Online spaces have proven to be fertile ground for the growth of explicitly feminist activism and communities, with the emergence of many popular blogs, apps, and social media campaigns devoted to raising feminist consciousness and encouraging feminist action. Yet feminists continue to struggle with issues of privilege and difference in online spaces. Questions linger as to whether online feminist activism is accessible by and inclusive of working-class and poor women, women of color, queer and trans women, differently-abled women, women in developing countries, and individuals who do not identify as women.
In our call for contributions to this issue of Commentary and Criticism, we asked authors to critically examine cases that illuminate both the affordances and limitations of online spaces for undertaking intersectional, feminist activism. Megan Fitzmaurice's essay explores the case of the National Women's History Cybermuseum in the United States, asking how online museums both enable marginalized groups to reclaim commemorative agency, yet uphold the inherent privilege of institutionalized memory places. Fitzmaurice sheds light on how the Cybermuseum represents a more inclusive, participatory version of feminist history than that which is often commemorated in brick-and-mortar museums, begging the question of whether feminist memory might be best served by investing in infrastructure that would enhance access and participation in such online feminist spaces. Gilda Seddighi draws on a combination of online and offline ethnography to pose the question of what happens when a protest group moves from offline-and-local to online-and-transnationally-networked. She argues that the Iranian group Mothers of Park Laleh initially drew strength from the affective labor of women who met in physical space, but as the group shifted to an online, diasporic network, a different kind of affective labor became more valued. Seddighi provocatively questions what is lost when the kinds of social and cultural capital that are privileged in offline activism become more marginal in online spaces. Finally, Fredrika Thelandersson's essay offers a timely response to ongoing debates about what has come to be called “tone policing” in online feminist networks. Thelandersson shows how the affordances of Twitter and Tumblr can turn conflicts around difference into positive, “teachable moments,” thus realizing the potential strengths to be found in feminists' diversity.
We hope to further explore issues of privilege within mediated feminist activism in future issues of Commentary and Criticism. For now, we hope readers will find the cases explored here provocative and productive for thinking through this theme.
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