ABOUT THIS BOOK

In Empowered Sarah Banet-Weiser examines the deeply entwined relationship between popular feminism and popular misogyny as it plays out in advertising, online and multimedia platforms, and nonprofit and commercial campaigns. Examining feminist discourses that emphasize self-confidence, body positivity, and individual achievement alongside violent misogynist phenomena such as revenge porn, toxic geek masculinity, and men's rights movements, Banet-Weiser traces how popular feminism and popular misogyny are co-constituted. From Black Girls Code and the Always #LikeAGirl campaign to GamerGate and the 2016 presidential election, Banet-Weiser shows how popular feminism is met with a misogynistic backlash of mass harassment, assault, and institutional neglect. In so doing, she contends that popular feminism's problematic commitment to visibility limits its potential and collective power.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Sarah Banet-Weiser is Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and author of Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship, also published by Duke University Press, and AuthenticTM: The Politics of Ambivalence in Brand Culture.

REVIEWS

"Empowered adroitly examines the context in which popular feminism is transformed into hateful and misogynistic rage."

-- Elisabeth Woronzoff Popmatters

"Sarah Banet-Weiser offers an informative and readable account of popular feminism and popular misogynistic reactions to it. . . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."

-- M. Morrissey Choice

"Empowered offers an extremely timely and critical perspective toward understanding the current topology of feminism and misogyny in popular US culture and can benefit a wide range of readers. With its various tangible examples to illuminate the theorization of popular feminism and misogyny, general readers who don’t have prior knowledge on feminist research could enjoy reading it."

-- Dasol Kim International Journal of Communication

"Empowered presents insightful as well as bold arguments on the current status of popular feminism and its networked natures with popular misogyny."

-- Younghan Cho International Journal of Communication

"Banet-Weiser’s engaging and clear prose, alongside her use of many contemporary examples from a number of cultural contexts, make the book accessible enough for advanced undergraduate or graduate students while still offering cogent and theoretically grounded argumentation to scholars."

-- Laura L. Beadling Journal of American Culture

"Empowered is a crucial and much needed contribution to the debate around contemporary popular feminism and misogyny. In not shying away from exposing both the neoliberal influences of popular feminism, and from investigating the conflictual but nevertheless close entanglements between popular feminist and misogynist thought, Banet-Weiser provides an important keystone towards the reinvention of feminism as a radical and intersectional political project in the contemporary era."

-- Hannah Mueller Communication Booknotes Quarterly

"Empowered is elegant, compelling, and provides an incisive critique of our times—a zeitgeist characterized in equal parts through inspired momentum on matters of gender justice and, simultaneously, met with vitriolic resistance at almost every turn. Empowered theorizes a significant relationship between popular feminism and popular misogyny; it also illuminates how Millennial and Gen Z generations arrive at mediated understandings of feminism."

-- Michelle Flood Feminist Media Studies

“In Empowered, Sarah Banet-Weiser develops a framework for understanding the dynamics between what she calls ‘popular feminism and popular misogyny.’ Banet-Weiser signals that to understand popular feminism, we must explore it through its relationship with the other side of the coin: that is, misogyny…. [Empowered is] interesting, well crafted, and well written.”

-- Ea Høg Utoft Signs

“Taking seriously popular feminism and popular misogyny as sites of struggle, Banet-Weiser deftly addresses the increased popularity of feminism in the contemporary moment and the virulent backlash of misogyny situating both within a corporate, capitalist economy of visibility.”

-- Jeremiah Favara Women's Studies International Forum

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. The Funhouse Mirror 41
2. Shame: Love Yourself and Be Humiliated 65
3. Confidence: The Con Game 92
4. Competence: Girls Who Code and Boys Who Hate Them 129
Conclusion: Rage 171
Notes 187
References 193
Index 211

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