White Women Wanted? An Analysis of Gender Diversity in Social Justice Magazines

Abstract

Abstract:The role of media in collective action repertoires has been extensively studied, but media as an agent of socialization in social movement identity is less understood. It could be that social movement media is normalizing a particular activist identity to the exclusion of other demographics. For instance, Harper has identified white-centrism in anti-speciesist media produced by the Nonhuman Animal rights movement and supposes that this lack of diversity stunts movement potential. Using the lesser-studied Nonhuman Animal rights movement as a starting point, this study investigates two prominent Nonhuman Animal rights magazines. We compare those findings with an analysis of comparable leftist movements also known to exhibit diversity strains. A content analysis of Nonhuman Animal rights, women's rights, and gay rights magazine covers spanning from 2000 to 2012 was undertaken to determine the manifestation of gender, race, body type, and sexualization. We find that the Nonhuman Animal rights media in our sample overwhelmingly portrays white women with a tendency toward thinness, but with low levels of sexualization as comparable to that of the other movements. All three movement samples unevenly depicted gender, overrepresented whites, and underrepresented non-thin body types.

Fat vegan politics: A survey of fat vegan activists’ online experiences with social movement sizeism

“…As a social justice movement, veganism has been criticized in its failure to embrace multiculturalism to the point of aggravating inequality for many demographics and complicating alliance-building (Harper 2011, Wrenn andLutz 2016). Veganism, a consumption-focused political protest against systematic discrimination against Nonhuman Animals, is most frequently represented primarily by thin, white-identified, middle class women, and this is thought to overshadow diversity in the vegan community.…”

“…Protesting, too, tends to render fat 1 bodies invisible, as thin-bodied women predominate in the vegan movement's infamous "I'd Rather Go Naked Than" campaigning. Non-thin bodies are practically non-existent in high profile vegan media spaces despite diversity of body types in the ranks (Wrenn and Lutz 2016).…”