Class Year

2015

Document Type

Student Research Paper

Date of Creation

Spring 2015

Department 1

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Abstract

Over the course of the last twenty years, the internet has become a powerful tool for the mobilization of social movements because of its ease of access, its allowance for greater control of organization and communication, and its rapid spread and dissemination of ideas. Tumblr, a micro-blogging site that is comprised of 227.6 million blogs and 106.3 billion posts by March 2015, is one of the most significant locations of social activism online. In recent years, Tumblr has become a platform for highly involved feminist dialogue because of the ability for like-minded users to follow and reblog posts regarding feminist issues and content. The goal of this research is to use textual analysis to uncover how feminism is acting as a rallying point and space of community building that spans intersections of race, nationality, class, gender, sexuality, etc., and how that rallying point is being created through a live-stream collective conscious. I do not contend that Tumblr is a perfect and unproblematic feminist utopia. Instead, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate that Tumblr is ultimately a hopeful space for discussion that has the potential for real social change. Thus, although negativity towards feminism is propagated through the anonymity of the internet, Tumblr has become both a location for feminist “world building” as a feminist community of practice. Through this platform comes the reshaping of feminism for the internet generation through female-to-female positivity, education and consciousness-raising, solidarity formed through the humor of ironic misandry, the increased importance and awareness of intersectionality and community reactions against anti-feminist content.

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Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies Senior Thesis

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