been eliminated—indeed, evidence suggests that the anonymity of the Internet makes hate speech and
misogynist attacks more common than in face-to-face encounters—the Web has made it possible for
feminists to respond to sexism in new ways, both individually and collectively. The lively presence of
feminism in the blogosphere has made feminism more accessible than it has ever been, and it has also
ensured that feminist ideas can reach audiences that previously would not have encountered them. In short,
a fourteen-year-old girl today is much more likely to discover feminism online than at her local library or
bookstore. That means she is much more likely to discover feminism in the first place.
Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has proven to be the primary means by which feminist ideas have
circulated and feminist actions have been organized. “Our activism is inseparable from technology,” said
Shelby Knox. “We began our activism online. Blogs are our consciousness-raising groups. . . . Blogs
serve the purpose of helping us figure out our ideology, have disagreements with each other, and figure out
what actions might work best without having to all be in the same place. They have equalized feminism,
because you don’t have to have the money to be in a women’s studies class or be able-bodied enough to
attend a consciousness-raising group every week or to stand on a picket line.”^44 Requiring only that
someone have Internet access, blogs have helped to democratize contemporary feminism and have
enabled a wide variety of people to make their voices heard—not just a small group of anointed feminist
leaders. The blogosphere has been compared to an earlier form of feminist action: consciousness raising.
“From our homes, offices, or schools, the Internet permits us to do what feminist consciousness-raising
groups did in the 1960s and 1970s—cross boundaries and make connections among and between diverse
feminists, diverse women.”^45
Feminist Disney Tumblr.
Jessica Valenti’s popular blog is one example of how feminism has become “wired” in the Internet
era. Valenti was born in 1978 and grew up in an Italian American household with a feminist mother who
brought her along to reproductive rights marches. After getting a master’s degree in women’s and gender
studies from Rutgers, she became part of the blogging boom when she founded the blog Feministing in
- As she reflected, she wanted “to provide a space for younger feminists who didn’t have a platform.
I was a 25 year-old who found it profoundly unfair that an elite few in the feminist movement had their
voices listened to, and that the work of so many younger women went misrepresented or ignored
altogether.”^46 In its first decade, Feministing became a global phenomenon, attracting over a hundred
thousand readers from around the world. The blog built a consciousness-raising-type community through