “curatorial”
practices evident among our case studies, demonstrating how particular
platforms may encourage the identification of specific locations, or imme-
diate experiences, while others prioritize less specific detail of where and
when, in place of the overall impact on the contributors’ lives. Although we
have only begun to map these differences here, we encourage scholars to adopt
insights from critical technology and cultural studies, which recognize that the
72
materiality and design of digital networks inevitably shapes digital feminist

practices and their affects. And although we find the concept of platform ver-
nacular useful, it is important to pay attention to dominant, non-dominant,
and unexpected vernaculars, their “slipperiness,” and how they may change
over time (see Warfield 2016).
Finally, the chapter highlights how these digital platforms can be used in un-
expected ways. This includes the ways these platforms were at times “hijacked”
by groups or individuals seeking to drive traffic elsewhere, as was evident with
#BeenRapedNeverReported, or the extent to which participants used these
platforms to share historic experiences of sexual violence, harassment, or as-
sault. In some cases, feminist campaigns can inspire “backlash” movements,
such as Why I Don’t Need Feminism, which emerged in response to Who
Needs Feminism? In sum then, this chapter sets the scene for the rest of this
book in showcasing the complexities of digital feminist activism, arguing that
it is far more nuanced and complex than one might initially expect. While this
chapter presents data from our textual analysis, the remaining chapters share
insights from the girls, women, and some men who engage with, or organize
these campaigns, highlighting the various emotional, mental, or practical factors
that create different experiences for those involved.
73
4
Feminist Organizers’ Experiences
of Activism
I don’t remember exactly when I heard about it, but I remember the
first time I visited the [Everyday Sexism] website, which was not too
long after it had been launched. . . . And I clicked on the website and
I started reading all these stories of women experiencing sexism day to
day and I thought thank God this exists, like, finally somewhere I can
send people who tell me to laugh off the grope on the tube, or who
accuse me of boasting when I talk about how a guy followed me from
the tube stop. Finally, something that gives me a voice that allows
me to talk about the way in which I’m harassed on the street all the
freaking time. So yeah, I remember that feeling of like, oh, I’m so glad
this exists.
The above is an excerpt from our interview with Emer O’Toole, who was one
of the key organizers of Everyday Sexism shortly after its launch. Emer was
one of 18 key stakeholders we interviewed, who worked across three feminist
campaigns: Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and Who Needs Feminism? Where
the last chapter provided an account of what experiences the public responded
to via digital feminist platforms, this chapter interrogates key experiences and the
affective dimensions of starting, running, and managing a feminist digital cam-
paign. In particular, we provide brief profiles of the activists, the motivations for
becoming involved, perceptions of their activities, and the various tactical and
self-care strategies they have developed and employed along the way. Throughout
this chapter, we develop the following arguments: First, we posit that organizing
feminist campaigns involves highly affective, invisible, precarious, and time-con-
suming 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
73
74
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.
Together, these arguments illustrate the monotony of digital feminist activist
work—and the ways that it stands in contrast to the ways internet work is often
addressed—for example, the hip glamour of working at millennial companies
such as Facebook or Google, which are constructed as fun (free food!), enlight-
ened, and supportive of creativity and innovation. On a macro level, discovering
or strengthening their feminist identities and being part of something they feel is
important certainly excites organizers; on a micro level, the labor itself, and daily
routines are far from exciting, and can instead be “dull and crushing” (Page 2017,
76). The labor involved is often boring—it is fragmented, standardized, and re-
petitive (Hand 2017). Furthermore, as we will pick up toward the end of the
chapter, as feminist activism is both highly exploitative and increasingly market-
able, we need to be more attuned to the ways some individuals or groups make
substantial profit from these initiatives, while others remain almost wholly un-
compensated for their work.
Who Are the Activists?

The 18 organizers interviewed for this research were all women, mostly young,
largely white, and middle class, with post-secondary education. They came
from the US, Canada, India, Kenya, Australia, and Venezuela, although their
activism was at times done outside the country of their birth. Most identified
as being heterosexual, but four stated they were queer. Many were aware of
their various privileges, and talked about the need for intersectional feminism,
which they viewed as an integral part of their activism. All interviews were
conducted between November 2014 and May 2015 via Skype, lasting between
30 and 90 minutes. At the time of our interview, only 13 of the 18 organizers
were still involved with their respective campaign. While most activists had
been involved for several years, a few had been active for under one year,
and one had been involved for only two months. Others, such as Hollaback!
Baltimore’s Melanie Keller and the Everyday Sexism’s Emer O’Toole stepped
back after suffering burnout, moving countries, or taking on full-time work,
finding it impossible to fit their activism in with their paid employment. While
a more detailed look into organizers’ exit from activism will be presented
throughout this chapter, as is seen later, one of the first questions asked in each
interview was how the person became involved with her respective feminist
campaign in the first place.
75
Feminist Or g aniz er s ’ E x pe rie n ce s of Act iv is m 75
Getting Involved
Out of the 18 organizers interviewed, 5 could be considered (co)founders of
their respective campaigns. This includes Laura Bates (Everyday Sexism), Emily
May (Hollaback!), and Rachel Seidman, Ivana Gonzales, and Ashley Tsai (Who
Needs Feminism?). While a detailed genesis of these campaigns has been
presented in c hapter 3, this space will be used to share the involvement of the
remaining 13 activists, who at times deliberately took steps to extend their re-
spective campaign, and in other cases “fell” into activism unintentionally or by
chance encounters.
Arpita Bhagat from Hollaback! Mumbai explains how she distinctly
remembers the first time she “stumbled upon” the Hollaback! website in 2013.
After closely following issues around women’s safety in India, Arpita “happened
to read an article [on Hollaback!], and that’s how I realized that there’s a whole
network of women” working around issues of sexism and safety. Although a
Hollaback! chapter had been initially set up in Mumbai, it had been left dor-
mant after its previous leader returned to full-time education. Arpita however
was motivated to see it restart. According to Emily May, Hollaback! has never
recruited for local chapter sites, but demands that potential leaders go through
a rigorous vetting and training program that only around 15 percent of potential
leaders complete, to try and ensure the movement remains viable.1
Three organizers initially came across the movement via Twitter. After first
hearing about Hollaback! through a link on this social media platform, Becky
Burns became interested in the movement, and after discovering there was al-
ready a branch in her home city of Montreal, volunteered to join the team. In a
similar vein, Emily Griffith first heard about Everyday Sexism via Twitter, and
responded to a call from Laura Bates seeking volunteers. Although research
has shown social media to play a vital role with other feminist campaigns in
recruiting organizers (see Castells 2012 Mendes 2015), among the organizers
interviewed here, it was not the most important route into activism. Instead, the
majority were recruited or encouraged through preexisting social connections
including friends and feminist communities. Although these organizers might
have initially heard about their respective campaigns via social media or the fem-
inist blogosphere, it often took preexisting networks to bring them in on the
organizational level.
For example, London organizer Julia Gray first met Hollaback! executive
director Emily May through a mutual friend during a visit to New York City.
After going to a baseball game together and hearing more about Hollaback!,
Julia was keen to get involved. Upon returning to London, Julia began discussing
the movement with her friend Bryony Beynon, and the two decided to launch
76
the Hollaback! London site. A friend encouraged Wacu Mureithi of Hollaback!

Nairobi to become involved after telling him about an experience of street ha-
rassment. Melanie Keller of Hollaback! Baltimore explained how she was
recruited to the team by her friend who was already a site leader. Only one of
my organizers, Jenny Dunne from Hollaback! Dublin, became involved after
hearing about the movement via mainstream media—confirming the extent to
which modern-day feminists rely less on mainstream media and more on social
media and friendship networks to build their movements (see Castells 2012;
Mendes 2015).
ACTIVIST EXPERIENCE AND FEMINIST IDENTITY

While many of the activists we interviewed had little or no prior experience with
activism, most had been studying or engaging with women’s issues for several
years. Julia Gray and Bryony Beynon had volunteer experience in Rape Crisis
centers before starting Hollaback! London, and Emily Griffith, Emer O’Toole,
Genevieve Berrick, and Arpita Bhagat had been writing/blogging about women’s
issues prior to their involvement with Everyday Sexism and Hollaback! respec-
tively. During her time at Duke University, Ashley Tsai became involved with a
number of activities around gender, race, and sexuality. Although not explicitly
involved with feminist activism until Who Needs Feminism?, Ivanna Gonzalez
had been involved with labor and women’s organizing on campus. Despite this,
it was only after taking Professor Seidman’s course on “Women in the Public
Sphere” that she came to identify as a feminist, and realized the work she was
doing around labor issues with the National Domestic Worker’s Alliance on
campus was indeed feminist. As Ivanna stated, taking Professor Seidman’s class
“allowed me to see the labor work that I was doing back on campus as feminist
work. And so that was also really important to me and really important to my
development as a feminist.” Our interview with Ivanna highlighted the ways that
many of our organizers were already interested in activism around many “femi-
nist issues,” even if they didn’t explicitly use the label. Although some organizers
shared their “feminist awakenings” with us without being prompted, this was a
question we eventually asked all participants.
F E M I N I S T AWA K E N I N G S
Our interviews with organizers revealed a range of different feminist awakenings
and relationships with the wider feminist movement. Several organizers first
encountered feminist ideas and texts from home, often at a very young age.
Genevieve Berrick of Hollaback! LA recalls being “bored” with the books at the
school library and started picking up her mother’s at home: “So I was reading
7
like The Female Eunuch and that kind of thing, this was like at [age] ten [laugh].”
Similarly, when we asked Hollaback! executive director Emily May how long she
had been a feminist, she responded, “I was a feminist since I was eight [laugh].”
The playful laughter accompanying the recounting of their path to feminism sig-
nals their recognition of both the peculiarity and delight of adopting this identity
from such an early age. Although Ahmed (2010) for example considers a fem-
inist consciousness one of unhappiness, our interviews suggest reflecting back
upon their feminist journey can in fact be pleasurable (see also Keller 2015).
While family was an important catalyst for some, in many cases, their ex-
posure to feminism or gender issues came later in life via their university ed-
ucation. Melanie Keller of Hollaback! Baltimore explained how she realized
she was a feminist in her third year of college. As she said, “So probably the
semester in the middle of taking my first gender studies course, I was, like, oh,
yeah, I’ve been a feminist all along.” Similarly, Ashley Tsai admits that: “I didn’t
even know what feminism was until I went to Duke [University].” While some
“discovered” feminism at university, for others, it was a fruitful space where
they explored, deepened and solidified their understanding of it, often through
the curriculum. Ashley Tsai has a BA in Women’s Studies; Genevieve Berrick
focused on gender in her BA and MA theses. Jill Dimond did an entire PhD
dissertation on feminist activism. When asked about her journey to this path,
she recalled experiencing a lot of sexism both during her obtaining of her un-
dergraduate degree in computer science and in the workforce where she was
consulting for large corporations such as Microsoft and Amazon. Unsettled by
these experiences, she returned to graduate school to “understand what was
going on and to try to help fix the problem [of sexism].” After becoming inter-
ested in the relationship between technology and gender-based violence, she
became determined to use her “skills as a developer to create interventions.”
She encountered Hollaback! just at the time when they were developing an app
that uses GPS-based technology so users can literally “map” their harassment
on the site. As she recalled:
It just so happens that they were making an app at that point, so this is
when apps were first submitting [laugh]. And they had hired this pro
bono developer, or they were paying them, but he couldn’t finish the
work. And so, I was, like, I would love to help out. . . . And so, I jumped
in and kind of became both a member of their organisation as a volun-
teer and a researcher.
In addition to developing the app, Jill went on to create the infrastructure to

support local Hollaback! sites as well as their HeartMob app, which launched in
2016 and aims to support victims of abuse across social media platforms.
78
Although several of our organizers, such as Jill, had previous experience with
activism, like other contemporary feminist movements, identification as a fem-
inist (or even an activist) was not required to become involved in any of these
campaigns. For example, Laura Bates did not identify as a feminist until after
starting Everyday Sexism. Although she argues she was never anti-feminist, the
realization that she was a feminist was “gradual” rather than linked to a specific
“aha” moment. In a similar vein, Arpita Bhagat of Hollaback! Mumbai explained
how she only came to identify as a feminist “after joining Hollaback!” Although
she recognized she probably would eventually have come to adopt this label,
“Hollaback! made the whole transition happen very smooth and nicely.” Despite
this, she admits that people in India “take a step back” when she tells them she is
a feminist, but persists on using this label. As she explains:
After working and after speaking to so many women, working with

local organisations, and the ongoing conversations, then I realized that
if you’re not going to claim feminism there is just no way forward, not
just for equality in general, but for development . . . into the develop-
mental stage really overall.
This unease with feminism was also expressed by Wacu Mureithi of Hollaback!
Nairobi, who was the only organizer who explicitly rejected this label both for
herself and the movement. Like Arpita, Wacu explained the ways “feminism” is
a very misunderstood word with multiple, often negative meanings in Kenya:
It [feminism] represents different things for different people. So, what

I think of feminism is not necessarily what everybody does think of it.
And I don’t want to be labelled as never wanting to get married, I just
want to believe in an open mind.
Although it’s true that in the West, some iterations of feminist politics have
gained media visibility and popularity in recent years (see Gill 2016; Banet-
Weiser and Portwood-Stacer 2017; Keller and Ryan 2018), previous research
has demonstrated the way “feminism,” particularly the “white feminism” Wacu
discussed, is often viewed as a form of neocolonialism. This involves Western
women going to “other” nations, “saving” them, and telling them what to do
(see Mohanty 1984). As a result, it is unsurprising to see discomfort with
this label.
While Wacu was the only organizer who did not identify as a feminist, our
research demonstrated the ways that not everyone who is drawn to campaigns
such as Hollaback!, Everyday Sexism, and Who Needs Feminism? explicitly
79
identify as a feminist before their involvement. One of our key arguments,

woven throughout many of our chapters, is that participation in these campaigns
can act as a form of “feminist awakening” and “consciousness-raising” about
feminism and feminist issues. These “awakenings” are enabled by the “ease” and
“openness” of which one is able to access, contribute to, or become involved
with these campaigns.2 This, as Julia Gray describes, is one of the benefits of
movements such as Hollaback!:
So yeah, it started off, you know, we didn’t have a clue what we were
doing when we first started. But I think that’s one of the great things
about it, that you don’t have to have any particular background or ed-
ucation, you know, this [street harassment] is something that affects
people from all walks of life and backgrounds and class. So, I think that’s
one of the really special things about Hollaback! is that it mobilizes
people, yeah, from all different kinds of demographics. And that’s
what’s brilliant about it.
As we will see in more detail later, this concept of “learning as they go” appears
to be a key feature and strength of contemporary feminist activism. Although it
is easy to suggest that a degree of tech savviness, some basic organizational skills,
and the energy to sustain these campaigns are all that’s really required for con-
temporary activism to flourish, it is in fact much more complicated.
For example, although Julia enthused about the ways campaigns such as
Hollaback! are open to people from all “kinds of demographics,” the simi-
larity among our organizers as mainly young, white, cis-gender, middle-
class women with post-secondary education, problematizes techno-utopian
celebrations of equality within digital feminist campaigns (see also Duffy
2015). Although our sample of organizers is in no way representative of all
digital feminist activists, and while we are aware of campaigns run by and
for LBGTQ+, BAME, and other marginalized groups, we are also cogni-
zant of the fact that the labor involved with these campaigns is often time-
consuming, privileging those with more time on their hands (young, single
women without caring responsibilities) who have a degree of financial secu-
rity allowing them to sacrifice paid employment for unpaid activism, or those
whose paid employment is “flexible” (and thus precarious) enough to juggle
activism with paid labor. As we will discuss more thoroughly in c hapters 5
and 7, we encourage social media scholars to consider intersections of gender
with age, race, class, sexuality, and ability, in terms of who organizes and
contributes to these “popular,” high-profile feminist campaigns, and the so-
cial hierarchies that are imbued within them.
80
The Labor of Feminist Digital Activism

There is a healthy body of scholarship devoted to “digital labor” (see Jarrett 2015;
Andrejevic et al. 2014; Fuchs 2014; Scholz 2013; Terranova 2000), much of
which interrogates the exploitation of unpaid laborers who use digital platforms
and social media as sites of creativity, leisure, and increasingly, activism (see
Duffy 2015; Gleeson 2016; Fuchs and Sevignani 2013). Although scholars
have examined digital labor in relation to the ways people produce free content
for corporations (see Andrejevic 2009; Postigo 2016; Pybus 2015; Rose and
Spencer 2015; Scholz 2013; Terranova 2000), little scholarship has focused on
the gendered nature of digital labor (for exceptions see Fotopoulou 2016; Arcy
2016; Duffy 2016; Jarrett 2014, 2015), particularly within various digital femi-
nist campaigns (see Gleeson 2016). Later, we outline some of the most common
tasks involved with digital feminist activism, labor that is time-consuming, and
often invisible, yet paramount to the smooth running of activist campaigns.
Like other types of “women’s work” such as child care and housework ( Jarrett
2014, 2015; Scholz 2013), we argue that the labor that makes digital feminist
activism possible is immaterial, affective, precarious, and exploitative, and raises
questions about the sustainability of such unpaid labor in light of online abuse,
burnout, and other work-life commitments.
Because of the different nature of each campaign, the organizers’ aims and
objectives, and the ways they divided up their work, our interviews identified a
range of jobs and roles in their routines such as:
• Uploading content to sites (sent in via email, Twitter, or direct to the platform)
• Moderating content to weed out “fake” posts or to eliminate oppressive
language
• Organizing volunteers and “rota systems” and designing volunteer guides
• Devising offline training initiatives
• Engaging in public talks, events, and media outreach
• Translating content (from English to Spanish, French and Hindi)
• Blogging
• Engaging with contributors
• Designing apps/interface and websites for the campaign
U P L O A D I N G A N D M O D E R AT I N G C O N T E N T
Out of the activities listed earlier, organizers indicated that uploading content
to sites was by far the most common, time-consuming, and often tedious work.
Although scholarship exists around affects in activism such as empowerment
and fun (see Papacharissi 2015), there is little research around boredom or
81
tedium, which, from our interviews, is part and parcel of activism (for an ex-
ception see Gardiner and Haladyn 2017; Page 2017). Rather than spending
their time engaged in interesting, glamorous, or high-profile tasks, the labor
required for all three campaigns was often mundane, banal, and repetitive.
This involved a combination of moderating and “accepting” content that
was uploaded directly to the site and copying and pasting content sent via
other methods such as Twitter and email. While this task might sound easy
enough, interviews with organizers revealed how this task was the most time-
consuming and boring, and not as straightforward as it might appear. Many
of our organizers shared how there were often hundreds, or even thousands
of submissions to approve, and the way the burden increased around spe-
cial events (such as International Women’s Day), or after episodes of media
engagement.
For some organizers, the tedium involved in these tasks was not just its re-
petitive nature, but the labor involved in determining if posts were indeed “le-
gitimate” or not. While organizers explained that “legitimate” submissions
included those from contributors who were sincere, “fake” submissions on the
other hand were those meant to ridicule or call into question the premise of
these campaigns. Ashley Tsai of Who Needs Feminism? shared the way they not
only received their fair share of fake submissions, but had to contend with the
rise of counter-sites such as Women Against Feminism where contributors took
photos of themselves with signs explaining why they didn’t need feminism, and a
fake Who Needs Feminism? site that mocked and diminished the reasons given
for why feminism was necessary. As with the other campaigns, the students in-
volved with Who Needs Feminism? quickly learned how to spot fake posts and
devise policies where they would exclude contributions if uncertain about their
legitimacy. As a result, Ivanna Gonzales from Who Needs Feminism? explained
how “sifting” became one of the most important, time-consuming, tedious, and
emotionally intensive parts of the process, particularly when encountering trolls
or fake posts.
Indeed, these accounts are interesting because they challenge some of the
discourses about the digital and digital life, namely, the immediacy, excite-
ment, and newness articulated by the social imaginaries of networked media
(Fotopoulou 2016a). In part, this celebratory discourse about the opportunities
for digital connections enabled by social media platforms obfuscate the reality
of such labor, which is invisible, tedious, boring, repetitive, precarious, and
mostly unpaid, yet wholly necessary to develop, maintain, and grow the digital
connections needed for a robust online feminist campaign.
While learning to decipher “fake” posts is part of the job description for all
three campaigns, so too was editing out racist, ablest, homophobic, or other-
wise oppressive details in the contributions. As Everyday Sexism organizer
82
Emily Griffith explained, this might include editing out racial identifiers of
harassers, or other aspects of the contribution, which maintains the spirit
of the experience, but ensures racist, ablest, or homophobic comments are
not reproduced on these sites. If it’s not possible to disentangle the abuse
from the comment, Emily explained that they simply did not post it. This
policy was also adopted by Hollaback!, and seems particularly pertinent after
criticisms of a video titled 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman went viral
as discussed in c hapter 3 (see also Rentschler 2017). The video recounts many
examples of street harassment leveled toward actress Shoshanna Roberts (a
white woman), mostly by black and Latino men, as a hidden camera filmed
her walking down streets of New York City. Although Hollaback! was not
responsible for commissioning, producing, or distributing the video, the or-
ganization issued a public response that encouraged the public to develop
a greater understanding of the ways street harassment is “directed toward
women of all races and ethnicities and conducted by an equally diverse pop-
ulation of men” (Hollaback! 2014). In our interview with Emily May, she was
very open about the “flawed” nature of the video, but was hopeful some good
could come from it. As she noted, “it forced a lot of people who never thought
about the way that race intersected with street harassment to think through
that” (2015).3
O R G A N I Z I N G V O L U N T E E R S A N D R OTA S Y S T E M S
Because of the time-consuming nature of their labor, several organizers discussed
the ways they established “shifts” or “rotas” to manage it more effectively, and
ensure content was ready for public consumption in a timely manner (see also
Gleeson 2016). The sheer volume of submissions and a chance encounter is
how Everyday Sexism organizer Emer O’Toole became involved with the cam-
paign. After attending a party for the feminist website The Vagenda, she met
Laura Bates. As Emer recounted, after asking her how it was going, she listened
as Laura explained the workload involved:
And she [Laura Bates] said that it was a lot of work. And she explained
to me what needed to be done, which was like transferring these stories
into a website, but she couldn’t handle it on her own any more, like,
she didn’t really know what to do. And I said, well, I will help and there
must be people out there who will help as well.
In Laura’s account of the same meeting, she recalled how she didn’t feel able to
ask for help, given the vast amount of work involved with the project:
83
And I didn’t feel like I could ask somebody else for that [to help upload
content] . . . And then about a week later, got this e-mail from Emer that
had a rota, she said something like, here are your twelve volunteers.
While drawing up a rota might seem easy enough, particularly for someone such
as Emer who had a developed feminist network, this was in fact, a highly hidden,
yet extremely intensive exercise:
What I did was, I drew up a volunteer guide that gave very precise
instructions for what had to happen, like how to search Twitter for the
information you needed; what stuff to include, what stuff not to in-
clude; how to tell if someone was trolling. All of these things.
In addition to drawing up volunteer guides and organizing her volunteers, Emer

was responsible for replacing anyone who dropped out, missed, or wanted to swap
their day. While finding volunteers never seemed to be a problem, the entire or-
ganizational process, including keeping track of who had finished their day was
extremely time-consuming. Pressure was also added by the architecture of Twitter,
in which tweets often disappear after a seven-day period. As Emer explained:
And if it was getting towards the seven-day period when the tweets
would be gone, I would email that person and say, have you done your
day? And I’d also have a backup person who, if someone suddenly
couldn’t do their day for whatever reason, someone who volunteered
to be on watch for that week, that they could just jump in and do it, if it
needed to be done.
While keeping track of all the volunteers required organization skills on its own,
Emer explained the ways time zones complicated matters further. Having moved
from London to Montreal during this period to take an academic position at
McGill University, Emer had to ensure all volunteers were within the GMT time
zone because of the way Twitter worked.
What is significant about our interview with Emer is the detail and complexity
of labor involved in maintaining and updating Everyday Sexism—work that is
necessary to do daily because of the sheer volume of posts. This work, which
Emer explained could take from 30 minutes to “a good four hours,” is not only
intensive and highly complex, but also invisible, precarious, and unacknowl-
edged. At the time of our interview, Laura Bates estimated that there were 20
to 30 volunteers working on the British version of Everyday Sexism alone, with
many more working with other satellite sites in other nations. The invisibility of
84
this labor is intensified by the fact that their names are not included anywhere on
the site. As will be discussed further in the chapter, while not being identified on
these sites was at times a preventative strategy to protect oneself from trolling, it
nonetheless hides the amount of bodies, time, and labor involved in maintaining
such campaigns.
Everyday Sexism was not the only campaign to enlist a rota of volunteers—
this practice was also common in Who Needs Feminism?, where the 16 students
enrolled on the “Women in the Public Sphere” course at Duke University
devised a system among themselves to deal with the overwhelming numbers
of submissions to the project. This involved splitting the day up into different
time slots, and assigning someone to monitor the Facebook page during that
time. As full-time students, Ashley explained how they were “totally unpre-
pared” for how time-consuming the project would be: “It was insane. We were
just so overwhelmed. . . . I was monitoring the page pretty much any time I had.
So, it probably was more than a few hours [per day].” And while Who Needs
Feminism? has over time received a tremendous amount of community sup-
port, they also received “pushback,” including trolling and the defacement of
posters that were displayed around campus. These experiences with trolling will
be discussed later in the chapter.
OT H E R A C T I V I T I E S
While moderating, uploading, and sifting through content, as well as organizing
volunteer lists seems to dominate a lot of the labor involved in feminist activist
campaigns, organizers identified a range of other tasks necessary as well. For ex-
ample, Hollaback! Baltimore and London both devised their own training programs
for local bars and cafes to create safe spaces for women and LGBTQ+ folks respec-
tively (the Safe Spaces program and Good Night Out Campaign). Many of the
organizers such as Laura Bates and Emily May regularly blog, write, or speak about
their activism, and engage frequently with the mainstream media. Ivanna Gonzalez
from Who Needs Feminism? felt personally committed to not only uploading
contributions, but typing out each message, and posting it below each submission.
Organizers also at times engaged with translating submissions or information from
their campaign to other languages. Rachel Seidman (2013) for example noted the
way the site received posts in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and
Arabic, which were then translated to English. Genevieve Berrick from Hollaback!
LA explained how all material on the site is available in both English and Spanish.
And Arpita Bhaghat of Hollaback! Mumbai translates words to Hindi where neces-
sary to make it more relevant to the local population. While these tasks might seem
small, easy, and perhaps mundane, when combined, they become taxing, time-con-
suming, and at times overwhelming. Yet at the same time, this work is politically
85
imperative. Translating material to Spanish in the US for example, sends an impor-

tant message about communities of belonging and inclusivity, which is necessary
for fostering widespread social, cultural, and political change.
Highly Affective Work
When asked to reflect upon their involvement with each respective campaign, it
became clear that organizers share feelings of “deep attachment” and “affective
bindings” (Gill and Pratt 2008, 15) to their work. Organizers talked enthusiasti-
cally about the “wonder” and “awe” they experienced, and feelings that through
their activism, they were changing the world:
I mean, it was amazing. . . .We really came together and figured out
what it was that we felt was missing, and work to change that together.
(Ashley Tsai, Who Needs Feminism?)
I think it’s been an incredibly sort of empowering and life changing
thing to be involved with. (Bryony Beynon, Hollaback! London)
I feel like it has changed the world and I feel like I’m part of some-
thing that has changed the world. And I don’t care if that’s hyperbole,
that’s what it feels like to me and that’s what it looks like to me. (Emer
O’Toole, Everyday Sexism)
It’s been really good. I feel like I’m part of something important. (Emily
Griffith, Everyday Sexism)
Angela McRobbie (2016) calls this type of labor “passionate work,” and it’s no
surprise to see their activities talked about in such terms. Yet, while organizers
overwhelmingly felt inspired and committed to their projects, many described
the weightiness of the work. As Genevieve Berrick from Hollaback! LA shared,
“Yeah, so there’s a lot of weight to it that feels heavy and helps us push forward
at the same time.” Genevieve’s comment is interesting, because while weight at
times can be a burden—a heavy load to bear—she talked about it as also being
useful in that it generated momentum needed to carry on forward. Others
noted however the exhaustion that being the bearer of such labor entailed,
and the necessity of taking breaks, limiting what they take on, and if necessary
walking away:
Yeah, it is really tiring. It is a lot of emotional work and I have to be really

careful about what I take on. ( Jill Dimond, Hollaback!)
86
I was really struggling to cope, and it got to the point where I had to
choose between keeping up with the moderation or quitting (Laura
Bates, Everyday Sexism)
[B]‌ecause I’ve been involved with activism and done a lot of these
kinds of things, like, I have a little bit of a higher threshold than
other people do. But it does get tiring and it does get . . . it’s def-
initely emotionally taxing, and you have to take care of yourself.
I did have to take a break from it sometimes and we all had to kind
of just . . . I think that was part of why we set up those shifts where
were monitoring things. Just without even really realising that’s what
we were doing, we were giving each other that break. (Ashley Tsai,
Who Needs Feminism?)
Throughout our interviews, it became clear that the “affective intensities”

(see Keller, Mendes, and Ringrose 2018; Khoja-Moolji 2015, 349) previously
described as an emotional “tax” levied onto feminist activism was not merely
from listening to stories of abuse, harassment, misogyny, and sexism, but at times
came from contributors reaching out with actual pleas for help. Ivanna Gonzalez
for example recounted an experience of receiving a detailed suicide plan via the
Who Needs Feminism? website. Unsure what to do, Ivanna reached out to some
contacts at Duke University, and with the help of a team was able to put together
a detailed response. However, as she admits, she was “not equipped to handle
this kind of thing,” and recognizes that despite getting “different iterations of
that kind of cry for help in a lot of the messages that we get,” she and her fellow
organizers “lack the resources and emotional capacity to provide this type of re-
sponse for everyone.” As other research has found, support is hugely important
for activists’ long-term health (Gleeson 2016; Hall 2014), but rarely is it put into
place—likely because of the grassroots nature of such groups, which lack struc-
ture, resources, and training.
Although this type of work was emotionally draining, exhausting, and taxing,
organizers also expressed their deep commitment to it. Emer O’Toole shared
her struggle to read posts that were unbearable, but feeling it “ethically ques-
tionable” to look away. As she explained, not reading a story because it upset her
would be:
[A]‌way of silencing women to say be quiet, we don’t want to hear your

story because your story upsets us; your story is just too disturbing for
me to listen to right now. And actually, I’ve heard three of these stories
this week and I feel like that’s enough stories and I don’t want to hear
any more. So, your rape, your sexual assault, your sexist experience at
87
work, I don’t want to hear that, I’ve heard enough of that. Well, that’s a
very effective way of silencing women. And I think that’s what Everyday
Sexism does, it says no, we’re not going to be silenced, each and every
instance of sexism and harassment matters, and each and every woman
who has experienced it should be allowed to speak.
In a similar vein, while admitting that reading stories of harassment, sexism, mi-
sogyny, and abuse could at times lead to “secondary trauma,” Hollaback! execu-
tive director Emily May shared:
At the same time [as being traumatic], I think there’s hope there. I think
that stories are how movements start; stories are how movements sus-
tain; stories are how you sort of restart movements once they’ve sort of
died out, right. . . . So, I’m, like, stoked when I see stories, as much as I’m
also obviously really saddened by them.
In this section, we have traced the ways the labor involved in digital feminist ac-
tivism is invisibly, immaterial, precarious, and highly affective. Although we are
not claiming that such work is unique to digital feminist activist campaigns, the
nature of these campaigns, which require listening, can be as Leah Bassel (2017)
argues, a social and political process. This is particularly true for marginalized
bodies who are frequently conceived of as “inaudible, less-than-human and ca-
pable only of noise rather than voice” (6). Although the campaigns discussed
through this book have a wide range of aims, from shaping public policy to
making sexism visible, as is evident from our interviews with organizers, they
are also engaging in a politics of listening (Bassel 2017). Organizers recognized
the value of listening to contributors’ experiences, regardless of how painful they
may be. Listening then is a form of recognition “that counters vicious exclusions
that combine race, gender, class and means of rendering people socially abject
[ . . . ] and . . . unheard” (Bassel 2017, 6). It is therefore one way in which nar-
rative resources can be redistributed to those whose voices or stories are rarely
heard (Bassel 2017).
Mediated Abuse
In recent years, there has been a growth of scholarship on the abuse and ha-
rassment of women online (see Citron 2014; Jane 2014a, 2016; Mendes 2015;
Penny 2013; Poland 2016; Powell and Henry 2017). This abuse ranges from the
seemingly mundane, to those filled with vitriolic misogyny and death and rape
8
threats. As discussed in c hapter 2, while cognizant of a range of terms in use,

we refer to the panoply of abuse directed toward women as “mediated abuse”
because it is broad enough to encompass a spectrum of practices, from the mun-
dane to the obscene, or “trolling,” because it is the language used by many of our
participants.
For this study, around 75 percent of our organizers experienced trolling
(n=14), indicating that while it is a pervasive problem, it is not a universal one.
And while mediated abuse may be likely to put some people off from engaging
with feminist activism, the affective implications such as anxiety, anger, and ir-
ritation were also credited for providing a sense of solidarity among organizers,
and evidence that their work was important. As Eyerman argued, “Even the ex-
perience of fear and anxiety, not uncommon in the midst of protest, can be a
strong force in creating a sense of collectivity and be an attractive force in collec-
tive actions” (2005 cited in Jasper 2011, 294).
In light of the substantial attention around online sexism in recent years, it
is useful to consider why some organizers might escape this seemingly inev-
itable byproduct of being engaged in feminist activism. From our interviews
with organizers, we have identified four reasons: first, the relative newness of
their involvement in activism; second, the “low-profile” nature of their activism;
third, their use of a range of preventative and precautionary measures including
removing their name from the activist site; and fourth, restricting what they
publish online about feminism or content that challenges submissive femininity.
Due to space constraints, we focus on the fourth reason.
S E L F - D I S C I P L I N I N G S U B J E C T S I N D I G I TA L   S PA C E S
A number of our organizers stated they had experienced mediated abuse in the
past (either on their own or as part of their activism), and as a result, became
self-disciplining subjects, using precautionary strategies such as excluding per-
sonal information on the campaign website, or keeping their feminist views
“hidden” on social media. This also includes being very selective about who
they “friend” on restricted platforms such as Facebook, censoring themselves
when it comes to feminist politics, or having multiple, anonymous accounts
(mainly on Twitter) for their feminism. Hollaback! executive director Emily
May explains how she has made a conscious effort to put the organization for-
ward rather than herself, and as a result, hasn’t had any mediated abuse that is
“really personal.” As she goes on to explain, “I’ve also been really intentional,
to the best of my ability, like, putting Hollaback! as an organisation, as a brand,
as a whatever forward, instead of me. . . . And I think that’s helped to shield me
a little bit.” Hollaback! web developer Jill Dimond also spoke about her use
of these preventative strategies with some regret. But after detailing how, as a
89
computer science student, she experienced mediated abuse early on, she shared
the impact it had on her:
At the time, I brushed it off, it was like, oh, whatever, it’s just stupid doo-
doos. But looking back, that really had a big effect on me in terms of
how guarded I am on the Internet. . . . And so I think that really kind of
prepared me early on to not [laugh] . . . to be really conservative about
what I share about myself online.
Jill is certainly not the only target of abuse to “retreat” from digital spheres, and
in recent years we have heard of high-profile women such as actress Leslie Jones,
food blogger Jack Munro, feminist blogger Jessica Valenti, and singer Nicki
Minaj disengaging from digital culture (even if only temporarily) in response to
their experiences.
A TA X O N O M Y O F A B U S E
Given the recent attention paid to mediated abuse, it is unsurprising that scholars
have spent time defining and taxonomizing it (see Henry and Powell 2017).
Although we did not explicitly ask our organizers to define what constitutes
“trolling,” they shared with us a wide range of practices, at times fueled by playful
prodding, to misogynistic vitriol. For example, Hollaback! Montreal’s Becky
Burns described experiencing “benevolent trolling,” where perpetrators sought
to “challenge” organizers in “a playful sort of way.” Others, such as Hollaback!
Dublin Jenny Dunn described encountering those who sought to discredit
the movement by posting comments on the site that “intentionally missed the
point.” This included comments on their Facebook page such as “women love
being catcalled.”
Our more high-profile activists such as Laura Bates, Emily May, and Emer
O’Toole were more likely to receive larger volumes of (often) highly aggressive
gendered and sexualized abuse including death, rape, and psychological threats
(directed toward them, their family, and friends) as the norm. Emily May stated
that she tended to experience an increase in mediated abuse whenever Hollaback!
does media publicity: “We notice a lot also when we do press, I’ll get a whole litany
of comments about how I’m fat and ugly and stupid. So that was cool [laugh].” In
a similar vein, Everyday Sexism organizer Emer O’Toole shared:
Yeah, I mean, I write about feminist on the Internet. I get rape threats.
I have people sending me emails that say things like, hey, you have fans,
click on this link, we’ve made you a fan page. And then I click on the
link and it’s a conversation about how a group of men are going to rape
90
me with a jagged stick, that’s been illustrated with a picture of me and

the jagged stick. . . . I don’t know if you’re shocked by what I’ve just
said. Often people are, but also no woman who writes feminism on the
Internet is the least bit surprized by the level or kind of male aggression
that gets levelled at me.
Everyday Sexism founder Laura Bates also recalled being completely unpre-
pared for the vitriol leveled against her. She described how she was on holiday
with her partner and his family when Everyday Sexism began to take off. As she
recounted:
And I just remember being there and having this surreal experience
where my phone was just buzzing, and I was on the one hand there
having an ice cream in the sunshine with them and then on the other
hand people were telling me that they wanted to dismember me.
Furthermore, Laura shared the way perpetrators used various tactics to “psyche
her out.” For example, they would send her around 200 messages, then pause for
three or four hours during which she received an “enormous sense of relief that
it was over” to find another torrent of messages with headings such as “oh hey
again Laura, thought that we’d gone away?” As she notes, these types of mind
games were “quite deliberate.”
From our interviews, we see that mediated abuse has been used to represent a
wide range of practices—from the seemingly mundane, ubiquitous, or “benevo-
lent” to the vitriolic, violent, and graphic. And while we have plenty of evidence
about the types of sexism leveled toward women, little scholarship has focused
on the affective implications of such abuse.
T H E I M PA C T O F M E D I AT E D   A B U S E
Scholars such as Emma A. Jane (2014, 2016, 2017) have noted that common
reactions to such mediated abuse include: distress, fear, irritation, anxiety, vio-
lation, and vulnerability—emotions that resonated with our organizers as well.
What scholarship has yet to focus on is the extent to which these emotions con-
tinue in the short, medium, or long term, or how these emotions might shift
over time (for an exception see Lewis, Marine, and Kenney 2017). Although
this was not a primary objective for our research, we know that activists such as
Laura Bates have been psychologically traumatized by years of trolling. Laura for
example, described how she now regularly suffers night terrors—in which she
wakes up fearing someone is in the room—because of the abuse she received.4
Jill Dimond also shared deep feelings of anxiety, more toward the anticipation
91
of trolling, rather than the trolling itself, which she described as often being “so
ridiculous, it was kind of funny at the same time, too [laugh].” A long-term inves-
tigation into the (changing) affective registers of online abuse is certainly worth
exploring, particularly, as we will show later, because of some surprising findings.
HUMOR AND LAUGHTER

Although humor and laughter were not affects we initially expected to encounter,
when going back through the transcripts again with our organizers, we found
they used laughter, jokes, and sarcasm time and again when discussing their
experiences of online sexism. As scholars have noted, humor can be used as “a
social and psychological distancing technique” to relieve anxiety, fear (Sanders
2004, 274; see also Palmer 1994), and can also be used as a coping mechanism to
“re-frame” distressing incidents (see Downea 1999; Moran and Massam 1997).
This was clearly the case in many of our interviews, and we deliberately bracketed
“[laugh]” in direct quotes to showcase its prevalence. In her studies of sex work
communities in the UK, Teela Sanders (2004) explores the way humor was often
used as a form or resistance to harassment, at times even mocking those who they
imagine to be trolling them. Within our own study, we found organizers using
similar strategies. For example, organizers called trolls names (“dickhead” or
“doo-doos”), or poked fun at the unoriginality of troll usernames, such as “ass-
hole troll 5000.” Others at times used sarcasm to highlight anger or frustration, for
example in the quote earlier in this chapter where Emily May stated, “So that was
cool [laugh],” when recounting an experience of being trolled. Among feminist
organizers then, humor and laughter are routinely used as a defense mechanism
and emotion management strategy (Hochschild 1983) used to make the difficult
aspects of digital feminist activism more palatable. It is also possible that as time
passes, organizers reconceive traumatic or troubling experiences as humorous,
thus mitigating long-term negative implications.
F I R E TO K E E P   G O I N G
Given recent media attention to the ways well-known feminists or women
have retreated from social media platforms such as Twitter because of their
experiences with online sexism, we were surprised to hear some organizers talk
about the way these experiences “galvanized” them and gave them “fire” to keep
going. In fact, Emily May uses the abuse leveled against Hollaback! as a means to
motivate organizers. As she said:
I say to our site leaders, you know, these haters, they’re a success metric,
they wouldn’t be bothering you if you weren’t threatening the sort of
92
inner sexist in them, if you weren’t threatening the core of their being.
They would just ignore you. You know, it’s much better that they’re
hating you than ignoring you, it’s showing that what you’re doing is
working.
In a similar vein, Who Needs Feminism? organizer Ashley Tsai acknowledged

that while being trolled is certainly “difficult,” at the same time, it was: “just more
fire for us . . . we kind of just took it as fire for us to keep going and doing what
we were doing.”
While it would be misleading to claim that organizers were simply able to
brush off online sexism and mediated abuse or use it as a means of fueling their
desire in the long run, that this was the experience of some of our organizers
highlights the need for further research into its short-, medium-, and long-term
impact. For example, at what point and how long do organizers feel traumatized?
How long can organizers feel galvanized by their experiences before burning out?
Are there other affects associated with trolling we have yet to uncover? One area
that we began to examine here is the practical implications of online sexism—
namely devising strategies to manage abusers or limit their exposure to them.
M E D I AT E D A B U S E M A N A G E M E N T S T R AT E G I E S
Previous scholars have investigated strategies used by feminist activists to manage
trolls (see Herring et al. 2002; Mendes 2015). In doing so, they have highlighted
“very real differences and perspectives, strategies and policies when it came to
trolls” (Mendes 2015, 177). This includes debate over “When—and where—is
it legitimate to draw the line?” (Herring et al. 2002, 372). Strategies included
ignoring the comment, blocking, unfriending, responding (as individuals or
a community), reporting their experience to the police, and generating new
initiatives to support victims of online sexism. Although “deleting,” “blocking,”
or “unfriending” has been viewed negatively as a form of censorship by previous
feminist activists (see Mendes 2015), few organizers in this study were opposed
to these strategies. When asked if they felt there was anything inherently wrong
in censoring or silencing trolls, some organizers, such as Emily May vehemently
disagreed:
I don’t think that trolling is free speech, I think trolling actually

silences free speech, because it creates a space where the trolls’ voices
are louder and they’re more prized, and everybody else just wants to
crawl under a rock, because they’re scared it’s going to be aimed at
them next.
93
This view was echoed by most organizers, who were aware that trolling is an
oft-used tool to silence women (see Lumsden and Morgan 2017).
While organizers had a range of tools at their disposal, it became clear that
many stated they were “strategic” in their management techniques. This included
making decisions on who was “worth” responding to, blocking, or reporting. As
Emer O’Toole shared:
I’ve got different strategies depending on who it is. I ignore all the sexual
stuff because I don’t know what to say. And a lot of the time, if a guy just
approaches me disrespectfully on Twitter or whatever, I just block him
because I don’t feel like it’s my job to constantly be educating people.
Although previous research has highlighted the use of a range of management

strategies, what emerged from our research was the nuanced ways in which they
are deployed. Hollaback! LA’s Genevieve Berrick also explained how her re-
sponse would depend on the type of sexism as well as the platform in which
it emerged. Hollaback! Montreal’s Becky Burns also stated that her response
would depend on the type of harassment. While she might engage with “benev-
olent” trolls who are challenging, but not abusive, others such as Emer held firm
in her decision not to engage with them, despite recognizing there can be value
in such encounters.
In terms of reporting their abuse, most organizers shared that they “didn’t
bother” taking the matter further with either the platform itself, or law en-
forcement officers. This was often because past experiences, or “horror stories”
from other women taught them that it was a waste of time. For example, over
the years, Laura Bates had reported many instances of abuse to the police,
sharing “every time I’ve ever reported abuse, the police take the details down
and then I’ve heard nothing.” Emily May explained how she has a “whole file”
of screenshots of abusive messages. Despite reporting threats of violence
to the FBI on several occasions, “They didn’t do anything [laugh]. Useless.”
While the platform architecture might enable organizers to easily block or
unfriend abusers, some organizers shared the way personal relationships
prevented them from doing so. Jill Dimond for example explained how she
has an easier time blocking someone on Twitter than on Facebook—mostly
because the abusers are friends or family members with whom she already has
personal ties.
While the platform and type of trolling influenced the response of some
organizers, time emerged as an important factor for others. As Emer explained: “I
do enough feminist activism, I don’t feel like educating men who are dickheads
to me on Twitter. I just don’t feel like that is part of how I want to spend my time.”
94
As we will see in chapter 5, sentiments such as these are echoed by many of our
“everyday feminists,” who are strategic in their efforts to educate others.
Closely associated with time was the amount of energy organizers were willing
to invest. Jill Dimond, who was seven months pregnant at the time of our inter-
view, explained how her management strategies are dependent on how much
energy she has, and is willing to spend:
But, you know, it takes a lot of energy, it really does, figuring out when
you’re going to engage [with trolls] or what you have time for, or what
you feel like is doing activism in everyday life, or if it’s just like, yeah,
I don’t have space for this right now.
In a similar vein, Julia Gray also talked about the ways her decision on how to
manage trolls was based on where to commit her limited energy and attention.
As she explained, she and her colleague Bryony Beynon at Hollaback! London
frequently ignore, block, or delete trolls because “we’ve got too much else to do
than to waste our energy on stuff like that.” It is significant that although trolling
is often seen as being inherently harmful, many organizers are pragmatic when it
comes to trolling, and consciously choose to disregard these messages, or block
these individuals, and instead focus their energy elsewhere.
While ignoring or blocking abusers was a common strategy among organizers,
many others opened up about the importance of self-care strategies, work-life
balance, and burnout.
Self-Care Strategies, Work/Life Balance,

and Burnout
For those involved in a range of “caring” practices such as social workers,
therapists, health professionals, terms such as “mindfulness” and “self-care” are
nothing new. There are many tomes devoted to these subjects (see Collard 2014;
Grise-Owens et al. 2016; Smullens 2015). And while these practices have been
long-standing for those such as nurses, psychiatrists, social workers, and others
“who use their own self as a method of change” (Skovholt and Trotter-Mathison
2011), self-care practices are becoming increasingly prominent across a wide
range of workplaces, educational systems, and even in relation to activist spaces
(see Boehm 2002; Downton and Wehr 1998; Gleeson 2016; Gorski 2015), in
order to help alleviate or postpone chances of burnout (Gleeson 2016). While
self-care can range from practical measures such as learning to set boundaries
or forming communities of support, to engaging in self-care practices such as
95
meditation and yoga, and community formations, we have also witnessed the
rise of short-term “patching” or “coping” exercises such as engaging with “cute”
ephemera to momentarily relieve stress.5
At the same time, there exists a range of excellent critiques of self-care,
particularly around the ways “structural inequalities are deflected by being
made the responsibilities of individuals” (Ahmed 2017, 239; see Prugl 2014;
Rottenberg 2014) within neoliberal societies. As Catherine Rottenberg (2014)
argues, we are witnessing the neoliberalization of feminism in which structural
systems that produce inequality are rejected in favor of feminists accepting
“full responsibility for her own well-being and self-care, which is increasingly
predicated on crafting a felicitous work–family balance based on a cost-benefit
calculus” (420).
While the rise of neoliberal feminism, with its focus on individual transfor-
mation in lieu of collective social and political change is worrying, Sara Ahmed
counters that self-care is important because “feminism needs feminists to sur-
vive” (Ahmed 2017, 236). Quoting Audre Lorde, Ahmed explains: “Caring for
myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political
warfare” (1988 cited in Ahmed 2017, 237). This is particularly true for those
who are marginalized and lack varying privileges—feminists living in a patriar-
chal world, the poor, or BAME people living in a world of “racial capitalism” for
example (Ahmed 2017, 238). Throughout our interviews, the necessity of self-
care strategies became not only evident, but integral to what Ahmed describes
as part of a feminist “killjoy survival kit,” and what Hagan calls a “feminist guide-
book” (cited in Butterbaugh 1998, 13). Bound up within these survival kits is
a range of coping and self-care strategies, necessary for feminists to continue
living a feminist life, and to exist in a world that might not value their existence
(Ahmed 2017).
From our interviews, organizers were highly cognizant of the emotional, af-
fective, and embodied labor of feminist activism, and were involved in a wide
variety of self-care practices to help offset this. These included playing music,
meditation, yoga, reading feminist work, taking a walk in a park, engaging in
feminist communities, taking a break from their activism or online activities,
and engaging with “cute” aesthetics. In some cases, these practices were highly
embodied. Hollaback! London’s Bryony Beynon for example explained how she
played the drums as part of her self-care:
So yeah, playing drums is quite like a thing that’s fun to do because you
get a lot of . . . it’s very bodily and you can get a lot of sort of aggres-
sion out. And obviously, being socialized not to show aggression, that’s
a useful thing to be able to do.
96
For Bryony, playing the drums was helpful not only in letting her “aggression
out” in relation to her work with Hollaback!, but as a means of challenging
gender roles in which women are socialized to be passive and submissive, and
not draw attention to themselves. While performance is integral to her self-care,
for her colleague Julia Gray, it was much quieter, though not necessarily less ef-
fective. Julia described how talking to others and reading “really helps me work
through my thoughts and my feelings. That’s my biggest way of dealing with
stuff.” Reading the experiences of others is also helpful, and Julia described being
particularly drawn to poetry and the “works of intersectional feminists”—artists
who are able to effectively conceptualize difficult emotions, which according to
Julia, “really makes me feel a lot better.”
In a few cases, organizers discussed their engagement with “cute aesthetics.”
Genevieve Berrick of Hollaback! LA for example shared how “I actually have
put Facebook statuses up saying, ‘Read too much about rape culture by 9.00
am, please send pictures of kittens.’ ” As Paul Dale et al. (2016) note, this rise
of “cute aesthetics” has emerged to help people cope with the rise of neoliberal
capitalism and precarious employment. In addition to looking at cute kittens,
Genevieve explained how although difficult, her involvement with feminist ac-
tivism was a form of self-care: “To some degree, Hollaback is the self-care. So,
feeling like you’re actually changing things and being able to palpably.” Although
most other organizers needed time away from their activism, as Ahmed (2017)
argues: “Protest can be a form of self-care as well as caring for others; a refusal
not to matter” (240).
B U R N O U T A N D W O R K / L I F E B A L A N C E
Burnout is often referred to as “a state or process of mental exhaustion” (Schaufeli
and Buunk 2003, 383). Scholars have argued that activists in social change
movements are prone to burnout due to their emotional investment in their re-
spective campaign (see Gorski and Chen 2015). As Gorski argues, the “emo-
tional burden” for activists is particularly heavy, because they are aware of the
stakes: “the perpetuation of injustice, oppression, and suffering” (2015, 701).
As a result, they are particularly vulnerable to anxiety. Gorski and Chen (2015)
have outlined that activists involved in social justice causes are at a higher risk
of suffering burnout when compared to other activists, and that this is due to
what Hochschild (1983) deems to be the emotional investment and labor of
individuals associated with the campaign.
While many organizers admitted they were able to “cope” with such self-care
strategies, others at times had to “take breaks,” or in a few cases, simply give up
their activism due to activist burnout (see Gorski 2015; Pines 1994), or the ina-
bility to manage it with their work/life balance. According to Maslach and Leiter
97
(1994), burnout is not “simply a temporary bout with frustration or weariness,

but rather a chronic condition that has debilitating and long-term implications”
(cited in Gorski 2015, 697). The debilitating nature of burnout was evident in
our interview with Everyday Sexism organizer Emily Griffith, who reported how
the stress of ongoing engagement with digital feminist activism, along with long-
standing mental health issues, forced her to take a break from the project for sev-
eral months. When burnout was combined with the added stress of managing
their activism with overwhelming work and life commitments, the result was
that some had to step away from their activism permanently. Fellow Everyday
Sexism organizer Emer O’Toole shared how she left the project “suddenly” and
“without grace” a few months into taking up her first full-time academic post.
This is because, as Emer described:
I stopped because basically my job was so much more work than

I could have anticipated, my first academic position, and I was
overwhelmed, and I just couldn’t actually do it. Like, I was sitting
down to do the volunteer co-ordination and I was kind of going like,
oh, having trouble breathing. And I just wrote to Laura and said, “I’m
so sorry, I can’t do it, I can’t even really train someone else up to take
over from me. I’m so sorry but here’s where everything’s at, I just have
to bow out right now.
The embodied nature of burnout is evident in the previous passage, as Emer

talks about having troubling breathing—the stress of combining activism with
her first full-time position being so overwhelming, it literally and figuratively
took her breath away. Emer and Emily are both examples of the primary implica-
tion of burnout—that activists either scale back on their activism, or abandon it
altogether (see Gorski 2015; Rettig 2006). And while organizers acknowledged
that stepping away from activism is necessary, it was often relayed to us with
regret. For Emer, a major source of this regret was not seeing earlier that that
she wasn’t coping. However, as she reflected: “But unfortunately, we’re not al-
ways perfect activists, we’re not always perfect feminists, we’re not always perfect
humans.” Emer was not the only organizer we interviewed who found it chal-
lenging combining activism with full-time employment. At the time of our in-
terview, Julia Gray of Hollaback! London had just moved to Brighton to take
up a full-time job, and was struggling to be as involved as she would have liked.
Melanie Keller of Hollaback! Baltimore had only recently given up her role with
the organization after moving to Austria to become an au pair. And we know
from our interviews with other organizers that they found it hugely challenging
to maintain commitments to activism when the demands of employment or
other life commitments became too taxing.
98
A key implication emerging from our research with organizers is the exploita-
tive and precarious nature of contemporary (feminist) activism, which involves
largely invisible, immaterial, and un(der)paid labor. As women’s work continues
to be undervalued and underpaid in various sectors (Grimshaw and Rubery
2007; Jarrett 2014), it is pertinent to highlight unpaid activism as a feminist
issue. While a few of our organizers managed to earn some money from their
activism,6 important questions remain about how long they can continue with
their activism in the long-term, particularly because most of the organizers we
interviewed were young (early twenties), energetic, single, and childless, with
“flexible” (e.g., precarious) jobs. Previous research (Gleeson 2016) has found
that activists who receive wages for their labor (regardless of how precarious)
remained involved with their campaigns for much longer than unpaid activists.
And while we have serious concerns about the increased commercialization of
feminism (as we discuss in the book’s Introduction), the work these activists do
is real and undervalued. At the same time, scholars have documented the ways
unpaid digital labor, and the content social media users create, including trol-
ling and abusive content, in fact generates huge profits for media corporations
such as Twitter and Facebook (see Shepherd et al. 2015). Given that such online
abuse is currently profitable, these large corporations are unmotivated to curb
it. On the other hand, the unpaid digital labor invested by activists goes unac-
knowledged and unrewarded. Within this context, following advice from Duffy
(2015) who advises we take heed from the Wages for Housework campaign in
the 1970s, “we should seek ways to mobilize social media producers to advocate
for fair compensation based on the realization that many of these activities are
value-added work” (712).
Moving Forward
Through our use of semi-structured interviews with 18 feminist activists, this
chapter shed light on a range of experiences of those organizing and managing
digital feminist campaigns—ranging from how they became involved, to pre-
vious experiences of activism, their relationship with feminism, and experiences
of online sexism. The chapter also showcased the ways the labor involved in fem-
inist campaigns is highly affective, invisible, precarious, and time-consuming.
While organizers shared feelings of deep attachments to their campaigns, they
opened up about the tedium and boredom also involved with certain tasks—
affects that have so far been understudied. While several of our organizers have
identified as feminists for several years before their involvement, it also emerged
that activism acted as a “feminist awakening” for some.
9
The chapter also documented organizers’ experiences with mediated abuse,

noting that while most encountered some degree, it is not an inevitable as-
pect of activism, and operates on a continuum—from the mundane to the
vitriolic. Furthermore, our research sheds light on some short-and long-term
implications—from finding experiences funny, to being galvanized to con-
tinue with their activism. And while we argue that mediated abuse is a serious
issue, this study provides hope in showing that it is not inevitable. Despite this,
mediated abuse needs to be reframed from a personal issue to a political one,
which needs collective response to hold perpetrators responsible, institutional
support from web providers where trolling takes place, and a range of support
structures for victims.
When we as a research team reflect back upon their experiences of activism,
it becomes clear that while digital feminist activism can be exhilarating and life
changing, it is often exhausting and draining, and individual and collective care
strategies are needed to prevent activist burnout. This includes the possibility of
compensating activists for their labor, while remaining cautious about the extent
to which feminism is commercialized and co-opted within neo-liberal capitalist
contexts.
10
5
Twitter as a Pedagogical Platform
Creating Feminist Digital Affective Counter-Publics to Challenge
Rape Culture
In 2015 at the time of our research Twitter had approximately 305 million users
(Wolfe 2017). Before the move to 280 characters, Using the @ symbol and a user
name of their choice as the handle, members of the public created short bursts
of content (referred to as “tweets”), no longer than 140 characters. Content can
be strategically and thematically organized around “hashtags” (#s) that hyper-
link tweets to enable conversation between users. Thus, the platform facilitates
quick moving, connected content that may be original or retweeted (recirculated
or shared) (Jenkins 2012) and include images or hyperlinked content. As use of
Twitter has exploded, so has the possibility of using this medium for activism, as is
visible in academic titles such as @ is for Activism (Hands 2010) and Tweets and the
Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (Gerbaudo 2012). The study of
feminist uses of Twitter has also grown with an emerging body of literature on the
platform’s potential for mobilizing campaigns to raise awareness about issues such
as anti-feminism, misogyny, reproductive rights, and gender and sexual violence
(Rentschler 2014). However, despite the growth of research, we still lack infor-
mation about the everyday experiences of users who mobilize Twitter to connect,
educate, and visibly engage with a range of feminist issues, including rape culture.
Responding to this gap, in this chapter we explore how self-defined femi-
nist activists use Twitter to participate in feminist politics. While the previous
chapter focused on high profile feminist campaigns and activist leaders, this
chapter tries to capture the everyday practices of everyday users of Twitter and
related platforms for performing their feminisms. We use the word “practice” in
the sense of trying out feminist politics. We develop an argument that Twitter is a
“digital pedagogical platform” (Retallack, Ringrose and Lawrence 2016; Ringrose
2018) for developing feminist affective counter-publics (McCosker 2015).
We explain how women develop complex digital literacies, suggesting Twitter
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Twitter as a Pe dag og ical P l at form 101
affords unprecedented participatory access for feminists to engage in politics in

their everyday lives. These assertions complicate and trouble ideas of feminism
in postfeminist “retreat” as well as ideas that popularized feminism has been wa-
tered down to becoming a cheer word without its political bite (Gill 2016). We
explore the highly politicized forms of feminism we encounter as we proceed.
Beyond using a discursive frame for looking at representations of types of
feminism, we also examine affective relations of performing and navigating femi-
nism in “the network” (Rentschler and Thrift 2015). Our contribution is to map
how digital feminism is actually experienced through our empirical research with
women, girls, and men. Our methodology allowed us to explore: How do self-
defined feminists discover and build upon feminist consciousness through their
use of Twitter? How does their experience of doing digital feminism shape their
experiences of feminism “in real-life,” and vice versa? How do they negotiate re-
sistance to their digital feminism and develop practices to manage abuse and
trolling?
Our findings provide rich and complex insights into the perceived benefits
and platform affordances (Boyd, 2010; Warfield 2016) of using Twitter al-
though we touch upon other platforms such as Tumblr for practicing digital
feminist activism. Participants valued the speed, immediacy, global reach, and
visibility of Twitter as a pedagogical platform to learn and educate around fem-
inist issues. We also, however, look at how participants understand safety and
respond to conflict on Twitter, discussing emergent digital strategies for coping
with technologically mediated aggression, trolling, and misogyny ( Jane 2017).
Throughout, our analysis blends the digital, material, and affective, consid-
ering the intermeshing of digital and “real-life” (Kim and Ringrose 2018) as it
manifests in discussions of how feminism is affectively produced and defended
by our participants (Khoja-Moolji 2015).
Researching Feminist Activism via Twitter

Where the case studies used in chapters 3 and 4 started with mainstream fem-
inist campaigns and identifying trends, participants, and leaders, here, we
used Twitter as a medium to recruit self-defined feminists using a bottom-up
approach. Bonnie Stewart (2017, 254) notes Twitter has been identified as a
useful platform for conducting qualitative research into “situated knowledge’s”
since it is “based around curated, cultivated identities (Hogan 2010) and their
interactions with other entities.” We therefore began by conducting a survey
through our own Twitter networks. Initially, using our project Twitter handle,
we tweeted a survey link, soliciting no responses—largely because we had few
followers. We then asked our Research Assistant, a self-defined Twitter feminist
102
with over 4,000 followers, to retweet the survey link—an effective strategy
that generated 47 responses. One of the responses was removed for being
“fake” and constituting trolling1 leaving us with 46 valid survey responses: 4
adult men, 27 adult women, and 15 teenaged girls. Albeit a small sample, the
responses were richly descriptive regarding participants’ experiences of using
Twitter for feminist activism, and specifically to combat rape culture. The
survey was used to get a sense of how various feminists use digital spaces such
as Twitter to “do” their feminisms. As such, we asked questions regarding how
they practiced feminism online and offline, and whether, or how, they chal-
lenged sexism and rape culture online; what benefits and risks they associated
with digital feminist activism; and if they had ever had negative experiences or
been “trolled.”
The survey was anonymous, but it invited participants to share their contact
details to participate in semi-structured interviews via Skype, email, or in person
(see also Stewart 2017). Through this strategy we recruited 21 further responses
including 13 Skype interviews, one in-person interview, and seven in-depth
follow-up questionnaire responses via email. Perhaps it is unsurprising given the
invitation to participate was issued from a UK Twitter feminist account that our
21 in-depth responses comprised of 62 percent (n=13) from the UK/Ireland,
29 percent (n=6) from the US, and only 1 percent (n=1) each from Saudi Arabia
and Nigeria. Here we present key findings from all the survey data (n=46) as
well as in-depth email questionnaires and interviews from our adult female and
male participants (n=14). We explore the in-depth responses from the teenagers
who are 18 and under (n=8) in c hapter 7, where we group this data together
with the additional research we conducted with teenaged girls. We have chosen
to explore all the in-depth data from teen feminists together as these findings
reveal specific challenges of negotiating rape culture as a teen digital feminist in
and around school.
Transcending Space, Extending Reach, Creating

Affective Counter-Publics
One of the questions we asked initially in the survey, and again in our interviews,
was around participants’ views about the benefits of social media such as Twitter
for communicating their feminist views to much wider audiences than their im-
mediate social circles:
The first place I heard about feminism was on the internet. Feminism
saved my life. The internet has the ability to reach so many people, and
if it can change my life, it can change theirs. I definitely see internet
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feminism as a form of activism with the potential to change society.

(Adult female survey respondent)
Recalling our discussions of networked affect (Hillis, Paasonen, and Petit

2016) in chapter 2, we can see how this response credits internet feminism as
changing and thereby “saving” her life, demonstrating the dramatic emotional
charge and attachment the participant has to her experiences of digital femi-
nism. The potentially huge reach of social media was likewise discussed by many
others as crucial in forging social change:
Twitter allows a greater number of people to engage in debate, it creates

greater awareness, it provides a platform to address many issues relating
to feminism and allows us to call people out when they make misogy-
nistic comments. Through exposing them on a public forum, we might
encourage one to re-evaluate their views and actions and hopefully en-
courage change. (Adult female survey respondent)
We can see that the digital affordances create the space both for the misogynistic
tweet to exist but also for it to be called out. Moreover, the material space of on-
line interaction crosses over into views and actions in the way the respondent
describes an ability to expose and re-evaluate one’s views. Participants feel ad-
amantly that digital feminism is creating real material changes that are part of a
complex enmeshing of participants’ online and offline experiences (Kember and
Zylinska 2012; Warfield 2016).
Another theme that emerged many times throughout the survey and our
interviews was the way digital tools were valued for creating feminist connections
across time and space enabling:
[T]‌he potential to connect with others. I have so many like-minded

friends on Twitter now that I sometimes forget not everyone is as sen-
sitive and understanding of issues around feminism, gender and trauma
as they are. You can get involved in reaching a huge audience without
putting yourself too much as risk too, i.e. retweeting or sharing informa-
tion. (Adult female survey respondent)
Connecting with “like-minded people” was key for enabling participants to

forge new friendships, and the potential of reaching or interacting with a “huge
audience” was appealing. Furthermore, connecting with other feminists online
was viewed as “less risky” than engaging in other forms of offline activism. Our
findings therefore highlight how these digital spaces are viewed as crucial for
reaching and sharing with audiences sensitive to “traumatic” feminist issues such
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as rape culture. Twitter was particularly praised for its ability to transcend other
practicalities such as geographic isolation and mental or physical disabilities that
inhibit other forms of political participation:
Visibility is important and Twitter allows feminists to express opinions

and share stories that aren’t publicised in the mainstream. I’m a believer
that the personal is political and if a person can connect to another’s
story their political views can be changed. Internet activism is also
useful for activists with mental or physical disabilities who may not be
able to attend protests and meetings. (Adult female survey respondent)
Here we can see the respondent describing what Papacharissi (2015) via Nancy
Fraser has called networked “counter publics” reaching previously excluded
populations. It is the digital affordances of global reach, speed, immediacy, di-
alogue, visibility, engagement, contact, connection, and collectivity (van Djick
2013) that are all noted as important and enabling this counter-public, and for
feminists to “express opinions.” These statements are not only about practical
benefits: they also highlight the affective force of digital feminism to “share
stories” as a means of changing views and creating what McCosker (2015) spe-
cifically calls “affective counter publics.” This feeling of sharing has historically
been a key aspect of feminist consciousness-raising. It is affectively experienced
here as a networked process of sharing in a visible way online, but with direct
embodied impacts (Hillis, Paasonen, and Petit 2015; Rentschler and Thrift
2015). For instance, another participant said online feminism “is good for my
heart”—a sentiment that speaks to both the physical and mental benefits of
such engagement. Others talked about feelings of deep “satisfaction” when their
feminist content or posts were shared or supported by others. Some opened
up about how the internet provided an outlet to “express feelings otherwise
stored away”—so that it may provide the only channel for participating in such
discussions.
But it was not only sharing around building consensus that was valued but the
enabling of a range of diverse voices participating in creating “counter-publics.”
Alternatives to dominant norms of exclusion and the capacity for inclusion of
marginalized groups on Twitter was voiced repeatedly:
Historically women have had little to no way to meet up and to discuss

and share ideas, which has arguably lead to a narrow and white femi-
nism being dominant, yet now through social media being accessible
for many it is so much more easier to share ideas, to discuss and de-
velop feminism, to help others through advice and through petitions,
through raising awareness, and through holding others to a higher
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standard and pointing out others inexcusable misogyny. (Adult female

survey respondent)
Women’s historical exclusion from the public sphere and political debates are
explained through reference to accessibility, ability, race, and class privilege
through what we might term an “intersectional” lens. This intersectional per-
spective draws upon important interventions made by feminist women of color
since the early 1980s (Crenshaw 1991; hooks 1981; Moraga and Anzaldúa
1981). Munro (2013) for example claims that intersectionality is one of the key
hallmarks of a digital fourth wave of feminism. Independent of the wave analogy
what is significant is the clear reference to the normalization of an intersectional
critique of “white feminism,” judged as too narrow, which is an important dis-
cursive trend in some of the responses. This discursive trend is significant not
only because it signals participants’ investment in an intersectional view of in-
equality and calls for political change, but also their critique of a postfeminist,
celebrity or “popular” feminism that is not inclusive (Loza 2014).
This theme of how social media enabled our participants to connect with
other feminists beyond local, regional, or national borders, breaking through
community, cultural, or family norms emerged strongly with one of our in-
terview participants. Pauline, 24, is a Canadian-born Filipino woman living in
Saudi Arabia. As someone with a very interesting transnational background, she
uses blogging and other social media tools to discuss feminism across borders.
Pauline believes that digital spaces are particularly important for women in
Saudi Arabia, as they offer “a way for people to connect because they can’t do so
in [real life] public, because the genders are separated, or can’t really gather in
public together. So people really, really connect online.” Here it is clear how the
online space provides a feminist digital counter-public to the specific political
context in question.
In a similar vein, Anwuli, 42, from Nigeria, recalls how:
A lot of people are ignorant about what feminism stands for especially
in the society from which I come. Most Nigerian men and women con-
sider feminism as a western construct and see the movement almost
as an affectation especially in women of certain classes. But with social
media I have been able to point out the everyday things people do un-
thinkingly that reinforce the patriarchy and also show people how the
patriarchy does not only hurt women.
Because Anwuli’s family and friends make her feel she is “crazy” for her femi-
nist views, social media provides an opportunity to connect with like-minded
feminists whom she would otherwise be unable to communicate with in her
106
local context. Digital feminist connection does not only, however, enable
those living in more gender-traditional societies to connect with feminist
counter-publics. Participants talked about how digital spaces helped feminists
bridge national divides. For example, Nura, 19, from the North of England
commented on the connective possibilities of Twitter, noting that it allowed
her to “Speak to feminists everywhere rather than just in your town and it
means you can read about stuff you wouldn’t know about.” As Monica a 26-
year-old disabled activist from the North of England said, “it’s often the case
that many protests and marches happen in London.” Digital tools enable her
to participate and support these events online. Contrary to arguments about
feminist slacktivism (Guillard 2016) where digital engagement is positioned
as less meaningful than physically attending marches or protests, Monica views
online participation as a “really important part of being an activist” and Twitter
as a particularly important way of connecting to movements, discussions, or
events that physical limitations might otherwise have prevented. Thus, we can
see strong evidence of a counter-public being created through expanding the
boundaries of digital inclusion and participation in feminist debate and dia-
logue opened up to disabled activists and other groups.
A Relatively Safe Space?
For many decades now, feminists have been interested in creating “safe spaces”
free from violence, harassment, and judgment through which feminists could
speak truths and collectively develop strategies for resistance oppression (Harris
2005; Sarachild 1978). In recent years, scholars are increasingly paying attention
to the various strategies feminists are developing for carving out and in some
cases “reappropriating social media platforms” (Clark-Parsons 2017, 3). And
while some have pointed out the inherently aggressive architecture of the internet
(Harvey 2016), others are noting the ways feminists “negotiate” the technolog-
ical affordances and limitations available on social media platforms to “produce
and enforce” notions of safety (Clark-Parsons 2017, 3). Despite research that has
noted Twitter is hostile to woman who are subject to disproportionate amounts
of trolling and aggression ( Jane 2017) our participants said Twitter was actually
part of “safe” online spaces in which they could not only “explore new ideas” but
meet “like-minded” people and access feminist news, ideas, and communities,
which, for a variety of reasons, are not accessible in their day-to-day lives.
Alison, 40, from the Midlands, UK, explained that she used Twitter to share
feminist views, rather than platforms such as Facebook, which she saw as better
suited for connecting with family and friends:
107
Twitter is my main forum for, you know, my feminist activism. . . . I tend

to find that Twitter’s a really good medium to get a point across. . . .
Personally, it’s a good way for me to be sort of anonymous. . . . So, I like
my Twitter account. You can talk to people, you can have conversations
with people and you can block most people who give you grief.
She prefers Twitter because its “platform affordances” (Boyd, 2010; Warfield
2016) enable relative anonymity from her family and friends, which makes her feel
she “can speak more about what I believe in and that.” Similarly, 19-year-old college
student Lena from London is part of what she terms a “global, intersectional femi-
nist group” on Twitter. This group operates a joint account that is comprised of 40
women from around the world. The group uses digital tools such as Twitter, blogs,
podcasts, and SoundCloud to spread their feminist news and views. The interna-
tional women’s group has both public and some private sections. Again, she notes
the public-facing aspects use podcasts, music mixes, Twitter, and blog posts to
make women feel “less isolated” and connected to an alternative public space. The
private part involves a group chat of supportive advice. This creates what we could
call a form of “mediated intimacy” (Atwood, Hakim, and Winch 2017; Barker,
Gill, and Harvey 2018), or perhaps we could call it mediated intersectional femi-
nist consciousness-raising. Here, members talk about their lived problems through
platforms such as Twitter, creating a sense of comfort and safety to explore issues
around “diversity” where they feel there is common ground and understanding
(Ahmed 2017). Lena feels that this way “there’s a lot less judgement than if you
were to talk to your friends about it [feminism].”
As others have shown, this ability to “speak without judgment” is highly
valued among feminists. Despite the ways it has been noted that “no digital space
can ever be truly safe for all participants at all times” (Clark-Parsons 2017, 18),
our participants value certain spaces that they affectively experience as more safe
than others. This is not wholly safe, but relatively safe, and they quickly learn
to identify spaces that are safer than others. For example, Lucas, a 24-year-old
male law student from the Midlands, UK, sees Twitter as his key channel for
learning about feminism as a man, where he could follow accounts somewhat
anonymously initially, plugging into a counter-public to find information. His
initial introduction to the movement came through Twitter after feminist con-
tent appeared on his timeline when retweeted by a female friend. The content
resonated with him and he began to identify as a feminist shortly after, asking his
friend to recommend other feminist Twitter users to follow. He says:
Twitter is great for engaging with feminism because it helps people find
other like-minded individuals. By tweeting, retweeting and following,
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it is an easy way to get your message across and demonstrate alle-

giance with specific views. It also however, leads to hate and “e-bile” on
social media.
Lucas points out that although Twitter enables him to connect with like-minded
individuals, it also comes with the risk of encountering mediated abuse. But he
also noted that he would be more afraid to voice these opinions in offline spaces,
making a critical point that “online is safer, but not safe.” Unlike women, how-
ever, as we will explore later in this chapter, he also notes that his “male privilege”
means that the feminist issues he’s exploring online rarely come up in his offline
interactions with men.
How Feminists Use Twitter as a Pedagogical

Platform
While the previous section provides insight into perceived benefits of using
digital tools in their feminist activism connecting to a counter-public, this
section addresses how our participants use these tools, and for what purpose.
From our interviews and surveys, we discovered that educating themselves,
peers, classmates, family, friends, the public, and even anonymous trolls is one
of the ways our participants articulated what it means to be a feminist and do
feminism in digital spaces. As scholars have noted, educating others is crucial
to many feminists’ understanding of what it means to be a feminist in a digital
age, and to engage with feminist politics (Fotopoulou 2016a). These practices
have been well charted, for instance, through affordances of feminist blogging
(Keller 2015). We conceive of Twitter as a “pedagogical platform” (Retallack,
Ringrose, and Lawrence 2016) for feminism exploring the educative practices
as enacting a type of “digital public pedagogy” and mediated connective learning
(Trifonas 2012). Twitter as an educational space was discussed at length by our
participants. At a basic level Twitter was viewed as key for “opening the idea of
feminism to those who don’t identify as feminist or didn’t know what it was.”
As one survey respondent wrote, Twitter might enable followers to “MAYBE
EVEN become advocates” (Adult female survey respondent, capitalized letters
original). Several participants spoke in almost evangelical terms of converting
non-feminists (nonbelievers) to feminists and showing them the light. Although
this practice of converting non-feminists was by no means universal among our
participants, several recounted their successes. As one participant stated: “I have
successfully ‘converted’ two of my friends into becoming big feminists and am
working on my third!” (Adult female survey respondent). Perhaps, then, there
109
is a fine line between educating and regulating others, and we can see the peda-
gogical potential of participatory media, but underlying this are the ideological
tensions and the policing of views created in counter-publics.
This also emerged among the 33 percent (n=14) of the survey respondents
who were teenagers attending secondary school who argued Twitter provided
knowledge and opportunities for learning and dialogue that was simply not
available anywhere else:
[Twitter] is a platform that isn’t available in school or in other aspects

of my life. It allows me to show knowledge to those unaware as well as
learn more myself. (Teen girl survey respondent)
I mostly tweet and retweet about what I find to be misogynistic.
What I really think makes the most impact from my account, is that
there are people from school I know following me that don’t share my
beliefs. The fact that they’re seeing my opinions, is hopefully making
them realize that these things are issues, and we have a responsibility to
care about them. (Teen girl survey respondent)
These comments show how these girls feel that they may be able to use social
media information gleaned from platforms such as Twitter to educate their peers
in and around school (see also Kim and Ringrose 2018; Retallack, Ringrose, and
Lawrence 2016). Indeed, in the second quote this is highlighted as a central
motivating factor in operating a Twitter account. Another respondent noted:
I think the biggest benefit of using social media for my feminism is the
fact that it helps me feel as if I’m making a difference, and interacting
with a community, on a daily basis. In my high school environment,
it’s easy to forget that there are other people out there with the same
progressive beliefs as me; the ability to interact with other feminists
reminds me that there’s still hope. (Teen girl survey respondent)
The experience of feeling alone in one’s feminist beliefs as a teenager at school

and finding “hope” through Twitter is a powerful testament to the affective ca-
pacity of a counter-public providing a sense of community and support, which
we’ll explore further in chapter 7.
Educating others through digital media was something mentioned frequently
by our higher education students as well. For instance, Monica, a 26-year-old
disabled feminist activist who lives in the North of England, is a student and
blogger who runs a feminist website hosting contributions of many feminist
writers. She also moderates a Facebook group for disabled women that has be-
come a popular support group of about 700 members. When we asked about her
10
social media practices, Monica explained that she turned to platforms such as
Twitter when she has “something to rant about [laugh],” or for retweeting other
feminist accounts: “It’s an outlet but also I like to think that I’m educating at the
same time. Like, it gets my opinion out there and hopefully trying to challenge
opinions.”
Participants spoke at length about the importance of digital media to improve
their own feminist understandings such as “educat[ing] myself about feminism
and RT [re-tweeting] intelligent, thought provoking and humorous viewpoints
with a hope of spreading awareness” (Adult female survey respondent). Lucas
(24, Midlands, UK), who was also a university student spoke extensively about
how he used Twitter to educate himself about feminist political issues such as
austerity measures, poverty and pay gaps for women, and the need to address
gender discrimination in schools globally. While he finds Twitter crucial for self-
education, he found Tweeting about feminism himself as a man complicated.
For example, he argues that male feminists are treated differently on Twitter,
highlighting how: “they are praised for saying the same things as women.” Lucas
finds this frustrating. He highlights the issue of “mansplaining,” identified in
chapter 3, “where men speak condescendingly to women and explain simple
things in patronising ways that both exert their dominance in the area, and be-
little women.” Here we can see that being positioned as a male feminist opens dif-
ferent sites of tension around the work of educating oneself and others. The male
respondents report a less obvious sense of solidarity with other self-identified
feminists online, as we will continue to explore.
These experiences of engaging with and developing feminist consciousness
online created a range of clashes in digital feminists’ everyday relationships
with colleagues, family, and friends. The tension between their online femi-
nist community, where they could share views and opinions and get support,
contrasted strongly with experiences of dismissal by significant others in their
everyday lives:
Most of my offline friends wouldn’t identify as [feminist]. I have been re-

ally surprised and disheartened, when talking to them about feminism,
by their reluctance to acknowledge the socially constructed nature of
femininity and the influence of culture on behaviours/practices that
they consider entirely free choices. I have found this frustrating, and
at times upsetting because I have come away from some conversations
feeling as though the problem lies with me—as though I’m imagining
things, that it’s about my personal issues, that I’m over-sensitive and so
on. This has encouraged me to get more involved with feminism online,
where I have found support and realised that I’m not alone. (Adult fe-
male survey respondent)
1
Again, the issue of “feeling alone” in one’s feminist views and feeling upset by
cultures of sexism among friends and family as well as at work, school, and uni-
versity further underscores the importance of Twitter for providing an alterna-
tive mediated space and affective solidarity and support (Hemmings 2012).
Several teens described experiencing trouble with hostile peer groups at
school when they expressed their feminist views. As one explained, “Most of
the negativity I’ve experienced online has been from people that actually know
me from school.” Another confirmed “The worst problems are in school. One
person related my feminist tweet to fascism. Others made sarcastic remarks. . . .
Some would make ‘jokes’ that they know are sexist/racist.” This respondent
also noted that she felt persecuted by peers for being Jewish. The teenaged
respondents spoke about the Men’s Rights Activists (MRA) discourses circu-
lating in peer groups, which they had to contend with. One reported her concern
about the “extreme backlash of ‘meninism’ ”—an MRA identity of defending
men against feminism. Another had tried to discuss meninism on her Twitter
account but said:
[T]‌wo girls who actually go to the same school as me made fun of some
of my anti-meninist tweets and tweeted rude things about me online.
When I called them out for their rude behavior, they threatened to
turn me into the school for online bullying/harassment!! I ended up
blocking them. (Teen girl survey respondent)
We return to the dynamics of teens encountering anti-feminist hostility in school

in chapter 7, but what is important here is how the teens are directly engaging
with and experiencing the meninism discourse but also finding ways to navigate
it. As another teen girl reported: “Every single day I work towards improving
my education and speech enough to be able to come back at anti-feminists,
misogynists, racists, etc like fire with my arguments.” We can see her passionate
attachment to developing her pedagogical message and some of the difficulties
of being both feminist and young and defending one’s views as we continue to
explore in chapter seven (see also Ringrose and Renold 2016a).
Beyond Twitter, several participants had their own YouTube channels or
contributed to blogs, which they argued provided more flexible pedagogical
strategies for disseminating their feminist views. Anwuli, 42, from Nigeria,
is another example of the ways participants often managed several social
media platforms, even operating multiple accounts within the same plat-
form. Anwuli has a personal blog that she uses to discuss her activism work,
such as her mobile library project bringing books to isolated communities,
while also curating a Nigerian feminist blog. Pauline, 24, from Saudi Arabia,
explained how she contributes to multiple feminist blogs. In some blog posts,
12
she recounts experiences of sexism, while in others, she has attempted to make
diverse women’s experiences more visible. Inspired by the concept of Humans
of New York, a photoblog that documents the everyday lives of citizens of
New York City, Pauline started documenting women’s experiences in the Saudi
Arabian context, asking: “how can we go about inserting women back into the
national narrative, visual narrative or city narrative, you know, how can we intro-
duce their stories?” She created a photojournalism project on women’s shoes in
Saudi Arabia, because as she explained “mostly women wore all black whether
the Abaya, the Hijab, or the Niqab . . . the only thing that you can see that stands
out is their shoes.” She took photographs of women’s shoes, which she linked to
their individual stories, which she articulates as an explicit feminist strategy to
get away from constructions of these women as apolitical and having no voice.
She then shared these storied images on the internet through her blog, Twitter,
and Instagram.
Danny, 30, from New York is a musician who uses Twitter and other social
media to promote her music but also to educate others about sexism, which she
says is rife in the music industry. In our interview, she explains how she expresses
her feminism through her songs and educates others through a song circle em-
powerment music group for women:
The last few years I’ve been really, really, focused on my music as a ve-
hicle to empower women and lift them up. . . . That’s like my mission in
life right now. . . . It’s all about inspiring women.
Calling herself a “social justice bard,” in one of her album posts, Danny wrote
a song referencing US president Donald Trump, and his treatment of women,
which she said contributed to “rape culture,” challenging his behavior in her
line: “If you grab me I will make you pay!” Danny explained music is her way of
raising her voice and concern, and encourages others to do the same, in whatever
way they feel safe, but the way she connects and spreads her feminist music and
challenges to rape culture is via social media such as Twitter.
Challenging Rape Culture

All but two of our 46 survey respondents stated they used digital technologies to
challenge rape culture, drawing on a wide range of strategies and practices. Due
to limited space, we have selected a few key examples that demonstrate the plu-
rality of practices, experiences, and strategies used. As Fotopoulou reminds us,
“Feminist activism is not only one thing. . . . it is a complex set of identities and
13
cultures, whose different investments in, and practices with, media technologies
mean different organisational structures and even political priorities” (2016, 1).
Several participants explained that they engaged in discussions of rape culture by
strategically engaging in debates around celebrities, popular culture, and sport:
I try to take part in ongoing discussion about rape culture, like Taylor
Swift being called a “slut” etc from writing about the men she has dated
and trying to explain to some people just what exactly rape culture is
and how it infects far more than people either realize or want to realize.
(Adult female survey participant)
Others challenged rape culture by tweeting “statistics, pictures and graphs, and
simply quotes challenging the normalization of rape culture and misogyny in
our society” (Adult female survey participant). Our male participants specifi-
cally highlighted using Twitter to educate other men about rape culture. Peter,
28, a violence prevention worker from Ohio, explained how he tries to educate
men in his Twitter feed and intervene in the sexism he witnesses online, saying:
I regularly tweet about masculinity and manhood and try to centre my

tweets around engaging men . . . on all issues related to rape culture.
I also use Facebook to share articles. . . . I try and address tweets about
feminism to men who share my identities.
Rob, a 47-year-old professor from Michigan, says he follows feminists on Twitter

to help challenge rape culture, which he defines as:
[T]‌he barrage of social cues that educate boys and men to feel entitled
to the attention and the physical bodies of girls and women, while
educating girls and women to please or accommodate other people’s
needs and to grant access to their bodies for others.
Rob also argued that feminists need to “keep challenging myths and assumptions
about ‘women lying’ or men’s inability to control sexual urges, educate people
about rape culture and rape myths . . . ideally there would be consent curriculum
in primary school.” Peter noted similarly:
Rape culture is an issue men have to tackle because all men benefit from
rape culture, when a man rapes a woman the media will paint a sympa-
thetic picture towards men. They will say an “aspiring athlete and an
aspiring student” to describe an alleged rapist.
14
We see how these male participants are working to redefine the responsibility
of rape culture away from women and victim blaming logics onto men, putting
feminist critiques into motion through their practices.
Women were faced with significantly more difficult negotiations around
whether they ought to try to educate others about rape culture through drawing
upon personal experiences of sexual violence. Personal disclosure was deemed
an important tactic in trying to persuade others about prevalence, or when
trying to prevent further harm:
I spent the first 27 of my 32 years being used and abused. Raped be-
fore my periods even started. I share my experiences and my opinions
which are based on my experience and what I have read and spoken
about with others who want to challenge rape culture. I actually told-off
a bunch of women off on Facebook today for being totally awful about
someone of their own gender. (Adult female survey respondent)
As another participant shared, “I once discussed my experience with rape on

my timeline when one of my followers was trying to slut shame a girl that has
just been raped” (Adult female survey respondent). Personal disclosure was
viewed as risky and opening oneself up to a range of potential abuse. Some of
our participants discussed a complex process of deciding whether to disclose,
and if so how to communicate traumatic personal experiences. Despite her in-
volvement with her intersectional women’s group, Lena (19, London) viewed
Twitter as unsafe for sharing her personal experiences of rape, given its high vis-
ibility. She used Tumblr instead, arguing it was a relatively safe and anonymous
way of tackling her experience of being raped by her boyfriend the previous year.
Through Tumblr, she shared two “rape poems” written in quick succession of
one another as seen in Figures 5.1 and 5.2.
Lena turned to Tumblr when her friends and family disbelieved that her boy-
friend could have raped her:
Not everyone is confident enough to speak in person. But online you

can and it’s much easier . . . like voice things that you might be scared
to in person. Like for example writing my poems and talking about
rape. I’m talking about things that I’ve not even yet told my mum, sort
of thing.
Lena explained these posts on Tumblr were an important part of the “painful
process” of coming to recognize her experience as rape. Lena’s experiences of
others disbelief relate to Linda Alcoff ’s (2018) work on victim rhetoric and
the epistemic fallacy around rape, which she explains as a cross cultural and
15
Figure 5.1 Rape Poem 1. Author screenshot.
Figure 5.2 Rape Poem 2. Author screenshot.
society-wide tendency to challenge and disbelieve women and girls who po-
sition themselves as victims of sexual violence. Tumblr is the online space
deemed more safe and anonymous for beginning the painful process of sharing,
expressing, and working through her experiences, without fear of mass sharing
and therefore of exposure and its risks (Cho 2016; Kanai 2017; Warfield 2016).
16
Does Fear, Hostility and Trolling Dominate

Twitter?
As Lena’s fear of Twitter alludes to, and as we’ve already discussed in chapter 1
of this book, Twitter has been widely critiqued for its hostility, with hate speech
increasingly normalized, and women disproportionately targeted by trolls, due
to its communicative structures that allow any public user to directly @ one an-
other ( Jane 2017; Megarry 2014). Trolling and online abuse were widely ex-
perienced by the survey respondents with 72 percent (n= 34) experiencing
negativity, hostility, or trolling in response to their feminism and challenges to
rape culture online.2 This online abuse and trolling ranged in nature from being
personally attacked around appearance, to sexual orientation and their feminist
views and values:
I have lost followers, been called an “ignorant woman,” “man-hater”

and “lesbian” in debates with regards to feminist issues. (Adult female
survey respondent)
I’ve had men be aggressively hostile, abusive and trolling—all un-
provoked. I rarely enter into a dialogue, yet have had to block men who
deliberately searched keywords and were randomly abusive. (Adult fe-
A significant number of the responses (26 percent) also included violent threats

and sexual violence, which they said ranged “From serious rational arguments,
to insults directed at me being stupid/ugly/a whore, to actual threats of violence
& rape.” Another said:
I get called a bitch and an ugly whore pretty much weekly. I was also told
that I deserved to be raped and that that would be the only way I’d ever
get laid and that I should be grateful. (Adult female survey respondent)
Scholars have identified how women’s experiences of trolling often include sexual
degradation and threats of sexual violence and rape (Henry and Powell 2017; Jane
2017). Some of our participants had come to view overt aggression that regressed
into sexual threats as “sad” and “predictable,” noting the repeated issues of:
Anti-feminists popping up in response to a RT/comment/discus-

sion and quite aggressively belittling the feminist point of view. Very
rarely, if ever, do they respectfully challenge—rather they attempt to
bully/dominate by demanding evidence/proof etc, and telling us in no
17
uncertain terms that we are wrong. At best it’s sarcastic and patronizing,
at worst it’s offensive—for example making reference to those who ob-
ject to pornography as ugly/jealous/needing to be f**ked. (Adult fe-
Danny, 30, from New York City, described being trolled the first time she tweeted
a personal experience of being sexually harassed. Danny reported receiving neg-
ative comments from men who asked her “what do you expect,?” and that she
deserved what she got. This links again to Lena’s fear about tweeting about her
personal experiences of rape, and Danny says she now expects this kind of abuse
in response to her posts, making an important point that such trolling is “actually
a part of rape culture.” She went on to add how she was also particularly prone to
receiving “bad comments” when:
I’m challenging like patriarchal society and privilege. Like white privi-
lege, male privilege, if I use those words I get a lot of things coming back
at me. And on Twitter I was recently using the #ShoutingBack hashtag
and a lot of women supporting each other . . . but there were also really
horrible men actively searching through that hashtag to find us and in-
dividually harass us.
Danny also shared that after multiple bouts of harassment she changed her
tactics from trying to positively engage with trolls online to simply blocking
them, noting:
Over the last couple of years, I’ve gotten into these really dark
conversations with people where I’m clearly not educating them. It’s
just that they’re going to keep harassing me and trying to push any
button they can. So, I’ve become a little more willing to just hit the
block button and avoid the conversation.
Alison, 43, from the North of England, disclosed a significant and prolonged
case of trolling related to the Ched Evans case in England3 where Twitter played
a significant part in revealing the identity of the victim:
Within hours of him being found guilty, obviously his family and
friends had taken to Facebook and had broken the anonymity of
his victim. And obviously, that’s not something we can tolerate, you
know, that’s not something that legally is okay. And morally it’s wrong
as well. And on Twitter, I’m quite an outspoken person, I tend to say
my views.
18
In response, Alison started tweeting her view that Evans “shouldn’t be allowed to
play football again ever,” to which she immediately began to experience repeated
trolling from one account continuously tweeting misogynistic and abusive
comments and following and reporting women including Alison. As she later
discovered, this male troll had a history of getting involved in such situations,
and not letting go.
Initially, Alison ignored him, and then despite blocking him, he began creating
new accounts to tweet her. Eventually, she contacted the managing director of
UK Twitter, whom she worked with to cancel any account he was making. From
December 2013 until our interview in July 2015, Alison estimates he has prob-
ably made about 200 accounts: “he just gets an account taken down and then he
restarts another one.” In addition to reporting this troll to Twitter, Alison went to
the police after the troll found a photograph of her, an address and her university
where she was studying, and created a fake Twitter account in her name. This
sustained campaign impacted her mental health, and she describes the whole
experience as “a nightmare.” Unfortunately, the police were unable to do much,
and suggested the best thing was for her to leave Twitter; widespread cases of
women leaving Twitter to protect themselves have been shown to be a signifi-
cant effect of trolling ( Jane 2017). In the end, Alison and another Twitter femi-
nist contacted a barrister and solicitor who took up their case pro bono, to work
with Interpol to catch him. Eighteen months after the ordeal began, Twitter
changed their account policy to make it more difficult for people like him to
create new accounts. In our interview, Alison felt that her own communication
with the UK Twitter branch had helped make the company realize how serious
these situations are. In her own words:
I think it has made a difference because he’s seen it’s gotten to a point
where I’ve been so angry at Twitter for allowing this to go on, giving
him sort of ideas that we need to stop it from happening, you need to
implement things to stop this happening.
Strategies to Manage Trolls
Just as the feminist organizers in c hapter 4 developed a range of strategies to
manage or avoid trolls, so too did the feminists using Twitter to whom we spoke.
As Fotopoulou (2016, 1) notes, feminists navigate between “articulations of op-
portunity and realisations of impossibility” that they must judge on a case-by-
case basis and constantly re-evaluate. Rather than assume women disappear or
become silenced, many think carefully about if or when to intervene, and weigh
19
up the consequences or energy in doing so. Like our respondents in c hapter 4,

many participants shared that they purposefully chose not to respond because
they wished to avoid being attacked. One survey respondent explained that she
didn’t experience a lot of trolling because:
I pre-empt it and hold my virtual tongue. I retweet a variety of topics of

Twitter but rarely share my own personal opinions or join in discussion
with potentially harsh and hostile strangers. Though I have had hostile
tweets aimed my way now and again. (Adult female survey respondent)
Others explained that their lack of trolling was because they “have barely any
followers . . . too far under the radar.” As we will see in chapter 7, many younger
feminists in schools have in fact taken to using hidden backchannels to engage
with feminism, as these visible public-facing mediums were seen as too hostile,
dangerous, and unsafe.
It is also worth noting that some of our participants experienced chronic
mental health problems, and while they perhaps followed feminists in digital
spaces, were reticent to share feminist views themselves. As one participant
said: “I know I’m not resilient enough to cope with trolls, so I don’t put my-
self out there much. I have so much respect for women who do” (Adult fe-
male survey respondent). These findings complicate celebratory notions that
engaging in digital feminist activism is easy or that a digital counter-public is
wholly safe, comforting, and inclusive. Instead we have a growing picture of the
ways various inequalities beyond simple access or literacy prevent some groups
from participating as fully as they would like in online public debate and creating
feminist counter-publics, raising age-old questions about the role of women in
the public sphere, given the range tactics to dissuade their participation (Salter
2013; 2016). Indeed, as we discuss in chapter 7, our research shows the ways
that engaging as a digital feminist activist requires a certain level of resilience,
confidence, and “thick skin,” which may also relate to degrees of privilege. We see
complex strategies of building digital literacies—where women learn to navigate
the “risks” of online trolls through trial and error and through their experiences,
and make complex judgments and employ highly creative strategies to manage
the negative impact of trolls.
Sarah, a 42-year-old school consultant from London is an avid sporting fan
of football, cricket, and boxing. Like other participants, Sarah runs two Twitter
accounts, a personal one as well as a sporting Twitter account about boxing,
through which she has actively challenged rape jokes and “lads.” In our inter-
view, she explained how she witnessed and intervened in various forms of trol-
ling, including one Twitter discussion where a group of boys attacked a woman
for making a sexually explicit comment. After intervening, the boys then turned
120
on Sarah saying “I hope you die. I hope you hang yourself.” Although many of
our participants shared feelings of anxiety, fear, and anger in response to trolling,
as Sarah explained, she “kept her cool” and used innovative ways to confront the
trolling:
I had a look on their profiles and stupidly they had their full names
and they had the names of their school. So, I did a bit of googling and
the most abusive one I messaged him back and I said oh what would
Mr. So and So—which is the name of his headteacher think? “Oh, I’m
very sorry miss, I’m very sorry.” They all deleted their tweets and they
scampered.
Here we see Sarah engaging in what Jane (2017) calls “digilante” (digital vigi-
lante) tactics of taking justice into her own hands by threatening the boys with
reporting them to their school authority. Despite this example, however, Sarah
felt that it was often useless to intervene, as some “lads” are “glorifying in the
attention” from even receiving negative responses to content such as rape jokes.
As Sarah explained, “a lot of it is just attention seeking and they will say anything,
whether its anti-woman or just plain stupid, just to get attention . . . naively,
I think it’s just some sad creature locked in his bedroom somewhere.” While
Sarah as an adult felt confident to confront these boys, as we see in c hapter 7 it
was not as easy for the teens we spoke to deal with threats to “kill yourself.”
It is interesting that Sarah, like some of the organizers we spoke with in
chapter 4 positions these trolls as “sad” or “lonely” or teenage boys in their
mom’s basements. As research on MRAs (Ging 2017) and new forms of domi-
nant “geek masculinity” (Salter and Blodgett 2017) demonstrate, many of these
men are middle class, have good jobs, families, and are well educated. Thus, we
need to dispel these normative assumptions about who may engage in mediated
abuse and interrogate how trolling is not an isolated and individualized practice,
but instead is a well organized and connected movement spreading misogyny
and vitriol in response to feminism ( Jane 2017).
Despite some of their stated aims to educate other men through their uses of
Twitter and social media, three of the four men participants felt that they had
inadequate strategies for addressing or intervening into Twitter trolling. For ex-
ample, Lucas (24, Midlands, UK) argued passionately that the:
[O]‌nus of challenging rape culture falls [on] . . . Male feminists es-

pecially straight cis ones need to relentlessly tackle the status quo re-
garding rape and sexual assault and force upon younger generations
that it is a man’s duty not to rape not a woman’s duty not to be raped.
12
However, when it came to concretely challenging comments online, Lucas

explained that he “wouldn’t feel comfortable intervening” unless he per-
sonally knew the “girl” being targeted. In contrast to some of the others, he
explained he did not want to educate (other men) as he feels “it’s not worth
it.” He fears (rightfully so perhaps) of being subjected to sarcastic comments
and banter from his male friends or other men on Twitter, who see this type
of “white knighting,” where men stand up for women online, as “beta male”
activism, as just a ploy to get female attention. Here we can see Lucas ex-
plicitly referencing MRA language of beta males, so-called lesser men who
cannot compete with alphas (Ging 2017). Lucas discussed having a group of
friends from school who mock him and tell him to “shut up” if he calls himself
a feminist. As he explained, within his circle of friends, being called a “fem-
inist” is a generic insult for men, and is akin to being called a “dick.” Lucas
says he feels defeated from male peers’ “banter,” their views that feminism is
“some kind of evil cult,” and his friends “refusing to listen,” which appears to
have immobilized him. Although he has tried to show his male friends how
feminism can help them, he is “exhausted from trying,” and has given up after
reaching a point of no longer being able to continue. He suffers the common
state of affective exhaustion or fatigue (Ahmed 2017) from doing “diversity
work” such as feminism amidst hostile rejection, belittling, and shaming of
his views. These findings are similar to the types of defeat and exhaustion ex-
perienced by some of our professional woman activists in c hapter 4, but pro-
vide specific insight into the emotional labor required to perform as a “male
feminist” on Twitter.
Like Lucas, Stan, 23, from the North of England said he had received a “mod-
erate” amount of trolling, but none that is comparable to that directed toward
women: “Men’s rights activists have harassed me on occasion often if supporting
a women friend who is being targeted. Normally they call me a ‘beta’ or tell me
to kill myself.” Again, we see reference to key MRA terms such as “beta” (infe-
rior masculinity) to shame male feminists, as well as violent threats, although
these are not sexually violent as are those directed at women. Stan says that he
blocks trolls and reserves commenting on his friends’ use of “casual sexist jokes/
behaviors.” Similarly, Rob (47, Michigan) also shied away from direct confron-
tation on Twitter as he was concerned about his academic job as a professor,
and the ease of Twitter “for hostile people (trolls) to contact you in social media
environments.” He worried that “Ideas or opinions have been used to bully or
even fire academics,” noting that this meant he kept his interventions “more low
level challenging of sexist assumptions in myself and others.” Evading conflict
and blocking, rather than responding or engaging with sexism are the dominant
strategies here.
12
Peter (28, Ohio), a trained violence prevention worker, was our only male
participant who tried to purposefully call out other men on their sexism on
Twitter:
I also try and collect trolls in people’s mentions and call out sexism
when it’s on display in responses to news articles. I think it’s important
for two reasons: 1) for women to see that men care, and 2) that other
men know a man will call them on their sexism when it’s likely that has
never happened before.
Peter, more than any of the other participants had seriously engaged with and
explored “masculine privilege” and articulated further how he possessed the
ability to challenge males:
If it’s someone who is clearly uneducated and has never thought of fem-
inist issues, I try and engage that person—especially if it’s a fellow man.
I believe that men’s roles within feminism vary, but in large part we are
supposed to educate other men, collect men who are trolling women,
and educate those men. Even though it’s burdensome, it’s our burden
to bear. One thing about cishet [sic] male privilege is it affords us the
ability to respond to misogyny without, generally, being stalked or ha-
rassed to the point of going offline. In general, I engage less because
I think it’s going to change that man’s mind, and more because I want
women to see there is a man who will show up for them and defend
them against these kinds of attacks, and equally important, for men to
see that it is possible for a man to challenge another man’s sexism and it
is necessary. Role modelling anti-sexist behaviors is incredibly impor-
tant to me. If it’s someone clearly trying to get a rise out of me and ‘troll,
I generally just tell them to fuck off and block them.
Peter’s nuanced replies here again underscores that calling out men is “a burden”
that takes an “emotional toll.” Much like the professional activists in c hapter 4,
however, he believes that taking on this burden is critical for changing conscious-
ness. He went on to argue that challenging “micro-aggressions” and the language
men use was the most important thing to “call out,” and that men needed to do
the “emotional labor of unlearning misogyny and sexism.” What we find striking
is that he is the only man in our data to be able to articulate this dimension of
his masculine privilege (Kimmel 2013). Peter has also worked out a complex
strategy to identity those men who are simply trying to get a rise whom he’d
block and those who seem educable, returning us to the interesting pedagogical
dynamics that evolve on Twitter. Exploring how we can encourage awareness of
123
these sophisticated techniques to weed through and sort out how to deal with a
wide range of discourses comprising mediated misogyny (Vickery and Everbach
2018) and technologically facilitated sexual violence (Powell and Henry 2017,
and to confront diverse “hybrid” forms of toxic masculinity (Blodgett and Salter
2017; Ging 2017) is an important thread we return to in the conclusion to
this book.
Implications for the Arguments in the Book

In this chapter, we have shown the dramatic and life-changing affordances of
Twitter to connect globally diverse feminists across time and space. These
findings have important implications that challenge the idea that feminism is
being “popularized” in ways that render women’s participation as any less politi-
cally charged and invested in social struggle than in previous eras (Banet-Weiser
2018; Gill 2017). We saw that the ways feminism was being debated, discussed,
and practiced was largely conceived as activism, and the relationship it had to
changing manifold relations in our participants’ lives were discussed at length. In
this way, we think our findings also complicate dystopic theories of “communi-
cative capitalism” (Dean 2009), which suggest that social media is encouraging
individualized fantasies of change rather than genuine material transformations
of social relations.
We demonstrated how our participants experienced Twitter as extremely
positive in generating community, connection, and support for feminist views,
arguing we understand them as generating a digital counter-public. Twitter
afforded capacities for forging collective understanding and sharing to transcend
physical boundaries and extend geographical space. Our findings challenge the
notion that while Twitter may give the illusion of collective change, this is an
affective feeling rather than material effects (Papacharissi 2015). The technolog-
ical affordances of Twitter were therefore found to be key in connecting with
like-minded people one can “identify with” online as part of solidifying affective
counter-publics (McCosker 2015).
We outlined the pedagogical dimensions and affordances of Twitter as a
platform identified by participants as essential for engaging and educating
others around issues such as rape culture. Participating in digital feminist ac-
tivism on Twitter was not entirely positive of course, since all the participants
had knowledge of or had experienced negativity and/or “trolling” ( Jane
2017; Shaw 2014). We saw that speaking out about rape culture proved more
emotionally draining for women and girls, especially if they referenced their
personal experiences of sexual victimization, which was viewed as one of the
riskiest activities online, something we will explore in much greater depth in
124
the following chapter. As with chapter 4, we also found significant evidence

that continuously engaging with high levels of trolling and conflict was ex-
hausting and defeating as we saw with Alison in relation to the Ched Evans
case, and Lucas in relation to combatting anti-feminism, and the shaming
of his masculinity from his young adult male peers. Indeed, also significant
was the finding that despite their rhetorical claims about wanting to chal-
lenge rape culture online, only one of the men, a trained violence preven-
tion worker, felt confident enough to engage and challenge men on online
platforms, which raises important questions about what types of strategies
can be adopted to fight back against trolls but also how men can learn to en-
gage around issues of sexism and toxic masculinity in everyday life. What
we were able to demonstrate was the developing digital literacies and how
our participants had tried a range of complex strategies to cope with online
conflicts and abuse. Although many activists, policymakers, and movements
“increasingly see bystanders as significant social change agents” (Rentschler
2017, 565; Henry and Powell 2017), our research demonstrates that digital
intervention is often complex, and not always effective, and may lead to neg-
ative consequences for the intervener. Although research is paying more at-
tention to it, this is an under-researched area that scholars should continue to
explore, and we touch upon this further in chapter 8.
Overall, despite experiences of conflict and trolling Twitter was still viewed
by many participants as a safer and easier place for engaging in feminist activism
and discussions of gender and sexual violence than offline spaces such as the
street, workplaces, schools, and among family and friends. Our findings about
feelings of relative safety online lends further support to just how important dig-
ital platforms are in providing pedagogical spaces to develop feminist conscious-
ness and find and maintain support for feminist views in our contemporary
moment; given they provide an affective counter-public for practicing feminist
politics. This becomes increasingly evident in the following chapter where we
explore the complex affective practices of participating in a Twitter hashtag that
is directly challenging rape culture.
125
6
Hashtag Feminism
Sharing Stories with #BeenRapedNeverReported
On October 26, 2014, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio per-

sonality Jian Ghomeshi was abruptly fired from his role as host of the popular
morning show Q, a position that had propelled Ghomeshi to stardom in the
Canadian arts and culture scene and burgeoning fame in the US media market.
Mainstream media reported that Ghomeshi had been accused of sexual vio-
lence, including an incident where a woman was left bruised and with a cracked
rib. An investigative report by the Toronto Star, published on October 26, 2014,
described how three young women had alleged that Ghomeshi had physi-
cally attacked them on dates without consent, with a fourth ex-CBC employee
alleging that Ghomeshi had sexually harassed her at work (Donovan and Brown
2014). Within a week of Ghomeshi’s firing, an additional four women and one
man came forward offering up their own detailed stories of Ghomeshi’s violent
behavior toward them, accusations that generated widespread discussion in the
Canadian news media about sexual violence, consent, and toxic masculinity.1
While the Ghomeshi story made visible the often-concealed problem of
sexual violence, it also unleashed sexist assumptions about victims of sexual
violence, including the troubling notion that “real” victims always report their
assaults to police. Indeed, this idea was used by some, such as the National Post’s
Christie Blatchford, to discredit Ghomeshi’s accusers, none of whom had pre-
viously reported their assaults to police (Blatchford 2014). Frustrated by these
public attacks on the women who had come forward, Toronto Star reporter
Antonia Zerbisias created the Twitter hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported with
her friend Sue Montgomery, a justice reporter at the Montreal Gazette. Both
women used the hashtag to share their own stories of sexual assault and why
they did not report them to the authorities (see Figure 6.1). The hashtag began
to trend, and within 24 hours it had been used nearly 8 million times by people
from all over the world (Gallant 2014), becoming a “feminist meme event”
125
126
Figure 6.1 Original tweet from Antonia Zerbisias. Author screenshot.
(Thrift 2014) that did not just reference the Ghomeshi allegations, but came to
symbolize the prevalence and persistence of rape culture both within Canada
and globally.
In this chapter we focus on the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag as a
case study that illuminates how Twitter and “hashtag feminism” (Berridge and
Portwood-Stacer 2014) create new lived possibilities for feminist identifica-
tion, experience, organizing, and resistance. Mobilizing the concept of “affec-
tive solidarity” (Hemmings 2012) we pay particular attention to the experiences
around girls’ and women’s use of the hashtag, including why they decided to
share their own story of sexual violence via Twitter, how they felt doing so, and
what responses they received from friends, families, and strangers. We argue
that these experiences demonstrate the ways in which Twitter hashtags such
as #BeenRapedNeverReported can generate affective relations that are both
personally healing and that can move participants to engage in social change
initiatives, including starting an online support group for survivors, as one of our
participants did. In this sense, we position #BeenRapedNeverReported as valu-
able as a tool for personal healing and consciousness-raising and for its ability to
produce other forms of progressive social change.
We draw on two types of data here. First, we discursively analyze a group
of purposefully selected tweets from the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag
posted within the first week in which the hashtag was active. This analysis allows
us to illuminate key themes identified from our interview data and provide a
snapshot of the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag. We then explore data
from semi-structured interviews with seven Canadian and American women
who used the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag in the immediate after-
math of the Ghomeshi allegations. These interviews help us to understand the
experiences of women who use social media to challenge rape culture, informa-
tion we cannot ascertain from their tweets alone.
After a general call for interview subjects using the hashtag
#BeenRapedNeverReported failed to yield results, we contacted potential
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Has h t ag F e m in is m 127
participants directly via our project Twitter account. Direct messages were
sent to people who were randomly selected based upon their use of the
#BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag to share an experience of sexual violence.
Therefore, people who used the hashtag to express support but not to share a
story, or organizations who used the hashtag to connect to a wider conversation
about sexual violence, were not included. Out of the approximately 50 direct
messages we sent, we received responses from and were able to arrange interviews
with seven women. This experience points to the difficulty for researchers to get
“behind” the hashtag to learn about the experiences of those who participate in
particular hashtags. The sensitive nature of our topic, coupled with fear of trol-
ling and a lack of trust when contacted by an unknown person on the internet,
likely informed many women’s hesitancy to speak to us. Indeed, several women
asked questions about our project before agreeing to be interviewed, and we
attempted to be as transparent as possible with our research aims.
Thus, given our small data set, this chapter is not meant to be representative
of all hashtag users or all posts, but instead, gives in-depth insights into the uses
of Twitter hashtags, specifically shedding light on a limited number of people
whose motivations and experiences can tell us something about the ways in
which the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag functions as both a discursive
and affective intervention into dominant public discourse about rape culture
and sexual violence.
In this sense, this chapter differs from the analysis of #BeenRapedNever
Reported found in chapter 3, which is based upon the use of an algorithm to
randomly select tweets for analysis. We understand this as a productive dif-
ference that makes apparent the ways in which our chosen research methods
shaped the data collected—a reality that often goes unacknowledged. While
the data we obtained from our algorithm was useful in getting a more “macro”
feel of the hashtag, without interview data and a purposefully selected group of
tweets we would miss a key part of the #BeenRapedNeverReported story—that
girls and women did in fact use the hashtag to share personal stories of sexual
violence, and that this sharing was deeply meaningful with both personal and
public implications.
Navigating the Hashtag Landscape

Before we discuss the experiences of hashtag participants, it is necessary to pro-
vide an overview of the landscape of the hashtag. Here we provide examples
of the kinds of tweets that populated the hashtag, as well as highlighting key
discursive interventions that emerged, including the need to consider rape
culture intersectionally, the prevalence of assault by intimate partners, and
128
the importance of contextualizing rape culture within wider systems of power

inequalities and oppression. We are positioning these discursive interventions
as an example of “discursive activism,” which according to Frances Shaw (2012a,
42) is “speech or texts that seek to challenge opposing discourses by exposing
power relations within these discourses, denaturalizing what appears natural,
and demonstrating the flawed assumptions and situatedness of mainstream so-
cial discourse.” We have chosen examples that challenge popular rape myths
(as we describe in the Introduction), disrupting them through discursive inter-
vention. Thus, we have purposefully selected the following examples to high-
light these discursive interventions, not because they were the most prevalent
or the only discourses present, but because we believe that they’re significant
in what they’re discursively accomplishing. Thus, the following analysis draws
from traditions of feminist media studies’ use of discursive textual analysis
(Gill 2007) and is not meant to provide an overall representative sample of the
hashtag.
Over the past several years there has been important debate within femi-
nist communities around the politics of inclusivity and intersectionality within
online feminist communities (see Thelandersson 2014; Portwood- Stacer
and Berridge 2014; Daniels 2016; Keller 2012). While we are unable to thor-
oughly unpack these debates here, many of these conversations have focused on
whether social media platforms such as Twitter can facilitate meaningful fem-
inist dialogue where difference and diversity is taken into account. While we
obviously cannot provide a definitive answer to this here, we can point to the
ways in which feminist intersectional critique was mobilized in the early days of
the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag. Much of this mobilization came from
participants themselves, who pointed out how their intersectional identities
worked to prevent them from reporting their assault. One poster writes, “Black
women rarely report rape because this nation has been taught that we are
UnRapeable #BeenRapedNeverReported,” a tweet that was shared 117 times
and “liked” 141 times. In 15 words this Twitter user draws a clear connection
between racist discursive constructions about black women’s sexuality (Collins
2005), the history of racism in the US/Canada (it is unclear what nation she is
referring to), and contemporary rape culture, and in doing so points out the dis-
tinctiveness about black women’s experience with rape.
Indigenous women too drew attention to the specificities of violence to-
ward Indigenous women in Canada. For example, one woman tweets, “Many
#Indigenous women have #BeenRapedNeverReported as we’re more likely
to be raped again by the cops. #Colonialism #Racism #MMIW.” This tweet
highlights the ways in which, similar to black women, Indigenous women
are hesitant to report their assault, due to the lengthy history of oppression
by Canadian institutions, including the police and the courts. Another reads,
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“Settler colonialism equals state violence against indigenous women #MMIW

#BeenRapedNeverReported.” Both tweets locate their critiques within the vi-
olence of colonialism as a context for the ongoing violence against Indigenous
girls and women, signified by the #MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous
Women) hashtag, which we will discuss in more depth later in this section.
Other users highlighted sexual and gender identities, particularly trans
identities, as reasons that they didn’t report their assaults. For example, one tweet
reads, “I still worry about how many other trans women he’s preyed upon be-
cause I didn’t report. #BeenRapedNeverReported.” Another user tweets, “Being
trans, I felt I’d have my gender picked apart. I didn’t want to deal w explaining &
defending my identity then. #BeenRapedNeverReported.” And another simply
reads, “#BeenRapedNeverReported because im [sic] trans.” These Twitter users
consider their own experience of assault within an intersectional framework,
and in doing so, discursively intervene in a dominant rape myth that portrays
cis-gendered women as normative victims (Benedict 1992; Meyers 1997).
Drawing attention to one’s trans identity then becomes an important strategy to
problematize the hegemonic focus on cis-gendered victims and to acknowledge
the high numbers of trans people who are victims of sexual violence, which is
reported at approximately 50 percent in the United States (Forge 2012).
Another important theme that emerged in the hashtag was users specifi-
cally challenging rape myths around the identity of the perpetrator. Indeed, a
significant number of tweets revealed being raped by a boyfriend or husband.
For example, one tweet reads, “I was 17. He was my 1st boyfriend, and he al-
most killed me. I’ll never forget . . . #BeenRapedNeverReported.” Another
one reads: “He pushed me on the couch and said: ‘you can’t say no, you’re
my girlfriend.’ I cried all that night. Many after. #BeenRapedNeverReported,”
a tweet that received 87 retweets and 121 “likes.” And another user tweeted,
“My husband raped me. Many times. ‘No’ was never an option, even if I begged
or cried. Last time, he tore my vagina #BeenRapedNeverReported.” And fi-
nally: “#BeenRapedNeverReported I went to church leader, only to be told that
a husband can’t rape his wife. @LDSchurch: you were horrible to me.” Indeed,
the number of tweets that described being raped by a boyfriend or husband are
shocking—even to those who are familiar with sexual violence statistics; and
this is why the intervention made by these tweets is so critical. By sharing stories
of sexual violence perpetrated by an intimate partner, women are not only
problematizing rape myths with regard to who a rapist is, but demonstrating
how domestic relationships are often situated within the broader confines of
rape culture where women’s voices are silenced, or their experiences ignored.
The last discursive intervention we want to highlight is the ways in which
#BeenRapedNeverReported participants used hashtags to draw links between
rape culture and other forms of inequality. Elsewhere we have described this
130
practice as using hashtags as a “narrative device” (Mendes, Keller, and Ringrose

forthcoming) to speak to incidents (for example, rape) that are too painful to
articulate in one’s own words. Here, however, we want to emphasize the ways in
which the use of other hashtags in combination with #BeenRapedNeverReported
discursively connect the conversation about rape culture with other forms of op-
pression. For instance, in our discussion earlier about Indigenous women, we
pointed out that several tweets used hashtags such as #Colonialism or #MMIW
to locate conversations about rape culture within larger historical contexts
of colonialism and a history of violence against Indigenous girls and women.
In doing so, these tweets problematize incorrect assertions that, for example,
blame individual Indigenous women for their victimization. Other tweets made
connections between rape culture and the Black Lives Matter movement: “And
they wonder why so many have #BeenRapedNeverReported when police
murder unarmed young black men without consequence #BlackLivesMatter.” In
hashtagging #Black Lives Matter here, the writer is discursively connecting these
problems, acknowledging unequal power structures that disadvantage BAME
communities in the justice system.
Other hashtags such as #RehtaehParsons and #IBelieveLucy were used
to connect the stories of #BeenRapedNeverReported with high- profile
news stories of girls and women (in this case, Rehtaeh Parsons and Lucy
DeCoutere) who were victims of sexual violence. For example, one tweet reads,
“You took away her name and then denied her justice! And you wonder why
#BeenRapedNeverReported was trending? #RehtaehParsons is her name!!.”2
While many tweets discussed affects such as disgust, empowerment, and
anger, several tweets literally hashtagged their emotions, calling attention to
the ways in which users feel as a strategy to build solidarity among a diversity
of Twitter users. One tweet, for instance, reads, “Rinelle Harper, a 16-year-old,
raped & left for dead in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine River. We’re with you. #out-
rage #BeenRapedNeverReported.” Tweets such as this draw together collective
feelings in a way that, we argue, allows for the possibility of solidarity. It is this
idea we turn to now in the next section as we focus on our participant interviews.
“It Just Made Me Sick to My Stomach”:

Experiencing the Affective Weight
of #BeenRapedNeverReported
While there were significant differences between our interview participants in
terms of age, occupations, class statuses, and region, all women spoke at length
about the intense emotions they experienced while learning about, following,
13
and participating in the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag. Chantelle, a 40-

something accountant from Calgary, Canada, describes her “outrage” upon
hearing about the Ghomeshi allegations. An avid Twitter user, she followed the de-
veloping story closely and quickly came across the #BeenRapedNeverReported
hashtag. She explains, “When I saw it [the hashtag] it just was exactly how
I felt . . . like, this is exactly why women don’t report—there’s so many obstacles
and nobody believes you. It just makes me sick to my stomach.” Chantelle was
“moved by what the hashtag was about” and decided to post about her own ex-
perience of being raped when she was 25 (see Figure 6.2), as well as her experi-
ence being sexually molested as a young child, posts that garnered many positive
messages of support from other hashtag users.
Yet despite the significant support that Chantelle received she recounts those
weeks after the Ghomeshi story broke as being very stressful and disruptive to
her life:
It was absolutely gut-wrenching. It was very emotional, and it was very

upsetting to me, this whole thing, being a part of that hashtag, reading
other women’s little tweets, 140-character tweets. One resonated, right,
and it was really . . . it was really a tough couple of weeks. Even though
it was very positive, it was very, very difficult for me. There were some
nights where I didn’t sleep.
Chantelle’s comments point to the range of intense emotions that the hashtag
cultivated, feelings of being physically ill (specifically mentioning her stomach
and gut) and upset, as well as simultaneously feeling supported and that she had
a voice that was being heard.
As we have described elsewhere (see Keller, Mendes, and Ringrose 2018),
Chantelle’s experiences of bodily discomfort around the Ghomeshi story was a
significant aspect of her participation in the hashtag, functioning as connective
tissue to the other women tweeting. Indeed, the ways in which other women’s
Figure 6.2 #BeenRapedNeverReported tweet Author screenshot.

132
tweets resonated with her provided both comfort and upset in a way that produces
what Claire Hemmings (2012) calls “affective solidarity.” Hemmings describes
affective solidarity as generated through experiences of affective dissonance or
discomfort, rather than through identity politics or empathy. Claiming that af-
fective solidarity is necessary for feminist social change, Hemmings privileges
affects, including rage, frustration, and/or the desire for connection, as genera-
tive for a feminist politics anchored in “the desire for transformation out of the
experience of discomfort” (158). In this sense, dissonant feelings allow for pro-
ductive connections to form and provide a basis for feminist activism.
This feeling of discomfort can be mapped across many of our participants and
other Twitter users’ experiences with #BeenRapedNeverReported. Emma, a 19-
year-old university student based in Ottawa, Canada, was sexually assaulted by
one of her best friends only two weeks before the #BeenRapedNeverReported
hashtag began trending. An avid Twitter user, Emma found the hashtag on
her newsfeed, and was quickly drawn into the stories she began to read, while
making sense of her own experience:
I was really moved because I actually found one of my friends, who

I don’t follow on Twitter, using the hashtag. And I had no idea that she’d
been through this. And so, it was quite moving to be able to sit there
and say, wow, look at all these people, look at this, and it’s still going on.
I just found it quite emotional, because I feel like a lot of people had
never actually talked about what had happened to them or labelled it a
sexual assault. And so, it felt comfortable online, which I think is a new
concept, that you have this idea of comfort and solidarity and support.
Emma describes her “emotional” experience reading the hashtag, moving her to
contribute her own story, in which she publicly identified herself. She reflects
on this experience: “I was a little bit nervous because it was the first time I was
attaching my name to it [the assault]. And so, there was a sense of ownership of
the event that I had to come to terms with . . . it’s such a public platform where
anyone can find it, and so I was nervous of any repercussions that might come up
posting it. But at the same time, I was excited and comforted by the atmosphere,
and so I was really moved to contribute.”
Ally, a 29-year-old roofer who lives in rural Ohio, also describes a mix of
emotions upon reading the hashtag:
I was nervous. I was excited. I was kind of worried because I know

people who have my Twitter information, that might not have known
[about the assault] and definitely do now. . . . I looked through [the
hashtag] quite a bit before even posting my own. I’m sitting here, and
13
I was looking at all these reasons [women didn’t report] and it made me
feel a lot less alone about everything, because I didn’t report.
Similar to Chantelle, both Emma and Ally’s confrontation with the hashtag was
marked by discordant emotions of nervousness, inspiration, and excitement that
ultimately gave them both the motivation to share the story of the assault.
Likewise, Brit, a 39-year-old American living in the Greater Toronto Area,
describes her intense investment in the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag
upon seeing it trending: “And I was just reading people’s tweets, just reading
them and reading them. And after a while, just seeing all these common themes,
I was just very sad.” Brit’s emotional response to reading the hashtag encouraged
her to tweet about her own experiences with sexual violence, which included
being raped on two occasions—when she was 19 by an acquaintance and then
again in her early 30s by her (then) husband and his friend. Brit describes how
her tweets seemed to open a floodgate among her friends on Twitter, many of
whom began to share their own stories of sexual violence.
Yet Brit did not take the decision to post about her own experiences lightly.
While she confidently posted about her rape when she was 19, her tweet
about her marital rape was significantly more stressful because Brit recognized
that while public discourse about rape has changed significantly over the past
decades, marital rape remains somewhat taboo. Brit recounts, “I was a little ap-
prehensive posting it, but I thought it through and I decided that it’s still as im-
portant for people to know. . . . I did almost delete it the next day, I felt a little
bit nervous. But I left it. . . . I guess I had a little anxiety about the marital one.”
Brit’s comments point to the ways in which many women carefully reflected on
the hashtag; contributions were often not made without a consideration of pos-
sible consequences and significant emotional investment, including a fear not of
public attention, but of a lack of attention.
Lauren, a 30-year-old Toronto-based woman and three-time sexual assault
survivor describes how her biggest anxiety around sharing her story online was
that “nobody would notice and [people would just] dismiss it.” In Lauren’s case,
quite the opposite happened, and as we discuss later in this chapter, Lauren’s
decision to launch a website where survivors of sexual assault could share their
stories, inspired by #BeenRapedNeverReported, gained her significant media
attention as well as an outpouring of support from family, friends, and strangers.
Likewise, Ally, speaks emphatically about how she wasn’t sure anyone would re-
spond to her tweets about being raped when she was a 9-year-old. She recounts
the “overwhelming awesome response” the night that she posted her tweet:
There was one. I don’t remember the name of the woman who
responded, but all she said was, we stand with you, friend. And that
134
one made me cry [laugh]. I’ll admit it, that one made me cry. And then
there was one that told me I was incredibly strong and brave for doing
what I did . . . there was six or seven comments like that. Which, for
me, was overwhelming because I didn’t really think that anyone would
say these things, you know, it was just I was helping the hashtag under-
stand why things weren’t being reported. And I didn’t really expect any
response at all. And next thing you know, I got likes and favorites and
comments, and I was just, like, oh my gosh, what is going on here? (see
Figure 6.3)
Ally’s comments hint at the surprise and relief she felt having received such
support from other unknown Twitter users. This support in the form of likes,
retweets, direct messages, and replies carries a powerful affective charge that, as
Jennifer Pybus (2015) argues, is central to the workings of social media.
Yet, beyond the economic value that the affective power of social media
generates for companies such as Facebook and Twitter, Pybus suggests that so-
cial value is also imperative to consider. She writes,
When a user places something into the archive, he or she is uploading

an object that has social, and hence affective, value. The object in ques-
tion has the potential to affect as it moves between the user and the
larger network of friends who come into contact with whatever has
Figure 6.3 #BeenRapedNeverReported tweet. Author screenshot.

135
been uploaded. Thus affect accumulates, sediments, and provides addi-

tional cultural significance to that which gets circulated. (240)
Drawing together Hemmings’ (2012) concept of affective solidarity with Pybus’

arguments, our analysis points to the possibilities that social media hold for not
just activism, but specifically feminist activism around rape culture. Indeed, it is
the accumulation of affect via the sheer number of personal stories (highlighted
in many of our participants’ comments) that makes this hashtag effective in
creating both affective solidarity among participants and attracting mainstream
media attention.
Indeed, mainstream Canadian media was quick to report on the success
of the hashtag due to its relationship to the Ghomeshi story (for example, see
Dunn 2014; Postmedia News 2014; Teotonio 2014). Yet while this public atten-
tion allowed many more people to participate in the hashtag, it also opened up
the hashtag to anti-feminist trolls. Mélanie, a 42-year-old Francophone woman
living in Montreal, used the hashtag to speak about her experience being raped
by her boyfriend. She says:
I didn’t see the trolls until after the regular media picked up on the
hashtag, so people were aware of it. [Prior to this] it was just this
amazing gathering of women who had a voice and who were supportive
of each other. It was just a really powerful, positive thing at the very
beginning. But as the weeks or the days went further, then I saw more
trolls and then I went on attack.
Melanie’s comments highlight the problem of mainstream media attention for

feminist hashtags such as #BeenRapedNeverReported. While on the one hand,
mainstream media provides much needed publicity for issues such as sexual vio-
lence, it also opens the hashtag to those hostile to feminist politics.
As we have explored in our Introduction, there is an emergent body of schol-
arship documenting gender trolling and digitally mediated misogyny (see
Citron 2014; Jane 2014b, 2016; Phillips 2015), so it is not our intention to
redescribe this phenomenon in-depth here. Rather we point specifically here to
how trolling can disrupt the affective solidarity of a hashtag, discouraging par-
ticipation and ultimately even forcing people to abandon it. However, most of
our participants did not encounter trolling in response to their participation in
the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag and were encouraged by the amount of
support they received online, as detailed earlier.
One notable exception is Lauren, who encountered a significant amount
of trolling and hateful comments after she was the subject of a National Post
story about two months after the Ghomeshi story broke. Lauren describes how
136
hundreds of negative comments were posted about her in the comments section
of the story, many accusing her of lying about being raped three times, blaming
her for the rapes, accusing her of being an alcoholic, and suggesting that she must
come from a single-mother home. While her friends and family suggested she ig-
nore the comments, she explains that “I couldn’t just ignore them, they were so
hurtful. I was shocked at how much they impacted me really.” Lauren responded
by blogging about the incident on the website she had recently launched for
survivors, quoting several of the trolling comments and contextualizing them in
order to showcase their ridiculousness. She writes:
“CEOmike” was very active on the comments today. Call me crazy (he
did) but I’m a little skeptical that he’s a CEO. He took victim blaming to
another level by blaming my family too:
I would bet, dollars to donuts, this woman is from a single parent
family living almost exclusively with her mother, who brought a series
of boyfriends home, some who stayed for varying amounts of time.
What this is here is really an example of the breakdown of families for
the safe and secure upbringing of children as whole people. [Quoted
comment]
If I’d have bet this guy a donut that we’d maxed out on ridiculous
for the day, I’d be out a donut. Just when I thought we were there—he
takes it a step further and blames the fact that people in Canada have
TOO MUCH ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION. He also calls me
“highly articulate”, (thanks, dude, you should really try it):
Did this women not have parents that would have made the effort
to make sure their 16 year old daughter was not going to underage
drinking party?
Again she decides to get so drunk she has to sleep it off in a place not
her own, expecting others to look after her safety.
And the third she thinks she is drugged, but instead of trying to get
herself out of there, asks someone else to look after her.
And why did she not report these assaults? Because she could not
manipulate the police and the law. This woman is a complete narcissist
manipulating others around her and now the media. She is now trying
to manipulate the law.
The problem with Canada is higher education is now so freely avail-
able, affected people are highly articulate. [Quoted comment]
I’d like to thank the commenters on today’s post for supporting the
When You’re Ready Project by providing current, relevant examples
of the reasons why this Project is necessary. If it weren’t for people
like you, I’d probably shut my feminist mouth and go back to blaming
137
myself. But you folks have inspired me to keep fighting. Take a bow,
trolls.
We may understand Lauren’s response as a form of creatively “talking back”

(Keller 2012; Keller, Mendes, and Ringrose 2018) to her trolls. Yet, she explains
in our interview that she only felt the strength to engage trolling comments in
such a way because of the amount of support she’d received in the weeks since
sharing her story of sexual violence.
Mélanie, 42, from Montreal has also experienced some less than favorable
responses from her participation in the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag.
Since the Ghomeshi story broke, she has been very active on Twitter, sharing
her experience being raped by a boyfriend in 2013, and even using the hashtag
#BeenRapedByMyBoyfriend in addition to the #BeenRapedNeverReported
hashtag. However, rather than trolls, Mélanie has been most concerned by the
response she’s received from her employer who has not been supportive of her
tweets. She explains, “On Twitter I was tweeting about rape and the legal proce-
dure with my ex and everything, and my employer actually asked me not to say
that I was working for them. I have no support from my employer at all. . . . My
social media activities [might] have an impact on my career, I’ll probably lose my
job.” Despite this fear, Mélanie says she continues to tweet about her experience
as she says she “wants to help others and at the same time I’m being helped.”
Indeed, Mélanie claims that speaking out on social media has been the one thing
helping her to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
When we contacted Mélanie to follow up with her a year later, we find that
she no longer is on Twitter, a marked change from her active Twitter presence
in our initial interview. She tells us that she closed down her account because
her ex-boyfriend/rapist has threatened her with legal action, and that her lawyer
has advised her to cease speaking out about her rape and PTSD on social media.
This silencing of assault survivors is worrying and suggests that speaking out
on social media could carry legal risks that have yet to be explored by feminist
media scholars.
Lauren and Mélanie’s experiences seem to not be representative of the ma-
jority of users of the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag. Nonetheless, their
experiences highlight the fragility of feminist hashtags, which are embedded
within a larger (often misogynistic) culture, and the ways that women can be
influenced to withdraw from public debate (Salter 2013). Indeed, as the two
most publicly outspoken women we interviewed, their experiences also suggest
that while speaking out about rape culture on social media may be publicly ac-
cepted (and even celebrated), women who are too outspoken, or in the words
of Sarah Ahmed (2017), are too “willful,” may indeed be the subject of trolling,
harassment, employment discipline, and even legal challenges.
138
(Re-)Presence-ing Feminism: Affective Solidarity

and Social Change
Based on our earlier discussion, it is clear that feminist hashtags such
as #BeenRapedNeverReported produce an affective solidarity among
participants that brings about a shift from “an individual experience to a col-
lective feminist capacity” (Hemmings 2012, 150). Yet, how does affective sol-
idarity function as a basis for feminist social change? Or, as one user tweets,
“#BeenRapedNeverReported is moving, devastating, & real. I wonder if the
candor of these difficult conversations changes the way things are.” What might
these changes look like? In this section, we continue to apply Hemmings’ (2012)
theoretical work to our empirical data to gain insight into what affective soli-
darity may look like within digital culture. We focus on how affective solidarity
motivated many of our interview participants to take action on sexual violence,
sometimes leading them to feminism and new feminist identities. Feminism, we
argue, becomes “(re-)presenc-ed” through this process, opening up important
possibilities for a feminist future.
The website When You’re Ready (whenyoureready.org) owes its existence,
in part, to the success of the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag. Founded by
Lauren, whom we introduced in the previous section, the website was created
as a space where women could share their stories of sexual violence in a nar-
rative beyond 140 characters. Lauren did not have a Twitter account when the
#BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag was trending, yet was deeply inspired by
reading the stories that women were sharing. She wanted to contribute and set
up the website, which she used to detail her experiences of sexual violence for
the first time, sending the website link to friends and family, as well as posting
the link to her personal Facebook page. With the Ghomeshi story still attracting
significant media attention, the When You’re Ready website received hundreds
of hits and some mainstream media attention (see Boesveld 2015), assuaging
Lauren’s fears that “nobody would care about the issue.”
Similar to the significant support received by our other participants, Lauren
was overwhelmed by the response she received from family, friends, and
strangers. But most striking to Lauren was the number of women she knew who
also revealed they had been assaulted: “More than half of the people I actually
reached out to that were women said that, that had happened to them before as
well. And I didn’t expect that. It was staggering. Some sent emails, some phone
calls, some, just, like texts. It was an overwhelming number of people saying that
they had been raped as well.” This realization prompted Lauren to acknowledge
that many women did not have a safe space to share their stories of sexual vio-
lence, and that a digital space such as When You’re Ready could fill this void.
139
Within the first couple of weeks of being live, Lauren received close to 20
submitted stories from women about their assaults, including one from a 70-
something woman who was assaulted in 1956. Lauren also enlisted regular
bloggers to help run the site, which she envisioned as a collective project, rather
than something she herself had ownership over. Close to three years (as of this
writing) after the website was launched, When You’re Ready continues to be an
important resource for survivors of sexual violence, and boasts a regular blogging
team of six women, including Lauren. Indeed, When You’re Ready establishes
the political potential of feminist hashtags in that they can produce solidarities
that germinate other political projects, such as Lauren’s website, which has not
only demonstrated staying power beyond the #BeenRapedNeverReported
hashtag, but invites women to challenge rape culture through their personal
stories of violence and healing.
While Lauren’s initiative received mainstream media attention and leaves a tan-
gible legacy, other participants described how the #BeenRapedNeverReported
hashtag prompted them to take other forms of action. Brit, for example, tells
us how sharing her story on Twitter motivated her to speak out more about
sexual violence and rape culture. She recently spoke to a group of fourth and
fifth grade girls about gender roles and consent. She credits her participation in
the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag as helping her to build confidence to
speak out more against rape culture. She reflects, “Being able to be more public
and offer that public support to others by sharing my story and saying, ‘hey, you
know, no, you’re not crazy’—I think the more I do it, the more I’m willing to
do it.” Indeed, it was speaking out online using the #BeenRapedNeverReported
hashtag that prompted Emma to report her rape. She says,
For me, [sharing my story with the #BeenRapedNeverReported

hashtag] was kind of the strength to say I can report this. And so, it gave
me the option and the power to actually go through to campus secu-
rity. . . . I’m not sure if it was because I finally put my name to it [the as-
sault] or because I had seen so many other stories. There was a solidarity
with it where I felt comfortable and ready to.
Emma’s comments are significant, as they specifically articulate the affective sol-
idarity that was generated via the sharing of stories using the hashtag. Emma was
moved to action because of the solidarity she felt with other girls and women,
and this is no small thing.
Interestingly, none of the women we spoke to were engaged in feminist ac-
tivism prior to their participation in the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag.
But similar to participants we discuss in c hapters 3, 4, and 5, several women spe-
cifically discussed how the hashtag worked as an educational tool for them to
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learn about feminist politics and terms such as “rape culture.” This is significant
for two reasons. First, it suggests that Twitter as a platform with the affordances
of hashtags such as #BeenRapedNeverReported have the potential to transverse
digital feminist enclaves and into mainstream digital spaces. Second, it suggests
that scholars need to consider the “outcomes” of hashtag activism broadly, in-
cluding the ways in which Twitter hashtags might function pedagogically.
Lauren was one of the women who credits the hashtag as introducing her to
the concept of “rape culture,” a term that several of the participants only learned
about through their exploration of the hashtag. Lauren says:
I hadn’t really heard the word before. Obviously, it’s [rape culture]
been prevalent in my entire life, but it is only probably online in the
last few months [that I understood what rape culture is]. It was when
the Jian Ghomeshi story became really prominent in the news, and the
#BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag started.
Despite having experienced the effects of rape culture throughout her life,
Lauren had not connected her own experiences with sexual violence to wider
issues of gender equality until she learned about rape culture online: “I started
thinking about how prevalent it [rape culture] is and how much I didn’t realize it
before. . . . I never connected it with me. I started thinking about what it meant
in my life.”
Similarly, Mélanie reports, “I learned a lot of new words on Twitter and new
concepts. Basically, I got a lot of education on Twitter about anything that has
to do with PTSD, rape, rape culture, I find my information out there actually.”
Mélanie discusses how she previously associated sexual violence with other geo-
graphic locations, rather than Canada:
I heard more stories about women being raped in Africa, and I was re-
ally devastated for them. But I didn’t think about the rape culture in
Canada or other developed [sic] countries. So before this year [when
#BeenRapedNeverReported trended] and before I was raped, I was not
thinking about rape culture [in Canada] at all.
Mélanie’s comments reveal a certain amount of privilege as a white woman living

in Canada. Indeed, many Indigenous Canadian women, for example, would
likely not disassociate sexual violence from the Canadian context, given the dis-
proportionate amount of (sexual) violence in which Indigenous women are the
victim (Kassam 2016). Yet, Mélanie’s comments are not an anomaly. Chantelle
discusses how she first became familiar with the term “rape culture” through
media reports about India, not immediately linking it to her own experience as
14
a Canadian woman who has survived sexual assault. In this sense, a hashtag such
as #BeenRapedNeverReported pushes back against postfeminist and colonial
ideas that “other” women in “developing” countries are victims of violence and
in need of supposedly liberated (white) Western women to come to their aid
(Scharff 2012; McRobbie 2009).
As we discussed in chapter 5, several of our participants also spoke about
mobilizing the hashtag, as well as other social media platforms such as Facebook,
to consciously educate others. Emma discusses how she finds social media
platforms “extremely helpful to challenge rape culture and sexual assault.” She
maintains:
It’s so open, anyone can read it, anyone can see it, and it’s just there. So,
someone who wasn’t necessarily involved in that conversation can read
it and say, ‘huh, maybe I am contributing to rape culture, or maybe I do
identify as a feminist, if that’s what that means.’
Emma cites an incident where a friend realized that she (the friend) was a fem-
inist upon witnessing an online conversation between Emma and Emma’s anti-
feminist cousin. Indeed, this type of hashtag pedagogy is a significant way that
Emma feels she can enact social change as a young activist (see Keller 2015).
Perhaps most important though, #BeenRapedNeverReported and the af-
fective solidarity it generated made feminism a possibility in the lives of our
participants, as well as other hashtag users. Lauren, for instance, suggests
that it was her experience with the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag
that inspired her to identify as a feminist. As we previously describe (Keller,
Mendes, and Ringrose 2018), Lauren had only identified as a feminist for
three weeks when we interviewed her in January 2015, in part because prior
to #BeenRapedNeverReported she “thought feminism was an outdated con-
cept.” She continues, “It didn’t occur to me that what I was experiencing could
change, I suppose.” Lauren is clearly excited about her newfound feminist
awakening, smiling as we eat lunch in a South London pub. Here, Lauren
comes into a feminist identity when she experiences an affective shift that
allowed her to not only see the disconnect between her own ontology and
epistemology (Hemmings 2012) but understand that disconnect as both un-
fair and changeable.
In this sense, we are suggesting that feminism has not only “come into being”
for women such as Lauren through sharing her story of sexual violence online,
but is made (re-)presence-ed (Couldry 2012) within mainstream media culture.
Here, we are theorizing (re-)presence-ing as more than merely a visibility of fem-
inism, but an urgent affect or feeling about feminism’s necessity that is generated
and circulated via feminist hashtags such as #BeenRapedNeverReported.
142
Affective solidarity, in this sense, can be understood as an important part of this

(re-)presence-ing, providing the feelings of dissonance and connection that
makes (re-)presence-ing possible. The concept of (re-)presence-ing feminism
challenges postfeminist sensibilities that permeate media culture and suggest
feminism’s pastness (McRobbie 2009). Instead, the (re-)presence-ing of femi-
nism makes a demand for feminism in the here and now.
While we agree with scholars such as Susana Loza (2014), who describe
how feminist hashtags function to make previously invisible issues vis-
ible, we also agree with arguments such as that recently made by Samantha
Thrift (2014), who suggests that the concept of visibility does not capture
the complexities of feminist hashtags. While Thrift argues for understanding
hashtags such as #YesAllWomen as a “feminist meme event,” we are inter-
ested in how feminism functions as something that is not only made visible
and eventful through tweeting, but something that is felt—as we described in
relation to Lauren earlier. It is this feeling that is central to the (re-)presence-
ing of feminism we are theorizing here. For example, one Twitter user tweets,
“So many of my women’s posts tell me about #BeenRapedNeverReported
stories of overwhelmingly #VAW (violence against women) I love #femi-
nism going viral. Action needed.” Another user tweets: “#BeenRapedNeverR
eported gave me #closure and #peace at 68. Thank you for that #Feminism.”
These tweets are powerful in that they connect the affective solidarity of
#BeenRapedNeverReported stories to feminism, calling attention to the
hashtag as specifically feminist.
These tweets are moving because they explicitly draw attention to feminism’s
presence through the use of a hashtag (#Feminism), as well as what Zizi
Papacharissi (2015) calls “virality of affect” (27), or the spread of affects across
multiple digital platforms. But what is the political potential of the (re-)presence-
ing of feminism through digital practices such as #BeenRapedNeverReported?
Indeed, much of the writing on postfeminism, as we’ve outlined in our intro-
ductory chapter, has focused on the ways in which gender politics have be-
come depoliticized through a privileging of individualized selfhood that aligns
with neoliberal imperatives, including consumer citizenship, competitive self-
branding, and makeover culture.
Other scholarship, such as Catherine Rottenberg’s (2014) concept of “neo-
liberal feminism” is also premised on the idea that popular contemporary fem-
inism has incorporated what she calls the “husk of liberalism” into its politics,
generating a “new feminist subject” that is self-managing, entrepreneurial, and
invested in self-transformation. This body of scholarship on postfeminism and
iterations of popular feminism reinscribes a perceived tension between the in-
dividual, empowered neoliberal subject and the collective politics of social
143
movements such as feminism. This tension has anchored many conversations

about gendered subjectivities, feminist politics, and social change in contempo-
rary media cultures, including digital media culture. To wit: Natalie Fenton and
Veronica Barassi (2011) argue that “self-centered media production practices,
which are promoted by social media, represent a challenge to the construc-
tion and dissemination of political messages that are born out of the efforts and
negotiations of a collective” (181).
Thus, it seems as though much of our theorizing as feminist digital
media scholars has been impeded by this perceived tension between the
individualized postfeminist subject and the collectively oriented feminist
subject. Therefore, we ask: How does a hashtag held together by affective sol-
idarity such as #BeenRapedNeverReported and the (re-)presence-ing of fem-
inism it carries encourage us to think beyond the binary of the individual/
collective? In order to consider this question we turn to Zizi Papacharissi’s
(2015) recent writing on affective publics in which she argues, “Affect is in-
herently political. It provides a way of understanding humans as collective
and emotional, as well as individual and rational, by presenting these states
as confluent rather than opposite” (16). Drawing on a wide range of affect
theories, Papacharissi suggests that affect is particularly useful to understand
politics within digital cultures, as “it does not conform to the structures we
symbolically internalize as political” (19).
In other words, an attention to affect may help us to better analyze how
“hashtag feminism” is experienced. For example, the presence of a collective
is felt through individual stories that acquire affective weight through both
their words and their sheer numbers, something that was alluded to by many
of our study participants. Nayomi, an American college student who wrote
about her rape on Lauren’s website, tells us that it was hearing others’ stories
that moved her to share her own of being raped two years ago: “In terms of
rhetoric, [these stories] create an emotional response and it’s something that
I think everyone cares about, whereas statistics it’s sort of more logical.” She
continues, “I think the more people who post their stories, the better, because
just in numbers, each story by itself is powerful and then I think if there are a
lot of stories together, that will be even more powerful.” Nayomi’s comments
point to the significance of stories in the (re-)presence-ing of feminism, and
that these stories hold potential to blur the individual and the collective in
ways that Papacharissi (2015) claims may “disrupt dominant narratives and
evoke the casual, everyday political” (99). In many ways this idea echoes
feminism’s long-standing commitment to the “personal as political” while
being reframed through the digital platforms that inform our current media
culture.
14
Conclusions: Stories as Affective Currency

The analysis discussed in this chapter points to the ways in which personal stories
work as affective currency along hashtags such as #BeenRapedNeverReported,
encouraging other women to contribute and drawing together diverse girls and
women with an affective solidarity (Hemmings 2012) based on experiences
of sexual violence. Indeed, our participants highlight the importance of per-
sonal stories in their reflections on the hashtag. Ally contends, “People are not
going to get involved with something unless it becomes personal. You have to
put it in a way to reach them personally.” A few hours after our interview, Ally
tweets us, saying: “@AHRCdigitalfems Thank you SO MUCH for not making
me feel like a statistic.” This point was articulated by several other participants
we interviewed and suggests the need to reconsider not only how we talk about
sexual assault publicly, but how sexual assault “data” affects differently when
mediated via stories.
This case study also illuminates how #BeenRapedNeverReported generates
a feeling of needing feminism now, what we theorize as a “(re-)presence-ing”
that pushes up against postfeminist sensibilities (Gill 2007b) in which fem-
inism is constructed as unnecessary and outdated. In this sense, participation
in a hashtag such as #BeenRapedNeverReported may serve as an entry point
for engagement with feminist politics and other progressive social change
initiatives. We’ve already seen this with Lauren, who became a public advocate
for survivors of sexual violence after being inspired by the stories she read on
#BeenRapedNeverReported. More recently, Lauren has also started organizing
with other women in media and technology sectors to create online resources
for survivors who want to make their own websites and engage in other forms
of mediated activism. Women are coming together around digital feminist ac-
tivism in ways that suggest a renewed feminist energy that is vibrant, insistent,
and powerful.
Yet these stories, like Lauren’s, are difficult to access as researchers. Social
media platforms such as Twitter generate so much data that it can be a chal-
lenge to get “behind” the hashtag in order to understand the motivations,
challenges, and rewards for participating in digital social justice initiatives.
Nonetheless, we contend that this case study points to the importance of doing
so. In this instance, we were able to learn about women’s experiences with
#BeenRapedNeverReported, including the complicated feelings around sharing
their stories, the support they received, and the ways in which this support af-
fected them. While these types of experiences are often overlooked by social
media researchers, they provide invaluable insight into the ways in which social
media mediates our daily lives and lived experiences.
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7
Teen Feminist Digital Activisms
Resisting Rape Culture in and around School
In late spring of 2015, 17-year-old Alexi Halket was summoned to the vice
principal’s office in her suburban Toronto high school. Her offense was her
attire—a trendy, navel-revealing crop top that, according to her vice principal,
looked “too much like a sports bra” and was “inappropriate” for school (Diblasi
2015). Yet, Halket refused to change, arguing that it was not girls’ clothing that
was problematic, but a school dress code that unnecessarily sexualizes girls’
bodies at school. Halket decided to act on this issue, organizing a “crop top day”
protest where she encouraged all students to don crop tops for classes the fol-
lowing day. Halket used social media, including Twitter and Facebook, to spread
the word to her classmates, dubbing the day #CropTopDay, which became the
protest hashtag (see Keller 2018 for further discussion). Within a few hours, the
hashtag was used by over 5,000 people, spreading well beyond Halket’s school
community and attracting substantial mainstream media attention, which cov-
ered the students’ school protest the next day (Luxen 2015). Halket and her
classmates were also joined by hundreds of other students around the Greater
Toronto Area—and even globally—who sported crop tops to problematize the
relationship between school dress codes and rape culture. Halket was reported
by MTV as passionately affirming that school dress codes directly perpetuate
rape culture:
Hell yeah! School dress codes teach female students that their bodies
are a problem and they have to cover up. [Dress codes] are telling a girl
that her body and her skin are symbols of her sexuality, and that if she
wants respect and to avoid sexual harassment, particularly from male
students, she has to cover up. That is so messed up. Nobody should be
harassing them in the first place and it is definitely not their responsi-
bility and they are not at fault! (Diblasi 2015)
145
146
Many #CropTopDay tweets emphasized the relationship between school

dress codes and rape culture, often in explicit terms. For example, one tweet
reads: “#CropTopDay #StandInSolidarity dress codes encourage the sexualiza-
tion of woman’s [sic] bodies and rape culture #NotOkay.” Another reads, “4 dirty
looks and 2 cat calls in an hour and a half on the TTC [subway] JUST because
I was wearing a tank top crop top. Disgusted. #CropTopDay.” This tweet was
retweeted by the poster’s older sister, with an accompanying note saying, “It’s
never okay for my sixteen-year-old sister to feel uncomfortable or anyone for
that matter. #CropTopDay” (see Figure 7.1).
In making explicit the connection between rape culture and dress codes in
both the tweet itself and accompanying hashtags such as #feminism, girls are
using digital technologies to engage in feminist critique and analysis by discur-
sively positioning their actions as political, feminist, and activist. In this way, as
we saw in c hapter 6, hashtags work to highlight the relationship amongst dress,
embodiment, and sexualization within institutional codes of practice, providing
a networked capacity for girls to organize as feminist activists.
We have begun this chapter foregrounding #CropTopDay and the story of
Halket’s experience to showcase how teenage girls internationally have been
increasingly vocal, visible, and public about the ways in which rape culture
shapes their experiences as young people, using social media to document their
experiences and struggles (see Sills et al. 2016; Ringrose and Renold 2016a).
We are also mindful of Deborah Tolman’s (2012, n.p.) argument: “The main-
stream media loves the story of a sole, courageous girl going after a media em-
pire, the proverbial David and Goliath gone girl.” While Tolman is referring to
the media coverage of Julia Bluhm, a 14-year-old who garnered publicity for her
role in lobbying Seventeen Magazine to cease photoshopping their models, her
comments are applicable to Halket, who was often celebrated in the Canadian
media as a particularly daring individual girl activist.
Figure 7.1 #CropTopDay tweet. Author screenshot.

147
Teen Fe m in is t Dig it al Act iv is m s 147
In this final data-driven chapter, we aim to move beyond the privileging

of high-profile celebrated media coverage of hashtag movements such as
#CropTopDay, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and more recently #MeToo, which
have dominated feminist media studies accounts of Twitter Feminism (Berridge
and Portwood-Stacer 2014). Instead we explore the everyday experiences of
teenage girls who are engaging in social media feminist activism, ranging from
hashtag campaigns to less visible forms of digital activism in their everyday lives.
We draw upon qualitative data from 27 teen participants, including seven semi-
structured Skype interviews and one email interview gathered from our larger
survey sample in c hapter 5, three semi-structured interviews with teenagers
who participated in the Canadian #CropTopDay campaign, and four focus
groups with 16 teenage girls conducted with members of a high school feminist
club in the UK. The individual and focus group interview data is supplemented
with social media artifacts that were either purposefully selected (such as the
#CropTopDay tweets, for example) or shared with us by our participants where
we used “scroll-back” methodology to capture relevant tweets and posts on mo-
bile phones during the interviews (Robards and Lincoln 2017).
We make three primary arguments in this chapter. First, relating back to
chapter 5 we show how the girls use Twitter as a pedagogical platform to dis-
cover feminism but also to specifically develop their analyses of how rape cul-
ture is operating at school. Second, we demonstrate how girls use Twitter both
publicly for instance by lobbying school administration or collectively operating
a Feminist Twitter account, but also how they use social media privately as a
backchannel to challenge sexism through private messaging functions. We ex-
plain how Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and iPhone group chat provide different
platform affordances and generate distinct practices or vernaculars (Boyd, 2010;
Gibbs et al. 2015; Warfield 2016). From using Facebook to challenge a rape joke
in the peer group to tweeting about sexist dress code live during assemblies at
school, or creating jointly authored feminist tweets from a joint Twitter account,
we explore a wide range of novel uses of digital platforms. Finally, we argue that
despite the opportunities for feminist activism found via social media, there re-
mains significant barriers to participation, including trolling and harassment,
which schools are failing to address, that present serious challenges for girls
ability to practice digital feminist politics in their everyday lives.
Discovering Feminism through Social Media

A significant finding from chapter 5 was that 33 percent of the 46 survey
respondents were teenagers who were still attending school. These teens noted
how social media, but particularly Twitter, provided knowledge that was not
148
available at school: a world “out there” to connect with like-minded people,

and find information that was not taught within the formal curriculum. Many
teens were also optimistic that they could use social media connections and in-
formation to influence, and even educate their known peers at school (see also
Retallack, Ringrose, and Lawrence 2016; Kim and Ringrose 2018), highlighting
the important pedagogical function that digital media platforms provide for
young people (Keller 2015).
Chloe, a 17- year old self- defined feminist activist from Pennsylvania,
said: “90% of my tweets are feminist” and that she uses Twitter over other more
popular platforms for teens, such as Instagram, because:
I can gain a lot of access to people that I wouldn’t have on other

platforms . . . it helps me connect to more people . . . say I tweeted some-
thing about feminism, and even if you’re not following someone, say
someone retweeted it and they saw it’s spreading the message easier. . . .
I have met a lot of people online who I’m friends with now on social
media who will have conversations about feminism . . . a lot of people
in the older generation will say that social media is bad, that it’s causing
a lot of harm . . . but in all I think it’s good for connecting you to people
around the world who you would never be able to meet beforehand.
While some students were comfortable having their feminist identity easily find-
able and searchable online, this was not always the case. Chloe, for example, re-
ported being concerned about making her Twitter account known to any friends
at school. Similarly, she had a YouTube Feminist channel and she tweeted her
broadcasts, but said only one of her school friends knew about it: “I never put
my Twitter account on my Facebook or anything because I don’t want any of my
friends to find it. . . . I’m not confident enough.” We can see how Chloe keeps sep-
arate her Twitter account as its platform affordances are distinct and less visible
to her school-based peer group than Facebook.
Also, echoing our findings from chapter 5, social media provides a counter-
public and a connective bridge between those who are geographically isolated
or dispersed, or who lack parental permission to attend offline events. For ex-
ample, Kara, 15, says that she’s exchanged tweets with girls from other Canadian
provinces who are part of what she called the “Crop Top Day movement,” and
she credits the social media platform for her burgeoning feminist consciousness.
She said:
There’s a lot [on Twitter] promoting feminism now, which is good. If it

wasn’t for social media I probably wouldn’t know what feminism is and
what it’s all about. I think social media has really helped.
149
Tori, 14, from London, notes that social media has given her an outlet to “spread
information and education” and learn about feminist issues, adding that for her
it was a more practical and accessible channel for getting involved given her age:
The thing is I don’t think I’d be allowed to go to all these feminist

activist’s events at the moment, but I definitely want to. When I’m an
adult living on my own I’d love to start going to these events.
Similarly, Sophia, 14, from Florida, says that living in the “bible belt” of the
southern US means that it is easier for her to express her feminism online than
in person:
With social media I feel a bit safer in a way to say I know that I’m
speaking out to a community that I know I feel a bit safer to . . . its easier
for me to put it into words, something I can’t think of things off the top
of my head but I can think about something. . . . I can talk about some-
thing that’s halfway across the world and it’s more well-known.
While some participants felt that social media provided a “safe” space to speak
their views, this was not a universal perspective. Debbie, 18, from Ireland, for
example, shared the way she was rarely moved beyond retweeting feminist
posts on Twitter because “there’s so many people could just come and attack
you . . . people love having a strong option against something rather than for
something.”
Significantly, as we will continue to explore, our data shows the ways teens
are discerning about which social media platforms they use to engage with fem-
inism. Debbie, like Chloe mentioned earlier, uses Twitter and Tumblr for fem-
inist posts, but wouldn’t feel comfortable posting on Facebook because of its
visibility with her friendship group from school and summer camp:
When it’s someone you know or you’re close with—like when you ex-
press something and then they have a really strong opinion against what
you’re saying . . . I find it a bit awkward to get over that. . . . I have a few
friends they pass remarks a lot . . . who’d be like you don’t want to say
that around Debbie.
In line with previous research on occupying a feminist identity inside school,

Debbie finds it difficult to cope with peer conflict or “remarks” about her fem-
inist views (see Ringrose and Renold 2016b). Although some participants did
not feel confident allowing friends and acquaintances to see their feminist views,
this was not a problem for all teens in our study. For example, Terri, 18, from
150
London, says that she became a feminist during her final year of high school, and
explicitly uses Twitter to connect with others online. Terri says she mostly has
her high school friends as Twitter followers and that she thinks of her feed as a
place where they will be “forced” to see her feminist views:
I share things and post things that combat oppression and patriarchy.
It is not just a feminist discourse but an overall SOCIAL JUSTICE dis-
course, but for me, they are one in the same. I do not hold back in what
I share because I know that as an “activist” it is my duty to “spread the
word” and make people see things that they would not see otherwise.
I consider it my responsibility to spread that word because without me,
maybe no one else would ever share such a message, and my followers
would not ever hear about it or be forced to think about it (social jus-
tice, power systems, oppression, etc).
We find this interesting that “spreading the word” is positioned as a form of fem-
inist burden to be taken on by Terri. As an older teen, perhaps she also gained
confidence to exert her views, as part of her desire to transform her peers by
showing them the “right way.” Using social media in such a fashion also allows
Terri to intensify and spread out her feminist activist identity as a girl (Brown
2016; Taft 2014). But even for girls such as Terri, who found professing femi-
nism empowering in some ways, many shared how they struggled with the issues
and conflicts that this has brought into their daily lives. Difficulties were partic-
ularly evident when they tried to call out sexism, misogyny, and rape culture in
the institutional setting of school, as we continue to explore later.
Discovering Rape Culture

As we saw in the survey data in chapter 5 and in our opening discussion of
#CropTopDay protests, rape culture was becoming a recognizable part of the
lives of all the teenage girls we spoke with. Most of our Canadian, American, and
British participants were becoming familiar with the term “rape culture,” and
this feminist awareness was explicitly connected to learning about issues online.
Sophia, 14, from Florida for example, explained how she learned about rape cul-
ture through social media, and recounts explicitly searching for information on
the issues that she wasn’t learning about at school:
I started getting home schooled . . . and looking more about other

things in history and I started on focusing on what’s happening in the
world and what my school would tell me. And I would sort of see things,
15
wrong things, that have happened. One of my friends a couple of years

ago was raped. And the police wouldn’t do a lot. And that was when
I kind of like decided I need to get involved.
Sophia’s parents removed her from school when she wasn’t doing well, and it is
significant that it is in a home schooling environment that she learns to be crit-
ical about what she was learning (or not) in school. Significantly, her friend’s
rape has also led her to actively seek out information on social media. Jamie, 17,
from Ohio also discussed how her personal experience of dating abuse led to
heightened awareness of rape culture:
I was in an abusive relationship and that’s something I try to talk about

a lot because I don’t want that to happen to any of my friends. But when
it was happening I didn’t tell anyone . . . but definitely that relationship
was a product of rape culture . . . while I was dating him he monitored
all of my social media. . . . I was a feminist when I was dating him, but
I was a lot more subtle about it because I knew that he would be upset
about it and he was a lot bigger than me, he was a lot scarier than me.
Jamie moves beyond a personal experience to share how feminism has enabled
her to develop a critical feminist analysis of rape culture. This analytical move
we are tracing positions abuse as a product of cultural norms: “something that
says men are entitled to women, and that it’s a women’s job to protect them-
selves, as opposed to teaching men to not do certain things, such as catcalling,
rape, assaults, those kinds of things.” Jamie then applies this understanding to
her experiences of being catcalled on the way to school:
To get to our school, you have to walk across the street and a lot of the
times in the morning, you’re just so tired and then a car will honk at
you, and a guy will whistle or something. And you’re just like, okay, re-
ally, I’m on my way to school and it’s seven in the morning!
Here, Jamie points to the ways in which girls experience rape culture commuting
to and from school, street harassment that most often goes unaddressed by
school officials because it is not directly on school property. Caroline, 16, from
London, also discussed having to battle rape culture daily at school, mentioning
frustration at the popularity of Robin Thicke’s song “Blurred Lines” with her
peers (see also Horeck 2014). She argued that inadequate sex education on
issues such as relationships and “consent” was key in perpetuating rape cul-
ture. Kara, a 15-year-old #CropTopDay participant from Nova Scotia, Canada,
also argued rape culture was a big problem that was not being recognized at
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school: “Oh definitely! I actually know a few people in my school who have been
sexually assaulted by other schoolmates. And I think that people need to be ed-
ucated more on what rape culture is.”
Getting “Fired Up”: Challenging Dress Codes

in North America
As indicated by the #CropTopDay campaign, one of the issues being connected to
rape culture in the institutional culture of schooling is that of sexist school dress
codes. This is not a new issue, as the policing of schoolgirl bodies has a lengthy
history—as does girls’ resistance to dress code policies (Lovell 2016; Pomerantz
2007, 2008; Schrum 2004). Nonetheless, we are likely hearing more about
these resistances due to teens’ ability to broadcast their views via social media
platforms, such as Twitter. It is significant that all the teen feminist activists in
our research were aware of the gender imbalances surrounding clothing policies
at school. From our North American data, we found that teenagers were increas-
ingly retaliating against sexist dress codes. For example, Kara (15, Nova Scotia,
Canada) says, “I definitely think that [#CropTopDay] is a feminist movement,
it has to do with rape culture and how that’s affecting us. Rape culture says that
women are just used for sexual objects and that they don’t really have an impor-
tance beside just giving men what they want.” Morgan, a 19-year-old American
college student agrees, comparing #CropTopDay to historical moments when
women were prevented from wearing particular garments, such as pants: “We’re
not getting arrested on the streets for what we’re wearing, but in schools we’re
being told you have to cover yourself because you’re a distraction. That’s not
okay.” Sofia (14, Florida) similarly talked about how dress codes had become
one of the most salient issues for girls at school in her context:
Recently we’ve been challenging dress codes. We find that they’re very
unfair. And living in Florida its very hot and a lot of girls are just tired
of wearing jeans every day and having to cover up so much because ap-
parently, what our teachers tell us is that we distract the boys. We can’t
wear shorts. They tell us that they have to be say like three inches above
the knee . . . I’ve seen if a person is disobeying the dress code they have
to put on a bright neon shirt and these ugly sweatpants and we have to
wear that around the school. And it’s very embarrassing. I’ve seen this
one girl have a panic attack because she was so shy that her mom had to
come and pick her up because she didn’t want people to know. It gets
pretty bad.
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Sofia reported that there were at least two dozen girls a day who were forced to
wear the “shame suit” and that it had become such a regional problem that it
made the news: “[I]‌t was on the national news . . . a nearby high school down
the street where my mom went to . . . they put this girl in a shame suit . . . what
happened was the girl posted it online.”
The media coverage and the girl posting it online seemed to galvanize Sofia,
who then also began tweeting about the dress codes at her school and about
her experiences with street harassment. Here tweets included: “sick and tired of
catcalling at this school” and “whistling at me isn’t a compliment it’s degrading.”
She also actively retweeted posts from girls in other schools who protested
gender bias against girls’ attire and noted the failure to sanction boys in dress
codes through tweets such as: “don’t say dress codes are for professionalism
unless you are prepared to ban sweatshirts and t-shirts too.” Although Twitter
offered Sofia an important channel for raising her own awareness and connecting
with teens outside school, as she explained, challenging dress codes within her
school proved much more difficult.
This was evident when describing her participation in the school’s “Girl Up”
club, officially supported by the United Nations, which advocated and fundraised
for “girls in less developed countries.” During one of their meetings, the girls
agreed to start a petition to challenge the school’s dress code. As she recounted:
And we all felt the same, we were all standing on our desk, talking like
just saying out loud personal experiences with dress codes. And we were
getting really fired up. And some of us started recording it and putting it
on Snapchat. And then after the meeting the president of our club, she
told us, we need to take those videos down because if someone finds
them we could get in a lot of trouble.
Here, although the school supported feminist activism in “other” parts of the
world, it was fearful of actions or criticisms that might bring negative attention.
This is despite Sofia’s acknowledgment that teachers and school boards had the
power to challenge slut-shaming, they still refused to do anything about it
Although many of the teen girls in our sample took to Twitter or other so-
cial media platforms to express their anger and frustration at dress codes, not
many were able to translate this into direct challenges at school. Feeling fed up
with the school’s inaction, Kara (15, Nova Scotia, Canada), took to tweeting the
school’s official Twitter handle to express her opinions. Jamie (17, Ohio) sim-
ilarly attempted to engage with her school culture saying: “I try to tweet a lot
of stuff about what’s going (on) . . . I try to post when I see misogynistic things
happening and call them out, pretty much.” She described learning about these
issues on feminist social media:
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On Tumblr I see a lot of posts about “I just got in trouble for wearing
this” and then like a blurb about what the teacher said. One of the things
I saw was a teacher got her in trouble for her shorts being too short. But
the guy didn’t get in trouble for wearing, I think it was a Hooters shirt,
that had the outline of a girl. Why would you ever wear a Hooters shirt
to school? Like who do you think you are?
Like Kara, Jamie described how she then began using Twitter to try to challenge
the multiple and various permutations of sexism that fall under the umbrella of
“rape culture,” and eventually even tweeted her principal directly. After hosting
a meeting with all the girls in her school to talk about the dress code as they
approached summer, Jamie took to Twitter to challenge many of the unsatisfac-
tory answers given about both the dress code and the way it was policed.
Here, Jamie describes herself and other girls challenging the principal’s girls-
only dress code assembly. Jamie’s Twitter feed also showed that she and her
friends live tweeted during the assembly reporting on the discussion. They used
the immediacy that social media platforms such as Twitter provide to speak and
galvanize the collective in the school. Jamie tweeted: “I don’t want to try have
[sic] to not look at a woman’s cleavage when I’m trying to talk to her. Actual
quote.” She then tweeted: “translation: Boys can’t control themselves and it’s the
fault of girls.” Jamie’s friend Theresa also tweeted, “We pay for this school and yr
[sic] going to FORCE us to LEAVE because you think our FULLY COVERED
legs aren’t suitable for a school environment?”
We are characterizing these tweets as an example of “backchannel” social
media use, a strategy used by teenage girls to document instances of sexism in
school in real time. The resulting conversation shows the creative use of Twitter
by teens inside of school to disrupt institutionalized sexism through the imme-
diacy of Twitter (Ringrose and Mendes 2018). This is methodologically sig-
nificant in that they are not using a recognizable hashtag, which would make
it easier to detect this activism in the Twitter network through big data hashtag
harvesting and mining (see boyd and Crawford 2012 for an excellent discus-
sion on the politics of big data). Instead, we can only see this type of activism
through the entry point of the social media “produser” and the interview trian-
gulation with participants to discuss their Twitter posts (Bruns 2008). We can
also see that the teens are not simply connecting with an online affective public
(Papacharissi 2015) or counter-public (McCosker 2015) by joining into a
trending hashtag, they are speaking to their preexisting Twitter contacts, an “in-
timate public” built upon affective relations, such as friendship (Khoja-Moolji
2015). Indeed, the known peer group at school carries many different affective
implications around visibility, privacy, and voice for “networked teens” (boyd
2014), as we’ll continue to explore as we proceed.
15
Hidden Sexism: Uniform Codes Responsibilizing

Girls for the Sexualization of Their Bodies
Where sexist dress codes have dominated discussion in North America, in the
UK, and Ireland all our participants wore school uniforms rather than plain
clothes; but they also connected the policing of their uniform skirts to rape cul-
ture. As part of our research we worked extensively with a feminist group in a UK
high school, interviewing 16 girls over a two-year period. Each focus group had
a mixture of grade 9 and 10 girls, aged 14 to 16. The school feminist group was
founded in 2014 after girls in shorts were sent home or held in detention during
a non-uniform day (see Ringrose and Renold 2016a). The girls were clear that
skirt policing was one of the main dynamics informing the sexism and rape cul-
ture at school:
Kelly: There is a lot of hidden sexism within the school, like the whole
thing with the uniform.
Dana: Completely.
Kelly: Just the whole attitude of, not the majority, but a strong amount of
the teachers, it is really sexist. And they probably don’t even realize that
its sexist. Its just sort of really embedded within the school and within
the school culture.
Sam: [S]‌ome teachers take it like, a personal offence if a girls got their skirt
rolled up. They’ll say “oh, why do you want your legs out, why do you
want people to look at you, you know, like do you want boys to touch
you, do you want to distract boys from their work?” things like that.
Kelly: Some teachers can be quite sexist.
Dana: One student got called a porn star because she had her skirt
rolled up.
Sam: Yeah and on non-uniform days people were sent home for wearing
short shorts and told to change.
Kelly: Awful. Like the Headteacher, he’s a man he will look you up and
down and decide whether its suitable or not.
Dana: You’re appropriate or whether you’re going to ruin the school
The discussion from this focus group shows how girls are responsibilized for
sexism instrumentally through the actual uniform policies, which are organized
around the binary of appropriate/inappropriate sexuality, enforced through the
gaze and evaluation of (in this case male) teachers. The notion that sexual rep-
utation and school reputation are linked explicitly comes through in our data,
particularly how a “bad” reputation with the former can “ruin” the latter. That
156
honor resides with women’s behavior is nothing new—after all, in many cultures
around the world, family honor is also connected to normative cultural expec-
tations that blame the victim when they transgress the cultural rules around fe-
male sexuality (Payne 2015). Tori (14, West London) who was not part of our
main research school, connected the way uniform codes were linked to rape cul-
ture at her school:
It’s literally ridiculous the things that girls are sent out of school for
compared to boys and it’s encouraging the rape culture by saying girls
need to be told what they wear because boys are more horny than girls
and therefore it’s easy for them to rape you; instead of teaching boys
not to rape.
Girls articulated the way “school rules” around gender, sexuality, and embod-
iment work to legitimize sexism, and limit a discursive space to challenge the
sexual objectification and regulation of their bodies (Raby 2012). This was
clearly articulated by Leigh, age 15, from our research school:
Unless [lad culture] is breaking an actual rule, then there’s not much
they’ll [the school administration] want to do. If we just say, “oh, they’re
[the boys] always making these comments and stuff,” a teacher can tell
them [to stop] but they’d just start again when the teacher went away.
Leigh here is discussing the British notion of lad culture (see Jackson and
Sundaram 2018; Phipps et al. 2018) which we defined in c hapter 2 as the idea
that “boys will be boys” and the normalization of sexist banter as expected
behavior from boys, an idea that emerged strongly throughout our data.
Another way that sexism from peers expressed itself was anti-feminism and
rejecting girls’ experiences of sexism as legitimate. Callie, age 15, from our re-
search school recounted the ways boys denied girls’ experiences of street harass-
ment, or dismissed effects of sexism:
I feel like when you say you’re a feminist or you say you’re affected by
sexism, loads of boys are, like, well, how does it affect you and stuff? And
you say, well, I don’t really appreciate being wolf whistled in the street,
and stuff like that. And they’re like, yeah, but that doesn’t happen, and,
oh, but how does that upset you, and stuff? So I think if I did a tweet, I’d
want to include quite shocking statistics about maybe not just stuff like
wolf whistling and stuff, it would be more FGM and rape, so that they’d
actually take the statistics and they would think, God, that actually is a
big problem.
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It is perhaps no surprise that the girls in our focus groups often resorted to
calling upon more extreme forms of violence as a tactic to get others to recog-
nize sexism as a problem. We can draw parallels here with posts to Who Needs
Feminism?, discussed in chapter 3, where contributors similarly used issues such
as violence against women as a reason that feminism was necessary, because it is
harder to dispute or dismiss. The girls tried to explain their difficulties in getting
the boys to understand or accept their views as linked to immaturity and “lack of
understanding”; but others felt this was cultivated through a lack of education in
school, as we saw in chapter 5:
Jane: We never had a lesson on consent really.

Interviewer: What do you want to be taught about . . . or if you could
design it yourself?
Clarissa: A lot about consent.
Jane: Yeah.
Kerry: A lot about what’s right and what’s wrong (emphasis added).
These same dynamics of facing widespread ignorance about rape culture as well
as resistance to feminist analyses and experiences of sexism and sexual violence
discussed by our adult participants are raised here as the girls highlight the key
word of “consent” twice (Lanford 2017). The difference for these girls is they
are living inside the school structure and attempting to challenge sexual violence
within it through a range of political practices (see also Sundaram 2014).
Challenging Rape Culture on Facebook

As noted, the school feminist group originated in 2014 after girls were sent
home for violating dress codes during a school non-uniform day in the summer.
From discussions in class supported by a man sociology teacher, the sessions
quickly spilled over into “digilante” ( Jane 2017) activism on their social media
accounts. For example, Robin, age 16, had begun to openly challenge posts on
school peer’s Facebook accounts. When a male schoolmate and Facebook friend
posted a rape joke on another boy’s Facebook wall, Robin responded with: “Are
rape jokes funny? *winces.*” Another member of the feminist group, Amelia,
chimed in to support this, commenting underneath Robin’s post: “Yes, rape, that
hilarious topic. Everyone loves a little rape,” going on to suggest that the contrib-
utor think about how rape could affect girls and women in his family, such as his
sister. After this comment, the boy turned violent calling Amelia “a f-ing bitch”
and telling her to “shut the ‘f ’ up” for talking about his sister. This is an interesting
158
example of where protective masculinity clashes with the lad bravado of his rape
joke discourse (Niccolini 2016). This exchange begins to make visible the op-
portunity for community-building and support that Facebook provided some
of our teen feminists, who were already generating solidarity through their par-
ticipation in their lunchtime school feminist group (see Ringrose and Renold
2016a for a fuller account).
In 2015 the girls again talked about a disgruntled Facebook post from another
one of the founding members of the feminist club, Francesca, age 16, which this
time documents her harassment in the school hallway. This post generated 69
comments and 160 likes. We reproduce this post in full as follows:
Today I left my lesson and walked a few meters before being tapped
on the bum by a 12–13 year old boy. As any girl should I stopped,
asked which one it was and explained how incredibly unacceptable it
was to touch a girl’s bum without her permission, and made everyone
aware of what had just happened. Unsurprisingly neither boy owned
up but simply laughed and blamed the other. I then had a group of
young girls approach me saying things such as “Stop,” “Calm down,”
“it’s not a big deal” “it happens everyday,” “don’t worry.” It makes me
so angry upset and disappointed to think that these girls see it as OK
to be inappropriately touched on a DAILY BASIS and see it as un-
necessary to DO SOMETHING about it! I think it is so ironic that
[the school] held a model United Nations Conference discussing
the inequality women face globally only just last Saturday when
they have cases of the discussions within the school. Something
needs to be done. Girls and women need to know and understand
that THEY should choose who and what touches THEIR bodies
and that they are NOT public property for anyone to touch. Girls
who laugh along or ignore these events are enabling and encouraging
these boys or men to continue. Don’t just stand there or move on
DO SOMETHING.
The girls commented extensively about this incident and the many online
comments it had provoked, noting:
[M]‌ost of the comments were from boys saying like what’s the deal?
Firstly. Then comments from girls saying girl, pretty much the exact
same thing happened to me and emojis . . . like praising her. Well
done . . . and . . . shown support, be like yeah, I agree with you. (Sam,
age 15)
159
This example indicates in this case it was easier to challenge sexist behavior on
Facebook than in the institutional setting of the school because there were more
people from their peer group to lend support, as we discussed earlier. The con-
nective capabilities of Facebook then provided a space for these girls to “come
together” to challenge rape culture among their peers. However, while it would
be easy to look at this data and conclude that challenging rape culture online is
less difficult than in offline settings, our analysis of different groups of girls in dif-
ferent friend groups and social statuses in the school reveal many social and inter-
personal complexities and girl “hierarchies” (Ringrose 2013). Only some girls,
often those with “higher status” in the peer hierarchy, found challenging rape
culture on Facebook possible at all. Our interviews revealed that in fact, some
girls found Facebook much more difficult to navigate because of their status in
the peer group and lack of support. For instance Jos, age 15, argued “there’s a cer-
tain category of girls that would make this type of post . . . [about their personal
experiences of rape culture] because they’d be thinking more about what ac-
tually happened than the repercussions of putting [your encounter with sexual
harassment] on a Facebook page and having people reply.” We see that Jos is
noting that some girls would be more anxious than Francesca about the negative
responses from peers either denying these encounters, or possibly even aggres-
sively attacking the victims online as we saw with Robin’s post earlier. In addition,
Rhea, age 15, says that she avoids reporting on personal incidents of sexism on
Facebook because the audience on Facebook is beyond school but also includes
her family, “it’s [not] going to do anything but worry my nan.” Girls worry about
the reception of their feminism and protest statements among family as well as
friends, and feeling able to post sensitive material about gender and sexuality on
Facebook appears to relate directly to age and peer status of the girls involved.
Where Francesca was one of the older, popular, and high-achieving girls in the
school and one of the founding members of the feminist club, Jos and Rhea are
younger and less confident about their ability to manage the types of negative
comments leveled toward Francesca.
Challenges of Using Social Media for Feminist

Activism in School
As we’ve been discussing, it would be misleading to minimize the enormous
challenges in doing feminist digital activism in and around schools faced by our
participants. If we move to the formal policy context, in-school social media use
is largely unsupported in many schools in Britain through policies such as mo-
bile phone banning, which was in effect in the research school (Francis 2017).
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The girls in our research school felt hampered by how social media was blocked
by the school safety policies, which position platforms such as Twitter as a dis-
traction, rather than a forum for political participation or engagement with so-
cial justice issues:
Sam: All social media sites, or pretty much all of them are blocked in
school. Yeah, like on the school computers.
Leigh: It’s like school doesn’t want anything to do with it. . . . If you try to
go on it it just says this URL is blocked so you can’t access the website.
Sarah: We’re not allowed to be online . . .
Callie: They’re worried about offending anyone. All schools are so wor-
ried about offending people all the time . . .
Indeed, the girls were clear that the school did not support them in their ac-
tivism, which could be positioned as “offensive.” One participant said at best the
school “didn’t care,” and at worst they were actively dissuaded from expressing
activist views or those that challenged school authority:
Leigh: Like if it’s an issue we’re fighting trying to make people aware of
and trying to make it more sort of universally accepted.
Sam: Like we’re meant to be naïve to like the big issues, but we’re not.
Kerri: A lot of activism within feminism and everything, a lot of it does
challenge the education system in schools. So its hard I guess for them
to promote that and say you should be activists.
We can see how the school is positioned as hostile to their feminist activism and
the girls understand they are being positioned as naïve, as has been seen in other
research where adults minimize and/or refuse girls political awareness, voice,
and agency (Brown 2016; Kim and Ringrose 2018).
Despite this the girls persisted in their feminist activism, and indeed went
so far as to construct a joint Twitter account with which to tweet their femi-
nist views. The girls were informally supported by a teacher in this endeavor,
although the account was not connected in any visible way to the school iden-
tity.1 The joint “Feminist Twitter” account, as they informally called it, had
the word “girl” in the @ name, which related to their struggles over feminine
embodiment and being put down as young girls in school (Young 1980). The
Twitter profile image they chose was a humorous 1960s’ style beauty queen
holding a sign reading “not your bitch.” The backdrop profile image was of
“feminist conversation hearts” with slogans such as: “gender binary sux,” “no
means no,” “feminist killjoy,” and “not your babe.” It is significant both that the
girls wanted to collectively politicize their group through Twitter and that the
16
teacher worked to support this activism. Sonia Livingstone and Amanda Third
(2017) present a “ladder of social media opportunity in Europe, which shows
the relatively small percentage of young people who are politically active given
only 8 percent sign an online petition, 12 percent express political views on-
line and only 16 percent publish their own blog/vlog comments” (Ofcom 2014
cited in Livingstone and Third 2017). The finding that only 12 percent of young
people express political views online puts the exceptional political ambitions of
many of our teen participants from both the UK and North America in sharp
perspective.
Challenges in Operating a Joint Feminist

Twitter Account
Given the groundbreaking nature of what the girls were attempting, it is not
surprising that they faced significant challenges in their collective attempts
to run a feminist Twitter account through their feminist group at school. The
first tweet they sent out as a group was a retweet of this quote: “Feminism is
about human equality not female supremacy. Feminism is about HUMAN
EQUALITY not diffusion of the male ego.” Talking excitedly over one an-
other, they recalled:
Dana: And even after the first couple of tweets we got, this one person . . .
Kelly: So many trolls, even within the first couple of tweets.
Dana: The first hour.
Sam: Who were challenging it. And there was even a girl who was
challenging us.
Dana: Oh my god that girl!
It is likely that the negative attention brought to this tweet was enhanced by
Twitter’s functionality, where users can not only see, respond to (and critique)
the original tweet, but any retweets as well. Emma Jane (2017) has extensively
documented the aggressive largely anonymous environment of Twitter as a
breeding ground for sexist, anti-feminist vitriol. The girls discussed further the
content of the replies:
Kerri: They argue with us because we’ve called ourselves feminists and
they’ve called themselves something else [humanist].
Jane: A lot of guys are just so against it and one point is that it’s called fem-
inism, and not equalism.
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When we asked the girls who they thought their trolls were, they replied: “random
people in America . . . who scroll through tweets and hashtags about feminism,”
which is exactly what happened with one of the next tweets they sent out about
the sexist double standards of skirt length as seen in Figure 7.2:
This tweet contains the widely circulated Tumblr image created by 18-year-
old Rosea Lake from Vancouver, which has become synonymous with calling
out rape culture through skirt policing on social media (Whitelocks 2013). The
image shows lines drawn down a woman’s leg with the words “whore,” “slut,”
“asking for it,” “provocative,” “cheeky,” “flirty,” and “prude” to indicate how levels
of propriety align with skirt length associated with victim-blaming rape cul-
ture. The image is set alongside the popular hashtag #INeedFeminismBecause
(referencing an offshoot of the popular Tumblr account we explored in chapter 3).
Like our discussion of the hashtag #CropTopDay, the tweet demonstrates a
clustering of Twitter techniques, including use of a Tumblr image as well as a
trending hashtag to challenge rape culture, a practice that shows the convergent
nature of the digital media landscape in which the girls are operating as well as
their savvy use of hashtag technology to connect into feminist debates.
The girls received immediate negative feedback to the tweet. First, they re-
ceived comments from a female-identified Twitter account who questioned
the definitions of “slutty” and “appropriate,” to which the girls responded,
Figure 7.2 #INeedFeminism tweet. Author screenshot.

163
“we should be able to wear what we want when we want and not be judged
for it.” To this the woman replied “you dress unprofessional and wonder why
you’re not respected. Wear what you want at home, in public it’s a different
matter.” This exchange prompted Sam to switch from the “Feminist Twitter”
as many students referred to it, to her personal account, which was a common
practice:
I thought I don’t want to say it on the feminist Twitter account because

I don’t want to, like, I want it to be a nice account. So then I said “what’s
unprofessional?” to her. She said “Example girl complains about
being sent to the office for wearing a crop top to school.” I said if the
weather is hot, why not wear a crop top? She said its unprofessional
and distracting to both males and females. I said “then teach the stu-
dent not to be distracted by a stomach.” She said “That’s ludicrous why
would the whole class revolve around you and your silly whims? I said
“Ludicrous? What’s ludicrous is that you don’t understand equality is
needed.” She said “Of course boys and girls wear your crop tops, three
cheers for equality.”
It is significant to note the ways Sam operates two Twitter accounts and chooses
to speak as an individual, rather than for the group to engage in an online ar-
gument. She argues that this is because she wants the “Feminist Twitter” to be
“nice” in ways that are congruent with normative nonaggressive, congenial teen
femininity (Ringrose 2006). But this is contradicted a minute later when she
also says:
Say someone was arguing with the feminist account and then the fem-
inist account was kind of like slacking, and not getting their points
across clearly. . . . I’d go on the internet and type in fancy words to make
myself sound more intelligent, so then I can argue and debate better,
and back them up.
Presumably Sam means that she makes strategic decisions when to post from
her own account to either back up or support the feminist account, which would
help if it was being “Tweeted against.”
The girls demonstrated a swift learning curve about the type of aggressive
online attacks common in relation to content that can be searched through fem-
inist hashtags or through the word “feminism.” Indeed, the girls became very
aware of the fact that the identifying terms on the Twitter account, listing them
as “London School girls,” was part of why they were being aggressively targeted
for their views:
164
Jane: It said students, it was made quite clear that we were teenage girls.
Clarissa: I think it’s kind of sad that it’s still controversial to be a feminist.
Jane: I don’t understand how making a feminist Twitter account is con-
troversial at all.
Clarissa: how it’s a thing to be a feminist? it’s like you should . . . eve-
ryone should be a feminist, it’s not an addition to your personality.
The girls express frustration at constantly being attacked for feminist content.
Another conflict erupted when Anne, age 15, used the “Feminist Twitter” to di-
rectly respond to a Twitter account of local football club supporters who had
made a sexist tweet about the Ladies World Cup:
Clarissa: Some guy tweeted . . . Caitlyn Jenner looks better than half of

the Ivory Coast ladies team, or the whole Ivory Coast. And then Anne
was like, you should be appreciating them for their football, not for
their looks. And then he tweeted back like, yeah, but they’d never get a
dick anywhere. And then, like, all of us got involved . . .
Jane: They were just talking about rape and making it sound funny,
[having] fun talking about child abuse, it’s so funny [laugh]. No one
laughed.
Christy: And they were saying, like, oh, you’re just Nazis, go and make
me a sandwich.
Jane: Feminazi.
Christy: It’s like insults from idiots, like go and make me a sandwich.
The girls described this encounter sarcastically, speculating the boys they were in
the online encounter with were “12-year-old boys who should be at Nando’s” (a
fried chicken shop), which is a means of positioning the boys as uneducated, low
class and possibly racializing them also. Others however, found the encounter
much more threatening and less of a joke:
Kelly: We were told to kill ourselves actually.

Sam: There was one guy who was, like, it doesn’t matter what your uncle
did to you when you were younger and, like, get over it.
Dana: It’s scarier trying to challenge rape culture than it is a lot of other
stuff because there’s always so many people that are willing to defend it.
So it’s all banter.
Sam: And I just don’t understand how that is funny or humorous at all.
Dana: People just say that stuff to piss people off.
Kelly: To be controversial.
Sam: They think they’re so intelligent, they’re not.
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Dana: People sent us a porno link. I didn’t click into that link.
These girls describe how (what they assume are) boys respond to Anne’s tweet
by telling them to kill themselves. This is clear evidence of trolling in the form
of a violent threat. It is also what Nicola Henry and Anastasia Powell (2017)
term technological mediated sexual violence since the comments also include
sexualized references, implying that Anne was a victim of incestuous sexual as-
sault, which accounts for her feminist views. Perhaps to further offend them,
they were sent a “porno link.”
The discursive strategy employed here is to undermine Anne’s youthful fem-
inism by suggesting that she is against men because she has suffered sexual vi-
olence. This explanation is commonly used to explain feminism as a pathology
connected to personal experience and to deny wider systemic patterns of patri-
archy and sexual power inequalities (Austin 2005). To put Anne in her place,
her feminist arguments are attacked through positioning her as a victim of sexual
violence from an adult relative (uncle, invoking incest), which make her anti-sex.
Interestingly, Anne related this type of aggressive behavior they were
navigating via the Feminist Twitter account to her earlier experiences on Ask
FM, a social media platform used extensively by younger teens several years
previous:
I thought it was rude but it happens a lot in social media. If you are
having a debate with someone and you fail, you’ll just be like oh go kill
yourself. It’s not like it’s shocking to me because I’ve seen it before. In
year eight I used to have this thing called Ask FM and people would be
like oh kill yourself.
This discussion reveals the ways abusive rhetorical strategies migrate across so-
cial media platforms. Although statements telling her to go kill herself upset
Anne, our interview also revealed the ways such aggressive hate speech quickly
becomes normalized vernacular practice on Twitter ( Jane 2017). At times, these
practices frustrated, angered, annoyed, and saddened the girls. Many girls re-
ported being both very incensed by this sexism, but not knowing how to handle
their feelings of anger about it:
Sarah: I like getting involved in the arguments. But then I find myself re-
ally annoyed . . .
Callie: I get too aggressive.
Our data offers insight into how these tweets were experienced in different
contexts. Sarah, for example, recounts feelings of frustration while reading the
16
tweets at home that night: “I was, like, on my bedroom floor and I was like really
[ggrrrr] why are they doing this. It’s more frustrating because they’re obviously
not as educated as we are about feminism.” Callie and several other girls discussed
feeling challenged about how to cope with anger and aggression, noting it was
extremely difficult to effectively intervene given the dynamics online:
Sarah: [they were] ganging up, it’s really weird because they all have the
same views and they’re all talking to each other, so it’s right, like in
their world . . . all of their friends think the same way, which is quite
misogynistic . . .
Callie: Mob mentality. However much we said oh this is very wrong, they
would come up with some ignorant, stupid, doesn’t make sense. Like
you can’t stop them.
Helen: Its really difficult. They were saying oh well you’re asking for it.
Callie: We have a Facebook group so everyone was getting really riled up
about it on the group, so we were planning what to say, which made our
argument probably a lot stronger than it would have been if we hadn’t
been communicating at all.
The platform architecture, particularly the anonymity, of Twitter, which enables

users to continuously and repeatedly tweet, positions the boys as unstoppable. This
was particularly the case when they barraged the girls with comments including
those involving sexual violence (girls being molested by their uncle) and victim
blaming (“you’re asking for it”). At the same time, while feeling overwhelmed by
the way they came under attack, the girls demonstrated the important role that
their closed Facebook group played as a private, but collaborative “backchannel”
that enabled them to plan and organize Twitter responses. It is significant that,
although less likely to be responding in real time, they felt their arguments were
much stronger than they would have been had they tackled the trolls on their own:
Dana: I didn’t reply to any of the trolls. And I felt much better when
someone more stronger in the group created like a strong argument for
me, did it for me . . . you felt more supported in your views.
Kelly: There’s no guarantee that people will stick up for you when it’s your
personal account. Whereas when it’s on the group image, everyone will
back it up.
The girls articulate the difference between using their personal accounts to re-
spond to attacks and “back up” the Feminist Twitter account, discussing how
tweeting from one’s personal account made one more vulnerable. Only a few of
the girls felt invincible enough to take on this aggressive Twitter culture, such
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as Sarah who was identified as “mean” and “forceful” enough to defend herself.
But as we have already seen, some members such as Sam wanted the Feminist
Twitter to be seen as “nice.” The contradiction between expressing political views
such as feminism and the normalization of “nice,” compliant teen girl identity is
therefore placed in sharp contrast (Gonick 2004; Ringrose 2006), creating ten-
sion and anxiety for the girls.
Being Trolled by Classmates

Trolling was not limited to unknown others, Chloe, 17, from Pennsylvania, for
example, recounted how the worst incidents of trolling happened from people
at school. She explained that a boy from her “home room” (form tutor group)
challenged her Twitter posts on his own Twitter:
Someone who wasn’t following me who I actually knew at school,

I wasn’t friends with this guy but he found one of my tweets and took it
out of context and put it on his page. . . . We weren’t following each other
so this means he stalked my account to find this tweet and use it against
me, because it was about how I said that male feminists shouldn’t be put
on a higher platform than women feminists and he was arguing “people
get mad when their meninists and then people get mad when there’s
male feminists and nothing can make us happy. And that’s not what I was
saying at all in my tweet . . . he just decided that I was a good target for
that. And that’s when I decided that it’s not an educated argument, it’s not
really worth my time. And so that’s when I started blocking people.
Recalling the discussion of men’s rights activists and dominant MRA discourses
(Ging 2017; Nagle 2017) discussed in c hapter 5, the notion of meninism (male
anti-feminists) comes up from the boy who is challenging her tweet. Chloe re-
lated feeling very anxious about this incident, saying:
We are not even friends; we don’t talk at all or even acquaintances . . . And

the next day I was waiting like I didn’t know if he was going to fight me
or something but he didn’t say anything to me in person. It was like he
was a whole different person.
While the girls in the feminist group at school had each other to back them-
selves up in person as well as on private chats, Chloe relates being fearful that
the boy may react with physical violence at school given he has sought out and
criticized her tweets about “meninism.” She relates feeling confused when the
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boy did not engage at all in person the next day at school, indicating a discon-
nect between online and offline engagement and the complexity of engaging in
digital feminist activism in a context such as school, but this was not an isolated
incident:
Another time was another guy in my school who was a freshmen and he
also commented on my tweets when he wasn’t following me. . . . I feel
like a lot of the time guys are doing it just to get a reaction . . . getting
into these arguments and getting a reaction out of feminists. . . . I think
my name must go around in their circles as being a feminist and so they
search out my name on Twitter and my bio says I’m a feminist.
Chloe has two important points about these interactions: first, that the ano-
nymity of Twitter seemed to embolden people in a way that is completely dif-
ferent from face to face encounters:
It’s really, really easy to send out whatever you want without getting a
backlash. . . . Twitter doesn’t really delete accounts so a lot of people
think that they can just tweet whatever they want without having any
consequence, and you’re on a screen, not face-to-face, so it kind of
shields you.
Second, Chloe described how there were little if any consequences of students
engaging in hostile or threatening Twitter activity from the school:
They do not like getting involved unless something happens and there’s
no live contact at school. And so even if we’ve alerted them about things
that happen online they will say, “Okay we’ll get it on our radar if some-
thing will happen at school” ’ . . . If someone threatened me on Twitter
and I would go to administration and tell them about it they won’t re-
ally do anything. And actually, there was a meeting with a girl who had a
guy threaten her . . . a hate page on Twitter saying she needed to die, and
called her really rude things . . . and they went to administration, they
did have a meeting. But what made me really upset is that administra-
tion made them both have to apologize to each other, instead of saying
you can’t attack and threaten someone on social media.
Chloe felt this type of attitude permeated the school around issues of rape culture
more generally as well, relating that they did have rape awareness assemblies, but
her teacher had opted her class out of the assembly because it was not mandatory.
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We return to this failure of schools to recognize or intervene into gender trolling

in our conclusion to this chapter.
Negotiating What Content and Platforms

to Post On
As with the adult Twitter users in chapter 5, the teens felt that Twitter trolling
was most risky if one opens oneself up through sharing personal experiences of
sexual harassment. For example, Sam (15, London) discussed tweeting about an
episode of street harassment from her personal Twitter account:
I went on a run with my friend. On the way to the park we got beeped
at twice, three times. We were running around the park, people were
shouting like oh, sexy blah blah, blah. And then on the way back it
happened again, and I exploded. I shouted at the person who did it.
I screamed at them, I was so angry. . . . So I went home and I tweeted
about it. And then this guy tweeted me back—no idea who he was, no
idea how he saw my tweet but he tweeted back “oh no you didn’t you
fucking whore.” I was like you weren’t there, I was there.
Sam suggested that sharing a unique personal tweet was more dangerous: “I
think you get attacked more if it’s something you’ve said.” This type of gender trol-
ling on Twitter had an effect on our participants, some of whom began to disen-
gage from tweeting personal experiences and to purposefully avoid challenging
sexism in online debates. Ann (15) whom we met earlier when she was attacked
for tweeting her local football club to challenge sexism in their comments on
female football players, said the experience dramatically decreased her use of
Twitter:
I guess I don’t really tweet a lot if I’m honest. I find it will help me more
if I just message my friend or to the group chat because when some-
thing happens to me I don’t instantly think to tweet about it all the time.
Rather than disengaging form activism altogether, the teens developed al-
ternative strategies, such as establishing their “closed” or “private” groups
(see also Clark-Parsons 2017) such as Facebook messenger as we saw. Ann
discusses how her friendship group has a private iPhone group chat called
“Like it Lads,” which emerged as a humorous way to “take the piss out of
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the boys.” This private iPhone Messenger group is made up of six girls who
comprise their own friendship group within the Feminist Club at school.
The girls explained that they use this group to share problematic or troubling
experiences, but also to discuss and debate feminist issues among themselves.
For instance, following Sam’s frustration about being attacked for tweeting
about experiences of street harassment, she explained feeling that she would
benefit more from discussing issues with the friendship group through the
iPhone group than sharing with the outside world:
I feel like my friends are closer . . . if I tweet that means no one will be
there to support me right away. . . . At the same time I feel like I don’t
want to tweet it all the time, it happens every other day and I don’t
want to tweet it all the time because I think it’s just a bit sad and
I don’t want my Twitter to reflect me as this horrible person whose
life is so sad.
Again, Sam relates not wanting to be positioned as having a horrible life, a ten-
sion inhering in holding the position of teen feminist “killjoy” bringing down
everyone with “sad” stories (Ringrose and Renold 2016b). We can see that in
balancing these tensions the girls develop different strategies and changing
relationships as to how they use social media in their feminist activism.
Additional challenges included deciding among the group which feminist
perspectives to prioritize in their Twitter posts, as they discussed “low key sort
of tensions” (Callie) emerging around the precise wording of tweets and how to
manage their interactions with one another:
Callie: It was like I don’t want to use the term OCD out of place, but
some of the girls were being a bit funny about how the Twitter was laid
out . . . someone was like no you can just write that tweet again. They
wanted it to be like a professional feminist Twitter. . . . They wanted all
of the arguments to be deleted which I thought was kind of silly if it was
a good argument.
Anne: I feel if I don’t word what I’m trying to say right, anti-feminists will
pick apart what I’ve said and be like you’re wrong. So that makes it a
slower thing, I can’t just put it out there.
As it emerged, due to these tensions, many of the girls only used the joint
Twitter for a relatively short period because “it was a bit of a stress really. I felt
like I needed to Okay [the content] if I was going to tweet something.” As Dana
put it:
17
Yeah, I think there was too much competition between who can make
the smartest or wittiest tweets. So, there wasn’t much point in putting
your opinion because someone else would think of something better
than you that they could have said.
This exchange provides novel insights into how the girls manage the idea of
relating and responding to an outside public through their Feminist Twitter, and
group dynamics around who controlled the digital feminist content of the ac-
count and what was best to say. They not only had to negotiate what to tweet,
but also how to manage public responses. We also see a feeling of competition
with some of the girls around appearing “smart” and “witty” (Pomerantz and
Raby 2016), which alienated some girls, who eventually stopped contributing
to the joint account. While they explained how they continued to use the group
“Feminist Twitter” account, this was done more sporadically and with different
intentions. As time went by, they began to engage more with satirical humorous
feminist content, and to retweet content, rather than post personal experiences
“as schoolgirls.”
For example, they said they enjoyed an account called “relatable quotes,” which
highlighted sexual double standards in society. This included, for example a post
critiquing the attack on Kim Kardashian’s famous “Break the Internet” images
with a satirical rejoinder of Justin Bieber’s tweets of his bare buttocks, which
was widely celebrated, pointing out that this was a sexual double standard. They
explained that humorous feminist posts could deliver their message differently:
Callie: [They] take the piss . . . they’re feminist but they say everything
sarcastically . . . there is one about street harassment. Women should
just travel in underground tunnels where no men can see them, they say
it in a stupid way to sort of make people see . . .
Helen: Its sort of on a level that everyone can attain and understand, it’s a
lot easier and it brings it more to everyone.
Here the girls expressly explain how humor, as an affective channel, can make
messages easier to see and relate to. Indeed, scholars have noted how humor
can be used to make feminist content “sticky” (Ahmed 2004) and spreadable
(Bore, Graefer, and Kilby 2018; Jenkins et al. 2012; Rentschlar and Thrift 2015;
Ringrose and Lawrence 2018). They contrast the confidence to use humor with
“crying and getting really angry,” which is draining, and creates conflict difficult
to manage.
As with chapter 5, other platforms were identified by participants as being in-
herently “safer” than Twitter, with Tumblr again noted as a more “anonymous”
place to post or repost feminist content since it “feels much deeper like a black
172
hole.” In part, feelings of safety and security were also associated with the in-
ability to respond directly to the curator of the content (Kanai 2016). In this
sense, it is much more difficult to have an argument on Tumblr than Twitter.
Furthermore, with Tumblr, participants liked the way:
You can choose whether something comes up on your Tumblr or

not. So, whereas with Twitter you can’t really delete something that
someone has said to you. You can block them and other people can still
see what they’ve replied to you, and I think it is kind of embarrassing
to be shamed for something that has happened to you (Rhea, age 15).
Although it is clear that Tumblr seemed to be a “safer space,” we must acknowl-

edge that this platform was actively used by only a handful of girls in both our
survey and interviewing samples. Given Tumblr’s early associations with queer,
artsy, and creative “underground” communities (Cho 2015; Warfield 2016) the
girls using Tumblr extensively could be characterized as having sophisticated
cultural knowledge, with perhaps more tech savvy users who had a heightened
analysis of different platform specific sensibilities using this platform. On
the other hand, they may also lack the social capital to post their experiences
more publicly on a platform such as Facebook or Twitter, indicating complex
intermeshing of online and offline identity and values in performing feminism
in and around schools.
Concluding Thoughts
In this chapter, we have explored how teen girls are using social media to engage
with institutionalized and systematic forms of sexism, sexual objectification, and
harassment constitutive of not only what can be termed rape culture but also
lad culture as it manifests through cultural norms of masculinity in the UK, US,
and Canada. We explored the complexity of the girl’s feminist activism around
these issues offline in their school-based group, but also through their online so-
cial media activity. One of the findings that emerged from our research was the
careful thought girls put into not only what to post, but where to post. In part,
this was linked with girls’ understanding of platform affordances (Gibbs et al.
2014; Warfield 2016); opportunities and risks offered by various social media
were carefully negotiated and managed, much like we saw earlier in chapter 5.
Twitter, according to the girls we spoke to, seemed to offer the girls an opportu-
nity to extend their engagement with feminism beyond their local communities,
providing a channel for them to explore viewpoints and identities that might
be controversial, such as linking school policy to rape culture. Teens are using
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Twitter in what Carrie Rentschler (2014) describes as a feminist politics of

witnessing, whereby witnessing is transformed from a “sensory-based act of
seeing or hearing to the ability to record and distribute . . . evidence of rape cul-
ture and its interruptability” (69). In doing so, girls mobilize evidence from their
own lived experiences to make sense of a larger context of sexism and rape cul-
ture in much the same way as the participants of the #BeenRapedNeverReported
hashtag we discussed in chapter 6.
Twitter was distinguished from other social media, suggesting that its plat-
form vernacular (Gibbs et al. 2015) affords young people both freedoms and
risks that other social media platforms do not. Unlike Facebook, which operates
through mutual friendship connections often based upon “real life” relationships,
Twitter’s non-reciprocal following structure means that teens often use the plat-
form to make connections and “follow” a range of people they do not actually
know. In this sense, we found Twitter to be a place where certain politicized
teens could engage in feminist activism and avoid surveillance from parents,
other family members, and peers who may not be supportive of their feminist
views, and to communicate with people and organizations they may not have
access to in person. Some of the most confident US and Canadian teens also
used Twitter to actively communicate with members of their school commu-
nity including adult authority figures, although that was quite rare, but this detail
contributes nuance to research on the low statistical rates of youth digital polit-
ical participation (Livingstone and Third 2017).
The girls’ joint feminist Twitter account in our research school revealed com-
plex dynamics about navigating a feminist identity online and offline as a teen
girl. Through carefully mapping group discussions we saw the challenges of
doing collective feminism in the networked affective economy of the Twitter
sphere for teens, given participation was marked by issues of popularity, liking,
and following, as well as adversity, aggression, and trolling. Twitter opened the
girls up to a barrage of mediated misogyny including sexualized trolling (Vickery
and Everbach 2018). Like the adult feminist activists, the teen girls swiftly devel-
oped strategies (group and individual) to cope with attacks and to modify their
social media practices, across all the platforms they engaged with.
Taken together, these findings strongly support the need for media lit-
eracy and education around social media, digital rights, and responsibilities
(Livingstone and Third 2017) especially, however, around issues of gendered
and sexualized violence and consent in digital culture and at school (Powell
2010; Dobson and Ringrose 2016). Indeed, the girls in the research school felt
that outside attacks and peer group dismissal, as well as institutional failure to
support them meant it was difficult to continue their digital activism in relation
to their school-based activities in the feminist group. The failure across all the
schools discussed by our research participants to acknowledge or protect girls’
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against experiences of online trolling, threats, and sexual violence, even when
it involved known individuals at school, is one of our most important findings
that needs to be urgently addressed in educational research and policy on digital
gendered and sexual violence such as cyberbullying and cybersexism, as we will
return to in our Conclusion.
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8
Conclusion
Doing Digital Feminist Activism
On October 15, 2017, as we were in the final stages of completing this book,
the #MeToo hashtag began trending on Twitter in response to a tweet by ac-
tress Alyssa Milano urging survivors of sexual violence or harassment to dig-
itally document their experience with the hashtag. As a phrase coined in 2006
by African American community organizer Tarana Burke to help women from
BAME and lower socioeconomic groups find “pathways to healing” through
empathy (MeToo 2017), #MeToo has an important history that was mobilized
and extended through Milano’s tweet. Indeed, the hashtag functioned to expose
the widespread nature of sexual violence in the wake of the allegations against
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, and sparked significant conversations
about sexual misconduct in the workplace. In the coming days, the hashtag
captured both public and media attention, being used over 12 million times in
the first 24 hours alone (CBS 2017). We became aware of the hashtag when
our own social media feeds unexpectedly became filled by stories from friends,
family, and acquaintances who shared their experiences of sexual harassment,
abuse, and assault. As the weeks and months passed, #MeToo transformed
from a hashtag to a movement, inspiring Time Magazine to name its annual
Person of the Year the “Silence Breakers,” or those who “came forward with
their stories about pervasive sexual harassment” (Zacharek, Dockterman, and
Edwards 2017).
#MeToo is perhaps one of the most high-profile examples of digital feminist
activism we have yet encountered, and it has been followed up by additional
movements such as Time’s Up, an organization raising legal aid funding to sup-
port low-wage victims of workplace sexual harassment. However, it follows a
growing trend of the public’s willingness to engage with resistance and challenges
to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression via feminist uptake of digital
communication. As feminist activism becomes more high profile, as celebrities
175
176
and powerful women add their voices to such initiatives, we not only anticipate
continued mainstream media attention, but scholarly attention to the diverse
and often highly creative practices of resistance to rape culture. Yet, while it is
easy to celebrate the rise of this digital feminist activism (and believe us, we do
celebrate), it is pertinent to ask questions not only about what digital feminism
does, or how it manifests itself, but how it is felt and experienced by the growing
number of participants and organizers of such activist initiatives. This is where
our study contributes significant and unique empirical findings that go beyond
analysis of a social media trend (big data), digital artifacts (e.g., Tweets), or mass
media headlines to explore the lived experiences of digital feminist activists and
their challenges to rape culture.
Digital Feminism: Educating and Saving Lives

The first major contribution of this book is being able to demonstrate how en-
gaging with feminism via digital technologies transforms our participants’ lives.
Across all of our data chapters we saw how tweets, Tumblr signs, and online
testimonials were critical in not only giving people a voice to share experiences
of sexual violence, but to have these experiences seen, heard, and validated.
Despite very real barriers to participation, our research also uncovered how
participating in digital feminist activism served as a healing process for survivors
of sexual violence. For example, in chapter 6, we argue that stories shared with
the #BeenRapedNeverReported hashtag worked as “affective currency” that
drew survivors together and often encouraged tangible social action, such as re-
porting one’s assault to the authorities or starting an online support network for
survivors. In several instances this healing process even facilitated participants’
desire to learn more about feminism, as they began to connect their own per-
sonal experiences with feminism as a political movement. In this sense, digital
feminist activism has important implications for fields such as criminology, and
those interested in understanding the “multiple, fluid and fragmented nature of
justice” (Fileborn 2017, 1499). This is because having traumatic, troubling, or
disturbing experiences of sexual violence heard by others has been shown to
give victims a sense of justice, which is currently lacking through institutional or
formal means (Fileborn 2017; Powell 2015).
Chapter 5 demonstrated how Twitter is practiced and used to connect
globally diverse feminists across time and space, creating affective bonds and
communities of like-minded individuals. We saw how participants conceived
their debates, discussions, and feminist practices as activism, and how these ac-
tivities led to changing relationships with friends, peers, family, colleagues, and
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C on cl u s ion 177
themselves. We also found that participants’ experiences on Twitter and other

social media platforms was politically charged (Papacharissi 2015), revealing
strong personal investments in social struggle. Our findings therefore compli-
cate ideas that social media encourages fantasies of individual change rather
than genuine material transformations and activism (Dean 2009; Papacharissi
2015). Instead, we demonstrated how our participants experienced feminist dig-
ital platforms as extremely positive in generating community, connection, and
support for feminist views, and solidarity in calling out rape culture. We saw how
participants made use of the affordances of social media platforms such as Twitter
for finding like-minded people to “identify with” online, and how the power of
this collective understanding and sharing feminism transcended boundaries and
geographical space. This awakening to feminism was present in our textual anal-
ysis and interviews across all six case studies. For example, many of our teenage
participants in chapter 7 credited social media as the first portal for finding out
information about feminism when it was not available in school, family, or local
communities. We outlined the pedagogical dimensions of Twitter in-depth, as a
platform identified by participants as essential for learning about feminism, and
engaging and educating others around issues such as rape culture.
Complex Practices
Throughout the book, our second major contribution is to highlight how digital
feminism is far more complex and nuanced than one might initially expect. For
example, at the same time as high-profile campaigns and hashtags gain public
attention, we have shown how feminists also make use of lesser-studied tools
such as WhatsApp and iPhone chats. In this sense, our research draws atten-
tion to the multiple, complex, and nuanced ways feminists make use of a wide
range of tools and platforms, many of which are currently “under the radar” from
popular and scholarly attention. This was particularly the case given we have
contributed significantly to an under-researched area of how young feminists
use digital technology to discover and communicate their views in and around
school. We demonstrated the complexity of practices such as operating a joint
feminist Twitter account with peers at school or managing trolling from known
classmates, all areas that we have had little understanding of to date.
When thinking about the political economy of digital feminist initiatives,
we have also shown that in addition to making use of preexisting commercial
platforms, others have commissioned, crowdfunded, and designed bespoke
websites, blogs, and apps. This is not to say that these necessarily escape the
trappings of communicative capitalism entirely (Dean 2005), in which the
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exchange of communication props up an exploitative capitalist system. After

all, some of our case studies using bespoke websites such as Hollaback! have
built-in widgets or affordances to enhance the spread of testimonials across
commercial platforms. The sharing and number of submissions are then used as
evidence of impact, which in turn can be used to secure funding or support (see
Hollaback 2017). In this sense, these feminist activists engage in a type of trade-
off that many of us do; they strategically navigate their own use of commercial
platforms—and the patriarchal contexts in which they are created—in order to
harness the lucrative visibility and spreadability that commercial platforms offer.
Digital platforms and tools are often used in unexpected, and “slippery” ways,
which are hard to predict, and which change over time. For example, although
one might assume #BeenRapedNeverReported was mostly used to share per-
sonal experiences of sexual assault and the reasons they did not report it, our anal-
ysis revealed how the hashtag was also commonly used to share other people’s
experiences, providing communities of support and solidarity for victims,
calling out rape culture. We were also surprised to see cases of the hashtag being
hijacked by those wishing to draw readers to their own websites or organizations
to gain new audiences or maximize profits. As another example, although some
platforms such as Everyday Sexism or Hollaback! were designed to enable im-
mediate sharing of experiences, we were in fact struck by the number of histor-
ical experiences being reported. That users “hack” (Warfield 2016) the intended
use of these platforms to highlight the historic nature of these experiences is
significant, and necessary to disrupt nostalgia for past times in which sexual vi-
olence and harassment was considered banal and accepted as just “boys being
boys.”1 Finally, with Who Needs Feminism?, we witnessed a transformation
from the start of the campaign where (sometimes smiling) individuals were
photographed with their faces in full view, to a trend where the public tended to
“hide” behind the sign as a means of further preserving their anonymity. In sum,
although these campaigns are often designed to elicit particular testimonials or
experiences, the public may not conform to these expectations.
Developing Strategies to Manage Mediated

Misogyny
Third, our findings show that although it may be technologically easy for many
to engage in digital feminist activism, there remain significant barriers to partic-
ipation that require careful consideration. For example, in chapter 4 we detail
how the emotional burden of engaging with testimonials of sexual violence as
well as sustained trolling has prevented some volunteers from continuing their
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work with Everyday Sexism. Likewise, nearly all our 46 participants in chapter 5
experienced some form of anti-feminist negativity or trolling online. We saw that
speaking out about rape culture proved more emotionally draining for women
and girls, especially if they referenced their personal experiences of sexual victim-
ization, which was viewed as one of the riskiest activities online viewed across
chapters 5, 6, and 7. Continuously coping with high levels of trolling and conflict
was exhausting and defeating.
What we demonstrated was the significance of developing digital literacies
and how our participants employed a range of complex strategies to cope
with online conflicts and abuse in the form of mediated abuse. For instance,
participants in chapter 5 had located perpetrators in real life to challenge their
behavior, threatening to contact their school, or working with Twitter to shut
down a serial troll. In c hapter 5 we found that all the schools discussed including
our research school had poorly developed responses to digital harassment or
trolling, leaving girls to cope with online conflicts on their own. Significantly, we
found that the male participants struggled to cope with anti-feminist men and
those who shamed their masculinity or reproduced MRA ideology. Although
we only had a small sample of men, we found that despite their rhetorical claims
about wanting to challenge rape culture online, only one, a trained violence pre-
vention worker, felt confident enough to engage and challenge reactive mascu-
linity politics. Given the rise of campaigns such as the UN’s HeForShe, which
encourage men to be feminist allies, this raises important questions about what
unique strategies men need to adopt not only to practice everyday feminism,
or fight back against trolls, but also to engage around issues of sexism and toxic
masculinity in everyday life.
Making Visible Affective Digital Labor

The fourth major contribution of this research is making visible the labor in-
volved in digital feminist activism and showcasing the ways campaigns don’t
simply just “run themselves.” Indeed, none of our case studies emerge “out
of thin air,” but were instead the result of complex negotiations, actions, and
initiatives by various groups of people, who have donated countless hours
to these projects, with little to no financial compensation, security, or even
recognition. This study highlights how the labor involved in such campaigns
is often precarious, highly affective, invisible, and time-consuming. Although
most of our participants described their involvement as extremely fulfilling
and life-changing, it was often exhausting, tedious, and draining, and led to
burnout, particularly for our feminist organizers. We also explore the ways
180
in which the perspectives and experiences of some feminists—often those

who are white, cis-gendered, and middle class—receive elevated public vis-
ibility and celebration that often eludes feminists with more marginalized
identities. Alongside others who have shown how factors such as age, tech-
nological skills and fluency, and income impact feminists’ ability to engage
in digital activism (see Fileborn 2017; Fotopoulou 2016b), our research has
demonstrated how disability, age, social status, personal self-confidence,
and communities of support also impact the experience of activism. In sum,
experiences of doing digital feminist activism can vary widely across groups,
and can only be comprehensively understood through not only technolog-
ical, but affective, material, and cultural analyses.
While the previous sections highlight some of our key contributions and
arguments, the remainder of this chapter explores some of the challenges of
studying digital feminist activism, including ethical issues, accounting for how
power and privilege play a role in terms of who speaks about which issues, and
how our findings offer insights into the context of popular feminism and the
problems presented by digital misogyny and trolling. We conclude the chapter
by exploring some key aspects of what digital feminism does and enables, and
some final questions about what some future directions of digital feminist ac-
tivism might be.
Challenges of Studying Digital Feminist Activism

In addition to providing key insights from our research, we hope this book will
be used to guide those interested in studying digital cultures. Indeed, one of the
key, and surprising findings, is that studying digital cultures was much more
difficult than we initially anticipated—practically, emotionally, and psycholog-
ically. In part, some of our challenges were linked with specific ethical protocols.
For example, when recruiting research participants, we were not allowed to use
our personal social media accounts, and instead had to set up project accounts.
This was challenging for many reasons. For example, although we have healthy
followings on our personal Twitter accounts, we were not able to utilize these
to recruit participants. Indeed, when we tweeted a call for participants, we had
no replies. We instead had to be creative and ask our friends and colleagues to
retweet our call for participants to generate greater responses. Although we rec-
ognize that ethics procedures are necessary and important, they also provide
obstacles, such as our ability to make use of social media, but also to access more
teen participants. Working with teenagers in schools is ethically challenging
and required prolonged negotiation with our university ethics committees, and
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school leadership to enable us to engage with and capture the experiences of

teens experimenting with Twitter in their teen feminist club.
On an emotional and psychological level, in addition to feeling inspired by
feminist resistances to rape culture, we were also at times left deeply upset and
traumatized. For example, there were several points during the research where
we had to take breaks from the textual data collection and analysis, because we
found reading story after story of assault, abuse, and harassment too traumatic.
Our in-depth interviews also covered many sensitive topics, and while these
often left us moved, they were often very emotional and took enormous amounts
of mental energy to process. As a research team, we also experienced trolling
after presenting our work at an academic conference. Here, trolls mobilized to
question the legitimacy of our project, attack us, and our funders. Although
these attacks were relatively unspectacular compared to those experienced by
feminist scholars studying MRAs or #Gamergate, they nonetheless demonstrate
the “risks” researchers face for studying feminist activism in digital spaces.
Power and Privilege in Researching Digital

Feminist Activism
As scholars have argued, alternative and autonomous feminist initiatives such as
newspapers, zines, and websites have the potential to challenge existing power
structures and hierarchies (see Srberny-Mohammadi 1996; Zobl and Drueke
2012). That being said, while alternative feminist activism provide space for
feminists to come together, research has highlighted how issues of power and
privilege mean that most high-profile initiatives are developed by those with rel-
ative “privileges, access to cultural capital, and power” (Zobl 2009, 7), namely,
white-middle class, cis-gendered Western women. As such, taking a cue from
critical technology studies, it is pertinent that scholars pay greater attention to
the digital environment and how “forms of discrimination may be built and
designed into the architecture of the Internet, just as in other forms of material
structures” (Harvey 2016, 12; see also Latina and Docherty 2014).
This is certainly reflected in our study, in part due to the case studies that we
selected. As white, middle-class, cis-gendered female researchers located in the
UK and Canada we selected “mainstream” digital feminist campaigns with which
we, as feminists, were already familiar. Upon critical reflection however, we may
understand “mainstream” as reflecting dominant—white—culture, a realization
that gives us pause. Our selection then reflects our own privileged positionality,
and must be regarded as only an impartial and incomplete look at contem-
porary digital feminist activism. As we document throughout this book, an
182
intersectional lens guided our analysis, and we paid particular attention toward
the ways in which those with marginalized identities participated in our chosen
case studies. Nonetheless, we recognize that BAME and LGBTQ+ communities
are harnessing the power of digital platforms (see Fischer 2016; Rapp et al. 2010;
Williams 2016), and that these identity-specific campaigns are not present in
this book. We acknowledge that this is both due to our positionality and the
lack of media attention and mainstream visibility that digital feminist activism
by black, Indigenous, queer, disabled, and other marginalized groups receive. In
hindsight, hashtags such as #BlackGirlMagic, #YouOkSis, or #SayHerName or
other campaigns such as Idle No More would have provided a more inclusive
focus to the book.
Conducting intersectional analysis of digital spaces is methodologically chal-
lenging, largely due to the anonymity built into the platforms we are studying.
In nearly all cases it was difficult to ascertain various identities such as ethnicity
or sexuality from a singular tweet or submission. While the interview compo-
nent of our methodology was crucial to understanding the multiple identities
of our participants, our relatively limited interview sample meant that we really
only have an incomplete picture of the kinds of people who participate in digital
feminist activism. While we interviewed some disabled, BAME, and LGBTQ+
respondents, the majority identified as white, cis-gendered, and middle class;
the adults were university educated, and our research school was located in a
largely middle-class catchment area. In part, while this skew is likely down to
the sites we examined (as we discussed earlier), it nonetheless remains the case
that online spaces reproduce offline power structures and dynamics that margin-
alize and disadvantage some groups over others (see boyd 2011; Fileborn 2017;
Harvey 2016).
In addition to power imbalances between BAME and LGBTQ+ groups, our
interviews reveal the way that other factors enabled or disabled participation in
digital feminist activism as well (see also Fotopoulou 2016a). For example, sev-
eral participants had disabilities that impacted the longevity of their activism and
the types of activities in which they could be involved. Our teen participants also
revealed the ways age, social status, technological savviness, and levels of confi-
dence played important roles in their various engagements. For example, some
of the more popular girls felt confident and able to engage their feminist politics
in potentially hostile or risky environments, such as Twitter, while others expe-
rienced anxiety and fear of saying the “wrong thing,” or being trolled.
We need to recognize how power and privilege determines who engages in
digital feminist activism and who is primed to set the agenda for such activism.
While we have highlighted some of these issues throughout the book, they re-
main pertinent to consider in the wake of #MeToo, which has been made visible
by wealthy, primarily white, celebrities. We must then continue to ask: Whose
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experiences are absent from our Twitter feeds and the pages of Everyday Sexism?
Whose stories go unrecorded on Hollaback!? And which teenage girls do not
join into a hashtag such as #CropTopDay, or do not participate in a feminist club
at school? These questions are in our minds as we complete this book, and we
encourage other researchers to remember them as they study digital feminist
activism.
What Does Our Study Tell Us about Popular

Feminism, Postfeminism and Anti-feminist
Backlash?
As we noted in our Introduction, feminism has become both “hyper-v isible
and normative” (Banet-Weiser 2015) within contemporary media and pop-
ular culture, and this had a range of variable effects for our participants. While
there is no doubt that our feminist organizers are indeed passionate about
the work they were doing, in our current climate of precarity, it is clear that
in some cases, their involvement can be described as “hope” (Kuehn and
Corrigan 2013) or “aspirational” (Duffy 2016) labor—in which their un-
or undercompensated labor is used to help secure future employment or
opportunities. Yet, while the labor of the many goes unrewarded, as feminism
continues to gain popularity, and is increasingly marketable and “brandable”
(see Banet-Weiser 2012; Mendes 2017; Rottenberg 2014), we must be wary
of the ways it is being co-opted to suit corporate agendas. In particular, we
must keep a critical eye on the ways corporations, nonprofits, or NGOs might
make use of unpaid labor, while simultaneously profiting from feminist ac-
tivism and organizing (Mendes 2017).
Indeed, as scholars have noted, not only is mainstream feminism increas-
ingly compatible with the market values of neoliberalism (Rottenberg 2014),
but grassroots activists are ever more drawing from the logic of marketing and
promotional culture to “brand” their activism to stand out and create affective
ties in a highly competitive market (Mendes 2017). We have considered these
tensions by trying to draw out the sites of contradiction and complexity as fem-
inist activists, both at the highly organized level, as well as “everyday” Twitter
feminists work on promoting their views through social media platforms. Gill
(2016) has suggested the co-optation, recuperation, or reterritorialization of
feminism is largely uneven. Neoliberal feminism may be most evident in com-
mercially produced glossy women’s magazines, books, newspapers, or even
high-profile activist initiatives such as the Time’s Up movement, but we found
women navigate these initiatives in a range of complex ways. Some of the feminist
184
initiatives we explored were radical in nature, and are indeed identifying and
challenging structural forms of oppression through intersectional analysis.
But at the same time as we see newfound representations of popular
feminisms we see ever stronger rejections of feminism evident in the growth of
anti-feminism such as the virulent spread of MRAs, and intensification misog-
ynist hate speech (see Jane 2017) that are hallmarks of what Ging (2017) calls
the “manoshpere.” History has shown that whenever feminists begin to agitate
and make progress in their quest for social change, it is met by a “backlash” (see
Bevacqua 2000; Faludi 1992; Mendes 2011b). Although we have highlighted
how feelings of solidarity, community, and support were common, trolling
and mediated abuse is also a reality for many who use digital technologies to
engage with feminism. To date, digital providers and social media companies
such as Twitter have admitted they “suck at dealing with abuse and trolls” (see
Hern 2015).
Whether it is accusations of a growing “witch-hunt” against men (see
Livsey 2018), or the rise of “networked misogyny” (Banet-Weiser and Miltner
2015) and MRAs (Gottell and Dutton 2016), the contemporary backlash is
here, albeit in new forms. Indeed, in recent years there is a growth of research on
digital spaces devoted to men’s rights that is characterized for its “truly remark-
able gallery of antifeminist content” (Menzies 2007, 65; Ging 2017). Although
much MRA and alt-right activity has historically been “hidden,” others have
noted their increased visibility as they gain political strength and numbers (Ging
2017; Nagle 2017). Just as feminists in the past have turned to alternative, quiet
digital spaces to forge communities, MRAs are using the same tactics to counter
feminist rhetoric, ideologies, and gains. In our professional lives, as we deal with
young people within and outside educational institutions, we are aware of the
growth of new, alternative masculinities that oppose feminism. Although many
activists, policymakers, and movements “increasingly see bystanders as signifi-
cant social change agents” (Rentschler 2017, 565; Henry and Powell 2017) our
research demonstrates that digital intervention is often complex, and not always
effective, and may lead to negative consequences for the intervener. Although
research is paying more attention to bystanders (see Banyard, Moynihan, and
Plante 2007; Rentschler 2017), this is an under-researched area that scholars
could continue to explore, particularly as bystander intervention program are
being rolled out across university campuses and by groups such as Hollaback!
Bystander interventions (both digitally and in person) in schools are another
important area to consider. While there have been years of anti-bullying by-
stander interventions, gender-blind bullying policies have largely failed to address
gendered and sexualized violence (Stein 2003; Ringrose and Renold 2010) with
bystander interventions aimed at sexual harassment only recently developing.
These could show promise if they focus on tackling coercive masculinities but
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they must also recognize the intermeshing of online and offline in the produc-
tion of sexism and sexual double standards among young people (Dobson and
Ringrose 2016). Our findings showed how schools are failing to address sexism
or sexual violence both online and offline as reported by our participants across
international contexts of the US, Canada, and the UK. We found evidence that
schools were not only failing to protect girls from rape culture experienced in
and around school (such as street harassment on the way to school), but that
they sanctioned rape culture through uniform and dress code policies in ways
that remained largely unrecognized. Furthermore, they completely failed to ac-
knowledge or address trolling, cybersexism, or sexual harassment online (see
also Ringrose and Renold 2016a). Schools need to confront the complex nature
of digital media as both an area where problematic behavior can proliferate, such
as rape jokes and trolling as we demonstrated; but also recognize that digital
technology can afford important opportunities for young people to fight back
and exert their voice through digital political participation. Schools would do
well to try to harness the pedagogical possibilities of social media for social jus-
tice and transformation around gender and sexual equity in ways that have been
successful in university contexts (Guillard 2016; Kim and Ringrose 2018).
What Does Digital Feminism Do?

When we take a broad look at our study and our many findings, it is neither pro-
ductive nor possible to conclude this book with one overarching claim. Instead,
we want to finish by thinking about the road forward, and future implications of
our work. We are keenly aware of the ways the activism we study is not merely
a “media artifact”—instead we are talking about real people, who have experi-
enced real violence, and the sharing of such experiences often has offline legal,
political, social, or cultural implications. Although the point of contributing per-
sonal testimonials may in part be to gain some sense of power, agency, or justice,
what can, or should contributors expect from such digital participation? While
digital feminist activism is complex, and strategies of resistance vary across di-
verse campaigns, hashtags, and practices, considering our main findings, we have
identified some key features of what digital feminism aims to do. Although we
do not claim these features are found within all campaigns, nor that they are en-
tirely new, they nonetheless provide a sense of the aims and objectives of much
contemporary activism.
First, our research reveals how digital feminist initiatives often seek to make
visible issues of inequality, access, power, abuse, and patriarchy. Making oppres-
sion visible has always been a key tenet of feminist activism, and in this sense,
digital feminist activists carry on long and rich traditions of their forbearers. In
186
our contemporary culture, this visibility is necessary to combat notions we live

in a postfeminist society, where feminism is unnecessary, redundant, harmful
or passé (Gill 2007b; McRobbie 2009). A significant tenet of visibility involves
speaking about those previously “unspeakable things” (see Penny 2014) such as
sexual violence, harassment, and abuse (see also Keller, Mendes, and Ringrose
2018). Thus, drawing on Sara Ahmed (2017), we may conceptualize this visi-
bility as part of the work of feminist cataloguing necessary for showing “that this
incident is not isolated but part of a series of events: a series of structure” (30).
The activist work that we foreground in this book is part of a structure that, we
hope, gives evidence of the structure of patriarchy that undergirds many of the
experiences we have explored here (Ahmed 2017).
Second, although many organizers and contributors to these sites already
identified themselves as feminists, or recognized sexism, racism, and other op-
pressive ideologies, our study demonstrated the potential of these digital fem-
inist campaigns as tools of collective consciousness-raising. Often, the media
texts we analyzed contained specific articulations of how their authors now see
individual instances of sexism as part of a wider structural problem of patriarchy.
Our interview data also confirmed that many participants of digital feminist
campaigns, such as those who contributed to the #BeenRapedNeverReported
hashtag for example, often gained a better understanding of feminism through
their participation, and several of our interviewees adopted a feminist identity
after engaging with online feminist campaigns. This is remarkable, as it points to
the ways in which digital feminist activism may function as a low-barrier entry
point for other types of feminist activism and a more robust feminist politics.
Third, through the consciousness-raising discussed earlier, digital feminist ac-
tivism produces connections, solidarities, and communities among participants.
We trace this at several points in the book, including in chapters 5, 6, and 7,
where we discuss how many of our interviewees developed a range of affective
connections with others through their digital feminist activism. While we often
consider sitting at the computer or tapping on our phones as a solitary activity,
we argue that digital feminist activism is ultimately a collective activity and that
the creation of these connections—despite sometimes only being temporary
and ephemeral—are powerful.
Fourth, digital feminism seeks to challenge inequalities and oppression, getting
the public to question taken-for-granted cultural norms and practices, including
dress-code policies, street harassment, or sexualized “banter.” These practices
and norms are challenged through a range of strategies including humor and
asking questions, and practical measures such as policy interventions, forging
new communities, lobbying, and education. In some cases, these challenges
may take on material forms, such as Hollaback!’s HeartMob app, which gathers
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resources to help people report or cope with digitally mediated harassment, or

#MeToo’s spin-off campaign Time’s Up, as discussed earlier.
Finally, we contend that digital feminism is being used to meet victims’ var-
ious justice needs, both within and outside of legal frameworks. Rather than
simply being used as new tools to seek conventional forms of justice, digital
“technologies are mediating new social practices of informal justice” (Powell
2015, 573; see also Fileborn 2017). As demonstrated by popular hashtags such
as #MeToo and #BeenRapedNeverReported, new technologies have provided
some victims of sexual violence and harassment a way to “to tell their stories in
their own way, in a setting of their choice” (Herman 2005, 574), making them
feel heard and supported, and giving them some sense of comfort and justice.
Powell (2015) argues that the proliferation of hashtags and apps to share trau-
matic experiences constitutes a positive “development of new technosocial
practices of informal justice” (580). We reported on these types of practices in
chapter 5 when one participant used “digilante” ( Jane 2017) tactics to challenge
misogynistic and sexually shaming comments of school boys by threatening to
report them to their teacher. Receiving positive feedback in digital spaces gives
some individuals the confidence to report their experience to authorities as we
also document in chapter 5 where a participant went to Twitter and Interpol to
find and charge a serial troll. Significantly this elevation of visibility and voice
around experiences of sexual violence may be doing work to shift the epistemic
fallacy connected to rape and women sexual survivors (Alcoff 2018). This may
be the greatest potential social shift where the connectivity and support online
spreads out a mass of experience in a form of public pedagogy that becomes dif-
ficult to discount and silence.
In Closing: What Can Digital Feminism Achieve?

Given these potentialities of digital feminist activism, we want to finish with
some open questions, in order to think broadly about what digital feminist ac-
tivism can achieve. The answer is not straightforward and difficult to measure.
When seeing movements such as #MeToo, and its aftermath, it is difficult to con-
tend that digital feminism is meaningless, yet it can be difficult to measure its
impact. It is virtually impossible to predict where it will go to next. This is partic-
ularly true for our “hidden,” “quiet,” or “obscure” case studies, whose actions are
often invisible to the public. Will these campaigns continue to gain momentum,
or will they die out, only to be replaced by the next big “fad”? The answer again
depends on the campaign itself and its requirements of a core group or organizers
to keep it alive. A dedicated #MeToo website has already been established,
18
seeking donations for Tarana Burke’s Girls for Gender Equality grassroots or-
ganization. Hollaback! has been successful, but as an NGO, needs to constantly
seek out funding. Although Who Needs Feminism? attracted mainstream visi-
bility for over a year, it eventually died out because its organizers could not sus-
tain their unpaid activism while pursuing careers and having a work-life balance.
And while hashtags such as #BeenRapedNeverReported have had a mini-revival
in light of #MeToo, there is no doubt the pace of its use has slowed dramati-
cally. Yet, while it is easy to count the number of powerful (white) men being
fired, sued, or imprisoned, ideological shifts and broader cultural change can
be far more difficult to measure. Even when figures are banded about such as
12 million people engaging with a hashtag, our analysis reveals the unexpected
ways this content is engaged with. What proportion of #MeToo contributors
are trolls? What proportion are simply making banal comments about the
hashtag? To what degree is the movement being co-opted by organizations and
individuals seeking to draw traffic to other sites?
As Papacharissi (2016) argues, “Change is gradual. Revolutions may spark
instantaneously, but their impact is not instant; it unfolds over time, and for
good reason. Revolutions are meaningless unless they are long. They have to
be long to acquire meaning” (321). In teasing out the temporal and material
nuances of digital feminist activism, this book reveals how the practices of en-
gaging in feminist politics to effect social change is complex, and varied, and
is experienced differently between groups, influenced by factors such as age,
ability, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, culture, social status, and power. In
some cases, digital feminism has immediate reach, is highly visible, popular,
and mainstream. We have shown how feminist activism often requires inten-
sive and prolonged labor from high-profile organizers to maintain its visibility
and wide reach. Its legacy may be long-lasting, producing tangible legislative,
political, or cultural change. Powerful men may be fired, put on trial, or sent
to prison. These initiatives may lead to feelings that change is happening, that
justice has been, or will be achieved. While most digital feminist activism
never reaches these high-levels of public visibility and may not contribute
to tangible feelings of immanent society-w ide changes, we have shown that
participating in the everyday dynamics of these movements and counter-
publics is hugely significant and experienced as life changing in the micro-
moments of connecting, dialoguing, and findings solidarity with others.
Many of our participants deliberately seek out “quiet,” “hidden,” or seemingly
“safe” spaces, restricted to a few trusted friends to explore their feminism. In
other cases, they rely on the anonymity afforded by platforms such as Tumblr
and Twitter to take account of and make visible their experiences of rape cul-
ture. Although the labor involved may not be as time-consuming as managing
high-profile campaigns, it is often highly effective, carefully thought out, and
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personally meaningful. Our participants have demonstrated repeatedly how

the personal is political, and networked feminisms may well be contributing
to the spread and reach of resistance to rape culture enabling large-scale cul-
tural shifts and tangible policy or legal outcomes. Indeed, while the provoca-
tive tagline “Time’s Up” invokes the sense of urgency and reckoning affectively
produced through networked feminism, issuing an immediate challenge to
all, as the adage goes: only time will tell.
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19
Notes
Chapter 1
1. We were largely unsuccessful in recruiting boys for this project. As such, this represents a
significant gap in the current literature.
CHAPTER 2
1. We are fully aware of the diverse range of feminist activism taking place in non-English-
speaking nations around the world, including the South and Central Americas, Poland,
Italy, Sweden, and China—much of which is currently under-explored. This includes var-
ious campaigns across a range of issues including femicides, kidnappings, rape, sexual ha-
rassment, reproductive freedom, and sex work.
CHAPTER 3
1. The website received a major overhaul in 2017 and the interface changed to make it more
mobile friendly.
2. For example, the SlutWalk movement was also hampered by criticisms from BAME women
for initially campaigning to reclaim the word “slut”—a term not commonly used against
them. Furthermore, the movement lacked an initial awareness of the complicated relation-
ship many women had with the criminal justice system, and the ways the police and courts
discriminated against and prosecuted BAME women, migrants, sex workers, and so forth,
and was forced to make changes to its strategies as a result (Mendes 2015).
CHAPTER 4
1. The vetting process requires that a member of the team attends five training webinars; com-
plete a planning form, meet with local organizations, complete a press list, maintain one’s
own Hollaback! Site, and set up one-on-one calls with Hollaback! staff in New York. To
date, the organization has trained over 500 site leaders (Hollaback! 2017).
2. We of course acknowledge that while it might be technologically “easy” to contribute to a
site, this does not mean it is emotionally easy. As will be detailed in the chapter, once in-
volved in these campaigns, there is a tremendous amount of labor that goes into them.
191
192
192 No tes
3. As a result of the bad PR stemming from the video, a number of satellite sites in Washington,
Winnipeg, Philadelphia, and Boston decided to split from Hollaback!, rename their organ-
izations, and privilege BAME women and intersectional frameworks on street harassment
in their activism (see Rentschler 2017).
4. Some of the trolling Laura experienced was so effective that she asked us not to share it in
the book because she didn’t want any potential trolls to know her “weaknesses.”
5. We must also be aware that not everyone has the time or money to participate in some of
these self-care strategies such as yoga.
6. Emily May is the executive director of Hollaback!, which has a nonprofit status; Laura Bates
earns income from public talks and sales of her book based on the project; Bryony Beynon
earned around one-third of her income from training provided via her Good Night Out
initiative.
CHAPTER 5
1. In the survey response, he or she stated they completed the survey to challenge the “33%
false rape allegations in the UK” annually, and detailed his or her enjoyment of trolling.
2. Age played a salient role in this with the younger participants offering more personal
experiences of sexual harassment. In this section, we focus on our adult participants, leaving
the multiple examples we found of the teen girls reporting instances of physical harassment
or examples of sanctioned “rape culture” at school for the next chapter.
3. Ched Evans is a British footballer accused of raping a 19-year-old woman in a hotel room
in 2011; he was convicted in 2012 and cleared in a retrial in 2016. The court case sparked
protracted mainstream media coverage.
CHAPTER 6
1. Ghomeshi was charged with four counts of sexual assault and one count of “overcome
resistance—choking,” although he was acquitted of all charges in early 2016.
2. Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17-year-old from Nova Scotia, Canada, took her own life in April 2013
after suffering from persistent harassment over the online distribution of photos showing
her being gang raped in late 2011. This tweet refers to the publication ban on using Parsons’
name in the media following the charges of circulating child pornography laid against
Parsons’ alleged rapists. Many felt the ban was unwarranted given the highly public nature
of the case and the ways in which it denies personhood to the unnamed victim.
CHAPTER 7
1. The Twitter account name is anonymized as per our ethical protocols.
Chapter 8
1. See for example comments from British TV presenter Anne Robinson who proclaimed
the ways modern women are too “fragile” when it came to harassment, and looked back
fondly to a time when women were more “robust” at overcoming these experiences
(Oppenheim 2017).
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213
Index
affect 4–5, 20, 23–33, 35, 38, 41, 43, 45–6, 53, 57, 140–2; justice 187; media visibility 42, 135;
60, 72–3, 80, 91–2, 101, 105, 107, 123, 130, personal experiences 56, 60, 66, 70, 127–33,
134–35, 141–42, 144, 156–7, 171, 189; affec- 137, 142, 144, 178; public responses 133–7;
tive aliens 25; affective analysis 6, 101, 180; related hashtags 70, 130, 137, 142, 188;
affective counter-publics 100–09, 123–4; af- sample selection 47, 126–7; silencing 137;
fective currency 144, 176; affective dissonance social change 126, 138, 144. See also affect;
26, 132; affective economy 25, 173; affective Ghomeshi, Jian; trolling; Zerbisias, Antonia
fabrics 27; affective intensity 47, 86; affective Beyoncé 1
intervention 22, 127; affective labor 21, 25, 73, black and Asian minority ethnic (BAME) 18–19,
80, 85–7, 95, 98, 179–80; affective publics 4, 35, 65, 69, 79, 95, 131, 175, 182
20, 27–8, 143, 154; affective registers 46, 91; #BlackLivesMatter 130
affective relations 126, 154, 176, 183, 186; af- blogs 3, 16, 32, 35, 40, 54, 107, 111, 177. See also
fective responses 57–60, 88, 90, 121, 130, 134, feminist blogs
144, 156–57; affective solidarity 4, 20–2, 26, boredom 80–1, 98, 179–80
31, 53–4, 57, 61, 111, 126, 132, 135, 138–44; burnout 15, 21, 74, 80, 92, 94–8
affective turn 25; mediated affect 29–32, 46; Butler, Judith 4, 11
networked affect 4, 20, 26–9, 103
Ahmed, Sara 22, 24–7, 64, 77, 95–6, 107, 121, campus 45, 49, 70, 76, 84, 139, 184
137–8, 171, 186. See also affect; feminist care 21, 44, 57, 74, 85–6, 94–6, 99, 192. See also
killjoy; feminist snaps collective care; self-care
anger 49, 57–9, 63, 70–1, 88, 91, 118, 120, 130, catcalling 48–50. See also street harassment
153, 158, 165–6, 169, 171 class 130, 164, 180–2, 188
anonymity 4, 14, 36, 46, 70, 88, 102, 107–08, collective care 21, 74, 99
115, 117, 161, 166, 168, 171, 178, 182, communicative capitalism 4, 30, 123, 177–8
188, 192 community 95, 105, 109, 123, 145, 158, 175,
attunement 27, 74 177, 184
consciousness-raising 5, 16, 35, 62, 79, 104, 126,
Banet-Weiser, Sarah 1–2, 9–13, 15, 78, 123, 186. See also feminist awakenings
183–4. See popular feminism; popular content analysis 21, 36, 40–1, 43
misogyny criminology 6, 24
Bates, Laura 12, 21, 46–7, 65, 70, 75, 78, 82–6, #CropTopDay 2, 22, 146–7, 151–2, 162, 183
89–90, 93, 192. See also Everyday Sexism cultural studies 6
becoming feminist 11–12, 108–9. See also
feminist awakenings; feminist snaps Dean, Jodi 29–30, 44, 123, 177–8
#BeenRapedNeverReported 2–3, 16, 20, 22, digital exclusions 19–20
26, 31, 36, 40, 43, 48, 50, 54–5, 173; discur- digital labor 80–7, 179–80
sive intervention 127, 130; educational tool disclosure 29, 43, 54, 71, 114
139–41, 176; genesis 47, 125–6; hijacking discursive activism 128
69–70, 72; intersectional experiences 128–30, dominant vernacular 33, 48, 72
213
214
214 I nd ex
education 6, 24, 108, 110–11, 140, 149, 157, 160, 80–4, 97; mainstream visibility 34; mediated
174, 184, 186. See also pedagogy abuse 88–96; organizers 73–9;overview 3,
embodiment 25, 28, 38, 95, 97, 104, 146, 160 36, 44; scene setting 53–7; street harass-
ethnography 3–4, 7, 20, 33, 38–40 ment 48–50; violence against women 50–1.
Everyday Sexism 36, 40, 42–3, 47–8, 50, See also May, Emily
178–9, 183; analyzing oppression 61–4; hooks, bell 37, 105
genesis 46–7; organizer experiences 73–6, humor 1, 17–18, 29, 63, 91, 110, 160, 164,
82–6, 90, 97; personal experiences 50–3, 55, 169–71, 186. See also laughter
59, 61–6, 70; scene setting 53–7; violence
against women 50–1. See also Bates, Laura; immaterial labor 30, 80, 88, 98
O’Toole, Emer; trolling indigenous women 128–30, 140–1, 182
injustice 7, 16, 18, 26, 96
Facebook 3, 22–3, 32, 36, 39, 41–2, 44, 46–7, 74, Instagram 18, 31–2, 112, 148
84, 106, 118, 138, 148–9, 173; blocking 93; intersectionality: intersectional analysis 4, 35–8,
capitalist value 30–1, 98, 134; challenge rape 65, 74, 79, 96, 105, 127–9, 181–2, 184; in-
culture 145, 147, 157–9, 166, 172; closed tersectional feminism 11, 18, 74, 105, 107,
groups 35, 166, 169–70; education 113–14, 114, 192; intersectional nature of oppression
141; mediated abuse 89; moderation 109–10; 11, 14, 18, 37, 65, 127–8; privilege 32, 35,
status update 96 79, 105
feminist awakenings 76–9, 98, 141–2. See also
becoming feminist; feminist snaps justice: criminal justice system 68, 130, 191;
feminist blogs 11, 111–12 digilante justice 120; informal justice 187–8;
feminist consciousness 16, 26, 28, 35, 62–4, 77, justice reporter 125; reproductive jus-
79, 101, 104, 107, 110, 122–4, 126, 148, 186 tice 2, 68; social justice 96, 112, 144, 150, 160,
feminist killjoy 25, 95, 160, 170. See also feminist 176, 185. See also injustice
survival kit
feminist snaps 25–6, 63–4 lad culture 6, 8, 22, 25, 53, 156, 172.
feminist survival kit 95–6. See also care laughter 17, 49, 62, 73, 76–7, 89, 91, 93, 110,
fourth wave feminism 10–12, 24, 105 134, 158, 164. See also humor
LGBTQ+ 2, 35, 52, 64–5, 67–9, 84, 182
gender essentialism 3–4 listening 38, 82, 86–7, 121
Ghomeshi, Jian 16, 22, 47, 55, 125–6, listening publics 44
131–2, 135–40, 192. See also literacy 5, 100, 119, 124, 173, 179
#BeenRapedNeverReported
Gill, Rosalind 1, 8–9, 13, 26, 34, 37, 46, 62, 78, May, Emily 21, 42, 46, 65, 74–5, 77, 82, 84, 87–9,
85, 101, 107, 123, 128, 144, 183, 186 91–3, 192. See also mediated abuse; trolling
McRobbie, Angela 1, 46, 62, 87, 141–2, 186
Haraway, Donna 4 mediated abuse 5–6, 14–16, 21, 23, 73–4, 87–92,
hashtag feminism 6, 16–19, 125–44; 99, 108, 120, 179, 184
#AskThicke 17; #BlackGirlMagic 69, 182; memes 45, 125, 142. See also Who Needs
#CropTopDay 2, 22, 145–7, 150–4, Feminism?
162, 183; #EverydaySexism 47, 56; #MeToo men’s rights activists (MRA) 35, 111, 121, 167,
2, 6, 17, 23, 26, 70, 147, 175, 182, 187–8; 179, 184
#NotOk 2; #RapeCultureIsWhen 17; #MeToo 2, 6, 17, 23, 26, 70, 147, 175, 182, 187–8
#SafetyTipsForLadies  17–18; misogyny 1–3, 8, 13–14, 16–17, 20, 31, 33,
#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen 18; 37, 40, 42–3, 56, 60–4, 71, 86–8, 100–01,
#TimesUp 23; #YesAllWomen 2, 105, 120, 122, 133, 150; digital misogyny
17, 142; #YouOkSis 17, 182. See also 4, 13, 180; networked misogyny 33, 184;
#BeenRapedNeverReported mediated misogyny 8, 22, 33, 123, 135, 173;
hegemonic masculinity 8, 66. See also toxic popular misogyny 2, 12–13, 16
masculinity Montgomery, Sue 125. See
Hemmings, Clare 4, 21–2, 26, 111, 126, 132, #BeenRapedNeverReported; Zerbisias,
135, 138, 141, 144 Antonia
Hollaback! 2, 20–1, 32, 35, 40, 47, 178, 184,
186–8, 191; affect 84–7; consciousness- neoliberalism 1, 9–10
raising genesis 42–4, 63–4; homophobia 52; neoliberal feminism 9, 142
impact 61; intersectionality 65–9, 183; labor non-dominant vernacular 68–9, 72
215
I n dex 215
oppression 11, 14, 37, 61, 65, 98, 106, 128–30, 147, 151, 171; school settings 2–3, 35, 39,
150, 175, 184–5, 186 109, 124
O’Toole, Emer 73–4, 76, 82–3, 85–7, 89, 93, 97 self-care 86, 94–7, 192. See also care;
collective care
Papacharissi, Zizi 4, 21, 24, 27–8, 40, 43–4, 80, sexism 3–4, 8, 13–14, 16–17, 22, 35, 42, 46–8,
104, 123, 143, 154, 177 54, 57, 71, 73, 75, 86–7, 90, 92–3, 98, 111–12,
patriarchy 1, 9, 17–18, 62–3, 95, 105, 117, 150, 154–6, 172–4, 179, 185–6; analyzing 63–4;
165, 174, 178, 185–6 calling out 17, 35, 55, 61–4, 87, 122, 157;
pedagogy 5, 10, 21, 54, 57, 100–01, 108–12, challenges to 2, 18, 25, 33, 37, 47, 50–3,
122–4, 140–1, 147–8, 177, 185, 187. See also 56, 102, 112–13, 122, 124, 147, 150, 154,
consciousness-raising; education 169, 175; experiences of 11, 13, 42, 46, 51–3,
platform affordance 21, 24, 27, 29, 32, 44, 46, 50, 55–6, 66, 68–9, 77, 112, 155–7, 159, 165; im-
53–6, 71, 101, 103–4, 106–8, 123, 140, 147–8, pact of 57–61, 165–6, 169; virulent sexism 14.
172,  177–8 See also Everyday Sexism
platform architecture 21, 44, 50, 53–5, 61, 71, 83, sexual violence 3, 6–8, 16–17, 23, 25, 46–7, 71,
93, 106, 166, 181 100, 123–7, 129, 166, 174, 178, 185–6; chal-
platform vernacular 4, 7, 20–4, 31–3, 43–4, 46–8, lenging 28–9, 157, 175, 185–7; continuum
50, 53–5, 57, 61, 64, 66, 68–72, 147, 165, 173 model of 48; disbelief of 7; disclosures of
political economy 10, 20, 29–31, 177–8 29, 71–2; experiences of 3, 5, 7, 114–16,
popular feminism 6, 8–12, 24, 142, 180, 183–5 125–7, 130, 133, 137–44, 157, 165, 176;
popular misogyny 2, 12–13, 16 gendered nature of 4, 8; hidden experiences
postfeminism 1, 8–9, 12, 24, 26, 28, 142, 183 of 5, 125; public discussions of 22; reporting
precarious labor 73, 79–81, 83, 87, 96, 98, 179 25–6, 47; shame 59–60; statistics 129;
privilege 7, 9–10, 32, 35, 43, 63–9, 74, 79, 98, technologically facilitated 123, 165; threats
105, 117, 119, 140, 180–3, 192; male privilege of 116–17, 174. See also rape; violence
108, 117, 122–3. against women
public transport 46, 50, 52, 59, 63–4 sign 45–6, 56, 61, 70–1, 160, 178
slippery Twitter streams 48, 69–71, 178
quiet activism 32, 35, 96, 184, 187, 189. See also slut-shaming 2, 114, 153. See also victim-
safe spaces blaming; social media: Facebook 3, 22–3,
30–2, 35–6, 39–40, 42, 44, 46–7, 74, 84, 89,
racism 2, 13, 19, 30, 63, 68, 81–2, 111, 128, 186 96, 98, 106, 109, 114, 134, 141, 147–9,
rape 6–8, 17, 47, 62, 87, 114, 116–17, 120, 128, 157–9, 166, 172–3; Instagram 18, 31–2,
130, 137, 140, 143, 151, 156; marital rape 133; 112, 148; Tumblr 3, 14, 16, 19, 22, 27, 29,
public discourses around 133; rape avoid- 32–2, 35–6, 40, 44–6, 54, 58, 101,
ance 62; rape joke 23, 120, 147, 157–8, 185; 114–15, 147, 149, 154, 162, 171–2,
rape myths 113–14, 128–9; rape prevention 176, 188; WhatsApp 32, 35, 177
17, 156; rape schedule 61; rape threats #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen 18
87–90, 116; reports of 128, 139 street harassment 3, 14, 35, 42, 44, 48–50, 57, 65,
#RapeCultureIsWhen 17 76, 79, 82, 153, 156, 169–71, 185–6, 192.
resilience 6, 17–18, 119 See also catcalling
safe spaces 44, 46, 65–8, 84, 106–8, 112, 114–15, teen feminists 22, 28, 102, 109, 111, 145–7,
119, 124, 138, 149, 171–2, 188–9. See also 150, 152–4, 158, 161, 163, 167, 170, 172–3,
quiet activism 180–2,  192
#SafetyTipsForLadies  17–18 thematic analysis 3, 22, 25, 33–4, 40–1, 43
school 3, 5, 23, 29, 35, 52, 55–6, 61, 76, 111, third wave feminism 11
119–20, 177, 180–2; activism 2, 102, toxic masculinity 8, 22, 35, 123–5, 179
109, 119, 145–7, 153–4, 159–67, 184–5; trans 52, 69, 129
assemblies 22, 154; curriculum 109, 113, trolling 6, 13–15, 20, 81, 88–91, 98–9, 106,
147–8, 152, 157; dress codes 2, 145–6, 152–7; 108, 116, 120, 147, 169, 173–4, 178–80, 184,
feminist club 22, 29, 35, 39, 147, 155–67, 170, 188, 192; challenging 137; experiences of 4–5,
181, 183; gender discrimination 110; graduate 88, 116–18, 121–4, 135–7, 161–5, 167–9, 181;
school 77; hostility 111, 121, 148–50, 167–9, fear of 127, 182; management strategies 23,
177, 179, 187; masculinity in schools 8, 22; 83–4, 91–6, 101–2, 119–24, 166, 177, 184–5,
punishment in 145–6; rape culture in 49, 147, 187. See also mediated abuse
150–6, 171–4, 185, 192; school age 55, 109, Trump, Donald 2, 37, 112
216
216 I nd ex
Tumblr 3, 14, 16, 19, 22, 27, 29, 31–2, 35–6, 40, WhatsApp 32, 35, 177
44–6, 54, 58, 101, 114–15, 147, 149, 154, 162, white feminism 19, 78,
171–2, 176, 188 104–5
Who Needs Feminism? 21, 36, 43,
university 45–6, 49, 70, 76–7, 83–4, 86, 110–11, 48, 50–1, 54–6, 58, 63, 65–7,
118, 132, 181–2, 184–5 69–70, 72–3, 78–9, 81, 84, 86, 92, 188;
genesis  45–6
victim-blaming 114, 136–7, 166. See also willfulness 25. See also feminist killjoy
slut-shaming #YesAllWomen 2, 17, 142
violence against women 6–7, 48, 50–1, 142, 157. #YouOkSis 17, 182
See also rape; sexual violence
voice 5, 11, 25, 29, 38, 51, 55, 66, 73, 87, 108, Zerbisias, Antonia 125–6. See #BeenRaped
112, 114, 131, 135, 154, 160, 176, 185, 187 NeverReported; Montgomery, Sue

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Digital Feminist Activism

Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

Digital Feminist Activism

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Paperback printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

1. Introduction: Digital Feminist Interventions 1

2. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Studying Digital

3. Documenting Harassment, Sexism, and Misogyny in Digital

4. Feminist Organizers’ Experiences of Activism 73

5. Twitter as a Pedagogical Platform: Creating Feminist Digital

6. Hashtag Feminism: Sharing Stories with

7. Teen Feminist Digital Activisms: Resisting Rape Culture

8. Conclusion: Doing Digital Feminist Activism 175

• Hollaback!—​a website where users share stories of street harassment and

not treat girl or women therefore as naturalized or essential categories (Butler

lives. We showcase the powerful—​if sometimes only ephemeral or temporary—​

fulfilling and life-​changing, these experiences varied widely between groups.

Naming the Problem: What Is Rape Culture?

[R]‌rape jokes, sexual harassment, cat-​calling, sexualized “banter”; the

“Lad culture” was seen as a “pack” mentality evident in activities such

From Postfeminism to Popular Feminisms

period after feminism, a backlash against feminism, and an epistemological shift

popular feminism, including not only an aestheticized feminism such as the

“awakenings,” and spaces to challenge rape culture, but spaces to challenge

Indeed, alongside the mediated visibility of contemporary popular femi-

to as one of “mediated misogyny” (Vickery and Everbach 2018). As Rosalind

[F]‌or every uplifting account of feminist activism, there is another of

or “gendered cyberhate” or “mancyberhate” fail to capture the intersectional na-

Resistance to Popular Misogyny

@LaurenHarsh1: #askThicke If one of your songs played in a forest and

Is mainstream feminism destined to remain the terrain of white women?

and is used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes—​drawing on a range of

Building from our introduction, which mapped contemporary debates around

Theor etical and M e t h odol og ical Approach e s 25

communities, surveys, semi-​ structured interviews, and qualitative content

Affect and Feminism

#BeenRapedNeverReported, or experiences of coming to feminist conscious-

Affective dissonance cannot guarantee feminist politicization or even

Theor etical and M e t h odol og ical Approach e s 27

of scholarship exploring affect in media cultures, and specifically, how the

Social media facilitate engagement in ways that are meaningful. Most

Papacharissi is heavily influenced by Deleuze’s notion of bodily capacity and

a Twitter account or hashtag), which we explore in detail. Papacharissi (2015)

Theor etical and M e t h odol og ical Approach e s 29

If democracy is understood as the production of information by all that

capitalism have converged within networked communications and entertain-

Ideals of access, inclusion, discussion and participation come

Theor etical and M e t h odol og ical Approach e s 31

The affective intensities generated in these interactions provide a re-

Twitter, or Instagram, each unique in terms of their sociotechnical affordances

Here, Cho’s analysis points to the particularities of Tumbler’s sociotechnical

Theor etical and M e t h odol og ical Approach e s 33

analysis focuses on the dominant vernaculars, we will draw attention to counter-​

Methodological Approach: Researching Digital

Theor etical and M e t h odol og ical Approach e s 35

in or organized high-​profile campaigns, as well as including those whose work

Table 2.1 List of Case Studies, Reason for Selection, and Methods Used

Case Study Reason for Selection Methods Used

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

• Hollaback!—a website where users share stories of street harassment and

lives. We showcase the powerful—if sometimes only ephemeral or temporary—

fulfilling and life-changing, these experiences varied widely between groups.

[R]‌rape jokes, sexual harassment, cat-calling, sexualized “banter”; the

and is used in a multitude of ways, for many purposes—drawing on a range of

communities, surveys, semi- structured interviews, and qualitative content

analysis focuses on the dominant vernaculars, we will draw attention to counter-

in or organized high-profile campaigns, as well as including those whose work

Table 2.1 List of Case Studies, Reason for Selection, and Methods Used

Hollaback! Anti-street harassment project; Semi-structured interviews;

2017; McNicol 2015; Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood 2017). An intersec-

How Do Participants Engage with the Site?

Got called a “fucking patronising slag” by a drunk middle-aged com-

threats. As discussed in c hapter 2, while cognizant of a range of terms in use,

Self-Care Strategies, Work/Life Balance,