2014/09/25 by Julia Cook, Reza Hasmath · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Gender, Feminism, and Media #Social Media and Politics #Impact of Technology on Adolescents
paper · doi:10.1177/0011392114550008
This article looks at the construction and performance of gendered identity through a sub-section of Facebook web pages belonging to the Slut Walk movement. The authors’ analysis suggests that gender is constructed through the subjects’ participation in the ‘post-feminist masquerade’ through which their gendered identity is defined in relation to a hegemonic masculine ideal. This situates the web pages within a space characterized through the ambivalent and appropriative treatment of feminism and further, coiled within an acute tension between feminist and post-feminist discourses. Acts of resistance are framed as individual, momentary ruptures of Judith Butler’s heterosexual matrix of ‘cultural intelligibility’. The online context of these ruptures is found to vest a creative potential, by removing the constraints of time and location, indicating that the impact of these ruptures may extend beyond its immediate environment.