Online Activism is real activism

I’m tired of seeing online activism trivialized or thought of as “not real activism.” Raising awareness and visibility is "real activism" and the internet is exceptionally well suited for it. What about those for whom it’s not possible to leave their homes and go out and do the “real” work? Should they be excluded from activist work altogether because they can’t be one in the way that’s prescribed?

These are questions I've been asking myself a lot lately, as the schism between "real" (read: concrete, hands-on, in the public) activist work, and "not real" (online, call-out culture -- which I'll get to later) widens as more people are starting feminist/anti-racist blogs, or becoming part of the existing SJ blogging community. Can I just say one thing? It's insulting to say that online activism isn't real. It might not have the immediacy and urgency of being part of a large-scale public protest, but it's no less real. The recent #mooreandme campaign is a good example of a successful online protest that still managed to be pinned as "slacker activism":

#Mooreandme is not a slacker protest. It’s a different form of civil disobedience. We’re not flouting the law — there’s no specific unjust law, in this case, to flout. We’re not marching, because marching is meaningless here; our issue is not with the writ-large, protest-sign, bumper-sticker policies of progressivism, but with the misogyny that comes out when so-called progressives wink and nudge at each other in private, which Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore demonstrated and legitimized in public. We object to the conversation, and we object with conversation. We disobey the rules that say women should not engage powerful men. We disobey the rules that say women and allies should not demand accountability from powerful men for the harm they do. We disobey the rules that say women must not band together, that we must make ourselves small and solitary and vulnerable. We disobey the rules that say a threatened woman must back down. (Jess from Hate Harding.info)

That's not to say online activism is perfect, or should take the place of real world activism; if fact there are a lot of flaws. A few weeks ago, Jill's Feministe post on call-out culture hit a nerve with the SJ blogosphere. My only issue with call-outs is that they rarely lead to real accountability. This, I think, is symptomatic of a largely privileged commentariat at different stages of awareness. Unfortunately, I have no idea how we're supposed to get around this, except to reinforce this: listen. And listen some more. (The flip side of that is, I guess, not trusting your own voice. I rarely comment unless I'm 110% sure of what I'm saying, and even then, sometimes I don't.) Also what's helped me is accepting that I'm going to get some things wrong. By virtue of being a relatively thin, cis white girl, society has granted me a fair amount of privilege. (Not all: I'm still a woman in a society that still devalues women, I grew up in a multi-cultural household with one half of my family not native English speakers, and I have almost nothing in the way of economic power.) I'm still learning how these advantages and disadvantages inform the way I think.

These are only small steps, but still a big part of the "work" of online activism. It's also a lot of 101-stuff, but I'm okay with a little 101 as long as it leads to more awareness. But I guess what I'm trying to say is these are some of the things the online world does well, and if it leads to bigger, more concrete activism, even better.