Consciousness-raising and Networked Anti-Rape Counter-publics

Abstract

On October 15 2017, the #MeToo movement erupted onto social media propelling sexual harassment and assault back onto the public agenda, and reigniting a level of consciousness raising that had arguably not seen since second wave feminism. However, as I noted in the introduction, the #MeToo movement was not the first time digital communication technologies have been used to engender a societal consciousness about rape and sexual violence. The HollaBack! blog, which began in 2005, is considered one of the first collective efforts to use digital media to speak out about street harassment and abuse by activists, with individuals sharing stories, supporting survivors and speaking back to rape culture in an attempt to challenge the acceptance and frequency of these spatial and bodily intrusions (Fileborn, 2014). Since at least 2005, there have been multiple efforts enabled by the affordances of digital platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube and blogs, to engage in activism to speak out about experiences of rape and other forms of sexual violence and to challenge rape culture (see Fileborn & LoneyHowes, 2020). Given the extent to which these spaces seek to challenge popular public discourse, scholars have described them as subaltern counter-publics. Some of these digital counter-publics seeking to challenge rape culture have gained substantial traction, such as SlutWalk (est. 2011; see Mendes, 2015), and the hashtag campaigns #YesAllWomen (est. 2014) and #BeenRapeNeverReported (est. 2014). Although they did not have the same level of engagement at the #MeToo movement, #YesAllWomen had 1.5 million uses within the first 24 hours (Thrift, 2014), and #BeenRapedNeverReported was used 8 million times within the same time period (Gallant, 2014). In this sense, digital platforms have been