Let's Be Abominable Feminists: Yeti: Campus Stories and Sexism in the Digital College Party Scene

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Date

2016-11

Authors

Favara, Jeremiah
Kawamura, Caitlyn

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Journal ISSN

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Publisher

Fembot Collective

Abstract

Social media and mobile apps are increasingly a part of college culture and are being mobilized in the college party scene. Through the use of digital ethnography, this paper focuses on the app Yeti: Campus Stories to explore the role of social media apps in digital college party culture in perpetuating and potentially challenging sexist spaces on college campuses. We argue that women’s participation in the digital college party scene is guided by a narrow set of gendered and sexualized expectations where women can exercise some agency and control while ultimately being exposed to harassment within a scene organized around the interests of heterosexual masculinity. Images of women posted by men, often without the women’s consent, function as forms of digital sex talk where status for men is linked to toxic expressions of heterosexual masculinity. Themes found on Yeti reveal problems of gender inequality and consent in digital college party culture in need of feminist interventions.

Description

26 pages

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Citation

Favara, J. & Kawamura, C. (2016). Let’s Be Abominable Feminists: Yeti: Campus Stories and Sexism in the Digital College Party Scene. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 10. doi:10.7264/N3SF2TGJ