ICCIT's Brett Caraway on femcels and what unites this enigmatic subculture in the Global News

ICCIT's Brett Caraway talked to Global News national online journalist about femcels and what unites this enigmatic subculture.

Brett Caraway, a University of Toronto professor who specializes in social movements, says femcels should not be mistaken as simply a tongue-in-cheek, aesthetic-based meme culture. Instead, he says femcels are “a group of people that are on the receiving end of a power dynamic and are performing a grievance.”

Though he hesitated to qualify femcels as a “movement” or “community,” given there is no clear organizational structure, he says the meaning lies in the examination of the patriarchy. As a result of existing gender-based societal imbalances, femcels feel they are either being overly objectified by the male gaze, or that they do not meet the standards to be objectified in the first place.

Though there are undeniable undertones of self-loathing, Caraway says femcels are “letting off steam.” What unites femcels, he believes, is the performance of self. Through humour (often in the form of memes or self-deprecating comments on social media), femcels have created a unique identity and are using it to resist existing power dynamics.

Read the full article here.