Platform Feminism: Protest and the Politics of Spatial Organization
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24215/23143924e026Keywords:
feminist activism, media platforms, politics, spatial organizationAbstract
This article brings into question the political utility of platforms as media for feminist resistance. Using examples of #MeToo, and the Women’s March on Washington, movements that have relied on the platform for reinvigorating what Sarah Banet-Weiser has called “popular feminism” (2018), I argue that common media platforms tend to infer an underlying assumption of safety, privilege and power in relation to social space. Through highlighting how BIPOC people organize in social space, I argue that the focus on amplification and elevation, facilitated by the logics of platform, obscures the needs of those who resist on the margins. I introduce the spatial strategies employed by those who must negotiate space differently to challenge the centrality of platforms as media the structure contemporary feminist protest.
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