feminism in media essay

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Feminist Theory and the Media

2017, The international encyclopedia of media effects

The second feminist wave, which started in the 1960s in the United States and spread through Europe during the late 1960s and the 1970s, increased interest in media and their relations to gender. On the one hand, the role media play in creating gendered stereotypes and maintaining patriarchal values-that is, creating a distorted, male-biased view on the world-was questioned. These questions gave rise to specific fields of study for feminist scholars-stereotypes and social roles, ideology, and pornography (Van Zoonen, 1994)-which are currently investigated in three academic disciplines: psychoanalysis, social psychology, and cultural studies. On the other hand, feminist scholars raised questions about academic knowledge itself. Relating feminist political viewpoints to academic knowledge, the androcentric character of Western understandings of knowledge was criticized, resulting in three feminist epistemologies: feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theory, and feminist postmodernism (the latter is also called postmodern feminism). These three traditions share one important view that Western understandings of knowledge are androcen-tric and prioritize rationality (Hawkesworth, 1989). However, their ideas on how to change the androcentric character of knowledge and how to come to alternative conceptions of knowledge differ tremendously (Smith, 1998). In feminist studies on media, the three epistemologies rarely appear in their "pure" forms; rather, insights often are mixed and used in complementary ways. Nevertheless, values advocated in each epis-temological tradition have important repercussions for feminist studies on media and their audiences. To elucidate how epistemological beliefs have had an impact on feminist theory on media, the three epistemological traditions and their specific values and beliefs will be discussed briefly. Next, psychoanalytic, social psychology, and cultural studies approaches to media are discussed in terms of their epistemological beliefs and the impact thereof on the generated theoretical insights. Feminist epistemologies Androcentric epistemologies emphasize a strict separation of fact and value, hence prioritizing rationality over the realm of emotions, to which values belong. Feminist epistemologies start from a reverse observation, namely that academic knowledge is saturated with male values (androcentrism) that masquerade as objective truths. Martin (1991), for example, describes how research on biological human reproduction is imbued by male and female stereotypes. Though studies show how egg and sperm The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects. Patrick Rössler (Editor-in-Chief), Cynthia A. Hoffner, and Liesbet van Zoonen (Associate Editors).

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This paper offers a general overview of past, current, and developing issues and debates in the growing field of gender and feminist media studies. Its main aim is to provide for those who are new to the field, as well as advanced students and researchers, a broad sense of what is now significant and important area of academic research. It engages with the differences and similarities between gender and feminist media studies, gendered communication systems, gendered news production, feminist methodologies and methods in communication research (textual, audience, and production based), the media's role in constructing gender, and gendered and feminist research by specific media form including advertising, magazines, film, television, news, radio, and the Internet and new media. The outline of research presented is not exhaustive; however, it attempts to trace certain significant developments in the field historically, conceptually, methodologically politically and trans-nationally.

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Gender and media studies has witnessed in recent years a resounding revival, as is testified by number of published monographs and collections, articles, themed issues of international journals, conferences that bring into focus the diverse features of the relationship between gender and communication. The field has gone through an ebb and flow process over time, since it began to take shape inside the academia in early seventies, under the determining influence of the second-wave feminism, which had made the media a primary object of inquiry and criticism. Actually feminism, its waves and shifts and multiple voices, is a major factor to be considered –alongside equally shiftings conceptual frameworks and methodological tools underpinning research and analysis, and the changing media contexts and contents– in order to account for the constitution and development of the gender and media scholarship. This paper is aimed at drawing an overview of such a history, through a narrative of change and continuity that strives to render how the field has come to be configured and reconfigured over time, and has readjusted its mode of engagement with the fundamental challenge of disclosing and understanding the gendered and gendering dimensions of the media discourses and practices. More focus will be put on the strands of the vibrant debate that enlivens the current revival, much informed by competing ideas as regards gender and media in a postfeminist and media-saturated cultural environment. Keywords: gender, media, images of women, feminism, post-feminism

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Debating Communities and Networks XII

This is the official conference site for the debating communities and networks 12 conference 2021, the fourth wave: how social media has revolutionised feminism.

By Lauren Anderson

The evolution of Web 2.0 has drastically revolutionised the ways in which society functions, having an irreversible impact on the practices of modern activism (Storer & Rodriguez, 2020). Consequently, Feminism has undergone a shift that heavily features the use of social media and digital technologies, with this ‘fourth wave’ being explicitly defined by this use of the internet and online networks in Feminist activism (Schuster, 2013; Jackson, 2018; Pruchniewska, 2019). Online networks have facilitated fourth wave Feminism in a number of ways due to the affordances that these networks provide. Online networks have facilitated fourth wave Feminism through their ability to assist in the building of online Feminist networks at a globalised level previously unafforded in pre-digital times – ultimately aiding the Feminist movement and empowering the feminist community. Additionally, online networks provide an inclusive outlet for the expression and exploration of all Feminist identities, providing women the power to challenge oppressive patriarchal ideologies and systems of power through having agency over their own representations. Online networks have also facilitated the sharing of information regarding Feminist issues, and also have the ability to unify and mobilise the feminist community to initiate offline action to incite a move towards social change, as seen in movements such as #MeToo.

Digital technologies and Web 2.0 have significantly impacted all aspects of modern society, with online networks becoming crucial to modern activism. These technologies allow for “flexible, decentralised and individualised forms of activism”, completely reshaping the ways in which activism functions and its ability to incite social change (Kavada, 2018, p.108). Current social movements across the globe have demonstrated this ability and importance of online networks in facilitating social movements and advocating for social change, and according to Jackson (2018), there is a current focus on contemporary Feminist activism in the digital landscape that is “unprecedented” (p.32). Online networks have facilitated fourth wave Feminism through their ability to build Feminist communities in ways previously unafforded, provide an outlet for the expression of identities, facilitate the sharing of information regarding Feminist issues, and ultimately unify and mobilise Feminist communities to initiate social change on a global scale.

For the purpose of this argument, it is crucial to firstly define fourth wave Feminism, and how it is intrinsically linked to online networks. Storer and Rodriguez (2020) define social movements as “a group of individuals that collectively organise to challenge dominant social or political paradigms and re-envision a new world order” (p.163). Turley and Fisher (2018) define the Feminist movement as the “social movement to challenge the patriarchal and societal systems that service to oppress women, and to advocate for social justice and issues that affect women around the world” (p.128). The first Feminist movement begun nearly two-hundred year ago, advocating for women’s rights and social, economic, and political equality. This still remains the core of the Feminist ideology in the twenty-first century, however, Feminist practices have evolved throughout history, with the movement undergoing what Jouët (2018) terms as a “revival” within the last decade (p.133). The evolution of Web 2.0 has drastically revolutionised the ways in which society functions, having an irreversible impact on the practices of modern activism (Storer & Rodriguez, 2020). Consequently, Feminism has undergone a shift that heavily features the use of social media and digital technologies, with this ‘fourth wave’ being explicitly defined by this use of the internet and online networks in Feminist activism (Schuster, 2013; Jackson, 2018; Pruchniewska, 2019). The various affordances of online networks have shaped and developed the ways in which Feminists engage in online activism (Keller, 2019). As a result, the contemporary practice of Feminism is not uniform, but is instead an increasingly complex, constantly evolving, and diverse range of practices that centre around a wide range of Feminist issues ranging from cultural, societal, ethnic and sexual perspectives (Jackson, 2018).

Online networks have facilitated fourth wave Feminism through their ability to assist in the building of online Feminist networks at a globalised level previously unafforded in pre-digital times – ultimately aiding the Feminist movement and empowering the feminist community. The establishment and subsequent flourishment of Web 2.0 has meant that online networks have the ability to transcend geographic boundaries, allowing Feminists to build networks and communities at a local, national, and international level (Schuster, 2013). By increasing the scale of the Feminist movement through a global online network, it is able to draw more attention to the continuing presence of the systemic issues of sexism, oppression and injustice that permeate society (Matich, Ashman & Parsons, 2019). In addition to increasing the awareness of Feminism, online networks facilitate the empowerment of feminist communities via the creation of this globalised feminist network (Pruchniewska, 2019). Practices within feminist networks include creating online cultures of support for women, promoting and creating Feminist discourses that challenge patriarchal ones, and battling feminist issues such as rape culture and sexism (Jouët, 2018). These networks and communities function to validate women’s lived experiences, as they can identify that the isolated encounters of sexism, oppression and harassment they face are actually part of a larger systemic inequality (Keller, 2019; Pruchniewska, 2019). Most importantly, these online networks provide a less intimidating environment for women to be vulnerable and to share these lived experiences, creating an environment of support and a shared sense of emotion and identity among members (Schuster, 2013; Dobson, 2015; Kavada, 2018). Jackson (2018) found in her studies that the ability of online networks to facilitate the building of a shared sense of belonging within Feminist networks was highly valued among the women she interviewed, and stressed the importance of the creation of women-only spaces that allow them to safely navigate, explore, and express their Feminist views. Therefore, online networks have not only facilitated fourth wave feminism through the establishment of a globalised feminist network, but also provide women with access to networks that allow them to find a shared sense of purpose, belonging, and empowerment within the feminist movement.

Online networks provide an inclusive outlet for the expression and exploration of all Feminist identities that ultimately facilitate fourth wave Feminism by providing women the power to challenge oppressive patriarchal ideologies and systems of power. Online networks and their associated affordances allow women to express themselves in a way not possible offline, and construct their own identities in an unrestricted environment (Dobson, 2015; Jackson, 2018). Women, and young girls particularly, are able to utilise the various affordances that online networks and social media offer in order to portray their desired Feminist identity – such as sharing and creating informative and empowering imagery and content – and in doing so, challenge oppressive patriarchal ideologies (Schuster, 2013; Keller, 2019). As previously discussed, fourth wave Feminism is not only characterised by the use of online networks, but also by a shift towards inclusivity within the Feminist ideology (Jouët, 2018). Intersectionality has become a major defining aspect of contemporary fourth wave Feminism, as the affordances of online networks allow for the reshaping of Feminist discourses by those who were previously excluded, allowing more feminist identities to be expressed and shared with society (Jackson, 2018). This can be seen in groups such as Mwasi, an “afro-Feminist” group established in 2014 that fight for the end of racial discrimination against Black women. Groups such as Mwasi are able to utilise online networks to construct and share their own identities, thus promoting a political discourse about Black women that is self-produced by Black women (Jouët, 2018). Therefore, due to their accessibility to online networks, marginalised feminist populations are now able to engage with feminism on a visible and global platform (Jackson, 2018). By affording women this ability to express and explore their feminist identities, online networks give women authority over their own narratives and representations, placing them in a position of power that challenges the systems of oppression that seek to limit women’s agency (Matich, Ashman & Parsons, 2019). Overall, this demonstrates how online networks have facilitated the expansion of Feminism to be more inclusive, allowing marginalised feminist groups to share and express their identities and challenge the oppressive ideologies of the patriarchal system in the process.

Online networks have also facilitated the sharing of information regarding Feminist issues, thus facilitating the Feminist movement by raising awareness to call for social change. The primary function of online networks within feminist practices, as identified by Jackson (2018), is for the dissemination of information about feminism issues and ideologies, and the correction of misinformation regarding Feminism. Platform affordances of online networks such as spreadability and shareability allow content to move quickly across multiple platforms, making online networks a crucial tool in Feminist activism for raising awareness (Keller, 2019). Additionally, online networks offer a more democratised space for Feminists (Storer & Rodriguez, 2020), allowing them to use their own voices to challenge anti-feminist rhetoric, such as the notion that feminist simply ‘man-hating’ and unfeminine, and to share their experiences and knowledge surrounding feminist issues (Jackson, 2018). Online communities allow for a constant flow of information, allowing individuals to access, participate, share and educate, whilst ultimately increasing the awareness of Feminist issues (Kavada, 2018). These accessible, participatory, and sharable capabilities of online networks ultimately enable the Feminist movement to receive more exposure and gain responses from the greater global audience, thus raising awareness of the movement which can initiate social change (Turley & Fisher, 2018). Therefore, online networks facilitate fourth wave feminism through their ability to enable the sharing of information to raise awareness of feminist issues.

As seen in campaigns such as #MeToo, online networks have revolutionised Feminism through their ability to unify and mobilise the Feminist community on a global scale in order to raise awareness, initiate offline action, and strive to achieve social change. As previously discussed, online networks, particularly social media, have increased the visibility of Feminist issues and activism (Jackson, 2018). However, the most impactful role that online networks play in the practice of activism is the ability of these networks to function as organisational tools for activists, facilitating the “coordination of collective action” towards achieving social change (Kavada, 2018, p.108). Online networks facilitate faster mobilisation and “accelerated cycles of action” (Jouët, 2018, p.140) due to the spreadability and shareability of content that allows information to move quickly across multiple platforms (Keller, 2019). Therefore, the organisation of activist campaigns via online networks has surpassed traditional methods of social movements as they allow for a greater outreach, modes of advocacy and participation (Storer & Rodriguez, 2020, p.161), with these networks therefore becoming crucial to contemporary Feminist activism. The prevalence and popularity of social media and online networks in modern society means that these networks hold significant political potential as discussions in these spaces are often echoed within the public sphere and mainstream media – allowing for these issues to be positioned the forefront of public debate (Jouët, 2018; Pruchniewska, 2019). Revolutionary campaigns such as #MeToo have significantly highlighted how campaigns coordinated, created and shared through online networks have resulted in entire global movements that resulted in public discussion and action surrounding Feminist issues (Storer & Rodriguez, 2020). #MeToo conversations initially took place on Twitter, but then spread to other online networks as women gained support exposed the prevalence of the issues across many industries to society, ultimately encouraging people to take collective action offline (Pruchniewska, 2019). In the case of #MeToo – the networked affordance of hashtags allowed for the movement to be accessible, easily tracked, and able to be picked up by large, mainstream news organisations (Turley & Fisher, 2018), thus demonstrating how online networks are able to mobilise entire global communities for a united cause. Therefore, #MeToo is just but one example that demonstrates how fourth wave feminism has been facilitated through online networks, due to their ability to mobilise the global feminist community in a movement to fight for social change.

Practices of fourth wave Feminism in the online sphere include the building and development of an intersectional Feminist community at a global level, the exploration and expression of one’s feminist identity, the sharing of information regarding feminism and feminist issues, and the mobilisation of the feminist community to initiate offline action. These practices all function to raise awareness of feminism as a social movement, and to challenge patriarchal ideologies and systems of oppression. Online networks facilitate these practices, specifically through the network affordances they provide that enable the transcending of geographic boundaries, accessibility to marginalised communities, the sharing of information and content at a rapid rate, and the ability to construct and express one’s identity in a free and safe environment. Therefore, online networks have facilitated fourth wave Feminism through their ability to build a global Feminist network, provide an outlet for the expression of Feminist identities, facilitate the sharing of information and raising of awareness, and initiate social change through the mobilising of Feminist communities to participate in offline action.

Dobson, A. S. (2015). Postfeminism, girls and young women and digital media. In P. T. Clough & R. D. Egan (Eds). Postfeminist digital cultures : Femininity, social media, and self-representation (pp. 23-51) . Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Jackson, S. (2018). Young feminists, feminism and digital media. Feminism & psychology, 28 (1), 32-49. https://catalogue.curtin.edu.au/permalink/f/iiil99/TN_cdi_crossref_primary_10_1177_0959353517716952

Jouët, J. (2018). Digital feminism: Questioning the renewal of activism. Journal of Research in Gender Studies, 8 (1), 133-157. https://catalogue.curtin.edu.au/permalink/f/iiil99/TN_cdi_crossref_primary_10_22381_JRGS8120187

Kavada, A. (2018). Connective or Collective? The intersection between online crowds and social movements in contemporary activism. In G. Meikle, The Routledge companion to media and activism (1 st ed., pp.108-116). Routledge. https://catalogue.curtin.edu.au/permalink/f/15oatim/CUR_ALMA51200854030001951

Keller, J. (2019). “Oh, she’s a Tumblr feminist”: Exploring the platform vernacular of girls’ social media feminism. Social media + society, 5 (3). https://catalogue.curtin.edu.au/permalink/f/iiil99/TN_cdi_doaj_primary_oai_doaj_org_article_bf3af5420457427a85bbb3d067f67184

Matich, M., Ashman, R., & Parsons, E. (2019). #freethenipple – Digital activism and embodiment in the contemporary feminist movement. Consumption Markets & Culture, 22 (4), 337-362. doi: 10.1080/10253866.2018.1512240

Pruchniewska, U. (2019). “A group that’s just women for women”: Feminist affordances of private Facebook groups for professionals. New Media & Society, 21 (6), 1362-1379. doi: 10.1177/1461444818822490

Schuster, J. (2013). Invisible feminists? Social media and young women’s political participation. Political science, 65 (1), 8-24. https://catalogue.curtin.edu.au/permalink/f/iiil99/TN_cdi_nlnz_indexnz_997686383602837

Storer, H.L. & Rodriguez, M. (2020). #Mapping a movement: Social media, feminist hashtags, and movement building in the digital age. Journal of community practice, 28 (2), 160-176. https://catalogue.curtin.edu.au/permalink/f/iiil99/TN_cdi_crossref_primary_10_1080_10705422_2020_1757541

Turley, E. & Fisher, J. (2018). Tweeting back while shouting back: Social media and feminist activism. Feminism & Psychology, 28 (1), 128-132. doi: 10.1177/0959353517715875

22 thoughts on “ The Fourth Wave: How Social Media has Revolutionised Feminism ”

Great job on writing such an amazing piece, where the topic can normally be hard to actively engage with, but not in this case, l really found it easy to engage with your paper and to spot the points you were clearly trying to make. Online Activism can be achieved in a variety of ways, not just one, where there is a shared or common goal the users strive to achieve. I agree that online is a great way to support feminization, more so, say just equal rights and opportunities to they should have to succeed just like men, however, it does seem to be shifting constantly back and forth, but hopefully, in the future, its goal will be achieved. This also gives women the confidence to communicate and express their experiences, ideas, and stories with one another.

Thanks for such a great paper!!!

Thank you Gustavo!

Hey Lauren, Well done on writing such an interesting and enjoyable paper! I really enjoyed reading about this topic. I love how you mention that online spaces can be used to challenge anti-feminist rhetoric, such as the notion that feminists are simply ‘man-hating’ and unfeminine. I think this is an extremely important part of this movement as these stereotypes about feminists do exist, and breaking these will help to allow more women to feel safe to share and express their feminist beliefs and ideologies. Do you believe that there is still more to be done to facilitate this movement? If so what things in particular? Such a great topic, I really enjoyed this paper!

Hi Chloe! Thanks for reading my paper!

I think the normalisation of Feminist ideologies and Feminist discourses in everyday conversation is something that will greatly facilitate the movement. I think the more space Feminism takes up in the digital landscape, the more it will translate to and enter off-line conversations. From there we can begin to discuss and solve Feminist issues in a way that allows for open and inclusive discussions, and off-line action that eventuates into societal change. Furthermore, the normalisation of Feminist ideologies will also help to challenge and remove the stigma of Feminists as ‘man-hating’ that I referenced in my essay, as more people will be able to understand the basic foundations of the movement – thus removing the notion that Feminism is simply about man-hating.

Additionally, something that will assist this is the education that takes place on these online platforms. By educating one another about these issues and using the appropriate discourses, Feminists become equipped with the knowledge to be able to actually engage in meaningful and impactful discussions.

Hello Lauren!

As always your writing and structure is amazing and so well articulated, and I can really feel your passion towards this subject!

I do agree that social media has created a strong movement for feminist expression, and it is so inspiring to see campaigns and advocacies such as the #MeToo movement help other women and girls to voice their experiences and stories. Your referencing is spot on as well and really compliments your strong points, I really love the reference from Joust and Pruchniewska “networks hold significant political potential as discussions in these spaces are often echoed within the public sphere and mainstream media”, it is so important that we use social platforms for good and help educate the next generation that will only be more depended on social media. However, it did get me thinking Do you think these movements and online advocacies take away from the innocents of social platforms? Because of the seriousness and political stance it creates? I’ve just been seeing it more and more especially on younger platforms such as Tik Tok, where young girls are voicing their serious opinions and experiences getting hate for it just because online spaces are open for anyones voice. Which in return can create an even more harmful platform to share stories?

Such an interesting read!!

Feel free to read my paper as well https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2021/2021/05/10/lack-of-lgtbq-recognition-in-domestic-online-domestic-violence-advocacy/

Thank you Tamlyn

Hey Tamlyn, thanks for reading my paper!

You’ve brought up an angle that I have not previously considered in relation to this topic. I have witnessed a lot of discussions regarding social media turning into a political space, to which there are positives and negatives. As mentioned in my essay, the ability of these platforms to be transformed into spaces of political agency allows movements like Feminism to gain traction. However, as you mentioned, these platforms largely take on a fun role for many of their users, and I do agree that the political transformation of these spaces can remove the innocence of them.

I think a possible solution to this could be the creation of alternative platforms that are used specifically for political and social activism, creating a dedicated space for these movements. The only downfall is that such a platform would only be used by those who are already invested in social change movements, and thus those who need to be educated would not be on the platform. It’s a difficult question you pose – its hard to strike a balance between the social media sphere as fun and as a space of agency.

Hi Lauren! I really enjoyed reading this thank you for sharing!

You write very concisely and your argument was very clear throughout. I particularly agree with your points surrounding the idea of how social media and these online networks has created a safe space and more relaxed environment for these issues to be brought to peoples attention in a mode they are more comfortable with. I also agree with your comments about the political power these platforms hold in terms of reaching the public and mainstream media.

I also liked your discussion about the potential and existing role that social media and these online networks have in regards to organisational practices. I had never previously thought of social medias discussions of these issues transform into physical practices in that way so thank you for bringing that to light.

I also agree with the fact that there is no box definition to feminism or its practices. It is such a multifaceted, evolving practice that has changed over the course of time and will continue to do so as these issues and ideologies are brought to light and questioned in our society.

I am curious to know more of your thoughts surrounding the extreme popularity of these discussions of feminism online such as the #MeToo movement, do you think it leaves females, particularly young girls too vulnerable to those who do not share the same views? Social media can be riddled with trolls, could you see the possible flip side of that coin in terms of there being such a thing as too much exposure?

Hi Bonnie! Thank you for reading my paper.

I do think that social media is becoming a space wherein users are becoming increasingly vulnerable; we are understanding that social media can become a place to talk about real issues rather than posting staged photos. I do agree that many Feminist issues are quite sensitive, and thus require a level of vulnerability that can be taken advantage of by people who may share opposing misogynistic views. This is why I think the creation of safe groups on social media, such as private Facebook groups, are crucial to helping this issue. These closed spaces still utilise the advantages of digital spaces, but provide women with more safety and security when discussing more sensitive topics. Additionally, the growth of the Feminist community and affordances of social platforms mean that individuals can support and protect one another from trolling etc.

You do raise a good point – there will always be trolls, however I hope (I am a positive person!) that the Feminist community is supportive enough to remove and take down any trolls on these platforms.

I really enjoyed reading your paper! I particularly liked reading about the shift towards inclusivity and intersectionality that the fourth wave of feminism was able to bring about.

Your argument overall holds a very optimistic view of the affordances of online networks and the power they have to facilitate and grow the forth wave feminist movement. I agree with you, without online networks and social media, we would not have a fourth wave. However, I want to put forward a limitation:

The fourth wave of feminism is hosted on monopolistic companies that profit immensely from users and popular hashtags and threads. Feminist awareness raising and debates are intrinsically linked to digital capitalism and the silicon valley where sexism and discrimination against women has been well reported on and appears to be rife. Do you think this has had, or will have any effect on fourth wave feminism? It is a difficult question, but interesting to consider when we are looking at online networks.

This is something that came up when I was researching for my paper on a similar subject. My focus was on the power of feminist hashtags. If you have time, I would love to hear your thoughts:

https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2021/2021/04/25/the-effectiveness-of-feminist-hashtags-such-as-metoo-on-empowering-women-mobilising-protests-and-enacting-political-and-societal-change/

Thanks, Elissa

Hi Elissa, thank you for taking the time to read my paper!

You do pose an interesting and difficult question! To be honest with you, I’ve never considered this issue, so thank you for bringing it to my attention. I do think that this will have an effect on fourth wave feminism, as you have so clearly pointed out the very mechanism by which this movement occurs is one that, at its core, has deep issues of sexism and discrimination. A utopian solution to this would be the creation of alternative platforms that are developed and run by members of the Feminist community, however this comes with many other challenges and issues.

I think digital capitalism is such a large issue that affects many, many areas – and thus it’s dismantling will require a large restructuring of society. I hope that fourth wave Feminism does play a role in this, however I think it will be the accumulative effort of many other movements that will achieve this, as it is such a large and underlying issue in society.

Overall I think this is an issue that is not discussed about often in these digital Feminist spaces, so I would love to see these discussions forming as it is a very important issue.

Thank you for bringing up such an interesting point! I would love to know what your thoughts on this issue are.

Thanks for your response! Sorry throw you such a curly question, but I love your answer!

Another part of the answer would be to break up these monopolistic companies – something which US regulators have started to flag in recent years. However Amazon, Apple, Facebook (et al) Google and Microsoft are so powerful and all consuming it is difficult to imagine a world in which this might happen.

I also agree this issue is something that is not really discussed in digital feminist spaces. This is probably because social media platforms have become so ubiquitous and part of our everyday lives that they (and all the ir underlying problems) have become invisible.

It is a very complex situation and there are no easy answers. Thanks for the discussion!

Cheers, Elissa

Thanks! It was a difficult question but I’m glad you asked it as it gave me a lot to think about.

I definitely agree that large monopolistic companies need to be broken down or at least held accountable and regulated to stop their dominant control over much of society. You raise an excellent point about the almost invisible nature of social media platforms in terms of their underlying issues and the larger effects that these issues have on society.

It is a complex issue, as the mechanisms for which the discussions about the dismantling of these systems and organisations occur are the very mechanisms that are controlled by these monopolistic organisations.

Thank you for such a thought provoking conversation!

Hi Lauren, This paper was amazing! The way you have structured it and provided the information made for a very compelling and interesting read. I agree with your point on how through the use of online platforms previous marginalized groups of feminine identities now have a way to share and express their identities with society.

You also mention in your paper that online networks have allowed for “faster mobilisation” and action to occur, due to how quick information can spread. What are your thoughts in regards to the potential ‘harmful’ nature of this? (Just to clarify, by ‘harmful’ I mean along the lines of the potential spread of misinformation). Overall, it was a great paper and you should be very proud of it and yourself :))

Also, feel free to check out my paper. It’s on a different topic but has some overlaps in terms of the utilisation of social media affordances to campaign topics: https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2021/2021/04/26/stopasianhate-facebook-and-instagram-aid-in-advocacy-and-the-development-of-asian-identity/

Hi Terina! Thank you so much for reading my paper!

I agree with your point that the ability to quickly mobilise large groups does pose a potential danger when faced with misinformation and disinformation. I think that one of the many issues within this is that many users do not have the media literacy to be able to critically question and assess whether the information they are presented with is true and accurate. I think education about how to read the media and critically interpret media is something that needs to be pushed so that audiences can recognise when information is false, which can ultimately reduce the danger of rapid-spreading misinformation.

Hi Lauren, I found your paper very enjoyable, thank you for sharing it! I agree that social media has enhanced feminist communities by facilitating conversations between geographically isolated individuals and creating a safe space for women to openly express themselves. This has been important to help women find support and validation for their experiences with oppression, sexism, and harassment. I believe online communities have also established a greater sense of solidarity and togetherness in feminist communities, which is empowering community members to ‘fight back’ and promote change. And this is certainly spurring a fourth wave of feminism.

However, I recently read an article on how slacktivism (when people support a cause by performing simple measures but are not truly engaged or devoted to making a change) can hinder advocacy movements (Gilmore, 2014). Do you think that social media is stifling feminist movements by allowing people to engage with content with very little effort? For example, by allowing people to simply ‘like’ a post to show their support. I’d love to hear your views.

I have written about a similar subject, how Instagram celebrities encourage the formation of feminist identities. Please check it out if you have time! Here’s the link: https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2021/2021/04/28/instagram-celebrities-leading-a-new-wave-of-feminism/#comment-450

Thanks again for the great read!

Gilmore, S. (2014, November 11). The problem with #slacktivism. Macleans. https://www.macleans.ca/society/the-real-problem-with-slacktivism/

Hi Rebekah!

Whilst slacktivism dose pose some issues, I don’t think that social media is stifling Feminist movements all when you consider everything social media has done to facilitate the movement.

I’ve responded to a similar question below, but my opinion in regards to slacktivism is that there is a problem in assuming that because something requires little effort, it does not have a large impact on an individual. The lowered barriers and participatory culture that social media fosters allows more people to easily interact with content, and in this case with the Feminist movement. Some people might call this slacktivism, however the affordances of these platforms are intrinsically built to lower the effort required to interact, making it easy for users.

You should be really proud of this paper! It was structured nicely, used a nice range of supporting vocabulary and some really interesting points regarding the rise in online feminism. Learning about the history of feminism (that it first came about around 200 years ago) then progressing to a movement that only happened a few years ago was really eye-opening. I think it’s really important that society is aware of when the movement was established and realise that it is not in fact as suddenly developed as they think – only due to fourth wave has it become so magnified. I agree with the ideology that feminism is constantly evolving through these online networks – especially through the female-only spaces such as chatboxes or Facebook groups. I also think that rise in fourth-wave feminism has changed some cultural-norms (e.g. women in the middle east and more restricted countries becoming more aware of the movements), allowing them to recognise oppression in their society and feel empowered to stand against it. What are your thoughts on this?

I was also fascinated by the discussion of feminist identity and its connections to the online networks. To what level do you think that online networks influence how a woman views herself within society? Considering that these communities share self-expression and individual opinions, it would be interesting to hear your take on this as some can be accused of ‘just agreeing’ with another user.

This leads into my paper ‘The Influence of Slacktivism on Feminist Movements’ where I explore a different perspective on the activism behind the feminist movements like the #metoo one you too discussed. Let me know your thoughts as it’d be great to get another view on my interpretation. Link to my paper: https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2021/2021/04/27/the-influence-of-slacktivism-on-feminist-movements/

Hi Kira! Thank you for taking the time to read my paper, and thank you for your comments!

I agree with your comment that this fourth wave of Feminism has helped to challenge oppressive cultural norms that are held in some areas of the world. The use of social media as a central defining mechanism for fourth-wave Feminism allows the creation of a global network of Feminists – which is why more women feel empowered to take a stand as they know they have a global community to support them. I think in some countries there is still a lot of work to be done, especially in areas where there is heavy media censorship. However, we are still seeing movements emerging from these very regions; movements against domestic violence against women in Turkey used social media and hashtags to spread awareness about the increasing number of deaths caused by domestic violence in their country.

I think online Feminist networks provide a safe space for debate, rather than simply agreeing with one another, as to fully dive into Feminism requires a lot of intellectual discussion and dissection of institutions of power and societal values.

In relation to slacktivism, it can be a tough one. I believe there lies a difficulty in determining how much impact simple interactions can have based on the context of the content and the user (e.g. a single post could have a huge impact on a user, but that impact can be reduced to the quantification of a single like or share). I think the relationship between online networks and how women view themselves in society is one that is internal, or evident in the offline space. For example, one of the main pillars of fourth-wave Feminism is the challenging of traditional patriarchal standards of beauty. Companies such as SavagexFenty that have used their social media to share images of people of all shapes, colours, races, and gender identities being empowered – showing that all of them are valued and are beautiful. This allows women to recognise that they too can feel empowered in their identity and place within society.

I know I didn’t quite respond to all your points but didn’t want to drag on – let me know what you think!

I think this is the best paper I’ve read so far, you expressed yourself so clearly and the research you used to back up your points was so informative. Feminism is such an important topic to have discussions about, and prior to reading your paper I hadn’t put a whole lot of thought into social media’s impact upon this specific social movement. I think social media gives women and girls a space to express themselves and share their experiences, and doing so online is far less daunting than doing so face-to-face, particularly when dealing with sensitive topics like sexual assault and domestic violence. I think feminist activists on social media have been so impactful in shifting society away from the “stay quiet and deal with it, that’s just the way things are” narrative that was common among older generations. Women and girls deserve better, and online feminism is an important tool in the process of challenging and denouncing the patriarchy. Thanks for all of your insights, genuinely so impressed with your work.

Thank you Silas! You are right, social media has allowed Feminism to move into a dominant position within the public sphere, challenging historical societal values that acted to suppress Feminist issues. Once you realise how much social media has provided in terms of allowing women a safe space and afforded agency, it is impossible to un-see it! Many of the papers I’ve discussed in my essay continually refer to how, as you’ve mentioned, social media provides a less daunting environment to discuss confronting issues such as sexism and domestic violence. It is due to the affordances of social media spaces such as lowered barriers to participation that allow Feminist issues to be seen and heard, allowing women feel as though they have a safe platform that elevates their voices and opinions on these issues. I hope that these online spaces will continue to evolve and that Feminists utilise these evolving spaces to further develop the process of challenging the patriarchy and movement towards social change.

Hi Lauren, this was such an interesting read!

Your point on how digital technologies allow users to be unique in their performance of activism is very insightful and I agree with you on this argument. Activism online can be done in so many ways while having a common goal in mind and it helps individuals to share to their own personal experiences. As you mention developing women-only spaces, I totally agree with you since there is so much to unpack about women’s circumstances and this has so much educational potential for society and the women themselves.

Despite being a key factor for change, there is still a sense of incomprehension towards feminism and it is often demonized online. What is your opinion on this and what do you think can be done to educate others?

Also, feel free to read my paper where I also discuss the #MeToo movement among others as I explore how Social commentary YouTube is one of the numerous ways online networks aid societal change.

I think the issue you raise in regards to the negative view or misconception of Feminism within modern society is a very relevant one. I think that this issue is multifaceted, factoring in the platform, the users, and the context.

Platforms play a pivotal role in setting public agenda through their algorithms that prioritise certain content, and their ability to censor content misinformation and disinformation. Platforms have the responsibility to monitor and remove content that functions to demonise Feminism and is rooted within misogyny.

I think that as ordinary users continue to act as Feminist agents in the online sphere, the proliferation of Feminist content across mainstream media can function to educate those who have a lack of comprehension in regards to Feminism, and challenge stigmas that demonise feminism. However, this is reliant on the ability of Feminist issues to be regarded as important enough to warrant attention from the mainstream media, and the continued effort of Feminist agents in the online environment.

Lastly, context plays a large role in regards to how a user navigates the online environment. The ability of the user to read the media and understand the conflicts at play can vary largely across social media, which is something that should be understood by platforms, users, and content creators.

I hope that over time Feminism becomes something that is commonly spoken about in mainstream media; ultimately reducing stigmas and introducing a Feminist dialogue that is accessible and comprehensive in regards Feminist issues.

Women, Feminism and Media

Sue Thornham
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Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Copyright year: 2007
Audience: College/higher education;
Main content: 184
Keywords: Film, Media & Cultural Studies
Published: May 30, 2007
ISBN: 9780748629282

Feminism and Media

Introduction.

Feminism is associated with exploring sexual orientation differences and refers to gender roles in the public view being supplemented. Feminism believes in equal rights for men and women. It is a movement that advocates for equal rights and laws for women’s political, social, cultural, and economic rights. It has nothing to do with hating guys. It isn’t about women being better than men. It has nothing to do with avoiding womanliness. Even though research shows that men and women are far more similar than different across many domains, our gender views may cause us to assume that men and women exist in other gendered worlds, producing self-fulfilling prophecies that validate these assumptions.

This study seeks to find the role that the media plays in our gendered views and experiences. This research aimed to see how much social networking sites had influenced people’s perceptions of the feminist movement. Gender inequalities are most pronounced in media representation and content, and, in particular, exposure patterns are partially due to gender-typed material. To comprehend how the media affects women, it is necessary first to learn about systemic gender disparities in media content and any gender inequalities in media quality and quantity.

A literature review

The feminist movement has progressed through many phases, three to be precise. Each stage, known as “waves” in academia, has its history and distinguishing characteristics. In the past and now, the media played a part in the movement. Charles Fourier originated the term “feminist” in 1837, according to Beecher (1990). Three waves of feminism developed it and supplied the elements necessary for equality to triumph. The first wave, which spanned the nineteenth and early twentieth century, focused on social and economic equality. It included fights for women’s voting rights and social equality. In 1960, the slogan “To End Patriarchy” launched the second wave of feminism. Women got more involved in their schooling, divorce rights, and professional options. In 1990, the third wave of feminism began with themes of gender violence and the oppression of women.

Methodology

The qualitative approach was used in this investigation. The data was gathered via focus group talks, online textual analysis, and critical journal reviews, among other means of data collection. These three methodologies would enable the researcher to triangulate their data and come to accurate conclusions from the investigation.

Feminism and the media have always had a strong connection, and this is no exception. The movement would not be where it is now if it had not had access to the media. Without the media, political and social advancements for women would have been challenging to accomplish. As social media becomes more popular, more viewpoints become available to the broader population. This allows for fresh ideas and tactics to fight injustice and promote political advancements for women. Because these waves were so huge, they’ve likely triggered the start of a never-ending cycle that will continue to evolve and adapt. Consequently, in general, incidents relating to women’s issues will continue to be covered by the media.

The idea is that the media is more than simply a source of information in this movement. They function as catalysts because they are at the center of the action. For the feminist cause, feminist groups and feminist media span all media, culture, and society. Their sole source of information about the feminist movement and a venue to learn about their own and other people’s circumstances was the media. They are freely available and appear in your “feed” without you having to actively seek them out, even without our consent.

As previously said, the media are becoming more indistinguishable from the public. We absorb information from it without even recognizing it anymore since it is so ubiquitous in our lives nowadays. It is via the work of Bolter and Deuze that we can understand how we get to be content producers without even realizing it. To be sure, the internet has made it so simple to express one’s thoughts by writing articles and videos that it has become ordinary and transparent since we are not accustomed to interacting with them daily. Women in the United Kingdom utilize internet media as a supplementary and vital means of gathering information and feeling empowered by the movement. “Democratic places of visibility, identity development, and discussion,” according to the literature.

Another intriguing conclusion from this survey was that, despite male feminist self-identity being considered contradictory to society’s views of what masculinity should and should not be, an increasing number of males felt comfortable self-identifying as feminists. This was a clear indicator of a cultural reality in which men who are seen to be deviating from dominant male gender norms, or hegemonic masculinity, risk having their masculinity and, by extension, heterosexuality questioned by their peers and society at large. Men’s willingness to identify as feminists is a step in the right direction. Still, with male feminists’ attitudes about feminine conduct remaining, sexist practices may continue to redirect attention away from male feminist self-identity.

Evans, E. (2015). The Politics of Third Wave Feminism: Neoliberalism, Intersectionality, and the State in Britain and the US. 1st ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp.19-38; 60-110.

Saeed, A., Yousaf, A., & Alharbi, J. (2017). family and state ownership, internationalization, and corporate board gender diversity. Cross-Cultural & Strategic Management.

TARROW, S. (2019). Power in movement: Collective action, social activities, and politics. 2nd ed. New York: Cornell University.

Ullah, H., Khan, A. N., Khan, H. N., & Ibrahim, A. (2016). Gender representation in Pakistani print media-a critical analysis. Pakistan Journal of Gender Studies, 12, 53- 70.

Ullah, S., Akhtar, P., & Zaefarian, G. (2018). Dealing with endogeneity bias: The generalized method of moments (GMM) for panel data. Industrial Marketing Management, 71, 69-78.

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Article Contents

Introduction, the battle over intersectionality, constitutive controversies, methodology, constructing the feminist sector as intersectionality’s pathfinder, white feminism and trans rights, conclusions, acknowledgments.

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“Diversity Within”: The Problems with “Intersectional” White Feminism in Practice

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Ashlee Christoffersen, Akwugo Emejulu, “Diversity Within”: The Problems with “Intersectional” White Feminism in Practice, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society , Volume 30, Issue 2, Summer 2023, Pages 630–653, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxac044

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In intersectionality studies, debates about the additive versus constitutive nature of intersectionality are long-established. This article attempts to intervene in these conversations by examining how additive, “diversity within” intersectionality works in practice. Across feminist academia, advocacy, and policymaking, there is a widely held perception that among the nongovernmental organizations constituted around identity-based inequalities (feminist, racial justice, migrants, disability, and LGBTQI+ rights), it is the feminist sector that best advocates for and attempts to practice intersectionality. This is related to the appropriation of Black feminist theories of intersectionality which emerged from grassroots activism and Critical Race scholarship as “feminist” theory, wherein feminist is always-already constructed as white. Drawing on empirical research with equality organizations working with disabled women and trans women in England and Scotland, this article suggests that the opposite is true: the additive intersectionality practiced by the white-led feminist sector serves to uphold white supremacy and other structural inequalities.

Intersectionality is the term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw for Black women’s theorizing of the social world’s foundational organizing logics of white supremacy—a global, social, political, economic, and cultural system which privileges whiteness, gendered racism, and racialized sexism ( Collins 1990 ; Crenshaw 1989 , 1991 ). Although most often associated with Black American feminist theory, intersectionality has a long tradition in Black British feminism ( Amos et al. 1984 ; Bryan, Dadzie, and Scafe 2018 ; Mirza 1997 ) and Afropean feminism ( Emejulu and Sobande 2019 ; Florvil 2020 ; Optiz, Oguntoye, and Schultz 1991 ; Wekker 2016 ). Intersectionality is the understanding that social inequalities are interdependent and indivisible from one another: “race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena” ( Collins 2015 , 2).

Crenshaw employs intersectionality to describe the ways that Black women’s experiences and identities are marginalized by practices that treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories not only in anti-discrimination law but also in feminist and anti-racist movements. As the classic essay collection edited by Hull, Bell-Scott, and Smith (2015 [1980]) succinctly put it, “All the women are white, all the Blacks are men—but some of us are brave.” When race and gender are conceptualized as separate and independent from each other there is a tendency for the most powerful members of marginalized groups, in this case, white women and Black men—to universalize themselves and their particular experiences and position themselves as the only legitimate representatives of the group as a whole.

There is a long-running debate among intersectionality scholars on what precisely intersectionality is ( Hancock 2007 , 2013 ; Jordan-Zachery 2007 ; Lutz 2015 ; May 2015 ; Collins 2019 ), as well as what it means . If intersectionality is disputed by academics, then what does it mean to those seeking to practice intersectionality in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)? How do definitions among practitioners relate to academic debates? How does what intersectionality is understood to mean relate to how it is applied? Our article examines how additive, what we call “diversity within,” intersectionality works in practice. Although rather unwieldy, we use “diversity within” to foreground how some practitioners in our study described the ways that they applied intersectionality. For these practitioners, addressing “diversity,” a term ubiquitously and often uncritically mobilized in the UK policy context (see Ahmed 2012 ), means acknowledging differences (e.g. of ethnicity, disability) within a predefined social group (i.e. women), and seeking to include those who have been excluded from their organization’s activities and services.

In feminist academia, advocacy, and policymaking, there is often an assumption that among the single-issue NGO sectors organized around identity-based inequalities (disability rights, feminist, LGBTQI+ rights, racial justice, migrants’ rights), it is the feminist sector that is the pathfinder that best advocates for and innovates in its practice of intersectionality (e.g. Evans 2015 , 2016 ; see also Bassel and Emejulu 2017a , 2017b ). Below we provide examples of this assumption being made by senior equality policymakers as well as women’s sector practitioners and directors in both England and Scotland. We argue that this erroneous assumption is the result of the appropriation of Black feminist theories of intersectionality emerging from Critical Race scholarship as “feminist” theory, wherein feminist is always-already constructed as white ( Alexander-Floyd 2012 ; Bilge 2013 ; Emejulu 2022 ; Lewis 2013 ; Tomlinson 2013 ). A majority of research on intersectionality and social movements which centers a particular identity-based sector focuses on white-dominated feminist organizations and movements (e.g. Boucher 2018 ; English 2019 , 2020 ; Evans 2015 , 2016 ; Laperriere and Lépinard 2016 ; Lépinard 2014 ; with exceptions including Tungohan 2015 ; Terriquez et al. 2018 ). This focus reflects intersectionality’s powerful academic appropriation as white “feminist” theory ( Davis 2008 ), particularly in Europe where race is disavowed and intersectionality is often mobilized to strategically erase race, racism, and white supremacy ( Emejulu and van der Scheer 2021 ; Lewis 2013 ). Feminist NGO advocates consider themselves to be the intersectionality experts—and thus legitimate “representatives” of women experiencing intersecting inequalities—a view echoed among gender equality policymakers, as will be evidenced through our empirical data below. Meanwhile among policymakers internationally, when it has been mobilized, intersectionality has been appropriated by “gender mainstreaming” technocrats (see e.g. Christoffersen 2022a on European policy; Hunting and Hankivsky 2020 for a critique; Lombardo and Agustín 2016 ), who engage exclusively with white-dominated feminist NGOs. Based on our research with equality organizations in England and Scotland, this article offers a counter-narrative. Instead, we argue that though the feminist NGO sector claims to be the only one really doing intersectionality, the particular way that intersectionality is being practiced by the single-issue white-led feminist sector serves, far from furthering intersectional justice, to uphold white supremacy and other structural inequalities. This is demonstrated through empirical examples concerning projects targeted toward disabled women, and perceptions and conflicts regarding trans rights. 1 We share these examples because issues of disability and trans rights formed the foci of discussions of intersectionality in the women’s sector—to the exclusion of discussion of racism.

We begin this article by first reviewing some of the key debates within intersectionality studies, particularly in relation to additive and constitutive approaches. We first discuss the additive ways that these practitioners understand how to apply intersectionality, an approach that reinforces white supremacy and other structural inequalities. We then provide examples of how additive approaches work in practice through discussion of organizing around disability and trans rights. Ultimately, diversity within intersectionality is “non-performative” ( Ahmed 2006 ; Nash 2019 ); in other words, it is an empty gesture that reaffirms white supremacy within these organizations. While much attention has been given to how single-issue women’s organizations can become more representative of marginalized women experiencing intersecting inequalities (e.g. Strolovitch 2007 ), we suggest alternative paths forward.

Intersectionality is a contested term ( Collins and Bilge 2016 ; Hancock 2016 ; May 2015 ), and authors have suggested conceiving it as a field of study rather than as simply a theory ( Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall 2013 ; Hancock 2016 ). Yet core to its meaning is that systems of inequality, including capitalism/class, sexism, racism and white supremacy, heterosexism, cisgenderism, ableism, and borders, constitute one another, meaning that they construct one another and interact to create institutions and differential social positions ( Bassel and Emejulu 2010 ; Collins 1990 ; Crenshaw 1989 , 1991 ; May 2015 ; Yuval-Davis 2006 ). Social institutions and positions are therefore shaped by multiple, mutually constituting, divisions operating simultaneously. Applying intersectionality, in both theory and practice, therefore means engagement with the interrelationship of these systems of inequality. This engagement is in turn predicated on acknowledgment of and reckoning with the ontology of each of these structures themselves.

As we and others argue, social divisions and identities cannot be separated from one another because they are mutually constituting, so that, for example, there is little analytical value in discussing “women” generically, but only particular categories of women, wherein gender is constituted by other elements, resulting in a specific inhabiting and experience of gender which is qualitatively different to others ( Collins 1990 ; Crenshaw 1989 , 1991 ). Yet intersectionality emerges from a feminist context where “woman” is always-already constructed as white ( Davis 1983 ; Lewis 2017 ), one where the figure of the Black woman has been discursively and materially degendered through slavery and its afterlife, and in its wake ( Hartman 2008 ; Sharpe 2016 ; Spillers 1987 ). Although not named as such, intersectionality has been a constitutive element of Black women’s politics since the colonial encounter. Understanding how race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and legal status interact in ways that advantage some groups and disadvantage others has formed the basis of Black women’s politics for centuries ( Collins 1990 ; Emejulu 2022 ).

While we see a constitutive definition of intersectionality as integral to it, others advocate additive definitions: a strand of white feminist academic thought employs particular definitions of intersectionality suggesting that inequalities can be separated from one another. This is exemplified by Walby, Armstrong, and Strid (2012a, 2012b ), who seek to arbitrate a new legitimate meaning of intersectionality. As social scientists historically mainly concerned with gender and class, they argue for a conception of the relationship between inequalities as “mutually shaping” rather than mutually constitutive: “which suggests that while the effects of one inequality on other inequalities may be discerned, the separate systems of inequality remain” ( Walby, Armstrong, and Strid 2012a , 453), because “the recognition of the differences between the ontologies of inequalities is necessary in order to [analyze] … practices that have been important in developing appropriate measures to tackle inequalities” ( Walby, Armstrong, and Strid 2012a , 474). A “mutual shaping” approach would seem to justify a continued focus on gender alone, without meaningful engagement with the ontologies of other inequality structures, nor how gender both constructs and is always constructed by them. For Walby et al., mutual shaping “acknowledges the way that systems of social relations change each other at the point of intersection, but do not become something totally different” ( Walby, Armstrong, and Strid 2012b , 235). This contradicts what many Black feminists have argued are systems of social relations that together produce social institutions and positions that are qualitatively different from those produced by one system of social relations alone ( Crenshaw 1991 ). The “mutual shaping” model offered represents an additive approach to intersectionality, in that it suggests that inequalities can be separated from one another; the idea that they change one another only at the “point of intersection” ( Walby, Armstrong, and Strid 2012b , 235) suggests the existence of a point at which there is no intersection. While few authors are explicit in their employment of a “mutually shaping” rather than “mutually constitutive” approach, it is apparent in many white feminist treatments of intersectionality which discuss it as “gender plus” and only in relation to gender, women, women’s studies, and feminism ( Alexander-Floyd 2012 ; Bilge 2013 ; Lewis 2017 ).

Other scholars have not seen recognition of differing ontologies and a conceptualization of inequalities as mutually constitutive as being contradictory from one another: “although discourses of race, gender, class, etc. have their own ontological bases which cannot be reduced to each other, there is no separate concrete meaning of any facet of these social categories, as they are mutually constitutive in any concrete historical moment ” ( Yuval-Davis 2013 , 7; emphasis added). “Mutual shaping” forgoes what is considered a key tenet of intersectionality by many of its theorists, i.e. mutual constitution/construction (e.g. Crenshaw 1989 , 1991 ; Collins 1990 ).

As white feminist engagement with intersectionality increases, the body of literature that is critical of the way that white feminists apply intersectionality in both theory and practice is correspondingly growing (e.g. Alexander-Floyd 2012 ; Bilge 2013 ; Lewis 2013 ; May 2015 ; Tomlinson 2013 ). Within feminist studies, Bilge (2013) argues that “intersectionality … has been systematically depoliticized” (p. 405): “originally focused on transformative and counter-hegemonic knowledge production and radical politics of social justice, [it] has been commodified and colonized for neoliberal regimes” (p. 407). A tendency has been observed, and named, among some European thinkers “to find valuable a ‘purified’ intersectionality, quarantined from its exposure to race” ( Lewis 2013 ; Tomlinson 2013 , 266), a process Bilge calls “whitening” and observes within feminist studies and elsewhere ( Bilge 2013 ). Indeed, the focus on race within intersectionality studies has been found to be less prevalent in Europe than in the United States ( Mugge et al. 2018 ). It is important to carefully examine how intersectionality travels in a European context similarly characterized by anti-Blackness, and which disavows and displaces race ( Bassel and Emejulu 2017a ; Christoffersen 2022b ; Emejulu and van der Scheer 2021 ; Lewis 2013 ). Moreover, Black feminists theorize the ways in which Black women, “as both representation and embodied, sentient being[s]” ( Lewis 2017 , 117) are effaced, discursively and materially made absent. We therefore note the potential for invocations of intersectionality in practice—as well as in academia—to be a site of this epistemological and material erasure of Black women, as knowledge producers and actors in these social worlds ( Lewis 2017 ).

Additive approaches to intersectionality rely on essentialist ideas about what the social structure of gender is and does by ultimately refusing the idea that it exists only within always-interlocking structures of inequality. In so doing, both scholars and practitioners reconstruct gender, like the category “woman,” as always-already white, and as we will demonstrate, nondisabled and cis.

We now move onto contextualize the article within long-running grassroots contestations of white feminist conceptions of gender and womanhood from Black women and women experiencing intersecting inequalities.

We are in the middle of a tumultuous period in which key categories of identification and enactments of power relations through gender are being contested and reconfigured. The bitter debate about what womanhood is, how it is constituted and performed has upended Scottish and English feminisms. To be sure, these debates are in no way new, but debates about the status of trans women in ostensibly “female only” spaces, about race and white supremacy in light of resurgent anti-racist mobilizations, and about colonial memory and decolonization processes have brought to the fore long-standing tensions within feminist politics in the United Kingdom ( Bey 2017 ; Bhambra 2014 ; Emejulu 2022 ). Transness, race, and decoloniality, for instance, force us to historicize that which has been taken for granted—gender and the gender binary—and fundamentally challenge what the conceptual basis of being a “woman” and doing “womanhood” means. This is why Black feminist theorists are so careful in framing intersectionality as mutually constitutive because once you understand that embedded in the idea of “woman” are the normative values of white, bourgeois cisheteronormativity, then the entire fiction of “woman” is exposed ( Emejulu 2022 ; Hartman 2008 ; Sharpe 2016 ; Spillers 1987 ).

Black, Asian, lesbian, queer, and disabled women have long critiqued the excluding and exclusive category of “womanhood” as practiced by mainstream feminism, or what is now more recently termed “white feminism.” Under this framework, gender is the foundation of social inequality and the only category of inequality that can unite all women in a struggle against it. It is presumed that the subject in mainstream feminism is a straight, white, middle-class, and nondisabled woman, and that this particular subject and her experiences can be universalized as the standard bearer for all women across time and space. As such, feminist political strategies are pursued on this basis of “exclusive universalism” ( Bassel and Emejulu 2017a )—from abortion rights to anti-violence against women’s work to the gender pay gap. Because these struggles have, for the most part, excluded different kinds of women and their experiences of inequality at other intersections of race, class, sexuality, disability, and legal status, English and Scottish feminisms have been fractured over these constitutive politics.

For example, the struggle for abortion rights in the 1970s and 1980s had to be expanded by the Organization of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD), the Brixton Black Women’s Group, and other radical Black and Asian activists to include a wider conception of bodily autonomy, encompassing resistance against virginity tests and forced sterilization of women of color in Britain and across the former British colonies ( Brixton Black Women’s Group 1984 ; Bryan, Dadzie, and Scafe 2018 ). Women’s bodily autonomy was not only about the fate of individual women’s bodies in terms of accessing contraception and abortion services but about how collectives of racialized bodies are captured and controlled by the bordering practices of the British state. OWAAD and other radical women of color demonstrated how sexism could not be separated from racism and the colonial relations of the British state. Imbricated in this struggle to expand the boundaries of who is included in womanhood is the longstanding lesbian and queer critique of mainstream feminism and the heteronormative assumptions embedded in much of feminist politics—particularly in relation to the sexual division of labor ( Butler 1999 ; Federici 2004 ). Lesbian, queer, and trans women expanded feminist struggles beyond the gender binary and seeking rights beyond simple equality with (white) men. Lesbian, queer, and trans feminisms expand the terrain of feminist politics by insisting on survival, visibility, desire, and transgression as foundational feminist concerns which can only be addressed when the power relations mobilized through sexuality, gender, class, and race are taken seriously ( Cohen 1997 ; Phelan 1997 ). Indeed, perhaps what is most puzzling about the current trans debate is how it echoes similar bad faith concerns about the “lavender menace” and the fear of lesbian women infiltrating “straight” women’s feminist spaces in the 1960s and 1970s ( Brownmiller 2000 ).

Disabled women challenge ideas of womanhood by politicizing impairment and illness. Rather than framing disabled bodies as broken and in need of fixing, or worse, elimination, disability feminism makes visible our disabling physical and social environments and institutions which render disabled people deviant and abnormal. Through a social model of disability and crip theory, disabled feminists challenge the stigma and invisibility of impairments, by considering how particular bodies are framed as pathological and thus consigned to disposability. Thinking about how gender, race, sexuality, and disability intersect is a direct challenge to dominant feminist approaches to bodily autonomy and caring practices in public and private spaces. Disability feminism forces us to consider how different kinds of women’s bodies operate in space and generate different kinds of politics and strategies for liberation ( Inckle 2014 ; McRuer 2006 ).

Thus, the current uproar about the presence of trans women in feminist spaces, for instance, is part of a long tradition within English and Scottish feminisms of forcing open feminist politics and spaces to not only make them more inclusive but to implode dominant approaches to feminism and womanhood, and build a new kind of intersectional politics capable of understanding and taking action on complex inequalities derived from race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and legal status. While what is a woman is always contested, contemporary debates about trans rights, sex work, decolonization, and anti-racism, and disability rights bring this particular and latent violence in the mainstream movement to the forefront.

We will now turn to discuss our methodology and methods.

The empirical data in this article draw on Christoffersen’s Ph.D. project exploring how equality NGO practitioners in England and Scotland conceptualize and operationalize intersectionality in their work. Mixed-method qualitative case studies of intersectionality’s conceptualization and use were conducted within three networks of equality organizations in three cities in England and Scotland, from 2016 to 2018. These networks bring together racial justice, feminist, disability rights, LGBTI rights, migrants’ rights organizations, and intersectional combinations of these. The case studies were participatory and ethnographic. For one year and six months, Christoffersen attended semi-regular meetings and events of equality networks and participated in their email lists. Networks were involved in the development of research questions and design, and some participants conducted data collection and recruitment.

Within the case studies, four methods were employed: interviews; participant observation; document analysis; and a focus group conducted with one network. Equality networks (rather than solely organizations) were selected because they represent a site of dialogue and joint working where there is not necessarily a significant tradition of or space for this within the equality NGO sector and movements. This is particularly important in a context where equality seeking has predominantly been conducted in “single strand” or “siloed” ways, and where solidarity and coalition are undermined by austerity politics ( Bassel and Emejulu 2017a ). Networks of equality organizations, representing a joining up of single-issue equality areas, create opportunities for dialogue and solidarity building that might engender or further intersectional meaning and practice. Networks were selected that include different types of equality organizations, explicitly take an intersectional approach, and have a policy intermediary, representative role. Christoffersen’s background as a practitioner in the sector was key to participant recruitment. The selected networks aim broadly at cooperation to address identity-based inequality, and advance equality, and work predominantly at local level. They tend, at decision-making levels, to be composed of relatively powerful organizations in their respective sub-sectors. These organizations are predominantly “single strand” and have been established for some time. Individuals, organizations, networks, and cities are anonymized; all names used are pseudonyms.

The data shared in this article draw primarily on research with feminist organizations: in-depth, semi-structured interviews with practitioners, senior managers, and directors, participant observation, and document analysis. Data concerning projects targeted toward disabled women were gathered through analysis of documents about and produced by the projects; participant observation at a meeting concerning one of the projects; and interviews. Documents are not quoted from directly since they are anonymized. Documents were analyzed with respect to how they define intersectionality, explicitly and implicitly, and what influenced work and knowledge in this area; how intersectionality was operationalized in the context of specific activities to which the documents pertain (identified by participants as “intersectional” work, such as the projects discussed below); assumptions and implicit meanings; omissions and exclusions; and framing.

Data concerning debates about trans rights draw on participant observation at network meetings, the focus group, document analysis, and interviews across equality sub-sectors. Participant observation and the focus group provided insight into the interaction of participants/network members representing different “strands,” having divergent histories and movements that have constructed them, and different interests: the possibilities for solidarity, and the challenges and conflict involved. Analysis of these data has centrally involved “asking the other question” ( Crenshaw 1991 ; Matsuda 1991 ): for example, in research with women’s organizations, asking how are race, disability, and gender identity constructed and/or omitted here?

The English and Scottish women’s organizations included are service providers ( n = 2) and engaged in policy advocacy ( n = 2); one service provider is large (thirty plus staff) while the remaining organizations are small (ten staff or fewer). Six single-issue feminist organizations participated in the research (alongside network staff and twenty-three other organizations from other equality sub-sectors (Deaf, disabled, faith, LGBTI, racial justice, migrants’ rights, trans) and intersectional combinations, the latter including one disabled women’s organization, one Black and minority ethnic (BME) women’s organization and two BME women of faith organizations. Two policymakers were also interviewed. For the purposes of the project, which was predominantly concerned with practice in organizations, in terms of individual positionality the equality subsector that the participant represents is the most important characteristic to contextualize them alongside their data. This is usually synonymous with an aspect or aspects of the identity of the participant (given that equality organizations are mainly led and staffed by their target communities). All other marginalized characteristics tend to be underrepresented in specific sector organizations, and all sectors but the racial justice and migrants’ rights sectors or intersectional organizations including work on race and/or ethnicity and/or migration status are white-led and predominantly white.

We will now move on to discuss our findings. We begin by establishing how feminist NGO sector practitioners and gender equality policymakers create a narrative that the feminist sector is the beacon of intersectional practice. We then turn to analyze empirical examples demonstrating that while feminist sector practitioners position themselves as the only true arbiters of intersectionality, they practice intersectionality in such a way as to reassert white supremacy and other structural inequalities in their organizations. These examples concern projects targeted toward disabled women and perceptions and conflicts regarding trans rights, selected because most “intersectionality” projects in the sector focus on disability, rather than race, which we find noteworthy and speaks to a broader European project of erasing race and putting disability in competition with race. Further, debates surrounding trans rights were rife during the period when the research was conducted and lack of agreement in this area, e.g. on the need to develop projects targeted toward trans women on par with those targeted toward disabled women, was identified by participants as a key challenge for intersectional solidarity. In other words, these examples emerged inductively from the data collected at this particular time and place concerning how practitioners conceptualize and operationalize intersectionality.

We will first offer examples of how practitioners represent themselves and their organizations as champions of intersectionality, and then turn to examine how such representations have a direct effect on how intersectionality is defined and practiced within these organizations.

Intersectionality’s appropriation by feminist studies ( Bilge 2013 ) is mirrored in perceptions held among some feminist academics, policymakers, and advocates that among equality-seeking NGOs, the feminist sector is the beacon of intersectional practice. This problematic unexamined assumption is reflected in methodological choices: a majority of research on intersectionality in practice has focused exclusively on feminist organizations (e.g. Evans 2016 ; Lépinard, 2014 ; for critiques of this approach, see Bassel and Emejulu 2017a , 2017b ). This perception was found among both prominent gender equality policymakers and feminist sector practitioners.

Women’s sector practitioners laid claim to intersectionality: for instance, Yvonne, director of a women’s organization in Scotland, stated: “we're not just focused on the gender issue, we're focused on the gender plus issues. Until very very recently, I think we were the only ones [among the equality organizations in the city] that had that overarching equality work.” Diane, a practitioner in a women’s organization in England, represented her work in a similar way: “successful services, sustainable services are built around that holistic approach, dealing with the whole woman, not just from a BME perspective or disabled perspective or an issue about class.”

As we can see from Diane’s claim, she constructs the women’s sector as the only sector which does “holistic” approaches, while the racial justice and disability rights sectors are constructed as limited and inherently inattentive to gender and women. Autonomous organizing by and for women of color and disabled women is effaced in both examples.

The perception that the single-issue, white-dominated feminist sector is the origin and pathfinder of intersectionality was echoed by policymakers. For instance, when asked about how she had encountered intersectionality, Margaret said: “It probably came from our [NGO] sector colleagues and … in particular the [single issue] women's organizations … they started to talk about wanting to work to examine intersectionality.” While Margaret went on to name particular white-led feminist organizations, Black women’s organizations were reflected upon only when later specifically asked about: “Black women's organizations had maybe a quicker grasp on it … than the more mainstream race organizations.” The implication was that while Black women’s organizations may have had a “quicker grasp on it” than racial justice organizations, really the white women’s sector was the leader.

While women’s sector practitioners claim that their sector is the only one really doing intersectionality, we argue that these kinds of (mis)representations of the feminist sector come at the expense of thoughtful and critical understandings and applications of intersectionality. We will now examine how ostensibly feminist organizations in England and Scotland practice intersectionality and the impact this has on both disability issues and trans rights in these organizational spaces.

Nothing About Us Without Us

First, we introduce the particular way that feminist sector practitioners understand intersectionality which is central to understanding both empirical examples to follow. “Diversity within” is an applied concept of intersectionality which means addressing “intersections” within an equality strand: for example, differences among women ( Christoffersen 2021 ). Gender remains the focus and is viewed implicitly or explicitly as more important than other inequalities. While this concept of intersectionality is related to single-issue organizing, it is not determined by it. Indeed, this additive “intersectionality” was found to be the most prevalent applied concept of intersectionality among those in the women’s sector, but importantly, this was not the case for any other single-strand sector (migrants’ rights, racial justice, disabled, Deaf, LGBTQI+), nor was it true of any of the intersectional sectors included in the sample. Organizations applied intersectionality in multiple ways and some employed a constitutive understanding of intersectionality ( Christoffersen 2021 ). In terms of individual positionality, “diversity within” was associated with dominant identities—cis, straight, middle-class white women (additive intersectionality serves to further the interests of singularly disadvantaged groups).

It is important to note that participants identified that additive intersectionality was conveyed to them and reproduced through on-the-job training and continuous professional development courses with other white-dominated feminist NGOs and white feminist academics advocating for this particular approach to intersectionality. This additive approach as represented in the training of NGO workers also served to reinforce the idea that white feminists “owned” intersectionality ( Bilge 2013 ).

Intersectionality is the new word … it has relevance … to the work that I do and that I'm focused on, so … obviously from my side it’s more about sort of women and those things that are happening around women and particular groups of women as well and how those things work, and I'm sort of quite interested in sort of gathering and articulating how a response to that or almost sort of the baseline of any work that we go forward doing, how that impacts on access to services, how organizations stay sustainable, there are lots of issues that are emerging now that, are, forgive me if I just keep going on about women specific things, but the generalisation of services, about funds being cut, and how that recognition of intersectionality impacts on women's lot. It’s quite, it’s insidious. The, the prioritising of the individual I think is seriously damaging to women as a group. And those intersectional points, I think is why we need to be clear and articulate, how and when that affects, and keep the case going strongly for keeping those visible. That's, that's my focus.

For Diane, intersectionality is constructed as something which is relevant sometimes, but not all the time; and something which is inherently individualistic. She argues that the recognition of intersectionality is “insidious” for women “as a group.” She sees it as her organizations’ task to narrow down when intersectionality is relevant, implying that oftentimes, it is irrelevant. In other words, she and her organization consider intersectionality reluctantly. It is important to note that few participants employing this understanding were openly reluctant about intersectionality. Indeed, most were enthusiastic about intersectionality as both a theory and a practice. It is only through the comparison of participants’ narratives that this reluctance becomes readily apparent. This understanding of intersectionality as additive (instead of being mutually constitutive with gender, other strands—race, class, sexuality, disability, and legal status—are perceived as being only nominally relevant and only some of the time) reflects an understanding of gender which is almost wholly blind to and arguably hostile to race, class, sexuality, disability, and legal status.

In practice, use of additive intersectionality often involves developing projects targeted at particular groups of women, driven by demographic analysis of service users by equality characteristics, frequently instituted as a funding requirement in light of the 2010 Equality Act. Feminist organizations have not always embraced intersectionality and developed projects out of new political understandings and goodwill. Rather, they have often been driven by equality monitoring requirements of funders revealing their exclusion of women experiencing intersectional disadvantage, even though they are funded to serve “all” in a given geographic community of identity.

Going back to examples like race, we've gone out, we've done engagement with race organizations. We'll always keep doing that, so we're not going to give up but we know that often [disabled BME] people will choose to stay belonging to those organizations … they're not going to get heavily involved in our community when they're involved in those communities.

As we can see, Susan offers problematic “cultural” narratives about “tight-knit communities” which she uses to rationalize why particular minority ethnic groups will not engage with her organization, thereby relieving her and the organization of responsibility to acknowledge and address white supremacy. As a result disabled people of color are particularly excluded from targeted, supposedly “intersectional” projects; there is a yawning gap between race and disability where little work exists at present. 3

In contrast, some organizations, cognizant of the origins of intersectionality, describe as their intersectional work either their own work with Black women (in the case of racial justice organizations), or seeking to widen their work with Black women and/or BME communities; for example, Anya, a practitioner in a racial justice organization, put it like this: “We would look at [intersectionality] more from a point of view of having Black women's organizations involved … we would be looking to make sure that their concerns were not drowned out by the majority and always came to the fore.”

Comparison of three projects addressing violence against disabled women illustrates the problems of diversity within intersectionality (AD 4 5–11, 42). These projects were all identified as “intersectional” by participants. Each project aimed broadly at increasing disabled women’s use of, and access to, anti-violence against women, and girls’ services, responding to the exclusion of disabled women from these services. These services emerged within single-issue women’s organizations and are subject to the exclusions of those organizations: they were not set up with disabled women in mind.

Two of the projects were initiated by nondisabled women’s organizations seeking to increase representation of disabled women among service users. Disabled women came to be identified as a priority because of equality monitoring: when looking at service user data, disabled women were found to be disproportionately underrepresented. For example, Helen, senior manager of a women’s organization in England, stated that her organization set up a targeted service because: “we were looking at some of our targets we were not meeting, we were thinking we weren’t meeting the needs of every [woman in the city] so we were looking at our performance against targets around deaf and disabled women.” Thus, even though Diane, the practitioner we introduced earlier, raised concerns about how intersectionality promoted individualism, we see that ostensible “intersectional service delivery” is driven not necessarily by a commitment to justice but by neoliberal performance management targets.

The projects’ focus was thus building the capacity of nondisabled women’s organizations to serve disabled women: a version of “acting for” or “doing to,” which fails to take into account disabled women’s agency and can be interpreted as paternalistic and part of a longer tradition of working on rather than with disabled women. In both of these projects, representation of disabled women among those running and directing the project was viewed as a bonus, not a necessity. Disabled women playing advisory roles were expected to give up their time for free. There was not necessarily any outreach to the disabled people’s sector in project development or implementation, nor was there attention paid to other inequalities within the projects (e.g. race, class, and/or sexuality). These projects, conceptualized singularly and under neoliberal compliance pressures, were nevertheless viewed as intersectional success stories by their proponents. In one of these two white-led women’s organizations, perceived as being “good on race” by some racial justice organizations since it also had a “race” project, its disability project was developed without race, or rather, whiteness was taken for granted: imagery depicted only white people, race was not highlighted in the documentation, monitoring information revealed that the project beneficiaries were c. 95 percent white while none were Black, and outreach reported did not include any racial justice or BME organizations (AD 42). This was possible because in additive applications of intersectionality, inequalities are conceptualized as being legitimately able to be added and subtracted at will, rather than being viewed as mutually constitutive. Some single-issue women’s organizations may therefore have targeted projects which may be deemed successful, but these are not necessarily “layered” and certainly not intersectional, and thus can be conceptualized and managed entirely separately within an (even quite small) organization. Nevertheless, the fact that such organizations have multiple projects targeted toward particular groups of women experiencing intersecting inequalities makes them heralded for their commitment to intersectionality, and bolsters the misperception held by some academics, policymakers, and practitioners alike that feminist organizations are more committed to intersectionality than other single-issue equality sectors.

In contrast, a third project led by a network of equality organizations focused on developing disabled-women-led peer support services, in other words it centered the agency of disabled women. This project aspired to be disabled-women-led and survivor-led as a core guiding principle. Building relationships with the disabled people’s sector in developing and implementing the project was viewed as essential from the outset. It was the only one of the three similar projects which centrally involved women of color in decision-making and integrated consideration of race, sexuality, and trans status along with gender and disability, consistent with a constitutive rather than an additive understanding of intersectionality. The representation of disabled women’s organizations and women of color in decision-making capacities was critical to the project developing in this way. Disabled women (conceptualized as diverse across other characteristics, rather than as a monolithic group) were viewed as agential, and their social position as mutually constituted rather than additively formed.

In spite of the notable differences in the projects driven by competing concepts of intersectionality, for practitioners employing diversity within intersectionality, intersectionality needs to stop there, or else they would have to admit that they are not really doing intersectionality. Diversity within “intersectionality” has all of the limitations of gender-first approaches to equality which efface women of color’s experiences that are widely critiqued elsewhere ( Crenshaw 1989 , 1991 ; Hankivsky 2005 ). The “diversity within” intersectionality practiced by the women’s sector fails to recognize relationality and the simultaneity of power and oppression insofar as it is additive. For this reason, it tends to view marginalized groups as solely oppressed, and those experiencing intersecting inequalities as having “additional barriers” in a deficit model. Within it, other aspects of identity may be able to be incorporated as “barriers,” but this tends to be limited to one.

Since intersectionally marginalized women are constructed as nonagential and unable to participate in decision-making about the projects, the more powerful, singularly disadvantaged, white, nondisabled women directing the projects are therefore implicitly constructed as ideal “representatives” of intersectionally marginalized women. In the context of the women’s sector, this concept of intersectionality thus serves to further the association of “women” with whiteness and the construction of “woman” as always-already white ( Lewis 2017 ).

We now turn to an empirical example concerning debates over trans rights, which further demonstrates the problems of additive intersectionality in practice. Additive intersectionality ultimately refuses meaningful engagement with structures of inequality other than a totalizing concept of gender which centers the interests of white and otherwise privileged women, thereby enacting violence on trans women and reinscribing white supremacy and ableism both within organizations and outside them.

A key challenge for intersectional practice that research participants identified was the opposition and resistance of some single-issue women’s organizations to the expansion of rights of trans people in general and trans women in particular, in the context of proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004 by Westminster and Holyrood, respectively. This act makes provision for legal change of gender on birth certificates. Important proposed reforms that would simplify what is currently a difficult, bureaucratic, and heavily medicalized process were ultimately abandoned in England and at the time of writing are in discussion in the Scottish Parliament. 5 In contrast to “intersectional” projects focused on disabled women, there were no projects targeted toward trans women delivered by women’s organizations in the sample. The following section will explore why, and what this lack of provision for trans women indicates about the meanings given to “intersectionality” by women’s organizations.

In one equality network, a women’s organization circulated a policy document concerning the local equality strategy on the email list of the inner governing circle of the network. The document, which had been submitted to an influential local policymaker, asserted that trans rights were not “real” rights, and constructed these rights as being in opposition to, and detrimental to, “women’s” rights (AD 28). The existence of trans women was effaced in putting these groups into opposition, constructing them as being mutually exclusive, thereby denying categorical intersection ( Hancock 2013 ). Significantly, the same document later goes on to mention how important it is that equality policy consider intersectionality, here conceptualized as additive. The circulation of this document engendered a breakdown of solidarity in the network. To an extent, the network LGBTI organization representative felt supported by the dismayed responses of others to the circulation of the email in their next meeting. On the other hand, they felt unsupported by the fact that it was left to them to raise it, making it seem to them that they were the only one to view it as problematic.

Intersectionality is fundamentally about recognition of the interrelation of structures of inequality (particularly race, class, and gender). Yet recognition of, and engagement with, the interrelationship of inequality structures, requires a prior step of recognizing the ontology of the structures themselves. This refusal to do so is reflected not only among white feminist academics who appropriate the language of intersectionality but fail to name or recognize white supremacy, instead bending and stretching intersectionality in the interests of white women—but also among practitioners. Many feminist sector practitioners employing additive understandings of intersectionality do not recognize a structure of inequality affecting trans people, as illustrated by the quote below. Recognition of this structure of inequality is particularly problematic for the women’s sector, since it offers fundamental challenges to core beliefs and assumptions on which many organizations are premised (ideas of gender as a binary power relation between women and men, and of gender as a fixed, biological status). The structure of inequality affecting trans people has been variously theorized, but the emerging consensus in trans studies is that it is best theorized as cisgenderism, an ideology that “denies, denigrates, or pathologizes … [that] creates an inherent system of associated power and privilege” ( Lennon and Mistler 2014 , 63).

I [got really angry] at a meeting because somebody called me a cis woman. And I said, "You don’t get to define me." I don’t like the term cis because it’s never been said to me as a description, it's been said to me as an accusation. I am not-You do not have the right. You have not earned the right to call me a cis woman just because that’s your community as a trans community, as a trans woman because that’s what you use.

Here she is expressing discomfort with the idea of cisgender privilege. This was a fairly common position taken by women’s sector organizations and thus, in that city, relations between prominent women’s sector organizations and the LGBTI sector had broken down.

A women’s organization that others had said was “working on” trans inclusion had also signed the policy document seeking to exclude trans issues from equality debates described above (AD 28), yet this organization had also been heralded for its good practice on intersectionality. We suggest this may be indicative of the limits of additive intersectionality in practice, and its lack of attention to representation of intersectionally marginalized women in decision-making: inclusion of trans women in services provided within cisgendered spaces, or simple inclusion of those previously excluded from service provision, does not necessarily signify any change in issue agendas, nor does it signify a lack of discriminatory attitudes, or a commitment to intersectional transformation. It may be that some organizations feel compelled to work toward inclusion by their equality sector peers, while others are compelled by equality and diversity funding requirements, against what they actually desire to do. For these organizations, binary trans identity is incorporated merely as an additional barrier among women , but the relationship between sexism and cisgenderism is left uninterrogated.

I suppose the only thing for us is around … gender neutrality … it's important for us a woman-only organization to be able to emphasise the gendered nature of violence. So if there's a complete gender neutrality, which isn't really about trans women but just about the whole intersex [ sic ] or non-binary issues could impact on us being able to talk about women-only services and also perpetrators as being predominantly male. We want to be able to voice that.

Some can additively recognize inequality which marginalizes trans people and incorporate binary female trans identity as an “additional barrier” among women; but they cannot incorporate the always-interlocking nature of sexism and cisgenderism . Because of this, they are left with no framework in which to recognize nonbinary gender as a marginalized category. This identity presents a fundamental epistemological, ideological challenge to some of the bases on which these feminist organizations are constructed (namely understandings of gender as a binary power relation). This example demonstrates the ways in which additive intersectionality refuses the idea that structures of inequality are always-interlocking. This refusal inherent to additive intersectionality in relation to all inequality structures is especially apparent in this example, because the particular ontologies of the inequality structures involved (sexism and cisgenderism) explicitly generate conflict around shared key concepts and categories (namely gender/“woman”). Meaningful engagement with cisgenderism would explicitly call into question practitioner understandings of gender, as a monolithic, white social structure, itself. Meaningfully engaging with white supremacy would also call gender/“woman” into question, but perhaps less explicitly. Nevertheless, this refusal illustrated by way of the example of cisgenderism is instructive for analyzing enduring refusals of white-led feminist organizations across Europe to meaningfully engage with white supremacy and structural racism, in spite of decades of Black and women of color feminist critique and theorizing.

Ultimately, intersectionality challenges singe-issue white feminist organizations because they are reliant on essential ideas about their constituents, namely their wholly oppressed status. It is difficult to absorb an idea of the simultaneity of privilege/oppression when a whole organization is based on a static view of its constituents as oppressed. Absorbing this idea would also necessitate a redirection of agendas away from benefiting those with relative privilege, which is both predicated on and requires a reconceptualization of what the pertinent issues are facing an organization’s constituents. Perhaps intersectionality can be absorbed additively, until it requires a fundamental rethink of established political agendas invested in victimhood which is at odds with recognizing privilege; until it necessitates the transformation that intersectionality demands.

In this article, we have attempted to examine how an implicit commitment to white supremacy, ableism, and cisgenderism shape how many ostensibly feminist NGOs conceptualize and practice intersectionality. Seemingly committed only to understanding gender as de-raced, de-classed, nondisabled, and de-sexualized, many feminist organizations advance an exclusive and excluding category of womanhood which universalizes straight, cis, nondisabled, and middle-class women to the detriment of all others. This commitment to a limited understanding of gender and gender inequality in turn warps how intersectionality is understood and applied in these organizations. Rather than taking the Black feminist challenge seriously and understanding how race, class, gender, disability, sexuality, and legal status are mutually constitutive, many feminist organizations demur and instead treat intersectionality as a pick and mix—where gender is always picked and, more often than not, placed in competition with other intersecting inequalities. As a result, women seeking support from shrinking social welfare services are under-served, and worse still, poorly served, by being misrepresented as nonagentic victims of their own unfortunate “intersectional circumstances.”

The dynamics we have documented amongst some feminist organizations in England and Scotland should not come as a surprise. Indeed, feminist theory, feminist movements, and feminist organizations have always been wracked by these divisions—of marginalized groups theorizing their own experiences and wanting a feminist politics to not merely “include” them but rather to be fundamentally transformed as a worldview and a social relation so that care for many different kinds of people is at the heart of any kind of radical revisioning of the present and future. It remains unclear whether feminist organizations have the courage to rethink their practices. As additive intersectionality becomes routinized in the sector, we have grave doubts about its future as radical framework for justice and equality.

Work around disabled women is enacted in projects; around trans rights, in a lack of projects, due to lack of agreement on the need for this work.

This is not to at all imply that disability justice work is actually easy.

There are, however, BME disabled people’s organizations who work at this intersection, although these have been hit particularly badly by austerity. Also, some disabled people’s organizations do make substantial efforts to engage BME disabled people.

Each document analyzed has been listed in a database and been renamed as “Anonymous Document [number].”

https://www.scottishtrans.org/our-work/gender-recognition-act-reform-2022/

We wish to thank participants in the research as well as Leah Bassel, anonymous reviewers, and the editors for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

The empirical research used in this article was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

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Gun Violence—A Black Feminist Issue: An Excerpt From Roxane Gay’s New Essay, ‘Stand Your Ground’

“in some ways, feminism and gun ownership seem like a good fit. … but guns can be as disempowering as they are empowering.”.

Bold and personal, Roxane Gay unpacks gun culture and gun ownership in America from a Black feminist perspective in her latest work, “Stand Your Ground.” The essay is the capstone to Roxane Gay &, a curated series of ebooks and audiobooks that lift up other voices , available exclusively on subscription hub Everand.

In “Stand Your Ground,” Gay writes about power, agency and gun ownership: “I own a gun, but I have more questions than answers,” as she acknowledges the complexity of these issues through Audre Lorde’s famous quote: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

The following is an excerpt from “Stand Your Ground: A Black Feminist Reckoning with America’s Gun Problem” copyright © 2024 by Roxane Gay, used by permission from Everand Originals and available exclusively through Everand .

Too many politicians made no efforts to codify [the right to abortion] federally. They assumed they were standing firmly on solid ground when such was not the case.

I’m a Black feminist, a bad feminist, a woman who believes a more equitable present and future are possible.

I’m not an optimist, but I have seen the change we are capable of when people work together and persist. I have also seen what we lose when we take the ground upon which we stand for granted or we don’t stand our ground firmly enough.

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4, in Dobbs v. Jackson , that the Constitution does not endow people with a right to abortion. Many Americans were shocked because the right to abortion was the law of the land for nearly 50 years. An entire generation grew up understanding that they could make choices for their bodies without legislative intervention, though in more conservative states, that right was always contingent. And then, in an arbitrary legal decision, a judicial body took that right away from millions of people with uteruses. It happened because too many Americans assumed that the right to abortion was unimpeachable. Too many politicians made no efforts to codify that right federally. They assumed they were standing firmly on solid ground when such was not the case.

It is appalling that women and people with uteruses have lost such a fundamental right to bodily autonomy. And it is not lost on me that women in many states have more rights as gun owners than they do as women. The power to take a life is more constitutionally and culturally valuable than a woman’s right to live freely. I do not know how to reconcile this reality with my feminism.

I have no fondness for guns. They are, in most hands, incredibly destructive. Every year, the number of mass shootings increases. With each new atrocity, the details are more horrifying.

A concert in Vegas. An elementary school in Connecticut. An elementary school in Texas. Staggering numbers of young children, dead before they know what it means to live. A parade in a Chicago suburb. A synagogue. A grocery store. A gay nightclub. A church. Another church. So many high schools. Shopping malls. Movie theaters.

With each successive tragedy, the details become more lurid, haunting, devastating, grim. And with each passing year, it feels more dangerous to spend time in public places, wondering if you are on the precipice of becoming a statistic.

It has not always been this way. It shouldn’t be this way. It does not need to be this way.

The power to take a life is more constitutionally and culturally valuable than a woman’s right to live freely. I do not know how to reconcile this reality with my feminism.

There is no single reason for mass shootings, though there are a few common denominators. The vast majority of mass shooters are men. Nearly 60 percent of mass shooters have a history of domestic violence. It feels like we cannot understand or predict mass shootings, that we cannot unravel the tangled threads of violence on a massive scale, but that isn’t necessarily true. And even if these crimes were unpreventable (they aren’t), we could certainly make it far more difficult for mass shooters to have access to the weapons that make their paths of destruction possible.

In some ways, feminism and gun ownership seem like a good fit.

A lot of feminist rhetoric centers on empowerment— creating opportunities and conditions that allow women to use their power, be treated with respect, have bodily autonomy, live on their own terms. A lot of gun rhetoric is also centered around empowerment—guns as a means of taking back power after trauma or claiming power in the name of self-defense or embracing the power of keeping our families safe.

But feminists must also grapple with the reality that however empowering guns may be, they are used against women at alarming rates—whether women are being threatened, injured or killed by a gun. The statistics are even more dire for Black, Latina and other women of color. Guns can be as disempowering as they are empowering.

Throughout the trial, and the many months leading up to the trial, Megan Thee Stallion was defamed and discredited for standing her ground and demanding justice.

On a July evening in 2020, rapper Megan Thee Stallion was in Los Angeles, sitting in a car with rapper Tory Lanez outside a party. There was some kind of disagreement that ended with Lanez shooting at Megan Thee Stallion’s feet multiple times, and taunting her, after she got out of the vehicle. Her injuries required surgery and a lengthy recovery.

Hours after the shooting, Lanez left a meandering voicemail for Kelsey Harris, Stallion’s former friend. In the message, he said, “I was just so fucking drunk, nigga, I just didn’t even understand what the fuck was going on, bruh. […] Regardless, that’s not going to make anything right and that’s not going to make my actions right.” Though he didn’t explicitly admit he shot Stallion, the implication of and the regret for his actions were there.

Two years later, Lanez was found guilty of assault with a firearm, illegal possession of a firearm, and negligent discharge—and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But the damage was done. Throughout the trial, and the many months leading up to the trial, Megan Thee Stallion was defamed and discredited for standing her ground and demanding justice. The severity of her injuries and the aftermath of the crime were doubted and dismissed. Hip-hop journalists, radio hosts and bloggers spread lies and misinformation and came up with all kinds of conspiracy theories to believe anything but the truth—that a Black woman was harmed and deserved justice. Rapper 50 Cent, in social media posts, doubted Stallion’s story, though later apologized. In “Circo Loco,” Canadian rapper Drake said, “This bitch lie ‘bout getting shots, but she still a stallion.” Eminem also had bars for Stallion when, in “Houdini,” he said, “If I was to ask for Megan Thee Stallion, if she would collab with me, would I really have a shot at a feat?”

These incidents bring Malcolm X’s prophetic words into stark relief: “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.” Culturally sanctioned misogynoir clarifies why addressing gun violence is not just a criminal justice issue—it is very much a Black feminist issue.

Women Rap Back: ‘It’s My Dance and It’s My Body’

The Abolitionist Aesthetics of Patrisse Cullors, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter

Kamala Harris and the Legacy of Black Women’s Leadership

U.S. democracy is at a dangerous inflection point—from the demise of abortion rights, to a lack of pay equity and parental leave, to skyrocketing maternal mortality, and attacks on trans health. Left unchecked, these crises will lead to wider gaps in political participation and representation. For 50 years, Ms . has been forging feminist journalism—reporting, rebelling and truth-telling from the front-lines, championing the Equal Rights Amendment, and centering the stories of those most impacted. With all that’s at stake for equality, we are redoubling our commitment for the next 50 years. In turn, we need your help, Support Ms . today with a donation—any amount that is meaningful to you . For as little as $5 each month , you’ll receive the print magazine along with our e-newsletters, action alerts, and invitations to Ms . Studios events and podcasts . We are grateful for your loyalty and ferocity .

About Roxane Gay

You may also like:, colorado one of eight states voting to expand abortion access in november: ‘we’re going to be a model for the rest of the country’, jd vance puts an extremist marriage agenda on the ballot.

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News outlets were leaked insider material from the Trump campaign. They chose not to print it

At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received. Here’s what to know.

FILE - Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, left, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, shake hands at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Aug. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Gray, File)

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Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance order ice cream at Olson’s Ice Cream Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, in Eau Claire, Wis. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, waves as he leaves with ice cream at Olson’s Ice Cream Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, in Eau Claire, Wis. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.

Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.

Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly.

Politico wrote over the weekend about receiving emails starting July 22 from a person identified as “Robert” that included a 271-page campaign document about Vance and a partial vetting report on Sen. Marco Rubio, who was also considered as a potential vice president. Both Politico and the Post said that two people had independently confirmed that the documents were authentic.

“Like many such vetting documents,” The Times wrote of the Vance report, “they contained past statements with the potential to be embarrassing or damaging, such as Mr. Vance’s remarks casting aspersions on Mr. Trump.”

What’s unclear is who provided the material. Politico said it did not know who “Robert” was and that when it spoke to the supposed leaker, he said, “I suggest you don’t be curious about where I got them from.”

The Trump campaign said it had been hacked and that Iranians were behind it. While the campaign provided no evidence for the claim, it came a day after a Microsoft report detailed an effort by an Iranian military intelligence unit to compromise the email account of a former senior advisor to a presidential campaign. The report did not specify which campaign.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, said over the weekend that “any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies.”

The FBI released a brief statement Monday that read: “We can confirm the FBI is investigating this matter.”

The Times said it would not discuss why it had decided not to print details of the internal communications. A spokesperson for the Post said: “As with any information we receive, we take into account the authenticity of the materials, any motives of the source and assess the public interest in making decisions about what, if anything, to publish.”

Brad Dayspring, a spokesperson for Politico, said editors there judged that “the questions surrounding the origins of the documents and how they came to our attention were more newsworthy than the material that was in those documents.”

Indeed, it didn’t take long after Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate for various news organizations to dig up unflattering statements that the Ohio senator had made about him.

A lesson from 2016?

It’s also easy to recall how, in 2016, candidate Trump and his team encouraged coverage of documents on the Clinton campaign that Wikileaks had acquired from hackers. It was widespread: A BBC story promised “18 revelations from Wikileaks’ hacked Clinton emails” and Vox even wrote about Podesta’s advice for making superb risotto.

Brian Fallon, then a Clinton campaign spokesperson, noted at the time how striking it was that concern about Russian hacking quickly gave way to fascination over what was revealed. “Just like Russia wanted,” he said.

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Unlike this year, the Wikileaks material was dumped into the public domain, increasing the pressure on news organizations to publish. That led to some bad decisions: In some cases, outlets misrepresented some of the material to be more damaging to Clinton than it actually was, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor who wrote “Cyberwar,” a book about the 2016 hacking.

This year, Jamieson said she believed news organizations made the right decision not to publish details of the Trump campaign material because they can’t be sure of the source.

“How do you know that you’re not being manipulated by the Trump campaign?” Jamieson said. She’s conservative about publishing decisions “because we’re in the misinformation age,” she said.

Thomas Rid, director of the Alperovitch Institute for Cybersecurity Studies at Johns Hopkins, also believes that the news organizations have made the right decision, but for different reasons. He said it appeared that an effort by a foreign agent to influence the 2024 presidential campaign was more newsworthy than the leaked material itself.

But one prominent journalist, Jesse Eisinger, senior reporter and editor at ProPublica, suggested the outlets could have told more than they did. While it’s true that past Vance statements about Trump are easily found publicly, the vetting document could have indicated which statements most concerned the campaign, or revealed things the journalists didn’t know.

Once it is established that the material is accurate, newsworthiness is a more important consideration than the source, he said.

“I don’t think they handled it properly,” Eisinger said. “I think they overlearned the lesson of 2016.”

David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder .

After Iowa abortion ruling, should voters boot Justice David May? Rekha Basu weighs in.

Opponents of same-sex marriage waged ideological warfare against the courts in 2010. this time, kim reynolds, lawmakers and justices are responsible for the ideological warfare..

Rekha Basu is a longtime syndicated columnist, editorial writer, reporter and author of the book, “Finding Your Voice.”
She retired in 2022 as a Des Moines Register columnist.

In 2010, a group of evangelical political activists, furious over the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling for same-sex marriage, plotted revenge. Led by Bob Vander Plaats of the The Family Leader, they formed the ironically named “Iowans for Freedom.”

Funded partly by out-of-state money, it campaigned against three of the Supreme Court justices who happened to be up for retention elections. And it succeeded in unseating three fine ones: Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices Michael Streit and David Baker .

Fast forward to this year, when a reconstituted Iowa Supreme Court, a majority hand-picked by Iowa’s anti-abortion Gov. Kim Reynolds, turns back the clock 50 years with a 4-3 ruling effectively outlawing abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy. In doing so, the justices overturned their own court's precedent, deciding that abortion laws should not be assessed under the strict-scrutiny standard previously invoked .

And now, in response, some women are taking a cue from what Iowans for Freedom accomplished in 2010. They’re encouraging others to turn the page on the November ballot — literally — to the side where judicial retention votes are, and vote against Justice David May . He’s the only one who voted for the six-week ban who’s up this year.

So, how could anyone who opposed the 2010 campaign support the same tactic? Comparisons between the two efforts get complicated. Retention elections used to be mostly pro forma shows of support for sitting judges appointed on a nonpartisan basis, who were doing their jobs properly. In 2010, same-sex marriage opponents couldn’t accept that their religious-based agenda had lost in a court of law bound by the Iowa Constitution. So it used the elections to wage ideological warfare.

This time the ideological warfare has been waged by the governor, state lawmakers and the court’s new majority, by tampering with the once nonpartisan, constitutionally based process. Reynolds, an outspoken abortion opponent, called a special one-day session of the Legislature last summer to vote on the ban. Six weeks is before most women even know if they’re pregnant. Iowa’s Republican-led Legislature complied by passing it, though a nearly identical 2018 law had been permanently blocked . Reynolds had over the years appointed four new justices, including May, who could reliably be predicted to vote as they did.

More: Kim Reynolds picked this Legislature, and it steamrolled an extreme path for Iowa

The victims now will be untold numbers of pregnant women and girls, and children born to people ill-equipped to care for them.

“The ideological bias of this court does not reflect the will of most Iowans, and I’m not sure how far it follows the constitution,” said Des Moines’ Lea DeLong, the reproductive rights advocate who penned a letter making the case for opposing May’s retention. “My reading of the constitution is that it is intended to expand the rights and liberties of people.”

Her letter is being widely circulated by email. It points out that, as Reynolds’ appointee, May helped give Iowa “one of the most restrictive rulings in the nation against the rights of women.” It goes on to say, “It is an unfortunate development in our society that these kinds of actions against judges must happen, but I'm afraid we have had to learn some sad lessons from those who deny the rights of women. It is well known that most Iowans do not support these draconian restrictions on women's lives and decisions.”

That’s true: 61% of Iowans polled support abortion rights in all or most cases . Still, the governor saw fit to impose her personal beliefs over the will of the majority.

DeLong is co-founder with Charlotte Hubbell of a group of some 15 women known as Iowans for Reproductive Freedom (one word but light years away from the group that waged the 2010 ballot battle). Formed in November, 2022, it has placed billboards defending reproductive rights on display around Des Moines.

They carry such captions as:

Reproductive Freedom Is KEY to a Strong Family .
Keep Government OUT of Women's Health Care .
If Men Got Pregnant, We Wouldn't Be Discussing This .

Though individual members support the ballot idea and are circulating DeLong’s letter, the organization isn’t officially involved in the effort. DeLong herself doesn’t doubt May is a good person. And she’s mindful that Reynolds would likely replace him with another justice of the same ideological bent. But she wants this to be a wake-up call. “It sends a message,” she said. “Maybe it will encourage people to think very seriously about what this court is doing to women.”

Unlike Vander Plaats’ well financed and heavily publicized initiative, she says, “We’re not trying to organize a campaign. We will do what women have always done before: Spread information to our friends.”

More importantly, the goal this time is protecting rights, not undermining them.

“Much as I don’t like the fundamental concept of doing this,” DeLong said, “I think so many destructive lines have been crossed.”

And she’s right. They have been.

Rekha Basu is a longtime syndicated columnist, editorial writer, reporter and author of the book, “Finding Your Voice.” She retired in 2022 as a Des Moines Register columnist. Her column, “Rekha Shouts and Whispers,” is available at basurekha.substack.com .

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Robert Griffin III and Samantha Ponder Fired By ESPN, Per Report

Stephen douglas | aug 16, 2024.

Dec 4, 2023; Jacksonville, Florida, USA; ESPN Marcus Spears (right center) and Robert Griffin III (right) broadcast before a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Jacksonville Jaguars at EverBank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-USA TODAY Sports

Robert Griffin III and Samantha Ponder have been fired by ESPN, according to a report from The Athletic's Andrew Marchand. According to the report these decisions were strictly budgetary.

The timing of the announcements was shocking, as was the wording. The NFL season is just a few weeks away and Ponder most recently hosted Sunday NFL Countdown . She had been with ESPN since 2011.

Griffin joined ESPN in 2021 and had two years remaining on his contract. He was a rising star at ESPN and was regularly featured on their high-profile morning shows as well as in a prominent role on Monday Night Countdown . He was recently replaced on Countdown by Jason Kelce .

STEPHEN DOUGLAS

Stephen Douglas is a Senior Writer on the Breaking & Trending News Team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in journalism and media since 2008, and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Stephen spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and has previously written for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.

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Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence

Title: the ai scientist: towards fully automated open-ended scientific discovery.

Abstract: One of the grand challenges of artificial general intelligence is developing agents capable of conducting scientific research and discovering new knowledge. While frontier models have already been used as aides to human scientists, e.g. for brainstorming ideas, writing code, or prediction tasks, they still conduct only a small part of the scientific process. This paper presents the first comprehensive framework for fully automatic scientific discovery, enabling frontier large language models to perform research independently and communicate their findings. We introduce The AI Scientist, which generates novel research ideas, writes code, executes experiments, visualizes results, describes its findings by writing a full scientific paper, and then runs a simulated review process for evaluation. In principle, this process can be repeated to iteratively develop ideas in an open-ended fashion, acting like the human scientific community. We demonstrate its versatility by applying it to three distinct subfields of machine learning: diffusion modeling, transformer-based language modeling, and learning dynamics. Each idea is implemented and developed into a full paper at a cost of less than $15 per paper. To evaluate the generated papers, we design and validate an automated reviewer, which we show achieves near-human performance in evaluating paper scores. The AI Scientist can produce papers that exceed the acceptance threshold at a top machine learning conference as judged by our automated reviewer. This approach signifies the beginning of a new era in scientific discovery in machine learning: bringing the transformative benefits of AI agents to the entire research process of AI itself, and taking us closer to a world where endless affordable creativity and innovation can be unleashed on the world's most challenging problems. Our code is open-sourced at this https URL

Subjects:	Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Cite as:	[cs.AI]
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