Media and the Message

The use of women's equality/ liberation in the media has indeed been prevalent in the marches to war of both the UK and the US and, as Gallagher notes, there is nothing inherently 'new' in using "the rhetoric of women's rights to peddle colonial expansion"(27), however this acknowledgement somewhat misses the point that women are often used to symbolically represent an ideal that they are at once the subject of and excluded from.

Women the world over are used as symbols of national values externally while being domestically reproached for seeking "special status" when attempting to claim those democratic rights (ex. equal opportunity) and values (ex. inclusion in the workplace). The fact that women are in a much higher proportion in lower level, highly visible roles in television and news-casting is just one exemplar of women's bodies being used symbolically while their opinions and narratives are being left off of the table.

For patriarchal power is not only active in deciding who or what to put on the screen, but is also played out in creating the setting that dissuades or encourages certain voices to speak up. This type of secondary power, or rather the "second face" of power (Bachrach and Barratz), is evidenced in the article when men are seemingly oblivious to women's oppression, and also in the comments below that were found on the YouTube page for the above video.

I would argue that this "second face" is where the "new" media exerts its greatest influence. While conventional mass media inundates the airwaves with biased images and discourses of "gender", "sexuality", "democracy", and "freedom", social media and user generated content are direct input from citizens that legitimate hate and gender based discrimination on a much more personal level. Whereas mass media has legitimacy in its removed position and (arguable) status as a mirror of society, social media reflects the opinions of real individuals from within (what seems like) one's own community.

I have found that comments such as those above are typical of a trend being expressed in response to many feminist, women's oriented, or gender based videos on YouTube and other user-generated social-media. This type of discourse clearly demonstrates how the anonymity allowed for in non-conventional media contributes to an environment that is not conducive to debate, but is rather a continued platform for the status quo.

The most I can muster at the moment for something of a conclusion to this post is a hope that my own contributions to the media/environment are not for naught. And that a community of committed feminists the world over will refuse to be silent or anonymous such as the new platform encourages, but use our real voices, names and faces to stand up and include ourselves whether we're invited or not.

-Elyse.


Works Cited:

Bachrach and Baratz. "Two Faces of Power". The American Political Science Review. 56: 4 (1962): 947-952. Online.

Gallagher, Margaret. "Feminist Issues and the Global Media System". Feminist interventions in international communication: minding the gap. Ed. Katharine Sarikakis and Leslie Regan Shade, 2008. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.