Help a campus match furious about feminist or social justice

Carrie Rentschler / 56. #safetytipsforladies 581

in Social Movements and the Transformation of American Smartly being Care, edited by Jane Banaszak-Holl, Sandra Levitsky, and Mayer N. Zald. Unique York: Oxford University Press.

Taylor, verta, and Nancy Whittier. 1992. “Collective Identity in Social Tear Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobili- zation.” Pp. 104–129 in Frontiers in Social Tear The- ory, edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carole McClurg Mueller. Unique Haven: Yale University Press.

valenti, Jessica. 2007. Fleshy Frontal Feminism. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press.

van Dyke, Nella, Sarah Soule, and verta Taylor. 2004. “The Tar- will get of Social Movements: Beyond a Focal point on the Inform.” Pp. 27–51 in Authority in Opponents, Vol. 25, edited by Daniel J. Myers and Daniel M. Cress. Oxford: JAI Press.

van Laer, Jeroen. 2010. “Activists ‘Online’ and ‘Offline’: The Web as an Knowledge Channel for Command Demonstra- tions.” Mobilization 15(3): 405–417.

Wall, Melissa A. 2007. “Social Movements and Email: Expres- sions of Online Identity within the Globalization Protests.” Unique Media and Society 9(2): 258–277.

Warner, Russ. 2013. Who Wastes Extra Time at Work: Mil- lennials, Gen X’ers or Boomers? Unique York: AOL. Retrieved July 3, 2014 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-warner/ who-wastes-more-time- at-w_b_2618279.html).

Williams, Ray B. 2013. Enact Facebook and Other Social Media Support Narcissism? Unique York: Sussex Publishers. Retrieved July 3, 2014 (http://www.psychologytoday.com/ blog/wired-success/ 201306/attain-facebook-and-other-social- media-reduction-narcissism).

White, Robert W. 1989. “From Tranquil Command to Gue- rilla War: Micromobilization of the Provisional Irish Republican Military.” American Journal of Sociology 94(6): 1277–1302.

Whittier, Nancy. 1995. Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women’s Tear. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Yaeger, Taryn. 2012. Who Narrates the World? The OpEd Project 2012 Byline Portray. Unique York: The OpEd Project. Retrieved August 2, 2013 (www.theopedproject.org/index.php?option= com_ relate&leer=article&identification=817&Itemid=149).

READING 56

#safetytipsforladies: Feminist Twitter Takedowns of Sufferer Blaming

Carrie Rentschler

#safetytipsforladies: A hashtag about how drained girls folks are of being told to attain stupid, ineffective, unrealis- tic issues to handbook away from being raped. (Hilary Bowman-Dapper 2013a)

HILARY BOWMAN-SMART started #safteytips- forladies on March 21, 2013 out of exaspera- tion with dominant victim blaming anti-rape

advice-giving after studying yet every other article advising girls folks how to rob a risk administration ability to their very absorb safety. As she defined on her blog,

I’m completely in unhappy health to loss of life of being told what to wear and what to attain and how to be, as although any of that can by some ability do me from being raped. It’s no longer a woman’s responsibility to stop sexual assault. How about we command males no longer to rape instead? ( Hilary Bowman-Dapper 2013b, emphasis in customary)

Earlier than March 2013, Twitter hashtags like #SafteyTips- ForWomen shared faded self-defense techniques that

furious about capability victims’ (in most cases girls folks’s) bodies and behaviors. Whereas girls folks can produce resistance options and data of how to fight abet in opposition to violence, most rape prevention work peaceable areas pri- mary responsibility for stopping rape on folks that are centered for this violence (gawk Rachel Hall 2004; Automobile- ine Mardorossian 2002; Martha McCaughey 1998; Carrie A. Rentschler 1999). Tweets the usage of #safetytips- forladies known as out the victim-blaming focal point of most rape prevention, shifting consideration from the topic of girls folks staying safe, based solely on a source at the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), to how to end rape (“Quit Rape” 2013).

After Bowman-Dapper’s tweet, others adopted suit, humorously tweeting with the hashtag to mock the advice-giving tropes of faded rape prevention

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582   Portion IV: Social Alternate

a “symbolic rerouting” of anti-rape discourse, an “match marked by … a swap of route” in how we discuss and politicize sexual violence and its prevention (2013, 156). Currently, #safetytipsforladies and other feminist hashtag generation around victim blaming responses to sexual violence, like #YesAll- Women (Samantha C. Thrift 2014), provide particu- larly visible examples of how social media might be historic to redirect consideration in feminist responses to sexual violence from campaigns rooted within the habits of the survivor to folks who listen on the actions of oldsters that might rape.

Read as a collectivizing feminist response to rape tradition, #safetytipsforladies unearths the femi- nist devour exposing misogynist, victim-blaming solutions by plan of humor, in techniques that resonated around the Web. Feminist blogs and the gain press registered the impact and virality of the feminist hashtag by plan of their “most efficient of” and “favorites” lists. For Madeline Davies (2013) of Jezebel, “the girls folks of Twitter took over one thing tiresome and made it into one thing awesome.” In this vogue, the humor of #safteytipsforladies explains both its unfold and the memetic remaking of feminist jokes that reply to victim blaming attitudes and slut-shaming rhet- oric (gawk Limor Shifman 2014, 94–96). In the professional- cess, #safetytipsforladies helped swap the phrases of feminist debate about sexual violence, drawing broader media consideration to feminist rape prevention discourse by plan of the derisive laughter that ener- gizes latest feminisms (Susan Douglas 2010, 22). The hashtag activism of #safetytipsforladies illus- trates how humor nurtures a politics of pleasure and resil- ience within the face of rape tradition and its apologists. Alongside the feminist feeling constructions of rage and exasperation within the fight in opposition to the pernicious vic- tim blaming of rather a lot rape prevention, feminist hashtag humor asserts the worth of hijacking spaces of discussion and commentary on-line, articulating feminist critique in techniques that also, importantly, plan us order.

R E F E R E N C E S

Bing, Janet. 2007. “Liberated Jokes: Sexual Humor in All-Fe- male Groups.” Humor 20 (4): 337–366.

Bowman-Dapper, Hilary. 2013a. “Chronicling the Unex- ceptional.” Tumblr, March 20. Accessed July 11, 2014. h t tp : / / pa s y l r ee . tumb l r. com/pos t /45816844116 / safetytipsforladies-a-hashtag-about-how-drained.

discourse. Tweets by Kayla @fangirl124 and FemArm- ChairRegime @femarmchairregime joked that girls folks must don chain mail or three sweat suits, a ski veil, and snoozing salvage to handbook away from rape, the usage of hyperbolic exaggeration to present the irrational vic- tim-blaming good judgment at the abet of the root that what girls folks wear makes them more inclined to sexual assault. Bonnie Dean @BonDean deployed a comical visual meme to imply that girls folks must breeze away their vagi- nas at house forward of they breeze out, referencing comical Wanda Sykes’ stand-up routine where she jokingly told the same, whereas Lesley @jarvgirl suggested that girls folks must catch a 404 Error code tattooed around their bikini line. Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia), creator of the hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen (2013), known as out victim-blaming rape prevention by pointing out that practically all advice tells girls folks to “end being a woman in public. #safetytipsforladies” (March 25, 2013).

That girls folks became to Twitter to explicit their exasperation with rape prevention advice is extraordinarily revealing, for they concurrently hijacked long-established prevention discourse and repopulated Twitter chan- nels with a particular roughly search-to-search advice giv- ing. Tweets the usage of the hashtag had been immediate generated and recirculated, demonstrating how humor fuels the dissemination of feminist solutions by technique of social media (gawk Bing 2007). Noting the fee with which the hashtag caught on, feminist bloggers commented on the absurdity of most anti-rape advice directed at girls folks, emphasizing the have to “shift the purpose of passion to those doing the raping instead” (HarlotOverdrive 2013). Whereas tweets collectivized expressions of fem- inist “fed-upness” (Carrie A. Rentschler 2014), #safe- tytipsforladies also listed solutions for solving the likelihood of rape in techniques others came all the plan in which by plan of functional (e.g., Kristina Chew 2013). Tweets corresponding to Kate Wood’s @ gimmepanda mixed satirical jabs at the individu- alizing, paranoia-producing “techniques” layout of anti-rape risk administration advice whereas also criticizing the stranger hazard paradigm of rape prevention. Rape Disaster Scotland’s comical 2012 marketing campaign “High Ten Tricks to Stay Rape,” re-tweeted with #safetytips- forladies, tells males how no longer to rape by, amongst other issues, advising males to care for up whistles to warn poten- tial victims. Whereas equipped jokingly, the marketing campaign nonetheless objects how to plan capability rapists to blame for their habits.

As film pupil Yuriko Furuhata argues, media hijacks like those we gawk in feminist hashtags describe

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Alicia Garza / 57. A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Tear 583

Kendall, Mikki. 2013. “#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen: Women of Colour’s Wretchedness with Digital Feminism.” The Guardian, August 14. Accessed August 11, 2014. http:// www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/14/ solidarityisforwhitewomen-hashtag-feminism.

Mardorossian, Carine. 2002. “Toward a Unique Feminist Idea of Rape.” Signs 27 (3): 743–775.

McCaughey, Martha. 1998. Precise Knockouts: The Physical Fem- inism of Women’s Self-Protection. Unique York: Unique York Univer- sity Press.

Rentschler, Carrie A. 1999. “Women’s Self-Protection: Physical Education for On a customary foundation Lifestyles.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 26 (1): 152–161.

Rentschler, Carrie A. 2014. “Rape Culture and the Feminist Politics of Social Media.” Girlhood Studies 7 (1): 65–82.

Shifman, Limor. 2014. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

“‘end rape’ dislodging ‘care for safe’ advice on social media.” 2013. CBC.ca Storify. Accessed October 16, 2014. https://storify.com/cbccommunity/both-sexes-enhance- end-rape-answer-to-care for-safe-adv.

Thrift, Samantha C. 2014. “#YesAllWomen as Feminist Meme Match.” Feminist Media Studies 14 (6): 1090–1092.

“TOP TEN TIPS TO END RAPE.” 2012. Glasgow: Rape Disaster Scotland.

Bowman-Dapper, Hilary. 2013b. “#safteytipsforladies, or Why vic- tim-Blaming is Moronic.” Hilaroar (blog), March 21. Accessed July 11, 2014. http://hilaroar.tumblr.com/post/45957899437/ safetytipsforladies-or-why-victim-blaming-is.

Chew, Kristina. 2013. “Let’s be Actual: These are the 15 Simplest Safety Guidelines for Women.” The Care2 (blog), March 26. Accessed July 11, 2014. http://www.care2.com/causes/ most efficient-15-safetytipsforladies-from-girls-who-.

Davies, Madeline. 2013. “Women Lift Over #safteytipsforladies and Originate it 100 Times Better.” Jezebel (blog), March 25. Accessed July 11, 2014. http://jezebel.com/5992329/girls folks- rob-over-safetytipsforladies-and-plan-it-100-instances-better.

Douglas, Susan. 2010. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Performed. Unique York: Times Books.

Furuhata, Yuriko. 2013. Cinema of Actuality: Eastern Avant- Garde Filmmaking within the Season of Image Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Hall, Rachel. 2004. “‘It Can Happen to You’: Rape Prevention within the Age of Possibility Administration.” Hypatia 19 (3): 1–19.

HarlotOverdrive. 2013. “#safteytipsforladies (or why I want you to end telling me how I’m in a position to stop being sexually assaulted).” Harlot Overdrive: Sex, Culture, Nonsense (blog), March 20. Accessed July 11, 2014. http://harlotoverdrive. wordpress.com/2013/03/20/safetytipsforladies/.

READING 57

A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Tear

Alicia Garza

I CREATED #BLACKLIvESMATTER with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of my sisters, as a name to action for Sad folks after seventeen-year-outmoded

Trayvon Martin used to be posthumously placed on trial for his absorb execute and the killer, George Zimmerman, used to be no longer held to blame for the crime he commit- ted. It used to be a response to the anti-Sad racism that permeates our society and also, sadly, our movements.

Sad Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Sad lives are plan- atically and deliberately centered for loss of life. It’s an affirmation of Sad of us’ contributions to this soci- ety, our humanity, and our resilience within the face of deadly oppression.

We had been humbled when cultural workers, artists, designers, and techies equipped their labor and love to plan bigger #BlackLivesMatter past a social media hashtag. Opal, Patrisse, and I created the infrastruc- ture for this lag mission—engaging the hashtag from social media to the streets. Our group of workers grew by plan of a really worthwhile Sad Lives Matter ride, led and designed by Patrisse Cullors and Darnell L. Moore, organized to toughen the lag that’s increasing in St. Louis, MO, after eighteen-year outmoded Mike Brown used to be killed by the hands of Ferguson Police Offi- cer Darren Wilson. We’ve hosted national convention calls furious about elements of extreme importance to Sad folks working laborious for the liberation of our folks. We’ve connected folks all the plan in which by plan of the country working

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truth-telling and mental activism

by patricia hill collins

Talk the fact to the oldsters

Talk sense to the oldsters

Free them with motive

Free them with honesty

Free the oldsters with Love and Courage

and Love their-Being Mari Evans, from I Am a Sad Girl (1970)

Mari Evans’ poem invokes the social and political upheaval of the

Civil Rights and Sad Vitality movements in this country. Love others

of her generation, Evans rejected the separation between pupil-

ship and activism, college and society, pondering and doing. She wrote

poems, plays, young folks’s books, and a musical adaptation of Zora Neale

Hurston’s Their Eyes Have been Watching God. Alongside with other artists,

intellectuals, and activists at the time, she engaged in a number of kinds

of mental activism.

37WINTER 2013 contexts

I surprise how effec-

tively today’s students

and public intellectuals

discuss the fact about

as a lot as date social

elements. Unique technolo-

gies catch unfolded

formerly incredible

techniques for us to search the advice of with

one every other. We’re swimming in knowledge, but how a lot

of that knowledge strikes us nearer to the truths that can support

us? Folk can now gawk themselves on YouTube and post

their solutions on blogs with blinding chase. Yet for all this discuss

and noise, what are we announcing that’s of worth? Where are the

conversations that can spur as a lot as date mental activism?

Breathing life into solutions requires working all the plan in which by plan of differences and

constructing communities whereby dialogue is that you’ll be catch.

Currently, in our an increasing kind of company colleges and universities

and monopolistic mainstream media, we confront a contradic-

tory politics of inclusion and exclusion. A few of those from

formerly excluded teams now catch positions of vitality and

authority inside the social establishments that once excluded them.

Many of these insiders engage in mental work. On the same

time, as the lyrics of global hip-hop remind us, some distance too many

folks remain excluded.

As an American citizen, an African American lady from

a working-class background, and an tutorial who has expe-

rienced appreciable upward social mobility, I’m both an

insider and an outsider. During my professional career, I

catch struggled to do readability about how ever-shifting patterns

of belonging and exclusion catch fashioned the

contours of my mental activism.

Negotiating the as a lot as date politics of

knowledge production as an “outsider inside”

raises some basic dilemmas. In a mis-

guided effort to provide protection to standards, many of my

tutorial colleagues at varied colleges and

universities derogate any work that’s “popu-

lar” as much less rigorous or scholarly. They gawk such

“political” work as nonacademic. Such norms

suppress the roughly engaged scholarship

that pursuits me and that is basic for

mental activism. Nevertheless because solutions and politics are every-

where, the skill for mental activism will seemingly be in all areas.

speaking truth to vitality There are two basic options of mental activism.

One tries to discuss the fact to vitality. This plan of truth telling

uses the vitality of solutions to confront original vitality kinfolk.

On a metaphorical level, speaking the fact to vitality invokes

photos of altering the very foundations of social hierarchy

where the much less highly effective rob on the tips and practices of the

highly effective, in most cases armed solely with their solutions. One can imagine

this job by plan of the David and Goliath yarn of the faded

standing as a lot as the web, armed superb with a slingshot (as relying

solely on the vitality of one’s solutions appears to be like). A Google search

of the phrase “discuss the fact to vitality” uncovers a sizable amount of

hits reputedly furious about confronting folks that wield vitality

inside original social establishments.

My lengthy tutorial working in direction of used to be designed to equip

me to wield the language of vitality to help the pursuits of

the gatekeepers who granted me legitimacy. My lecturers did

no longer catch in solutions that I would settle to make spend of those same weapons

to danger a lot of what I realized, no lower than no longer as deeply as

I catch if truth be told performed. Whereas we might additionally catch our educations

as our person mental property, we immediate fi nd out that

highly effective teams quiz us to do our like levels in service

to conservative political agendas. Vitality robotically claims that it

has a monopoly on the fact. Yet my education printed a number of

truths, most of which had been co-opted and repackaged to suit the

vested pursuits of the more highly effective. The richness of different

capabilities of leer remained disregarded, neglected, ridiculed, and/or

persecuted out of existence.

Noteworthy of my tutorial writing strives to

discuss the fact to vitality, particularly, to provide

alternative analyses of social injustices that

scholarly audiences will fi nd credible. Noteworthy

of my career as a sociologist has been spent

speaking the fact to vitality about chase, class,

gender, and sexuality, yet chase has been central.

I catch furious about anti-racist discourse and prac-

tice that can also catalyze folks to catch

their worlds otherwise and, which ability, act

otherwise inside them. My work constitutes

theoretical interventions in what counts as truth

about chase and racism.

Contexts, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 36-39, 41. ISSN 1536-5042, digital ISSN 1537-6052. © 2013 Temple University Press. Used by permission of Temple University Press. http://contexts.sagepub.com. DOI 10.1177/1536504213476244

Illustrations by Corey Fields

38 contexts.org

Here’s a strong time to discuss overtly about chase; many

American electorate accept as true with that we are living in a post-racial world.

The election of Barack Obama has concurrently highlighted

the visibility of chase and the difficulties of speaking about it. In this

context, phrases like “family,” “neighborhood,” “post-racial society,”

and “color blindness” are invoked by thinkers on both the left

and the exact aspects of the political spectrum, with racial subtexts

carried inside what appears to be like a newfound team spirit all the plan in which by plan of the

historically divisive lessons of chase and gender. I accept as true with that if

we can swap our taking into account chase, we can attain so about

gender, class, sexuality, faith, and citizenship too.

Speaking the fact to vitality in techniques that undermine and

danger that vitality is assuredly most efficient performed as an insider. Some

adjustments are most efficient initiated from all the plan in which by plan of the belly of the beast.

Standing outdoors, throwing stones at the beast, and calling it

names received’t swap a lot, moreover possibly, to plan the beast

more dangerous because now it no longer believes that its

underlings adore it. Animated vitality constructions from the inside,

and working cracks within the plan, requires studying to discuss

a number of languages of vitality convincingly.

speaking truth to the oldsters A 2nd plan of mental activism objectives to discuss the

truth straight to the oldsters. In distinction to directing vitality to

those in vitality, a focal point that inadvertently bolsters the realization that

elites are the superb social actors who rely,

folks that discuss the fact to the oldsters

discuss straight to the heaps. The admire

here is extreme. It’s the distinction between

producing a memo that paperwork the

many circumstances of a boss’s sinful habits and

beseeches him or her to swap his or her

techniques and having a gathering with the group of workers to strategize techniques

that they, in my plan and collectively, might take care of the boss

and the lines of authority that do them within the advise to open up

with. The used plan speaks the fact to vitality—the latter

plan speaks the fact to the oldsters.

Mari Evans’ poem exemplifies this 2nd plan of truth scream-

ing. Evans demands a lot from mental activists by arguing

that long-established, day after day folks want honest solutions that can reduction

them in their day after day lives. Such truth-telling requires speaking,

motive, honesty, love, braveness, and care. For lecturers whose

horizons were narrowed to making ready for the next reap-

pointment, promotion, and tenure committee meeting, or their

lecture for the substantial introductory sociology class that meets at

9:00 a.m. three days per week like clockwork, this belief of

truth-telling constitutes a luxurious that can also be reserved for superb

doubtlessly the most privileged college individuals. Who has time to check with

every pupil, motive with the students, give them an factual

overview of the basic textbook, love them in techniques that

empower and no longer demean, present the braveness to rob a leer at one thing

radically varied, and explicit a level of same old care?

Intellectual activists who devote their consideration to the public

can pay a high tag. In the United States, students and activists

who do their education in service to their native publics are

robotically handed over for cushy jobs, stout salaries, and the likelihood

to seem on Nationwide Public Radio. In some areas of the globe,

speaking the fact to the oldsters lands you no longer on cable tv

but below house arrest, in detention center, or killed. As a lot as the moment American

intellectuals have to support in solutions that, when it involves our skill

to recount the vitality of solutions, we are the fortunate ones. For

our of us, pals, kinfolk, and neighbors who lack literacy,

work long hours, and/or spend reputedly unending doses of

so-known as actuality tv, the pleasure of hearing sleek solutions

Because solutions and politics are in all areas, the skill for mental activism will seemingly be in all areas.

39WINTER 2013 contexts

that danger social inequalities in most cases is a rarity.

I’m an mental whose scholarly work aspires to discuss

the fact to vitality. Yet a mountainous share of my mental work

has also aimed to discuss the fact to the oldsters. Every types of

truth telling are intertwined all the plan in which by plan of my mental career,

with my books, journal articles, and essays arrayed alongside a

continuum with speaking the fact to vitality and speaking the

truth to the oldsters on both end. Though-provoking these two types of

truth telling inside a singular work is robust.

speaking in a number of registers My book, Sad Feminist Belief: Information, Aware-

ness and the Politics of Empowerment is written in a number of

registers, for scholarly audiences to boot to non-tutorial Afri-

can American girls folks. I faced a strong danger in crafting

this book. How might I write a book about African American

girls folks’s mental production that is seemingly to be accredited by

scholarly audiences that had long excluded and derogated this

community? How might I write a book that spoke straight to African

American girls folks that they’d fetch honest, yet steer away from the

risk of being pushed apart by scholarly audiences (who controlled

publishing resources)? I had to search out techniques to peep the day after day

creativity and resistance of African American girls folks all the plan in which by plan of the

constraints of an tutorial discourse that

would no longer be considered by students as being too

long-established or political. I also had to catch in solutions

how my arguments might be recogniz-

in a position to and functional for African American

girls folks. And I had to sharpen my talents of

translation.

For the reason that enviornment topic at that time used to be so sleek and I used to be

an unknown pupil, I knew that my publisher would recruit

scholarly reviewers to present my manuscript an intensive assess-

ment. Yet to shield my book from the vitality kinfolk that

made African American girls folks objects of scholarly knowledge,

I also developed techniques of including African American girls folks as

reviewers of my enviornment topic.

I invited just a few Afri-

can American girls folks

undergraduates from

my University of Cin-

cinnati Africana Studies

capabilities to help as

readers for chapters of

my manuscript. They

had been lustrous, keen,

primari ly working-

class students whose

childhoods within the Cincinnati metropolitan house had equipped

them great, heterogeneous networks of African American

pals, neighbors, and kinfolk. I used to be no longer drawn to my stu-

dents’ skill to intellectual my English or voice me of how my book

might catch the good thing about additional citations from the tip scholarly

journals. As a substitute, I asked them t