Kaitlynn Mendes

‘Feminism rules! Now, where’s my swimsuit?’ Re-evaluating feminist discourse in print media 1968–2008:

Using both content and critical discourse analysis, this article traces the emergence of and changes in the ways feminism has been discursively constructed in 998 British and American news articles between 1968 and 1982 – which I define as the ‘height’ of the Second Feminist Wave, and 2008 – marking 40 years after feminism began gaining momentum in both nations. In analysing the British Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, and Guardian newspapers, as well as the American New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, I argue that not only has there been an erasure of feminist activism from these newspapers over time, but that discourses of feminism have become both de-politicized and de-radicalized since the 1960s, and can now largely be considered neoliberal in nature – a problematic construction for those seeking collective social change.

Speaking ‘unspeakable things’: documenting digital feminist responses to rape culture

Abstract This paper examines the ways in which girls and women are using digital media platforms to challenge the rape culture they experience in their everyday lives; including street harassment, sexual assault, and the policing of the body and clothing in school settings. Focusing on three international cases, including the anti-street harassment site Hollaback!, the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported, and interviews with teenage Twitter activists, the paper asks: 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, harassment, and sexism? And, why are girls and women choosing to mobilize digital media technologies in such a way? Employing an approach that includes ethnographic methods such as semi-structured interviews, content analysis, discursive textual analysis, and affect theories, we detail a range of ways that women and girls are using social media platforms to speak about, and thus make visible, experiences of rape culture. We argue that this digital mediation enables new connections previously unavailable to girls and women, allowing them to redraw the boundaries between themselves and others.

Reporting The Women's Movement

This article examines and compares how four British and American newspapers reported the second-wave feminist movement during its most active political period, 1968–1982. Through the use of both content analysis and critical discourse analysis, this study reveals that despite socio-political differences, both US (The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune) and UK (The Times, Daily Mirror) newspapers used a similar range of discourses when addressing the womens movement and its members. While coverage overall can best be described as fragmented and contradictory, I argue that on the surface, there was significantly more “positive” or supportive articles on the womens movement than previous scholars have noted. However, these news stories rarely addressed the ways in which capitalism and patriarchy oppress women as a group, and often created a demarcation between “legitimate” and “de-legitimate” feminists, the latter being anyone who deviates from traditional feminine norms. Such constructions therefore were not only politically incapable of challenging womens oppression, but helped construct feminism as a dirty word, a connotation which still exists today. This paper will also address the emergence and eventual dominance of oppositional discourses, examining the patriarchal and capitalist ideologies used in both countries to rebuff the movement, its members and their goals.

Framing Feminism: News Coverage of the Women's Movement in British and American Newspapers, 1968–1982

This article analyses the framing in four British and American newspapers of the second-wave feminist movement during its most politically active period (1968–1982). Using content and critical discourse analysis of 555 news articles, the article investigates how movement members were represented, what problems and solutions to womens oppression/inequality were posed and whose voices were used. This paper identifies: opposition to the movement, support for the movement, conflict and movement defined in terms of its goals. In addition to exploring nuances in coverage across time and space, we use a feminist perspective to make political statements about how gendered hierarchies function through media discourse, and argue that the circulation of patriarchal and capitalist ideologies worked to prevent womens equal partnership with men in both countries.

‘The lady is a closet feminist!’ Discourses of backlash and postfeminism in British and American newspapers

This article examines news reports of the second-wave feminist movement during its most active political period (1968–82) in British and American newspapers, and specifically focuses on the ways postfeminist discourses were constructed and deployed. While most accounts of postfeminism relate to American cultural texts from the 1990s to the present day, they ignore (or are unaware of) the ways such discourses were constructed before this, or in different cultural contexts. In this article, I argue that postfeminist discourses are evident throughout the 1970s, during the height of the second-wave feminist movement, and that many of these discourses differed between the countries as a result of unique socio-cultural contexts, and the ways the women’s movements evolved. That postfeminist discourses emerged early on indicates the extent to which patriarchal and capitalist ideologies contested feminist critiques from an early stage, demonstrating that notions of feminism’s eventual illegitimacy and hence its redundancy were not constructed overnight, but took years to achieve hegemony.

MeToo and the promise and pitfalls of challenging rape culture through digital feminist activism

On 24 October 2017, the #MeToo hashtag began trending on Twitter. Although the phrase was initiated by African American women’s rights activists Tarana Burke in 2006, it gained widespread attention when actress Alyssa Milano used it as a Twitter hashtag in response to allegations of sexual assault by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Through the #MeToo hashtag, Milano encouraged members of the public to join in to showcase the magnitude of the problem of sexual violence. Capturing both public and media attention, the hashtag was used 12 million times in the first 24 hours alone (CBS, 2017). Since 2014, we have been studying the ways feminists have increasingly turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny and rape culture (see Mendes et al., forthcoming). As a research team the sheer volume of attention paid towards this hashtag took us by surprise, but the fact survivors took to social media to share their experiences and engage in a ‘call-out culture’ resonated strongly with our research findings over the past three years. Although #MeToo is perhaps one of the most high-profile examples of digital feminist activism we have yet encountered, it follows a growing trend of the public’s

SlutWalk, Feminism, and News

In January 2011, Toronto Police Constable Michael Sanguinetti addressed a small group of York University students on campus safety. Prefaced by the statement, ‘I’m told I’m not supposed to say this,’ he went on to advise that ‘women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized’ (Kwan 2011). While his intentions might have been to protect women, his comments that ‘slutty’ women attract sexual assault perpetuated the long-standing myth that victims are responsible for the violence used against them. In response to PC Sanguinetti’s comments, a group of local women translated their concern into political activism. Three months later, the first SlutWalk took place in Toronto, attended by thousands. By the end of the year, SlutWalks were organized in over 100 cities in 40 nations, mobilizing tens of thousands of women, men, and children.

Introduction: Mothers and Media

In 1972, in the midst of the second wave, when Sherry Ortner (1972) critiqued the nature–culture divide between women and men and laid out a detailed map of the fallacy and limitation of such an ar...

Celebrity and the feminist blockbuster, by Anthea Taylor, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 306 pp., £67.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-13-737334-2

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Representing the Movement: SlutWalk is Misguided or Opposed

Where Chapter 4 focused on the frames and discourses used to construct SlutWalk as a movement which challenges rape culture and victim blaming, this chapter focuses on the way the movement was framed as misguided and/or opposed. This chapter pays particular attention to feminist critiques of the movement as one which plays to the male gaze, and thus is incapable of challenging patriarchal rape culture. It also focuses on the ways the movement was seen to focus on ‘trivial’ issues instead of those of ‘real’ concern. Moving on, the chapter evaluates the utility of these critiques, arguing that a critical examination of the movement’s aims, tactics and goals is important, particularly in a postfeminist era in which women’s empowerment is said to be best achieved through the overt display of one’s sexuality. At the same time, I argue that SlutWalk provides evidence of a departure away from a postfeminist ‘sensibility’ (Gill 2007), in which feminism has been ‘taken into account’ only to be depoliticized and rejected. Instead many of the texts recognize the need to challenge rape culture, and the issue of contention revolves around which strategies are the most appropriate or effective. The chapter concludes by de-bunking discourses stating SlutWalkers are naive in regards to men’s ‘true’ nature, and argues that the main problem with rape prevention tips is not merely that they condone victim blaming, but that they ignore the reality of rape as a crime of domination, violence, entitlement, control and power, rather than sex and passion.