Abstract
To contribute to research on digital activism, sexual harassment, and structural feminist intersectionality, our chapter explores India’s #MeToo movement as framed by the popular digital zine Feminism in India (FII). FII is acknowledged as an open-to-all, digital safe-space and inclusive media platform that is created and curated by Indian women—writers, editors, journalists, and activists. A thematic analysis of digital features about #MeTooIndia published in FII between 2018 and 2020, a time coinciding with the urgency of the social movement, led us to identify five key perceptions. The themes range from survivors’ stories of sexual harassment, and how power and privilege are systemically used and abused, to the normalization of victim-blaming and shaming. Indian media’s part in creating or censoring awareness about sexual harassment, and social media’s role in offering support or solutions to its victims/survivors are also themes that have revealed cultural forms of toxic misogyny and sexual violence that are structurally intersectional and uniquely local to India’s #MeToo contexts. Our chapter argues how women-led digital platforms like Feminism in India have the power to forge reciprocal relationships with their connective publics and give all women and activists the tools to contextualize social injustices and implement culturally sensitive interventions.
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Notes
- 1.
The data used as examples in this chapter follow AoIR’s (Markham and Buchanan, 2012), ethical guidelines to protect privacy and anonymity, and exclude any identifiable details of the authors, persons, or stakeholders whose texts, cases, sensitive information, or quotes are cited in the chapter.
- 2.
“Dada” is a part of Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and other Indian vernacular and regional vocabularies, and signifies “older or elder brother” and/or “grandfather.” In this case, the word dada refers to an older-brother.
- 3.
Secondary survivors are close friends, family, colleagues, etc. of sexual violence victims/survivors, and often are the people in whom the primary abuse victim confided about their abuse, or who may have witnessed the act of sexual violence or abuse against the primary victim.
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Mukherjee, I., Shah, P.V., Dexter, T.E. (2023). “Feminism in India” Framing #MeTooIndia: A Case of Digital Activism. In: Wiesslitz, C. (eds) Women’s Activism Online and the Global Struggle for Social Change. Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31621-0_14
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