ABSTRACT
In the chapter Activism: Fighting Back Against Rape Culture, Salvatori and Mendes demonstrate how digital technologies are used by contemporary feminists to fight back against rape culture. In doing so, Salvatori and Mendes take us through the long history of anti-rape activism, and how feminists have increasingly used (digital) media to challenge it. The authors argue that digital technologies amplified these efforts, enabling the feminist message to spread transnationally. Critical examples of digitally mediated anti-rape activism are then presented, from the SlutWalk movement to the #MeToo campaign. While much scholarship has emerged recently, attempting to provide a fuller understanding of these developments, a limitation of current research is the heavy focus on the Global North and English-speaking contexts. In this chapter, therefore, the authors point attention to the powerful feminist mobilisations emerging in Latin America, Asia, Eastern, and Southern Europe. Overall, the chapter takes stock of the important transformations in feminist activism over the past decade and of the particularly popular anti-rape campaign #MeToo, while also encouraging scholars to look beyond mainstream campaigns and pay attention to less visible but not less valuable efforts.
