A new wave of feminism has taken hold in Britain this year:young, irreverent, and fuelled by social media. Three online projects foundedin 2012 -- a website for submitting experiences of sexism, a campaign againsttopless women in newspapers and a blog satirising women's portrayal in themedia -- have won tens of thousands of supporters. They have earned nationalpress coverage and admiration from veteran feminists who thought their causehad faded into the background. "Initially we just made it for our friendsand we didn't really think that it would take off," said Rhiannon Coslett,25, a co-founder of the Vagenda blog. She and Holly Baxter, 23, impoverishedflatmates who had studied together, started the blog after a wine-soakedevening ridiculing women's magazines. It went viral on its first day with apost of "Stock Photos Of Women Looking Remorseful After SexualEncounters".
Nine months later, the Vagenda has 30,000 readers each day,while the two have given up their day jobs and have a book deal. Last week theywere among 600 people at a London theatre for an anti-sexism stand-up comedynight on the 42nd anniversary of Page Three, the page dedicated to toplessmodels in Rupert Murdoch's tabloid newspaper The Sun. Behind the event was acampaign called No More Page 3, which is pushing The Sun to remove the feature,and Everyday Sexism, which compiles accounts of discrimination and harassment.Both were started this year.
Young feminists credit social media with bringing peopletogether and creating space for views that might be mocked elsewhere. Despitehuge advances in the 20th century, British women are underrepresented inpolitics and business, while earning about ten percent less than men.Campaigners also speak of a pervasive culture of sexism.
Women's rights campaigners still face hostility, especiallyonline: when Bates set up Everyday Sexism she received hundreds of abusivemessages a day, culminating in specific threats that led her to call police.But the site has now drawn numerous submissions from men angered by theexperiences of women close to them, while others say the site has made themre-examine their own behaviour. Lucy Anne Holmes, 36, founder of No More Page3, finds women and men keen to join her battle against the topless photo that is"the largest female image in the country's best-selling newspaper".Neither the Vagenda writers, nor Holmes and Bates, were involved with activismbefore this year, but all say there is much more to be done. "A mum wrotein to say her little girl had asked if she could be turned into a boy so thatshe could go into space," Bates said. "As long as even one littlegirl is growing up thinking she has to change who she is to be what she wantsto be, the fight isn't over."
