Orienting Feminism

McIntyre identifies that docusoaps featuring transgender celebrities Caitlyn Jenner and Jazz Jennings, respectively, are particularly potent in their endorsements of transnormative ideology. The chapter analyses Caitlyn Jenner’s docusoap I Am Cait and Jazz Jennings’ docusoap I Am Jazz, arguing each manifests the specific conventions of docusoaps to make a spectacle of certain transgender subjectivities while simultaneously “normalising” them and perpetuating transnormativity. McIntyre finds that these transgender-themed shows’ manoeuvrings of transgender celebrity representation and docusoap aesthetic strategies serve to uphold gender binaries, align gender transition with medical discourse, and articulate restrictive transgender life narratives. The chapter also applies a trans feminist lens to reveal how these celebrity disseminations of transnormativity feed into broader social frameworks that subjugate femininity and womanhood, especially trans womanhood.

Fletcher makes progress in an under-researched area by developing an argument around the feminist sensibility of children’s animated programme My Little Pony [MLP]: Friendship Is Magic (hereafter MLP: Friendship is Magic). The first part of the chapter focuses on the operation of individual and collective agency in the storyworld and how this is linked to contemporary gender politics. Despite different levels of wealth and social power in the core ensemble (and in the larger web of characters), the chapter argues that MLP: Friendship Is Magic emphasises communalism and social cooperation rather than “post-feminist” individualism. The second part of the chapter provides a much-needed critical examination of the show’s racial politics. The chapter discusses how the series is based on “post-raciality” insofar as pastel-coloured ponies can be read as any race in the storyworld. Referring to a number of contentious episode examples, however, the chapter argues that some of the non-pony characters in the series stand for real-world ethnic groups. While some facets of the story material depart from the expected, Fletcher argues that the representations of species interactions often rely on ethnocentric stereotypes and cultural essentialism.

Paterson evaluates how graphic design plays a role in the visual representation of gender. By discussing how ideas of contemporary feminism operate through the graphic manifestation of vagina and vulva. Particular focus is given to graphic designs’ ability to create gender mythology through designed forms and the transitory nature of gender. Paterson uses an eclectic range of graphic design outcomes to discuss and connect the use of female genitalia. Highlighting the experience of gender as a mediated-design construct, Paterson explores ideas relative to activism, censorship and pornography examining why and how genitalia is graphically concealed or revealed through the practice of graphic design. This chapter uses female genitalia as a means of discussion to examine a range of perspectives associated with gender conscription and commodification.

In neoliberal times, patriarchal narratives about “women who ask for it” combine with the myth of meritocracy to make the slippery slope between safety advice and victim-blame slicker than ever. The only interventions that have shown empirical reductions in sexual assaults are “feminist empowerment” programmes that equip women with effective resistance skills. So, how can a feminist approach be distinguished from neoliberal discourses that responsibilise women for crime prevention while claiming to “empower” them? Drawing on the author’s experience as a feminist self-defence teacher in Aotearoa, New Zealand, this chapter suggests that a feminist approach should attend to empowerment as a political process with three interlocking dimensions: personal, collective and subversive. Examples are given of how this is, and could be, attempted through feminist self-defence classes.

This chapter contributes a personal insight into, and reflection upon, the process of organising and enacting a contemporary feminist march. Focusing on SlutWalk Melbourne, the chapter considers how immaterial, digital, and emotional labour are performed within the campaign and how activists handle incidents of burnout and stress. “SlutWalk Melbourne: Negotiating Feminisms and Organising Activists” concludes with an examination of how different forms of feminism and various intersectional values are incorporated into the campaigning process. Gleeson reflects on how SlutWalk Melbourne negotiates its position within the broader landscape of feminist activism and what steps can be taken next by the campaign to ensure the continued practice of intersectionality.

The location-specificity added by default to online interactions continue to make responses to transnational activism culture-specific. This, in turn, has political consequences. The New Delhi gang-rape incident of December 16, 2012, led to a sudden increase in coverage of rape incidents within the Indian media as well as a surge in social media-based activism. But this has also resulted in tagging India internationally as a country too unsafe to visit.

I argue that digitally mediated transnational activism, via Facebook updates and transformative tweets, has the potential to create dialogue on feminist issues that are shared but highly localized. This could eventually facilitate drawing the commonalities of the three waves of feminism—namely suffrage, equality and power conditions—to potentially herald the beginning of a digitized fourth wave.

In this chapter, Hodge explores the twenty-first century legacy of the ancient Greek poet, Sappho, transitioning from fragmentary papyri to dynamic, multi-faceted online platforms such as YouTube, Tumblr and WordPress sites. Sappho’s status as a feminist icon has continued to evolve, as this chapter illustrates via close readings of several creative and communal adaptations. Though much about this ancient poet’s life and beliefs is unknown, Hodge identifies some consistent approaches to Sappho, linked by power-oriented images as well as proto-feminist thinking. Hodge explores not only the ways in which Sappho continues to serve as a “rallying point” for feminist voices and inspiration for creative adaptors but also how Sappho’s poetics and themes have been preserved in cyberspaces.

As global corporations overtake the role of national classification bodies as arbiters of “community standards,” online pornographic content is now largely regulated by payment processors, hosting services and streaming platforms. From a vantage point as both porn performer and porn researcher, Stardust examines the ways in which women’s body fluids and queer sexualities are disproportionately targeted, experiencing arbitrary and unjustified removal. Featuring qualitative interviews with Australian feminist porn performers and producers, this chapter argues that the regulatory shift from national classification frameworks to platform governance has moved the threshold test for pornography from indecency and offensiveness to profitability and market risk. Privatised regulation produces content that is safe, sanitised and risk-averse and poses new challenges for demanding transparency in decision-making about what constitutes “community standards.”

The use of sexual consent in sexual violence prevention materials is rapidly growing. This chapter explores these materials and places them in conversation with insights from feminist research on sexual violence. Beres argues that consent-focused sexual violence prevention materials are inconsistent with current feminist understandings of the role of consent in sexual-violence prevention. Three concerns are raised: (1) The materials can create confusion through simultaneously presenting definitions of consent as “fact” and go beyond legal definitions of consent; (2) they are inconsistent with feminist research and presume an ignorant subject unfamiliar with consent negotiation; and (3) the creation of gender-neutral subjects within prevention materials fails to acknowledge the gendered aspect of sexual violence curtailing the ability for this type of sexual violence prevention to foster change. Through this analysis, Beres orients the reader toward the possibilities of building on feminist theorising to strengthen consent-focused education materials.