Mediating Misogyny

Gender, Technology, and Harassment

Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, Tracy Everbach, Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, Tracy Everbach

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319729176
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Mediating Misogyny is a collection of original academic essays that foregrounds the intersection of gender, technology, and media. Framed and informed by feminist theory, the book offers empirical research and nuanced theoretical analysis about the gender-based harassment women experience both online and offline. The contributors of this volume provide information on the ways feminist activists are using digital tools to combat harassment, raise awareness, and organize for social and political change across the globe. Lastly, the book provides practical resources and tips to help students, educators, institutions, and researchers stop online harassment.

© The Author(s) 2018

Jacqueline Ryan Vickery and Tracy Everbach (eds.)Mediating Misogynyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72917-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Persistence of Misogyny: From the Streets, to Our Screens, to the White House

Jacqueline Ryan Vickery¹ and Tracy Everbach²

(1)

Department of Media Arts, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

(2)

Mayborn School of Journalism, Digital/Print Journalism, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

End Abstract

In 1913, the day before U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, thousands of long-skirted women ascended upon Washington, D.C. to fight for their right to vote. As organizers Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Marcy Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and other members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Delta Sigma Theta sorority demonstrated, male onlookers harassed, jeered, and attacked them physically. Throughout Wilson’s presidency, suffragists picketed in front of the White House, where they endured more physical assaults and arrests. It was the women, and not their attackers, who ended up in prison. Alice Paul eventually staged a hunger strike and was sent to an asylum, where she was force-fed (Cott 1987; “Suffragist Alice Paul clashed with Woodrow Wilson” n.d.; “Women of protest” n.d.; Zahniser and Fry 2014). Eventually the women’s bravery, perseverance, and activism paid off: The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote, finally passed in 1920. However, the suffragist movement still had a problem: it strategically marginalized women of color in many ways; for example, by privileging white women’s rights at the expense of black men’s rights. The only African American organization to participate in the march—Delta Sigma Theta—was forced to stand in the back of the demonstration. Up until the 1960s many people of color, particularly in the South, still faced barriers to voting such as paying poll taxes, passing literacy tests, or facing jail time for violating absurd laws intended to keep blacks from voting (Bernard 2013; Fields-White 2011; “Race and Voting in the Segregated South” n.d.) (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2).

Fig. 1.1

1913 Women’s Suffrage March, Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-B2-2513-6)

Fig. 1.2

Ida B. Wells-Barnett and other suffragists march in D.C., 1913 (Chicago Daily Tribune photograph, March 5, 1913)

A little more than a century later, on November 8, 2016, enthusiastic feminists gathered to watch the U.S. presidential election results. Earlier in the day, some had gone to the polls wearing pantsuits, the signature clothing of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Most polls had shown Clinton in the lead over Republican candidate Donald J. Trump, who had run a blatantly sexist campaign highlighted by an Access Hollywood tape that featured him bragging about grabbing a woman’s genitals. Finally, many women thought, the glass ceiling would be broken and the first woman president would be elected. Clinton even booked the Jacob K. Javits Center in Manhattan, a building with a huge glass ceiling, to make her victory speech (Flegenheimer 2016).

As the election results began to roll in, it slowly became clear that the election was not going to turn out as Clinton supporters expected. Nor did the outcome reflect what most news media outlets, polling organizations, and major newspaper endorsements had predicted. Although Clinton won the U.S. popular vote, the majority of white women helped Trump win the electoral votes to become the 45th president of the United States.

Trump’s long history of misogynistic and racist behaviors, which can be documented for at least four decades (Cohen 2017), is undeniably disturbing. But what is perhaps equally concerning is the extent to which he deliberately used media interviews and his personal Twitter account to unapologetically broadcast and draw attention to his atrocious views and behavior. He boasted of entering beauty contest dressing rooms to gaze at partially dressed women and young girls. He told his friend Philip Johnson that, “you have to treat ’em [women] like shit” (Suebsaeng 2015). After Marie Brenner wrote an article about Trump for Vanity Fair that he did not like, he boasted of pouring a bottle of wine down her back, then accused her of lying and attempted to discredit her claim by stating she is “extremely unattractive” (Rosenberg 2016). In a 2013 tweet, he blamed female soldiers for their own sexual assaults because the military allows men and women to serve together (Mehta 2016). In 2015, a college student, Lauren Batchelder, asked Trump at a political forum how his policies would affect women and commented that she didn’t think he was “a friend to women.” The next day Trump tweeted that Batchelder was an “arrogant young woman” who questioned him “in such a nasty fashion.” Men then sent her online death and rape threats and sexually harassed her via phone calls; this continued for more than a year. Trump used Twitter to incite attacks against a private citizen, yet he never apologized nor denounced the harassment his supporters propagated (Johnson 2016).

Trump’s misogyny was blatant. His comments were highly publicized and could not be written off as occasional remarks that were taken out of context. His election win felt like a slap in the face to feminists who fought for equality and women’s rights. The longstanding battle to create and accept women’s roles in public places and as figures of authority was reinforced once again. Sexism was out in the open and undeniable, and, appallingly, many white women were embracing it. The struggle for equality seemed to fail once again. Misogyny was alive and well and moving into the White House.

However, feminists continued to fight back. The day after the election they used Facebook to organize the Women’s March on Washington. As history could predict, this was an organization initially headed solely by white women; after warranted criticism, however, the planning committee expanded to include several women of color (Bates 2017). The day after Trump’s inauguration, half a million people marched in Washington, D.C. The march became a worldwide phenomenon, with 2.6 million people marching against misogyny, racism, and other injustices in all 50 U.S. states and on all 7 continents (Pictures from Women’s Marches… 2017; Przybyla and Schouten 2017). Demonstrators held signs endorsing various humanitarian and equal rights causes: “Marching for Rights! Equality! The Planet! The Future!” “All of Us Together. Women Men Black White Gay Straight Disabled Young Old Native Come Here <3.” “They Tried to Bury Us. But They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds” (“Why we march” 2017) . Still, we cannot overlook the ways the movement marginalized women of color, some of whom blamed organizational racism for their decision not to participate; to be intersectional and inclusive Western feminism has to center the voices, experiences, and bodies of women of color (Bates 2017; Mosthof 2017) (Figs. 1.3 and 1.4).

Fig. 1.3

Women’s March on Washington, D.C., January 21, 2017 (Photo credit: Jacqueline Ryan Vickery)

Fig. 1.4

Women’s March on Washington, D.C., January 21, 2017 (Photo credit: Tracy Everbach)

After the march feminists continued to organize further. Concerted efforts to elect women candidates in local, state, and federal elections cropped up across the United States. Emily’s List, a group that supports and promotes progressive women candidates, reported that after Trump’s election the number of women expressing interest in running for office increased more than 1,000%—from about 900 in 2016 to 11,000 from January to April 2017 (O’Keefe and DeBonis 2017).

We want to emphasize that this book is not about Trump. But the election of Trump—and the ways he unapologetically continues to use digital media to humiliate, shame, and mobilize people to harass women—provides an apropos jumping-off point for thinking about and contextualizing contemporary media culture at the intersection of gender, power, and technology. Likewise, the opening examples of feminist activism highlight the ways in which feminism continues to ignore racism in problematic and oppressing ways. Our purpose is to critically analyze the ways media and digital technologies mediate misogyny, gender-based harassment, racism, and violence against women. We also aim to uncover some of the ways feminists are using digital media technologies to fight back against harassment, sexism, and assault. Finally, we posit what we can do to work toward a solution for this pervasive inequality. We look at these problems with an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and multimethod approach rooted in feminist and media theories. It is our intent that this collection of essays expands our theoretical thinking and practical approaches to creating more inclusive and equitable spaces—both online and offline—not just for women, but for all marginalized and targeted communities.

Before the Internet There Was Mediated Misogyny… Or… Why We Can’t Just Blame the Internet

Women have long been subjected to and battled misogyny, including problematic sexist and racist media portrayals. Building on the work of communication scholars George Gerbner and Larry Gross (1976), G...