Challenges for Women in Online Philosophy: Performativity and Clout

Despite believing in the value of online philosophy, I myself have limited philosophical engagements online. Online philosophy is a vast terrain, spanning from philosophy discussed in mainstream venues such as The New York Times to online philosophy encyclopedias to YouTube series and blog posts. Here, I want to focus only on women’s engagement in certain kinds of online philosophy – philosophy done on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, op-eds – platforms that give academics real-time feedback and prompt us to engage back immediately with our audiences.

What factors impede women’s participation in this kind of online philosophy? It could be due to time constraints as a result of patriarchal imbalance of childrearing or other household duties. Perhaps the biggest factor is online harassment and trolling. Cassie Herbert has an excellent piece on how online misogyny shapes our profession, where she not only addresses online misogynic content, but also how “misogyny exists in the normative structure of the interaction.” There are countless cases of women and minority philosophers being trolled by other philosophers within the philosophy blogosphere comments section.

Doxxing, rape threats, and death threats are additional hindrances for academics brave enough to engage with the general public, especially on topics deemed ‘controversial.’ Such retaliation is particularly true for academics who are Black, trans*, women, disabled, or academics who hold other minoritized identities. These attacks have real-life consequences that impact one’s job security, prompt folks to leave academia, and contribute to heightened anxiety and/or panic attacks. 

But there are reasons other than trolling and harassment that might hold one back from participating in online philosophy. Although racist and misogynistic harassment may be the biggest impediment to women’s presence in online philosophy, others have written on it. So I’ll address two other reasons why women might avoid doing online philosophy, and then say what enabled me to participate despite these issues.

The first issue has to do with performativity. Our online presence can never capture the entirety of who we are. There are many aspects of our lives that we choose not to share online. Furthermore, we may write something that is not received as we intended it. This is because not everyone who reads it shares similar life experiences or background assumptions, such a languate, a culture, or beliefs about the insidious nature of patriarchy. As a result, even from within our online ‘friends’ lists, many of us limit who can be an audience to our thoughts.

Beyond these concerns, there is the question of how we ‘perform’ what we share. By perform, I don’t mean to suggest artificiality or inauthenticity on part of the online poster. Rather, there are online scripts that receive the most uptake from online audiences:

• The prolific academic: this academic is on point. They offer bite-sized analysis in a timely fashion. Their publicly-oriented content is easily understandable and free of needless academic jargon. An event happens and they comment on it right away. There is a ‘wow’ factor to their incisive analysis, where that awe arises from being able to succinctly and clearly tie current events to philosophical ideas and be one of the first ones to do so.
• The enraged academic: this scholar calls out all the things wrong with the world we live in. The enraged scholar is passionate, fiery, and snappy, but most of all they are unapologetic warriors for social justice. They speak truth to power. They are trolled by evidence-deniers with diametrically opposed views. These enraged academics often suffer the worst of the internet consequences.
• The vulnerable academic: this academic writes from within moment(s) of trauma. They are able to touch our souls, resonate with our own vulnerabilities, and reach others by creating bridges founded in empathy. They might also be made invisible as ‘serious’ academics, as other academics theorize about such expressed trauma and then reap the benefits of academic publishing at the expense of the vulnerable academic. 
• The neo-liberal academic: last (and my least favorite) are scholars who get amplified because they post in agreement with the agenda of the dominant. They are part of the industry that perpetuates and creates the neo-liberal subject for academia, and the content of their post does not cause liberals and moderates to be uncomfortable. They get retweets and shares because the post reinforces the status quo.

This is not an exhaustive list of the scripts that receive uptake, and often they overlap. But it does give us an idea of what kind content structures hit the sweet spot and get maximum uptake with limited characters. While the first three scripts are generally beneficial to the fight for social justice, important ideas often get flattened into ‘infotaining’ blurbs by the consuming audience, but also sometimes by the original poster themselves. Other times, the posts come with a certain degree of performativity that carries an emotional and psychological cost to the online poster. For example, it is emotionally taxing to continually publicly fight for social justice and lay out one’s trauma in a way that must be ‘entertaining’ enough to catch the reader’s attention. The poster feels the burden of theatrics, lest their post is lost in online purgatory. And once lost, so is the ownership over one’s ideas and any affirmation from one’s colleagues in the form of retweets and shares.

Not everyone is capable of good online writing that can clearly and succinctly deliver one’s ideas. Having a strong online presence requires one to constantly be present, to write philosophical analysis in real-time in ways that gets uptake, and respond to detractors as they come. And since it might be hard to cultivate this skill set, it might serve some of us better to use our energy to engage with public philosophy on alternative platforms. This includes making YouTube videos (such as Wireless Philosophy), writing accessible entries on philosophical works, or even answering the public’s questions in a philosophy booth.

The second set of reasons why women may not do online philosophy is clout and visibility. It is true that social media platforms ameliorate issues of gatekeeping within academic disciplines by allowing for a more diverse set of voices. These platforms allow us to do philosophy that concerns our lives, without being put through year-long cycles of rejection because the work we do isn’t deemed ‘serious’ philosophy. These platforms make our thoughts accessible to all without paywalls and pretension. In my courses, I use philosophy blogs and online articles as material taught alongside traditionally published articles. They are nuanced yet accessible reads for my students.  More importantly, they push forward conversation on issues typically sidelined by top journals in the discipline.

But philosophy done in these forums doesn’t eliminate gatekeeping. In order to receive uptake on one’s writing, one has to have a certain degree of clout, and this clout is not built in a vacuum. Online presence is a function of social capital, social networks, the ranking of the poster’s institution, performativity, conferences they have presented at, and/or how well published they might be in traditional forms like research monographs and journal articles. For example, if Charles Mills or Alison Jaggar opened Twitter accounts tomorrow, they would rightfully have an instant following because philosophers admire their work and would be interested in learning from them in other formats. In this sense, getting uptake in the form of likes and retweets on one’s post isn’t strictly a meritocratic process that judges form and content; rather, the process retains existing legacies of academic elitism. 

Nor is online philosophy truly inclusive. It seems that it is, since it exists on platforms that are mostly free and where there is room for any philosopher to participate. But this is really the specter of inclusivity, and the illusion disappears as one realizes that most posts will not receive any uptake at all because the posters lack the social capital that would carry their blog, tweet, or Facebook post to a wider audience. 

Despite these drawbacks, doing philosophy online is a valuable endeavor and I have learned much from my fellow philosophers online. I highly recommend C. Thi Nguyen’s Manifesto for Public Philosophy for learning about the ways we can help public philosophy thrive. So, what do I do? I am on Facebook and often re-post news stories or op-eds (with some commentary) that are important to me. I am also on Twitter, and retweet or like various prolific, enraged, vulnerable academics fighting for social justice. But I have yet to find Facebook or Twitter to be a validating place to communicate my own work. Sometimes, my words are lost into the oblivion: there is little uptake. Other times, threads are misunderstood and/or hijacked and it is too much labor to respond.

Yet I knew that public engagement of ideas is crucial and online delivery is one of the most efficient ways to engage. So, I looked for a format that works for me. In November 2019, I started a podcast, She Speaks: Academic Muslimahs, in part because I was in search of my own people. Now in my third season of interviewing academic Muslim women, I have found the format of a podcast refreshing for a number of reasons.

First, it has allowed me to converse with other academics who I don’t need to discuss the idea of ‘far away’ cultures with; we simply move forward with the conversation. For example, there is no elaborate discussion of what Ramadan is (Google it); we can move right to discussing the lack of accommodations for it within academia.  Second, I don’t need to tread as carefully in order to avoid affirming stereotypes of our peoples. I assume that the person I am interviewing understands and affirms our peoples’ diversity of views. Third, when I talk about issues that we face within our communities, I  don’t need to simultaneously perform the coolness of our cultures to make it palatable to ears of the dominant culture.

Finally, the podcast allows me to pretend for an hour that my entire exchange is simply with the person I am speaking within that moment. When I post on Twitter or even on Facebook, I inevitably think about who might give it uptake or conversely, hijack the conversation in the comments or retweets. I have seen too many threads dissolve far from the conversation the original poster meant to have, because there is little safeguard for closed ranks on such forums. But when I do the podcast, I focus on the need to connect and converse with my interlocutor. It’s just the two of us having meaningful conversation. I learn about their scholarship, their life journey, and their views. Yes, other people are listening, but in that moment of recording, we are not directing the conversation outward. This connection with my interviewee is validating and allows me to be free from the chains of worrying about likes/retweets/shares from random online entities.

This is not say that the podcast format never runs into issues of performativity or clout. It’s just that these issues are easier to avoid because the conversation feels like a more personal exchange. Most importantly, it serves as a way of giving Muslim women a fuller and more robust narrative of our lives, our thoughts, and our scholarship.

Ultimately, the podcast allows me to talk about the mundane. While it is almost impossible to grab a sensational sound-bite within these conversations, it is somewhere within that mundanity that contains the truths of our peoples. This closed conversation but open audience has allowed me to move the discourse forward without it being hijacked or lost in oblivion, because people must listen. 

For women in philosophy who have encountered similar roadblocks, but yearn to partake in online philosophy, may you keep trying. There are many modes of online engagement that can operate in ways that work for you and yet interrupt the dynamics of the barriers you face, including the issues raised here.

The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on women in the history of philosophy, posts on issues of concern to women in the field of philosophy, and posts that put philosophy to work to address issues of concern to women in the wider world. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Adriel M. Trott or Associate Editor Julinna Oxley.

Saba Fatima

Saba Fatima is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). She writes and speaks on social and political issues within prescriptive Islam; Muslim/Muslim-American issues within a framework of feminist & race theory; non-ideal political theory, and medical humanities.