Abstract:
This article brings into question the political utility of platforms as media for feminist resistance. Using examples of #MeToo, and the Women’s March on Washington, movements that have relied on the platform for reinvigorating what Sarah Banet-Weiser has called “popular feminism” (2018), I argue that common media platforms tend to infer an underlying assumption of safety, privilege and power in relation to social space. Through highlighting how BIPOC people organize in social space, I argue that the focus on amplification and elevation, facilitated by the logics of platform, obscures the needs of those who resist on the margins. I introduce the spatial strategies employed by those who must negotiate space differently to challenge the centrality of platforms as media the structure contemporary feminist protest.