Is feminism the new racism, the dishwater of imagination? Is prejudice still the new education between the haves (knowledgeable boys, guys and men) and the have nots (girls and women), the soft domestic animal shamed if she is not a goddess. Technology is not gender neutral. Domesticity is not gender neutral. Feminism is not gender neutral. Art is not gender neutral. Feminism must confront the danger zones, the assumptions of the lives of women.
It is technology that is influencing the intelligentsia of women for the most part today. Daughters doing what they did in a disembodied space, a personal space that is filled with images where men hate women for their emotional maturity and intelligence. Is prejudice still the new education between the haves (knowledgeable boys, guys and men) and the have nots (girls and women)?
‘Networked feminism’s impact is somewhat limited because not everyone has access to the internet. According to Samhita Mukhopadhyay, the executive editor of ‘Feministing’, a popular feminist blog, “we tend to forget the women who aren’t online – there is a digital divide – and I think that part of the feminist movement should be focused on reaching out to people face-to-face doing community work, doing international work. A lot of people are online but not everybody, not by a long shot.’
Slacktivism (sometimes slacktivism or slackervism) is a portmanteau of the words slacker and activism. The word is usually considered a pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little physical or practical effect, other than to make the person doing it feel satisfied that they have contributed.
Slacktivism can be defined as the act of showing support for a cause but only truly being beneficial to the egos of people participating in this so-called activism. The acts tend to require minimal personal effort from the slacktivist. The underlying assumption being promoted by the term is that these low-cost efforts substitute for more substantive actions rather than supplementing them, although this assumption has not been borne out by research.
Contributor’s profile: South African Abigail George is a Pushcart Prize (“Wash Away My Sins”) and Best of the Net (“Secrets”) nominated blogger, poet, grant, and short story writer.
