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Let Spare Rib reflect all the richness of online feminism
Last edited Tue Apr 30, 2013, 05:11 PM - Edit history (1)
Consciousness raising, the cornerstone of 1970s feminist activism, can now be found online. It's never been easier to tap feminism into Google and find a cacophony of voices bringing home that jarring realisation that gendered inequality is a worldwide phenomenon. It's what I did four years ago when I first stumbled across the F Word, a website with content that would change my perceptions of gender forever.
Online feminism is free, instant and accessible – a mass of thriving, divergent opinions. The beautiful thing about feminism online is that you don't just hear from the same people who have somehow unofficially been crowned feminism's official representatives. Online feminism means the people in the mainstream media no longer get to set the perimeters of debate. Instead, there is a rich melting pot of voices who have never before been given a platform. There are sex workers – passionately opposing the narratives that assume that their mere existence threatens women's liberation. There are black women, like me – making the case for intersectionality, bridging those tension-filled gaps between feminism and anti-racism. There are transgender women – rejecting assertions that their existence is a threat to feminism's progress. For many disabled feminists and disabled activists in general, online activism can tackle the question of accessibility, particularly when demonstrations and events fail to provide it.
Feminism is not dogma, and it has no leaders. It's a place not just for questioning power structures, but for questioning each other, a place to grow, and learn, and change. Every voice levels the playing ground.
But we should never underestimate the power of the written word in hard copy. The return of Spare Rib is exciting, because, apart from the odd transgression, feminist politics aren't often found in women's magazines. As well as articles, the magazine served as a noticeboard for feminist events and activism. A significant development of online feminism has been the exploration of the intersecting and complex factors that contribute to a structurally and institutionally unequal society, with those factors including, but not limited to, gender. This conversation might be recent, but it's nothing new. I've got a copy of Spare Rib from September 1981 nestled among my books. With a front page dedicated to black women rising against racism and police harassment, articles about sex workers on hunger strike, and coverage of working class female factory workers challenging their employers with the Sex Discrimination Act, the magazine was nothing if it wasn't intersectional.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/30/spare-rib-online-feminism
Online feminism is free, instant and accessible – a mass of thriving, divergent opinions. The beautiful thing about feminism online is that you don't just hear from the same people who have somehow unofficially been crowned feminism's official representatives. Online feminism means the people in the mainstream media no longer get to set the perimeters of debate. Instead, there is a rich melting pot of voices who have never before been given a platform. There are sex workers – passionately opposing the narratives that assume that their mere existence threatens women's liberation. There are black women, like me – making the case for intersectionality, bridging those tension-filled gaps between feminism and anti-racism. There are transgender women – rejecting assertions that their existence is a threat to feminism's progress. For many disabled feminists and disabled activists in general, online activism can tackle the question of accessibility, particularly when demonstrations and events fail to provide it.
Feminism is not dogma, and it has no leaders. It's a place not just for questioning power structures, but for questioning each other, a place to grow, and learn, and change. Every voice levels the playing ground.
But we should never underestimate the power of the written word in hard copy. The return of Spare Rib is exciting, because, apart from the odd transgression, feminist politics aren't often found in women's magazines. As well as articles, the magazine served as a noticeboard for feminist events and activism. A significant development of online feminism has been the exploration of the intersecting and complex factors that contribute to a structurally and institutionally unequal society, with those factors including, but not limited to, gender. This conversation might be recent, but it's nothing new. I've got a copy of Spare Rib from September 1981 nestled among my books. With a front page dedicated to black women rising against racism and police harassment, articles about sex workers on hunger strike, and coverage of working class female factory workers challenging their employers with the Sex Discrimination Act, the magazine was nothing if it wasn't intersectional.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/30/spare-rib-online-feminism
This should be interesting. If we can bring divergent voices together, have honesty in debate; listening as well as speaking, teaching as well as learning, it will more than interesting.
