Article Information

Frances Shaw, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This short article examines the Instagram web web web page for Bye Felipe, a feminist campaign where individuals distribute screenshots of types of harassment and intimate entitlement from males on online dating services such as for example OKCupid and apps such as for example Tinder. We frame the campaign for example of feminist discursive activism. The website owners gather contributions and aggregate samples of specific patterns that are discursive hook up apps, to make collective governmental claims, a technique that Tomlinson calls “intensification.” We address the present literary works on cyber-misogyny and online harassment, as well as research on past similar promotions such as Fedoras of OKCupid to discuss shaming as a governmental training. We then draw the patterns out and principles invoked in interventions and resultant talks on Bye Felipe, examining the themes of rejection, silence and who’s got the ability to silence, rape tradition, and gendered intimate entitlement. I identify the governmental claims being made through the rhetorical techniques described when you look at the very first an element of the article. Drawing in the ongoing work of McCosker on trolling as provocation https://datingrating.net/afroromance-review, we talk about the part of repetition and rehearsal when you look at the training of discursive politics. Finally, through a discursive analysis of reactions to your articles on Instagram and Twitter as time passes, we explore the ongoing and hard work that is boundary exactly just what comprises appropriate examples for the website, therefore the articulation of feminist claims and discourses.

Introduction

This short article addresses the feminist campaign Bye Felipe, hosted on Instagram with a facebook page that is associated. I argue that the website constitutes a good example of feminist discursive activism through the highlighting of oppressive discourses in online dating sites. By analyzing talks on a few threads in the Instagram account, we describe the boundary practices that feminists engage in around safe areas for feminist politics, arguing that this is wearying work and can restrict opportunities when it comes to generation of brand new feminist claims. Nonetheless, when i argue when it comes to uses of danger and disagreement along with security into the training of discursive politics. I introduce the idea of the rehearsal of disagreement as a discursive act that is political building on McCosker’s (2013) arguments about trolling as provocation.

Trolling and harassment are central themes with this article. Fleetingly, trolling can be explained as “the work of intentionally posting inflammatory or confusing communications on the web so that you can provoke a vehement response from friends of users” (Cassandra, 2008, p. 5). Having said that, harassment is straight threatening behavior usually targeted toward people. Although these ideas are connected, as with my article that is previous on in feminist blog sites (Shaw, 2013), we see trolling and harassment as different. I really do maybe maybe not assume that trolling behavior is often designed to harass, even though it can be in a few means recognized as a silencing practice—an action that aims to reduce the area for other people in public areas debate—demarcated by level and physical violence (Jane, 2012).

The name of Bye Felipe references the meme Bye Felicia (a estimate through the comedy movie Friday; understand Your Meme, 2015), which signals a dismissive farewell. The Instagram account Bye Felipe had been put up by a female known as Alexandra Tweten (Barrow, 2014) as an area for ladies to fairly share screenshots of punishment and also to draw focus on the prevalence of harassment in internet dating. In a weblog for Ms. Magazine, Alexandra listed three cause of placing the page together:

A) Commiserating along with other women (you can’t be a woman on the internet and maybe maybe not get creepy communications from males); B) Letting males know very well what it is prefer to be a lady online (it’s not absolutely all cupcakes and rainbows!); and C) to reveal the problematic entitlement some guys feel they should exert over feamales in basic. (Tweten, 2014)

The Instagram account has gotten large amount of news attention, especially in online-only news web sites, being showcased in articles from the ny occasions, The Atlantic, E! on line (Mullins, 2014), Metro UK, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan and also the Huffington Post, to mention a few. At the time of 2016, it had almost 400,000 followers february. An innovative new York instances article brings Bye Felipe as well as other comparable internet web web sites as well as the spotlighting practices of other ladies, including Ashley Brincefield, who posts screenshots of “creepy messages” and “naked selfies” to her very own profile when guys harassed her on Tinder, and Anna Gensler, whom draws cartoons of males and also the associated communications she gets on OKCupid (Krueger, 2015). This new York circumstances structures these spotlighting, shaming, and highlighting practices as being a trend and a collective a reaction to a provided issue among females.

Practices

Into the research with this article, We combined observation that is long-term note-taking aided by the close analysis of two primary threads through the Instagram web web page when it comes to example of themes and habits observed. To assess those two threads, I utilized codes that are qualitative from my initial observation memos. Even though account is cross-platform, the pictures are initially published to Instagram after which shared elsewhere after that, and I also are making the pragmatic choice to restrict the analysis to the platform that is primary.

The 2 primary threads had been plumped for since they constituted good types of the 2 subtypes of screenshots commonly seen on the webpage: examples where a female reacted having an explicit rejection and examples where a lady failed to react at all, together with method in which males on online dating sites reacted every single types of reaction. The profile description in the Bye Felipe Instagram account relates to “Calling out dudes who turn aggressive whenever refused or ignored” (author’s focus), and both of these genres will be the site’s main focus. There are more sub-genres of Bye Felipe articles, however these will be the most frequent plus the many contentious, and tend to be the practices that Bye Felipe primarily calls focus on. Then, making use of the themes that emerged from all of these two primary threads as a sensitizing filter or lens, I dip inside and outside of other Bye Felipe threads across time. It really is primarily a qualitative, thematic analysis of remark threads, although i actually do additionally evaluate a number of the content on the internet site. We have opted for to quote users without attribution. Although commentary aren’t easily searchable on Instagram, usernames are, which means this is one of way that is appropriate protect the identity of individuals.