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.

Hashtag Activism: The Politics of Our Generation

This post originally appeared on December 2, 2014 written by Kelly Ehrenreich.

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November was a tumultuous time for feminism. 

The results of last month’s midterm elections gave way to a Republican majority in Congress for the first time since 2008. A week later, TIME published a piece suggesting that the word “feminist” be banned for the year based on its overuse namely by celebrities who dare to support gender equality in public.

Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist, pointed out the bitter irony in the juxtaposition of these two events:

For the most part, though, the past twelve months have been a banner year for feminism in media. Take for instance  #YesAllWomen, #YouOKSis and #GamerGate, all of which trended and garnered national media recognition. Then, there’s Beyoncé who stood firmly on the Video Music Awards stage with the word FEMINIST emblazoned on a screen behind her. Take also men like Aziz Ansari who announced to the world that men too can and should be feminists.

Aziz Ansari talks about being a feminist, & a child of immigrants by @feministabuloushttp://t.co/hKLlyO5EIf

— la tula cuecho (@LissetteMiller) October 8, 2014

Though the word “feminism” has managed to permeate mainstream discourse, despite TIME magazine’s critique, we’ve yet to achieve anywhere near gender or racial equity in society writ large.

The fundamental principles of feminism; that all humans are equal and should be treated as such regardless of gender, race or class, is no more feasible politically now than from a year ago.

How can we reconcile feminism’s popularity of the past year with the principles of feminism that we carry out in our everyday lives?

Despite the fact that many are talking about feminism and declaring gender and racial equality and justice an important value, voting demographics this past election season don’t seem reflect these views.  

Addressing the Disconnect

Critics of the millennial generation and those skeptical of social media as tools for organizing may consider this year’s voter turnout demographics as proof that hashtag activism doesn’t really matter. There has been no shortage of think pieces discussing popular hashtag trends and social movements posing the same question over again: “Does hashtag activism really make a difference?”

It’s a fair question. While #NotMyBossBusiness and #HobbyLobby swept across Twitter just a few months ago, politicians who voted against women’s health like Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts were re-elected in the midterms. Wendy Davis’ filibuster in pink tennis shoes was all the rage on Twitter last year. #StandWithWendy trended globally, yet on November 4th she lost handily to Greg Abbott and captured a meager 32% the white women vote.

#Ferguson has been a major trend this year ever since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer on August 9th. When the Missouri grand jury announced late last month a decision not to indict Mike Brown’s killer, #FergusonDecision, #BlackLivesMatter, and#HandsUpWalkOut trended and sparked massive offline action.

Even now Americans are protesting in the streets outside of St. Louis and across the country mourning Michael Brown’s death and demanding that their voices be heard and seen. These protest, largely organized online and by young people remind the world of this country’s painful history of violence against black and brown people.

How is that we have mass protests around the country, where people from all walks of life demand equality, equity, and justice, yet there are still those who march to the polls, casting votes for politicians to repeal the Affordable Care Act, limit Medicare and Medicaid, give tax cuts to wealthy, and silence those most marginalized?

A New Kind of Activism

Let me state the obvious: tweets ≠ votes. But does that mean hashtag feminism  or any kind social activism online doesn’t matter?

Of course not.

As @deray notes in this CNN piece on the power of #Ferguson, hashtags are a community, they are where we gather to share our experiences and hear stories we could not get anywhere else, whether it be in our own communities or from a cable news outlet. The Guardian calls hashtags a “rallying cry of a new generation’s quest for racial justice”.

There is no greater evidence of this rallying cry than what we have seen emerge along the #Ferguson and #YouOKSis tags. Both tags have been led and purveyed by feminists, particularly women of color, that have magnified stories and garnered the kind of attention mainstream media often ignores.

If media critics are still looking for hard evidence that social media activism matters but aren’t yet convinced by the sheer number of tweets this year, take a look at From #RenishaMcBride to #RememberRenisha.

Though hashtag activism looks different than other political and social movements of the past, this new(er) form of activism still faces similar challenges as previous generational movements. At times, activism can be a slow-moving, incremental process. There are always small victories. A surge of opposition doesn’t mean total defeat; it means there’s more work to be done.

Unlike movements before, hashtag activism doesn’t necessarily use the language of politics. It may not always use the language of revolution, resistance, rebellion either. More often than not, however, the power of hashtag feminism and hashtag activism lies in it’s real-time telling of intimate stories and ironic truths.

Hashtags have the power to locate the particulars of human experience. Though not always correlative in terms of congressional seats, hashtag activism locates where our stories are told overtime in 140-characters and measured by acts of empathy and resistance that follow. Our conversations, revelations, relationships, growth, and enlightenments: None of these should be discounted or discouraged.

What Comes Next

Despite those who argue that this generation of social activists are nothing more than social media users with strong opinions, one only need to look at feminist Twitter, where women and men go to bat for marginalized people and communities everyday, on and offline. Caring isn’t the problem, and neither is this new(er) form of activism.

"A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect." W.E.B. Du Bois #Ferguson

— Elizabeth Plank (@feministabulous) November 25, 2014

this is why voting matters. voter registration is how they fill jury pools, including grand jury pools. serving jury duty is important.

— Fatniss Evaaahdeen (@meadowgirl) November 25, 2014

The Future of Politics and Hashtag Activism

Though this year was a setback in many ways for progressives and feminist political ideals, there have been some steps forward. Alma Adams became the 100th woman of the 113th Congress, marking the largest number of women to serve in Congress simultaneously.

A few things to consider for the future of hashtag feminism and its potential impact on the political landscape:

1. Tweeting about something does not necessarily bring about political change.

2. Hashtag feminism may preach to the choir, but we still have to take our choirs offline and out into the community.

3. Representation in the media is key and hashtags, in many ways, disrupt mainstream media narratives about marginalized communities and unjust legislation.

4. Online communication by way of hashtags can help birth a new generation of understanding, empathy, and acceptance.

What do you think? What does #F mean in relationship to politics to you? How does or should one affect the other? Can hashtag activism change the political system? If so, can it do so fast enough? Will a political revolution ever and ultimately be attributed to a hashtag? Has #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter already proven the power of a hashtag to blend online and offline activism?

#HobbyLobby: Feminist Twitter Responds to Hobby Lobby Ruling

This post originally appeared on July 2, 2014 written by Aisha Springer.

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On the heels of a decision to overturn the law that guarantees “buffer zones” outside of women’s health centers, the Supreme Court has once again devalued women and their reproductive health choices. Monday’s 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby states that commercial enterprises can cite religious belief as a reason to withhold contraception coverage from their employees. The exact implications of this ruling are still unclear – according to Vox, lower courts will determine if #HobbyLobby means for-profit corporations can opt-out of covering any type of birth control, or just IUDs and the morning after pill.

Though the strict legal interpretation is still being determined, the message SCOTUS sent about how little it values women’s health was perfectly clear and Feminist Twitter responded. Hundreds of thousands of tweets including #HobbyLobby, #SCOTUS, #JointheDissent, #DrHobbyLobby, and the familiar #NotMyBossBusiness, expressed outrage at the logic applied in the decision and shared examples of how having a boss who refuses to provide insurance coverage for these services will or did cause serious financial hardship.

Opponents are calling on the public to boycott Hobby Lobby, as well as other businesses and nonprofit organizations that wish to deny birth control coverage based on religious beliefs. We can also let Congress know that we expect it to correct this decision, which is within its power since the decision was based on interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

After #HobbyLobby, These 82 Corporations Could Drop Birth Control Coverage http://t.co/mUkfSkkscy

— Elizabeth Plank (@feministabulous) July 1, 2014

A little history: originally the Affordable Care Act stated that contraception is a preventive service that must be provided at no extra cost in every insurance plan, with a religious exemption for a small number of religion-based non-profit organizations. A little over a year ago, the Department of Health and Human services revised their definition of a Religious Employer Exemption to include a broader group of non-profit organizations, which women’s health advocates considered weak and unsupportive of basic healthcare needs of women.

Follow #HobbyLobby tweets in real time located on the right sidebar.

Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court extended those exemptions even further by ruling that these “closely held” for-profit corporations have the right to file for religious exemptions to the ACA’s contraception mandate. This decision allows employers to impose their religious beliefs on all of their employees, although time and time again women are the ones who are targeted for restrictions. Men’s health care services, such as vasectomies and Viagra, remain untouched and unquestioned. This is a blow to women’s equality and incredibly disheartening for anyone who believes that religion should not be used as an excuse to discriminate.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the dissenting opinion in which she explains the many ways in which five of the six male justices got it wrong. She writes that, “accommodations to religious beliefs or observances, the Court has clarified, must not significantly impinge on the interests of third parties.” Her colleagues, on the other hand, believe that for-profit corporations should be accommodated regardless of the impact it will have on individuals.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg feels your #SCOTUS mansplaining pain. http://t.co/IsiZP5ndcG#HobbyLobby pic.twitter.com/mL6KBl6pXx

— Elizabeth Plank (@feministabulous) July 1, 2014

The individuals in this case are the thousands of women who work for these companies and their dependents. Women already disproportionately carry the financial burden of reproductive health care and face more barriers to receiving health care than men. After this ruling, it won’t be a surprise when more companies begin to claim religious exception and even more women and families pay the price. More women will lose the right to exercise control over their own reproductive decisions. And as we know from the massive impact the birth control pill has had since the 1960s, affordable access to contraception is directly related to women’s ability to be active participants in society.

For some time, we have had access to solid science on contraceptive care and an appreciation of the balance between exercising freedoms and infringing upon rights. Despite this, uninformed ideologues (who still believe, for example, that the Plan B pill is an abortifacient) have prevailed. Though these people may be in the minority, the problem lies in the fact that too many of them occupy influential positions in society. Yes, that includes the position of Supreme Court Justice. Sadly, the result has been a regression in equal rights for women and minorities.

In March, I attended the #NotMyBossBusiness rally in front of the Supreme Court when SCOTUS was hearing arguments in the Conestoga Wood v. Sebelius and Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby cases. I rallied in the snow with activists from Planned Parenthood, NOW, and more, to make it clear that we will not be passive as companies attempt to take away autonomy over our bodies. A smaller but vocal group of protesters rallied in opposition, touting posters of bloody fetuses and “God’s law is the only law” signs. These are the people celebrating the Supreme Court decision right now thanks to Justices Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, Scalia, and Roberts. Especially in 2014 that is something we should all be ashamed of.