Please join us for our next AHSN webinar on Monday 24th January 2022 from 7-8pm (AEDT).
“Shame and feminist humor in social media: Who’s laughing now?” featuring Prof Jenny Sundén and Prof Susanna Paasonen, authors of leading work on feminist humour in social media.
Online sexism, hate and harassment aim to silence women and other others through shaming and fear. In this seminar, Jenny Sundén and Susanna Paasonen argue that feminist social media tactics that use humor, laughter and a sense of the absurd to answer name-calling, slut-shaming and unsolicited dick pics can rewire the affective circuits of sexual shame and acts of shaming.
They investigate the tactic of using irony to make visible the exclusion of women from the realm of professional expertise within the “Congrats, you have an all male panel!” Tumblr blog, creating a form of feminist cringe comedy for those who feel embarrassed on behalf of those who have no sense of shame. The contagiousness of laughter drives the emergence of networked forms of feminism, bringing people together (although it may also create rifts). Exploring the intersection of networked feminism, humor and shame, Sundén and Paasonen argue for the political necessity of inappropriate laughter.
Register here.