Ow, my aching feminism!

  I wrote this as a position piece in support of the fourth-wave feminist tendency toward what is known as "hashtag activism." Shared here because I wrote it and am proud of it, but also because this is relevant to riot grrrls both then and now. Edited and reposted 1/2/2021 because the formatting went all screwy. The content is still the same. Pinky promise. 03/09/2020 The feminism of the 1970s introduced us to the concept of “the personal is political. What does this mean for feminists in 2020? Like its predecessors, fourth wave feminism stresses personal freedom; it is “shaped less by a shared struggle against oppression than by a collective embrace of individual freedoms.” (Sheinin 2016). Feminism’s fourth wave is recognized as the period beginning in approximately 2008. It is motivated and influenced by social media. The prevalence of the Internet presented easy accessibility to feminist media at a global level. It is a continuation of the issues that were present and pre...