The #METOO Movement In Turkey:|bIntersectıng Continuums Of Online And Offline Feminist Activism

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b3422557

Digital feminist activism has increased since the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies, offering new avenues for combating systemic inequalities and violence. Through the creative use of online platforms, feminist activism has gained unprecedented visibility, fostering mass awareness and transnational solidarity networks. The #MeToo movement, epitomized by the curation of its hashtag, stands as a pivotal moment in the global fight against sexual harassment. My research aims to explore how feminist practices and politics in the struggle against sexual harassment are changing in the continuum of online and offline activism after the emergence of the #MeToo movement in Turkey. This thesis adopts intersectional theory to analyze the underlying power dynamics in both online and offline struggles against sexual harassment, with a particular focus on a feminist solidarity network, the Susma Bitsin Platform (Speak up to End Platform) organized in the cinema, television, and theater industries. Based on a three-year-long online-and-offline feminist ethnography and in-depth interviews with the members of the platform, I analyze the intersecting continuums of feminist activist strategies and solidarities emerging out of the sexual harassment struggle. I utilize the intersecting continuums framework not only to illuminate the intersections of underlying patterns of domination and solidarity but also to identify the ruptures in the sexual harassment struggle, where the possibility of transformation occurs.