How Effective is Online Activism on Days Like International Women’s Day?
How Effective is Online Activism on Days Like International Women’s Day?
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house said Audrey Lorde and she was right. The structures of capitalism are inherently misogynist, they don’t naturally serve women because they weren’t meant to. Which is why capitalism has given rise, not to appropriate discourse on equality, intersectionality and the allocation of resources, but to side hustles, boss bitches and T-shirts that read ‘dump him’. Memes are funny and often astute, but they don’t empower women.
The likes of Florence Given and The Slumflower don’t claim to be perfect, but they’re problematic because they seem to believe that by distilling pre-existing feminist rhetoric into tweets, books and merch they can harness the power of capitalism for good. Of course, this has backfired spectacularly and sparked a public display of infighting that’s provoked little more than sighs, cringes, vitriol and shadenfreude from supporters of both Florence and Chidera. It’s an own goal for feminism – a movement that no one owns the rights to.
And that’s why I always say, in private, and somewhat reluctantly, that I am not a fan of International Women’s Day. I spend a great deal of time online, advocating for women’s health, education and entrepreneurship, and I’m surrounded by people doing the same. Powerful, well-meaning people, who year after year, agree to make things a little simpler, a little easier to digest, a GIF, a one-liner, a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt.
Social media has wrecked our ability to focus and we all suffer with attention deficit issues. What does this mean for IWD and for feminism writ large? It means no one really gets it. The messages we’ll be seeing across social media on International Women’s Day have been hi jacked, clipped, sterilised, repackaged and presented as a fifteen-second video. And how do we support the cause? We like and share. So how are we supporting women? How are we advancing equality and moving the needle? Are we moving it? For ourselves? For anyone?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as guilty as anyone. I’m a brand and marketing consultant and an influencer, which essentially means I tell brands what to say, how to say it and who to say it to. And feminism is my speciality. I’m the person who suggests we distil UN statistics, public policy and heartbreaking first-person accounts of oppression and violence into graphics and videos for social media, because I know that this is how this information will reach the most people. But I also know that this is not the best way to use this information to bring about real change. And I feel unsettled by that.
Social media and real activism are at odds
Social platforms are businesses and their primary users? Businesses. Remember when I said that capitalism and feminism can never be friends? A funny meme might do a great job of grabbing your attention, but it’s not likely to change the lives of women. What it will do in the long run is line the pockets of both the platform on which you’re viewing it, and the business posting it. It may provide a creator like Florence Given with a share of the profits, but ultimately the meme does women few favours.
Of course, women aren’t the only ones that struggle to thrive in capitalist societies where trickle-down economics are the programme du jour and social media reduces every struggle to a sassy quotation. People of colour are all too familiar with the discord between capitalism and actionable parity. On Black Out Tuesday social media was awash with plain black squares and beneath them, the #blacklivesmatter hashtag was used. Activists contacted hundreds of thousands of users asking them not to use that hashtag – the black squares were obscuring all existing posts about the movement, posts created to educate and incentivise as far as social platforms would allow.
A friend once said to me at a party, “I’m black first. I’m a feminist second.” She told me that white feminism and social media feminists don’t allow for her to be both at once, so being a black woman, that obviously comes first. I agree with that sentiment. Of course being a black woman comes first when International Women’s Day graphics bearing inspirational quotes take up so much space and so little is being done to reflect the likes and shares these posts are receiving.
But what can be done? You could buy a T-Shirt that says ‘Dump Him’ and feel satisfied that 10% of profits will be going to a charity – and hope the tee wasn’t made in a factory that exploits female workers – or you could donate directly to a charity. Ah but there’s the rub, if capitalism and feminism were such great friends, why are charities, not for profits and female-focused foundations our only obvious conduit for change?
This trickle-down approach isn’t working and nor are the memes. For this reason, despite International Women’s Day being the centre of my universe each year, the big date on my calendar, I don’t feel empowered, I feel powerless. I supercharge strategies, donate to charities, tell stories and post on social as though it’s going out of business. But that’s the problem, it isn’t likely to any time soon and I fear it’s our greatest distraction from making real effective progress.
