Despite less then impressive organization the Facebook organized slutwalk was a huge success with 3,000 mostly young women marching through the capital to reclaim the word "slut". Social Media events go viral for a solid reason and this young woman explains what motivated her to participate in the Slut Walk event.
Its not only impressive that a new kind of feminism is emerging through global social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, but the speed at which it is. In the 1990s the term "Queer" was taken over by the gay and lesbian community. But the process of retaking the term Queer took years. Today the word slut is being rapidly reworked in a series of online social events.
The process of reclaiming words like "queer", "nigger", or "chav" is not new. But potentially we are seeing a change in two major things:
- Language is being re-appropriated by a leaderless movement with little involvement of established media. (This is not entirely true as the Slut Walks do get a lot of media attention, but the media is responding and not leading on this one)
- Language is being re-appropriated much more quickly. Since 2011 the meaning of words like indolent, intern, slut and Arab have been transformed radically. In online social media culture forms change hands much faster than could be done in a world of corporate owned media.
No comments:
Post a Comment