From Ableist Presentation of Women in Media to Activism of Digital Feminist Perspective: "erktolia.org" Case Study

Abstract

In social sciences literature, ableism, as an ideology advocating "somatic integrity", regenerates and reinforces sexist attitude with the "incompetence" perception towards women as formed with phallocentric internalization in masculine speech. Media, having the effect of modifying, changing and directing social perception, is one of the tools of the mentioned reproduction and reinforcement. This study was based on the thought that the perception towards women, as presented in especially commercials, has a male-dominant characteristic and it aimed to interpret the dualistic structure, which forms social identity of women based on the perception of " incompetence" and that of men based on the perception of "integrity" and which is discussed with the ableistic attitude and involved with disabled studies mainly in social sciences literature until today. In the study content, "digital feminist perspective", as an activist alternative created by this structure in the face of negation and problematic presentation against women in social platform, was scrutinized and the potential of feminist perspective, using the digitals, to transform the mentioned problematic presentation for the benefit of women was discussed. The study is a qualitative field research, using the technique of sample case, based on descriptive methods. In this scope, it was investigated how "erktolia.org" web site, being the first in Turkey as a digital feminist activism platform, has problematized sexism in the ableism context based on its general structure and its first succeeding protest campaign. As an outcome of the study, it was concluded that erktolia.org web site had the potential of molding public opinion about the ableist attitude towards women - digital feminist perspective - and transformation of presentation.