– INTRO –
Welcome to a bonus episode of Feminist Not Fearless. My name’s Akane Kanai and if you’ve been following this series, I’m a researcher based in Melbourne, Australia. I conducted a multiyear project about online feminist culture and how it’s experienced by young people – which turned into this podcast.
This episode is a recording of our podcast launch event held at Monash University. Two participants in the research joined me for a panel discussion to reflect on the project. Gbonmi Olubodun came in person, and Aisha Wilson joined over Zoom. My colleague Whitney Monaghan opened the event and acknowledged country before handing over to Niamh White, the event moderator.
– DISCUSSION –
Niamh Yeah, I think that did deserve an applause. Welcome everyone. I have the pleasure of introducing everyone here and chairing this panel. My name is Niamh and I’m a PhD student here. And lucky enough to be, supervised by Akane. I’m really looking forward to hearing all of the thoughts here. So maybe we could start by everyone introducing themselves giving a little background to who they are and what age you were when the project started? Because it’s been going for a little while now.
Gbonmi I should start I think, hi, everyone. My name is Gbonmi. I use he/they pronouns. At the moment I’m 26 and when the program started, I was 22. Shout out Taylor Swift. And yeah, I’m a writer, I’m a youth worker and I’m a consultant and I’m really happy to be here.
AishaSo, my name is Aisha. I was 18 when I started the project in 2021. And now I’m 21 years old in 2024. And I’m a student of film, TV, and media at the moment at the Queensland University of Technology.
Akane My name is Akane. I use she/her pronouns and I mean, you would have heard on the trailer, but I am a researcher here at Monash in the School of Media and film and journalism.And when did, what age was I, when I had the project, I think I’m, 2021 was when it began and it’s now 2024. Right. So, I think I was 35. So, quite a bit older than my participants.
Niamh Well Akane, would you like to tell us a bit about the digital Feminist Futures Project?
Akane Yes. So this is a project I’ve been thinking about, I had been thinking about for some time. basically, in the field where I was working, I could see that there was a lot of interest in feminist hashtag activism as exemplifying certain movements in online culture. So there was a lot of interest particularly I guess in the impacts of Me Too as it became kind of resurgent you know, around the time of all the, the Hollywood news breaking. But at that time, there wasn’t a lot of research into what it was to do everyday kinds of feminism. And so there was a question of what difference is this kind of resurgence in feminist visibility actually doing in the every day. How is that shaping how people who identify as feminists? How do they consume, how do they watch, how do they think about their relationships? And what does it actually mean to be feminist in online culture when that is now increasingly the primary source through which young people are, you know, encountering feminism for the first time as a set of ideas. So that was the basis of the project. And I was lucky enough to have this funded as part of a, a multiyear project. So you could see shifts and changes over time because something that I’d seen in earlier work that I’ve been doing was that in terms of a lot of social media culture, people weren’t given the opportunity to change their views or they felt they had to have these really incisive hot takes in just, you know, very rapid fire ways. So I was really interested to see how people could revise and reflect on their narratives and what they were doing over time.
Niamh Lovely. And kind of on that question of age. You know, you were saying that this project has stretched now over three years and, and has that, that sort of rich long feeling to it. So I was just wondering, Aisha, maybe you’d like to answer this first, how it felt to be a research participant in this project over this long period. And what made you interested in participating?
Aisha Yeah. So, I think that when I signed up to be part of the project. I had no understanding of what the project actually was. I think I found it through Instagram. Someone had shared a link, someone that I followed, had shared a link and I saw feminism and I thought that’s me. So I swiped up and I filled out the form. And yeah, so I definitely didn’t have a concept really of what I was signing up for. And then I remember sort of getting the transcript from the first interview the first time and showing my sister and sort of getting an understanding that this was something, this was something important, this was something cool that I was being a part of. And now, three years on having listened to the podcast, having been a part of it, it’s very, it’s very interesting seeing how I myself have progressed from where I was when I first did that interview, both as a person and as a feminist. Yeah. Have I answered the question? Sorry.
Niamh Absolutely. Yes. And Gbonmi, would you like to answer the same question?
Gbonmi Yes. I really relate to a lot of what Aisha said. I think it may be in a, I guess in a bit of a different way I was, had just finished university like the year prior, when I, came across the project in 2021. I was working at like a youth consultancy. And when I saw the opportunity for the research project, I if I’m being really honest, I was really excited for the gift card. But then I, I think I got really, I think I got really excited about the premise of the research. I think coming from like a more like STEM engineering background, I didn’t have much of a chance to engage with humanities outside of, you know, my breadth subjects or just, you know, my own interest, you know, trying to like, read like articles or journals and that kind of thing. And so it was really cool. I remember at the start we did some like some group sessions as well. I think looking at my own relationship to social media over time through this project has been honestly, quite valuable to me.
Niamh Yeah. Thank you. That’s so interesting to hear. How that’s changed over time. And Akane, what was it that made you want to do a podcast specifically?
Akane Well, actually, we, I thought it would be interesting to mention that when we just briefly met to talk about this event, you know, last week, it was so interesting to hear from you Gbonmi and Aisha that your, the way that you use social media is actually totally changed since even the project. And, a lot of that has been about withdrawal. And that’s something that actually I saw with participants over time, seeing that sense of, you know, real overwhelm and exhaustion that so many of my participants were facing. I thought that it would be, it was important to have a medium where you could tell a story with enough space to digest the story as opposed to just, you know, one single post or even a series of posts. But also my participants themselves had talked about how much they loved different feminist podcasts because it gave them a kind of a sense of being in a little bubble. And there was this sense of, I guess having a bit of private space to listen to something in depth to kind of be inaccessible to the outside world when you were listening to it, something quite readerly about having a podcast, I guess, except you’re free to move through space.
Niamh Yeah, it also strikes me that it’s a kind of a way to, to give back and to continue the conversation with participants. You know, quite literally here. And I wonder, maybe start with Gbonmi, like, what was it like to listen back to the podcast and participate in it?
Gbonmi Well, I think firstly, it’s quite a novel concept to have like rigorous academic research available to you in podcast form. I think firstly, I find that level of accessibility, super exciting. Like, I definitely did stick my head into the academic journals and I, and I still do. But like, I also sometimes don’t understand, like maybe every third or fourth word. So I think like, I, yeah, I’m really excited by like the podcast as a format to kind of engage with not just young people, but I guess people who are interested in feminism online in general.I feel like I’ve run away with the question.
Niamh Not at all. Aisha, do you have an answer to that one?
Aisha So actually in sort of in preparation for today, I on the train this morning was re listening to the episodes that I was in and that Gbonmi me was in. And yeah, what you said Akane about it being sort of inaccessible, like something that you can listen to on the move I really love, I really love that it’s in this format and it’s not in some dense sort of sort of like maybe collection of articles or like reports that I probably wouldn’t be able to read or wouldn’t be able to find time to read, but having it in a podcast, it’s so accessible and I have I’ve sent it to some friends because I also think that it’s really, it’s a good source of information, I think especially the last episode really resonated with me on the discussion about intersectionality. And so I was sending it to friends. So being also involved in it and being one of the subjects was a very special thing listening back to it and seeing how I got to be part of a larger project that I think impacts a lot of people.
Gbonmi A little, I’ve been inspired by what Aisha said. I think what I would say, like, listening to, listening back to the work after having been a part of it. I think I was at first a little bit embarrassed about, like, so I’m featured on the fourth episode and I was a little embarrassed, a little bit embarrassed because I think I was very comfortable with Akane by this point. And so I was just like, chattering it away in the episode and then heard it back and I was like, whoa, I’m just like, actually just like slinging out lingo here, like, I think, like, I dropped a little s bomb. But one of my lovely friends said that it was really nice to hear people talk in a podcast the way that we talk in real life. And I think the fact that it’s talking about like real life kind of issues of like online culture that a lot of my friends and I’ve had conversations about as well. I feel like I’m actually, I’ve sent it around to quite a few friends as well and I’ve honestly just gotten like, either more thoughts on top or just more like, like resonance and validation, I think other people are experiencing. So yeah,
Akane Can I also jump in and just say that I think that’s sometimes I think we underestimate how important it is or how much resonance you can feel with just hearing a conversation. Because I think that’s part of the paradox of what a lot of participants were talking about in that you’re supposed to have connection in this omnipresent way all the time. You’re supposed to be so connected and yet it doesn’t really always feel very substantive. And I think sometimes engaging and being witness to someone’s conversation that they have allowed you into can actually feel really good sometimes. I actually wanted to ask Aisha a follow up because I know that, you know, you were saying before when we were chatting that, you know, you feel really different to that the person you were at the, at the beginning. So, I’m wondering like if the, if you had any particular reflections on where you were after the podcast, I guess.
Aisha Yeah, I think just having, having been part of this project at 18, like separate, separate to this project. I’ve done a lot of self-reflection, I think lately where just looking back and the, the amount that you change just between 18 and 19 and then 19 and 20 then, then I, another year on, I’m coming up to 22 and just changing as a person, your environment changes. I started university in 2022 as well. So that has impacted my life so much when, when I did this podcast, I mean, no, when I first did the interview with you, I was in a full-time job. I graduated high school in 2019 and then went straight into work and that was my second year of full-time work. And the only people I really had around me constantly were my colleagues, a lot of whom were older, older than me. I was definitely the youngest in the workplace at the time. And that gives you perspective, spending a lot of your time going from a high school environment where everyone is your age that you spend time with and then straight into full time work where everyone around you is significantly older. It’s constant learning and it’s constant sort of adapting to the situation constantly at hand. But then going into UNI so now I work part time in the same space and university full time and sort of the people that I surround myself with at UNI are completely different again to the people I knew in high school and the people that I knew and knew at work or know at work.
Aisha And I think that it’s mentioned in that episode of the podcast that I didn’t feel like I could talk to people around me. I didn’t feel like I could talk to my high school friends or the people at work about my politics and about feminism. And I absolutely have people in my life now who I can talk to about that and who I could probably have the same conversation with them 10 times where we just repeat the same thing, having the same discussion about a very particular point. And it’s sort of very validating to be in these spaces now where you can speak to people, who not only reflect what you believe, but also can sort of express their own opinions and take your understanding further. So just through knowing more people and knowing different types of people, in that way, my circumstances have changed a lot. And when I listen back to myself at 18, in this podcast, it is very, it was at first a little bit disconcerting because I just felt so removed from her. But then at the same time, that is definitely who I have been and I’m still that person in a lot of ways. If that makes sense, then,
Niamh That’s such an interesting reflection and what you were saying about sort of that pressure, that feeling of having to constantly kind of keep up. I think that’s something that comes up a lot in the podcast. Just inspired by that. I wonder, you know, Gbonmi, did you feel anything similar or what was your kind of relationship to these kind of spaces and feminism. Did that change over time?
Gbonmi It’s changed a lot. I think when I first started out in the project, I was, you know, maybe more on like Instagram. I think I just started getting onto TikTok. And I think I would say from like 2022 to 2023 I feel like my Instagram was mostly, you know, people I knew in real life, but then it became very linked to like social scenes outside of the online space that you know, you’ve been, you went to a certain club night. Now there’s a picture of you on somebody’s story and then, you know, all that kind of stuff is going on. And then I think what was more impactful was like starting to become more recognized from my TikTok in real life. I feel like TikTok was all fun and games and I just had people following me who were on another side of the world. They don’t know who I am. I could just like, say honestly, whatever I wanted. I think what was really shocking was when I started like going out to like parties and like in person and people would say to me like, like, oh I saw your TikTok about this and that I’m not thinking like I didn’t, I did not make that Tik Tok with the general public in mind. Now, I’m worried about what you’ve seen on my TikTok. And I think the final straw is when I got recognized in real life, someone came up to me and said, like, I know you from TikTok and I was like, I only had like, I, I think for Tik Tok for like context, like having a lot of followers on TikTok, you have to have like, at least like, you know, 100,000 to a million followers. Like I only had 4000 followers. How am I being recognized in real life? It felt impossible. But I think, yeah, like over time, my relationship to, I think what I, what I, what I was seeking out from social media, I think I’ve been trying to seek out in real life. And I think when it comes to a lot of the activism kind of kind of stuff, I think going for real life interactions around like justice and activism has been so much more fulfilling. And a lot more grounding because I think online things can feel very heady and very cerebral. I think we forget that we like to live in these like meat sacks.
Niamh And thinking of those kind of, I guess pressures, the, the good feelings, but the, the bad feelings that go along with things as well. Both of you mentioned episode four where spoiler alert, you kind of do something a little different and have a conversation between the two of you, Gbonm and Akane. And it, you know, a major theme that like come across in this conversation in the podcast is intersectionality and the idea of, you know, inclusion and how important that that is at the moment. But the, the fourth episode is about when inclusion feels bad and I wonder, you know, how do we draw that line between accepting, you know, that, that people aren’t perfect and often that they’re learning in these spaces. And, you know, making a critique that tokenism or inclusion that feels like appropriation can be really harmful.
Gbonmi I think, I think for me, it really boils down to like, I think first, I feel like the first thing that boil down to me is like having good faith in others. I think when there’s like conflicts online or in person around, you know, just like what we believe in, I think often people assume the worst in each other and I think that often leads to like a bigger escalation of drama than maybe is needed. I think when it comes to like, yeah, drawing the line between like, obviously, people are people, people are human, they’re imperfect. I think we should almost expect each other to be imperfect rather than expecting each other to kind of always, you know, be, I guess like para paragons of social good. I think where the line comes in is like, I think there needs to be a level of self-awareness and honesty. I think when we talk about inclusion and diversity and intersectionality, I mean, first, I mean, you know, I was working in organizations where they would have these, you know, terms, you know, built into the organizational strategy. But maybe the, you know, does the CFO does the CEO of this organization, is this like, is this like, is this a politics that they actually personally identify with? Do they understand what it means to see intersectionality in, you know, their day-to-day life, like sometimes that was missing. And I think there’s like a rush to like, want to, you know, be using all of the words and, you know, seem really, you know, tick box wokeness. I, I really don’t think that’s that important. I think it’s much more important to like, actually focus in on how you’re treating people in your, like one-on-one interactions? If you don’t have all the words? That’s fine. Yeah, that’s what I think.
Akane I think, I really enjoyed the conversation I could have with Gbonmi and the fourth episode of the podcast because I think when you’re able to talk with someone at length, you’re, you can kind of draw out some of the ickiness that you can feel as an object of inclusion. But I guess what I liked about that episode was that it enabled a kind of frankness about it without it being directed at a particular person.Because that’s also part of the issue with a lot of the feminist social media cultures that my participants were in and that everything felt incredibly individualized, and we really live in a culture where we are used to blaming individuals for their faults. Even though, you know, this, it’s about collective practices and structures and relationships. So it’s very easy to point out where a person got it wrong, but it’s a generally a social practice that makes it meaningful, you know. So what I really enjoyed in the last episode was being able to revisit that in that particular way. But I think the good faith element that Gbonmi was talking about, I think is really important because I think part of the trickiness in social media cultures is that there’s often the sense that intersectionality is about correcting as though there’s one rule and you implement it and correct others, but it’s not, it’s not a tick box actually and it’s not right or wrong. And the, I guess the emphasis that it’s something that’s about correction. Well, that can often mean that the people who feel most, justified in correcting others already operate from a, a place of privilege actually. And it can reinforce that even if you’re trying to enforce the right content or the right ways of speaking, depending on how one does it and, you know, one’s own position that can end up reinforcing actually some power asymmetries as well.
Niamh Aisha, what about you?
Aisha I think for me the way that I navigate just any political space or that I try to and something that I have sort of tried to incorporate into my, just the way that I think about pretty much everything is nuance as a rule just in the sense that there very often things are not as we expect them to be. So it’s very easy, especially in online spaces to jump to the conclusion that people are malicious that people are doing things on purpose that they have opinions because they are bad people rather than thinking about things like and thinking that people are coming from a good place. Obviously, accountability. And holding people accountable when the offenses are made, but nothing is ever black and white, especially in political spaces and especially considering intersectionality. Every single person lives a distinctly different life to every other person. And so that is extremely hard to navigate just by yourself and then navigating that with other people and navigating how other people engage with feminism and with politics and intersectionality. definitely for me. Just remembering that every situation is nuanced.
Niamh Yeah, I think that you all covered that sort of difficulty of, of navigating all of these intricacies. But absolutely holding that kind of space as I suppose a sort of feminist kind of care as well. In, in some ways, I wonder for our two participants. If you have any sort of final reflections on, on what it was like to be in the podcast
Gbonmi I was just lost in thought in reflections on what Aisha said, I think final reflections on the podcast being in it, it, it brings forth so many thoughts for me around. Just like the, the nature of like how we relate to each other online. I’m actually currently not on Instagram, not on TikTok. I’m still on YouTube. I count YouTube as social media. I don’t know if it counts, but I count it. I think like, you know, being online during Black Lives Matter, being online now during, you know, genocide in Palestine, I think I realized that there are like a lot of really good things that come out of social media. But I think our relationship to it is totally unfettered. We don’t really have guard rails up, I guess it’s a very new phenomenon. you know, like thinking back to like, you know, YouTube comment sections, I think used to be like a huge place of discussion. Online forums. I think I still, I mean, Reddit, it’s still an online forum but I used to like go on K pop forums a lot. And surprisingly, you get into social justice conversations on K pop forums.
And so it’s, it’s interesting, like the project kind of captured a moment of my life, but I think it’s kind of activated a level of reflection on social media and like, what like, what are the different impacts it’s had on my life? Like, what are the things I like about social media? I really liked getting to know other like African black trans people on, on TikTok. You know, I live in Australia. There’s not that many African people let alone trans, there’s about five of us and I know all of them. So it was great, you know, being able to connect with, you know, my peers online and in other countries that I wouldn’t usually have access to, I think maybe that maybe the parts I didn’t like was being very visible. You know, sometimes I’d make my little jokey jokes online and then I would get, you know, I went viral a few times and I’d get really hectic, you know, racist comments and I would just, I wouldn’t even be able to go through them and delete them all because it was just too much. And I would just have to put a warning that’s at the top of the post. Like, don’t go through the comments. They are horrible. Because I feel like, sometimes, you know, as a creator, you can encourage people to go to war in the comments. I feel like when I was creating TikTok’s, I, I didn’t, I’m like, I don’t think this person is engaging with you in good faith. So, like, I understand that, like, thank you for sticking up for me. But I think this person is a troll, like, it’s all of those things, you know, I think, I think that this project and thinking about feminism and like broadly social justice and never mentioned about like, you know, how things all really route back to colonialism. And I did mention that a little bit like in the fourth episode in the podcast. That like, I feel like a really core tactic of like, like colonial, like white tactics is like, kind of a divide and conquer the education because I think a lot of the like faults, we see in other people are not necessarily faults in individual people but are faults that are in the culture. Like, you know, the way that we’re taught at school, like, I mean, it was Captain Cook and nothing else. And it took, you know, me going out of my way, like afterwards to actually learn about first nation’s history. So, it’s hard to blame the individual for what’s systemic. But then I’m also for like, you know, taking in our power in our own hands and like, you know, doing what we can and like our actual personal lives with other people to live our values. I think that’s what’s really important to me. Yeah.
Aisha How, how do I follow that up? That was incredible. I love listening to that.
I, yeah, I don’t really have anything else too much to add. I’m, I’m very grateful to have been part of the project. It’s in a similar way. For me, it also has captured a point in my life that is a sort of time capsule now in that. And like I said before, I feel very separate to the woman that I was at the time. And yeah, the way that I engage with social media as well has changed not quite so much. I’m off TikTok. I don’t get all of my feminist engagement through TikTok anymore. I am still on Instagram. But trying to limit the way that I engage with that as well.
Yeah, just sort of like Gbonmi we said, trying to find the things that I seek from Instagram in my everyday life instead and trying to seek more time spent on Instagram reusing that time for other, for other means, reading, watching movies, that sort of thing, touching grass, et cetera. I feel like I’ve said everything but just very happy that it’s something that’s there and something that I’m, I’m very proud of being a part of and that I feel completely. I know that I was, I go by a different name in that first episode. But I’m very proud and happy to send it on to people, not just because I’m in it, but because the content is good, and I think it’s an extremely accessible podcast that covers a range of topics within digital feminism or feminism and digital spaces. So, yeah, absolutely.
Niamh I think you should all feel very proud. Maybe we can go to the audience and see if anybody has any questions.
Audience member Thank you. It was such a great session. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the title of the podcast series because it points to me it suggests a certain kind of vulnerability and I wondered where that came from.
Akane That’s a really good question. I guess I, what I was trying to s respond to was I, I guess a kind of popular depiction of feminism in recent years where there’s an idea that if you’re a feminist person, you are invulnerable, you know, and that feminist is often conflated with, I mean, literally, I mean, you know, the description of fearless feminists or groundbreaking or glass ceiling smashing or, you know, all these things that were really hard, you know.
And actually, if you really consider that behind every kind of empowered looking person, there’s a history and often a lot of feminists are, you know, women or gender diverse people or just people who’ve had some kind of experience of gender that leads them to question the world. And that can be sometimes really crushing experiences. Sometimes it’s just a general sense that things aren’t as they could be in the world and I, so I think actually vulnerability should really be the dominant way. We think about people who want to live more of a feminist life. And so I wanted to kind of move away from the sense that, yeah, this kind of sense of no fear because I don’t think actually that’s how many of us live in the world.
Aisha and Gbonmi, what did you think?
Aisha Yeah, I, I really resonate with the title. I think the first episode is called Feminist Not Fearless as well, which is the one that I’m in which I like because I’m full of fear, I’m scared of everything. And on a more serious note, I think it’s feminism almost exists not out of fear necessarily, that might not be the correct wording, but the, the struggle for human rights is not without fear on any level.
No movement is pushed forward by people who are not scared. You know, it’s, it’s out of a need for change that any movement is started and continues. And that sort of expectation for any feminists to be so bold in their positions as feminists that they can go into any fight and argue for feminism in any capacity. It’s sort of, it’s a lot of pressure for feminists.
And it especially considering that online spaces are extremely scary in any regard So, yeah, I found, I found the title to be quite good. I liked it a lot.
Gbonmi I would agree honestly. I, I like the notion of not fearless in the sense of like, thinking about, like, what it means to be courageous, like in the sense of like, being scared to do something and, and still doing it anyways. So I quite like the notion of like, feminist, not fearless because I think it leans into a like engaging with the realities of the like world we’re in like things are a bit scary. Like people will say whatever they want in your comment sections.
And I feel like that’s something to be aware of. It’s good to like, I think fear as like a biological response in the body is great as for survival.
Niamh That was a really wonderful conversation. Thank you all three of you for your contributions. Let’s maybe have a round of applause for our wonderful panel.
– CREDITS –
Thank you for listening to this bonus episode of Feminist Not Fearless, supported by Monash University and the Australian Research Council. If you liked this episode, please share it.
Special thanks to Niamh White, who moderated this panel, Dr. Whitney Monaghan for organising the event as part of the inaugural Monash Creative Directions Festival, and Gbonmi Olubodun and Aisha Wilson for generously sharing their time with us again.
Emma Baumhofer is the show’s producer. Melissa May is our audio engineer. Music by Ben Hallinan. Additional support from Gareth Popplestone, Zac Sharman and Doug Donaldson from the Monash Media Lab.
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