[INFOGRAPHIC] Top Feminist Hashtags of 2014

This post originally appeared on December 10, 2014 written by Tara L. Conley.

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This year’s top feminist hashtags would not be complete without a visual. See how each hashtag came about this year, and how others covered the story. Compare this year’s top tags to last year’s Top Feminist Hashtags of 2013.  Let us know what you think!

2014 Top Feminist Hashtags – Honorable Mentions

#bellhooksTNS first appeared on Twitter on October 23, 2013 when Twitter user @lolaschild tweeted the tag linking to bell hooks artist in residence series at The New School. The New School has since purveyed the tag on Twitter to promote hooks’ talks.

#Fem2 remains the longest running, widely used, and consistently referenced feminist hashtag to date. #Fem2 was created during an exchanged between Liz Sabator (@blogdiva), Victoria Pynchon (@VickiePynchon), and Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd), and first appeared on December 15, 2008. Niambi Jarvis (@hiyaahpower) is the most widely recognized purveyor of the hashtag.

#GirlsLikeUs first appeared on Twitter on September 2, 2009 when user @mieke_veedeo tweeted a link to Glu Magazine. The hashtag has since been used to promote Rachel Lloyd’s book, Girls Like Us. Most recently, writer and contributing editor of Marie Claire, Janet Mock used the hashtag to create a campaign to empower trans women of color.

#IStandWithJamilah and #IStandWithAura first appeared on Twitter on March 27, 2014 and September 14, 2014, respectfully, in support of EBONY.com’s senior editor, Jamilah Lemieux and Colorlines’ News Editor, Aura Bogado after both writers were singled out online for speaking out against racism.

#IStandWithJamilah because "racism" against white people isn't racism, it's a logical reaction to the oppression of people of color.

— Maladapted (@Malatestamony) March 27, 2014

@aurabogado is the best. @FCKH8 is the worst. #IStandWithAura

— @Pissdrinker (@OTSWST) September 15, 2014

#MarrisaAlexander and #FreeMarrisa first appeared on Twitter on May 3, 2012 and July 18, 2013, respectively, in response to the Stand Your Ground ruling that initially sentence a Black women, Marrisa Alexander to 20 years in prison for discharging a weapon in the presence of her estranged husband and children. As of November 24, 2014 Alexander accepted a plea deal to serve three years in jail.

Disclaimer: We do our best with limited capacity to ensure that tweets are fairly represented. If you feel as though you or your tweets have been misrepresented and wished to be removed from this year’s curation, please do not hesitate to contact us at inquiries [at] hashtagfeminism [dot] com.

This post was created over a year’s time. If you appreciate this work and our labor, please donate. Your donations go directly to writers and operation costs. Thank you!

Top Feminist Hashtags of 2014

This post originally appeared on December 10, 2014 written by Tara L. Conley. This is the second installment of ‘Top’ hashtag lists from Hashtag Feminism. This time it received national media attention, as founder Tara L. Conley co-wrote a companion piece with Elizabeth Plank for Mic.com.

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See Top Hashtags of 2014 INFOGRAPHIC.

Cross post at Mic.com.

Tara L. Conley, founder and publisher of Hashtag Feminism and Elizabeth Plank, senior editor at Mic collaborated to produce this year’s Top Feminist Hashtags of 2014. In 2013, Conley created the first “Top Feminist Hashtags” curation as a way to document stories and burgeoning conversations “dealing with race, gender, sexuality, economic justice, global citizenship” and at the time, Beyonce. This year, Conley and Plank curate and comment on the most widely recognized and transformative hashtags that locate stories about domestic violence, street harassment, women and feminists organizing Ferguson protests, global and national violence against Black girls and women, pro-choice legislation, media representations of women of color, and more.

Kim Kardashian may have tried to break the Internet this year, but it was female social media users who really crushed it in 2014. Despite being disproportionately at risk for abuse and harassment online, women proved the real power of social media this year, utilizing it for thoughtful conversations about inequality and social change. If we needed a sign feminism is reaching a turning point online, the runaway success of hashtags like #YesAllWomen is it.

Working with Tara L. Conley from Hashtag Feminism, Mic has ranked the year’s biggest feminist hashtag based on five not-so-scientific criteria: its trending power, either nationally or globally; its national online and/or independent news media attention; its sustainability; its impact on social, political and cultural issues offline; and its influence with notable Twitter users and thought leaders in social media and feminist spaces.

Here are the results:

#RenishaMcBride and #RememberRenisha

On Nov. 2, 2013, 19-year-old Renisha McBride was fatally shot in the face on the porch of Detroit homeowner Theodore Wafer. By the summer of 2014, #RenishaMcBride had transformed into#RememberRenisha, a tag spread widely by racial justice advocacy organization Color of Change. The transformation of this particular hashtag mirrors the evolution of the story, as advocates across the country moved away from simply naming the victim to claiming the young woman as part of their own communities. It also highlighted the way the lives of black women and girls are often downplayed, exploited or altogether ignored in mainstream media and other public discourses.

#YouOKSis

#YouOKSis first appeared on Twitter on June 7, 2014, as part of a conversation about street harassment and women of color between writers and activists @BlackGirlDanger and @FeministaJones. NewsOne produced a video featuring the creator of #YouOKSis, Feminista Jones, along with other black women talking about their experiences confronting street harassment in their communities. Although NewsOne’s video hasn’t received as much views and media attention as the viral Hollaback video, #YouOKSis has remained in the national spotlight because the stories located around the hashtag address the way women of color experience street harassment at the intersection of gender, sexuality, disability, culture and race, which some felt was missing in Hollaback’s video.

“It’s just a compliment” men’s sense of entitlement and inability to handle rejection. #YouOKSispic.twitter.com/EFIYSdO3vk — nobody (@afemal3pr) November 3, 2014

#YesAllWomen

After a man with a “smirky, grimace-y smile” murdered six people in Santa Barbara, Americans across the country attempted to comprehend what could motivate such hatred. That confusion turned to outrage, however, after police uncovered a 150-page manifesto exposing the perpetrator’s twisted misogynistic logic. #YesAllWomen, a direct response to the popular #NotAllMen meme used to derail conversations about gender discrimination, was started by Twitter user @Gildedspine. #YesAllWomen allowed women across the globe to air their grievances about the discrimination and abuse they experience daily. In 48 hours, the hashtag reached over 1 million tweets and continues to be a platform for important conversations about women and feminism.

Not ALL men harass women. But ALL women have, at some point, been harassed by men. Food for thought. #YesAllWomen — Adelaide Kane (@AdelaideKane) May 27, 2014

#AllMenCan

Although many men read, retweeted and supported the women airing their grievances on#YesAllWomen, gender inequality can’t be solved if only half the population is involved. Case in point, gendered violence and sexual assault are often talked about as “women’s issues,” when, in fact, the perpetrators of these crimes are far too often male. This article’s author created the hashtag #AllMenCan as a way for men to make their voices heard among those of so-called men’s rights activists, who were loudly defending the misogynistic mind-frame behind the Santa Barbara shooting. The result was an empowering collection of messages that proved all men can have respect for women without becoming less of a man.

#AllMenCan be masculine without misogyny, chivalrous without demeaning, and feminists without fear. Equality benefits us all. — Benjamin Curtis (@Clearcoat_Ben) May 29, 2014

#BringBackOurGirls

#BringBackOurGirls is one of the most widely recognized hashtags of the year. The origin story of this tag is also controversial. Although major news outlets initially reported that the hashtag was created in May of 2014 by Ramaa Mosley, an American soccer mom from southern California, the outlets largely ignored the Nigerian activists who were engaged in bringing about awareness both on and off Twitter. In fact, the hashtag first appeared on Twitter on April 23, 2014, when Ibrahim M. Abdullahi tweeted that Obiageli Ezekwesili had declared “Bring back our girls!” during an event in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt. Ezekwesili tweeted the hashtag later that day. This controversy started an important conversation about Western sentimentality and reminded the Internet that it’s important to interrogate the origins of these types of global campaigns, especially when some organizations end up using them to try to raise money. But there is another fascinating aspect of this hashtag’s origin story: how verbal declarations offline can be documented and popularized on Twitter by way of a hashtag. This is culture at work.

#SurvivorPrivilege

Remember when George Will dared suggest that rape victims are privileged? That kind of misogynistic click-bait was no match for Wagatwe Wanjuki, a fierce advocate and rape survivor who created the #SurvivorPrivilege hashtag to “channel my anger and shock at the column and express myself in a productive way. I never thought that it would catch on or that it would resonate with so many people,” she told Mic. Designed to give women a space to repudiate what Wanjuki calls “one of the most odious rape myths,” the hashtag was a space where survivors and allies could speak out in solidarity.

#RapeCultureIsWhen

As Danielle Paradis wrote for Mic, “There’s nothing like calling a group of women hysterical to undermine their argument.” After a tone-deaf article written by Caroline Kitchens likened women exposing and fighting against rape culture to “censorship and hysteria,” Zerlina Maxwell couldn’t handle the blatant disregard for victims. As a rape survivor herself, she knew all too well just how pervasive rape culture is. “I look at many of the feminist-driven hashtags as a space for healing and consciousness-raising,” Maxwell told Mic. #RapeCultureIsWhen created a space for survivors to share their own stories about experiencing victim blaming, slut shaming and cyber-bullying, that are all markers of the American epidemic of rape culture. For Maxwell, the popularity of the hashtag became cathartic and showed the power of online mobilization. “Twitter is a tool. It’s the megaphone that everyday people can use to change the attitudes and behaviors that we deem so harmful and that are the hardest to change.”

#HobbyLobby

The biggest Supreme Court decision of the year was viewed by many as a major blow to women. After five male conservative justices ruled that corporations can have a religious personhood and that mandating companies to cover birth control as part of their insurance packages would be a violation of their religious freedom, many were gobsmacked. Birth control was singled out, unlike any other medication or benefit, and threatened for moral reasons in 2014. People on both sides of the debate used the hashtag to have a conversation about what this meant for the future of the country. Some tweets were funny, some were more solemn and others simply tried to make light of a very damaging verdict. Although Ruth Bader Ginsberg never used Twitter to let us know what she thought, judging by her scathing dissent going viral, we could imagine what was on her mind.

All of the people who voted in favour of #HobbyLobby have one thing in common and it’s not a vagina. #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/IG8vf93bm3 — Elizabeth Plank (@feministabulous) June 30, 2014

#WhyIStayed

When the NFL gave a measly two-game suspension to Baltimore Raven’s running back Ray Rice, for a violent domestic violence incidence caught on tape inside an elevator, it shocked even the league’s most loyal fans. NFL chairman Roger Goddell  gave the player an indefinite suspension (which was later appealed), but that didn’t stop many from criticizing the league for its mishandling of violent behavior against women. Members of the media and general public weren’t just scrutinizing the NFL, however, some blamed Ray Rice’s fiancee at the time, Janay Palmer, for staying with him after he knocked her unconscious. Survivors of abuse used Twitter to point out women who are abused are rarely in a position to leave. Beverly Gooden, the creator of the hashtag, told Mic back in September that the accusations left her with a deep sense of embarrassment — because this had happened to her, too. “When I saw those tweets, my first reaction was shame. The same shame that I felt back when I was in a violent marriage. It’s a sort of guilt that would make me crawl into a shell and remain silent. But today, for a reason I can’t explain, I’d had enough. I knew I had an answer to everyone’s question of why victims of violence stay. I can’t speak for Janay Rice, I can only speak for me.”

#NMOS14

Although social media has played a prominent role in the recent protests following the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and Staten Island, this certainly isn’t the first time we’ve ever seen this type of organizing via social media. The #NMOS14 (national moment of silence) was a tag and movement created during the summer of 2014 by writer and activist Feminista Jones. In the wake of the fatal shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, Jones and others used social and digital media to organize silent vigils to honor victims of police brutality around the country. #NMOS14 isn’t the first and only mass movement organized online. There are many others. Even before Twitter, women were organizing online around post-Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts using Yahoo! listservs, and young college students in 2007 organized on MySpace and Facebook during the Jena Six case.#NMOS14 proved to be one of the most successful online-to-offline organizing campaigns to date.

#DudesGreetingDudes

Perhaps one of the most brilliantly executed hashtags of the year, combining social commentary and humor, was #DudesGreetingDudes. The tag, created by Elon James White of This Week in Blackness, used satire to prove that catcalling isn’t simply a pleasant greeting from “dudes” but rather, and often a violation of personal space and form of sexual harassment. The tag essentially asks what happens when heterosexual cisgender men use commonly offensive catcalls toward other heterosexual cisgender men. The result is a hilarious yet poignant commentary on masculinity, gender expectations, norms and public space.

Dudes. If you feel society has lost it’s decency, let’s bring it back. Let’s start the #DudesGreetingDudes movement! Say hi to each other! — Elon James White (@elonjames) November 2, 2014

MediaWritesWOC#

#HowMediaWritesWOC is a relatively new hashtag created by @Chitaskforce in late November as a way to spark discussion around how media reports and frames violence against girls and women of color. The tag features notable educators, activists and feminists talking about the ways media fail to responsibly represent women of color overtime. How media frames women of color in the context of violent imagery is nothing new. If you’ve ever turned on a television, you’ll know that these sort of representations have perpetuated for decades. #HowMediaWritesWOC succeeds not only as an archive of commentary but also as a literacy tool for educators and students alike to elicit and engage in critical conversations.

Update: User @annicardi notes that she did not create the #YesAllWomen hashtag.

#WhyIStayed: A Lesson In Empathy [OPINION]

This post originally appeared on September 11, 2014 written by Aisha Springer.

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Domestic violence is incredibly common. The statistics are staggering: In the U.S. one in four women experiences domestic violence in her lifetime. Internationally, domestic violence kills more people than war. Yet domestic violence and violence against women is generally misunderstood and mischaracterized by individuals and the media, focusing on victim-blaming and excuse-making. Depictions of domestic violence are sensationalized, rationalized, and ignore the reality of victims’ experiences. It’s no different even when celebrities are involved. Cue the Ray Rice conversation.

When reports came out that Baltimore Ravens former running back Ray Rice punched his then-fiancee, Janay Rice in an Atlantic City casino elevator, knocking her unconscious, an overwhelming response from the public and the NFL was to ask what she did to provoke him; too often the first question raised when a woman is abused.

Feminist Twitter, particularly female football fans, responded with outrage over Rice’s actions, the Ravens’ subsequent press conference, and the NFL’s uneven punishment for domestic violence and sexual offenders as opposed to drug abusers.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and other officials jointly questioned the couple about what happened, then scheduled a press conference where the Ravens live-tweeted her apology for the “role that she played the night of the incident.” Ray Rice, on the other hand, received a standing ovation from Ravens fans, citing “my trials and tribulations” and “everything I went through” throughout his response. To some observers, evidence that the the couple later got married meant that Janay Rice did, in fact, deserve at least some blame.

This past Monday morning, TMZ released the full security camera video of the assault. Almost immediately, the NFL suspended Rice indefinitely.

Many NFL fans on Twitter have noted this video contains no new information, and terminating Ray Rice after its release was a blatant attempt to save face. It didn’t work. It’s clear at this point that the NFL not only grossly mishandled the case, but merely continued its record as a massive profit-making, image-conscious institution that has a record of condoning DV.

It’s Not Just Ray Rice: @EdgeofSports on the NFL’s History of Condoning Domestic Abuse http://t.co/hbjyFPAQIO

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) September 9, 2014

Those who question Janay Rice’s apology during the joint press conference don’t take into consideration the binding circumstances. Rice was interviewed publicly, in front of her abuser, all while her abuser’s career hung in the balance; solely dependent upon her corroboration of the mutual blame story.

Now that the video of her assault has been shared with the world without her consent, she’s had to relive that traumatic night in Atlantic City. Public ‘proof’ or visual evidence of abuse is usually what’s required for a victim of domestic violence to receive any trace of justice. In this case, so-called ‘justice’ came as a result of PR acumen to preserve the NFL’s image.

Tuesday morning, Janay Rice responded via her private Instagram account to the video release and the decision of indefinite suspension.

Given the circumstances, it is counterproductive to judge and condemn Janay Rice’s life choices. But while the public should respect her decisions as hers to make, advocates should also continue to speak out against lenient punishments for domestic abuse and educate people about why it’s so difficult for victims to leave.

Enter, #WhyIStayed.

I had to plan my escape for months before I even had a place to go and money for the bus to get there. #WhyIStayed

— Beverly Gooden (@bevtgooden) September 8, 2014

The lack of concern for Janay Rice spawned the hashtags #WhyIStayed, #WhyILeft, and #WhenILeft. Blogger Beverly Gooden started this Twitter conversation to address the fact that even after the disturbing video was released, some people were apathetic towards Janay Rice while others continued to blame her.

Read Beverly Gooden’s reasons for starting #WhyIStayed on her blog and in the Washington Post.

Because I had no where else to go. #WhyIStayed

— Christiauna Marie (@CrankstaWho) September 9, 2014

#whyistayed I wasn't up to the probable custody battle. #WhyILeft My daughter was finally old enough. Marriage should never be mandatory.

— Kim Cowan (@kim0512) September 9, 2014

20+ cops responded, but he was back inside before I finished packing – less than an hour later #WhyIStayed

— H.Rights vs Stalkers (@stalkingviolate) September 9, 2014

As all of these women can attest, there are many valid reasons why victims stay, including psychological, emotional, cultural, legal, and economic reasons. Perpetuating the notion that the responsibility is on victims to stop or prevent violence, paired with inadequate institutional responses is what makes DV stigmatized and often deadly.

Women who leave are less likely to be abused but they are abt 8 times more likely to be killed if they leave. #WhyIStayed #WhenILeft

— Brittney Cooper (@ProfessorCrunk) September 9, 2014

#WhyIStayed Because I lived with abuse from before I was born, was taught a woman's place through words and examples in my house as a kid.

— Theresa Summa (@theresaanna) September 9, 2014

Because good church girls persevere and overcome. #whyistayed

— Akoua Deloire (@AfroIvoire) September 9, 2014

It's not one day he hits you, it's everyday he works hard to make you smaller. #WhyIStayed

— Elizabeth Plank (@feministabulous) September 9, 2014

After you read Janay Palmer's Instagram post, please read this chart before passing judgment on her words & actions. pic.twitter.com/Wn2qYBtTvF

— Wendy Thurm (@hangingsliders) September 9, 2014

Why would a person stay in an abusive relationship? @ndvh has discussed a lot of reasons http://t.co/DV9SlhSGs3 #WhyIStayed

— NOMORE.org (@NOMOREorg) September 9, 2014

Women who are victims of DV often feel they are on their own and no one will believe or support their stories; these beliefs are not entirely unfounded. Laws like nuisance ordinances reinforce a belief of hopelessness, and further enable abusers to isolate and control their victims.

A recent victory over nuisance ordinances in a Pennsylvania town may indicate progress, but that’s only one town among many. We need more policy victories like these along with a change in cultural perception.

That’s what make hashtags like #WhyIStayed so significant. Social media highlighted stories of DV in front of millions of people, and American institutions like the NFL can now be widely held to account for their blatant attempts to cover up violence against women.

We can’t afford to continue ignoring domestic violence. With victims’ and advocates’ voices amplified, ignorance will no longer be an excuse and apathy will no longer be tolerated.

If the #WhyIStayed tweets and the statement from Janay Rice don't show you what domestic violence does to women, you don't WANT to get it.

— RICHELLE CAREY (@RichelleCarey) September 9, 2014