Kaitlynn Mendes
Biographic Data
| ID | 3674326 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kaitlynn Mendes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kaitlynn |
| FAMILY NAME | Mendes |
| SIGNATURE | MENDES K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leicester |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Tinder for teens: Youth digital intimate cultures and tech facilitated violence on Snapchat
Snapchat has long been a pivotal space for youth digital intimate and sexual cultures, as well as gendered and sexual risks and harms. Despite being one of the most widely used social media platforms among youth, there has been little in-depth research that connects Snapchat's unique features and affordances with young users' practices, behaviours, and experiences on the platform. Responding to this gap, our study used mixed methods to explore Br…
Tinder for Teens: An in-Depth Exploration of Youth Intimate Cultures and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence on Snapchat
Snapchat has long been a pivotal space for youth digital intimate and sexual cultures, as well as gendered and sexual risks and harms. Despite being one of the most widely used social media platforms among youth in England and America, there has been little in-depth research that connects Snapchat’s unique features and affordances with an analysis of young users’ practices, behaviours, and experiences on the platform. Responding to this gap, our …
Stop Being so Fkn Soft: Masculinity, Politics, and the Acceptance of Gender-Based Online Violence Myths Among Young Canadian Men
Defining manhood is a critical concern in contemporary politics, especially due to its increasing role in shaping cultural narratives toward gender-based violence-and in particular, toward gender-based technology-facilitated violence and abuse (GBTFVA). In this context, this study investigates how political affiliation influences perceptions of GBTFVA among young Canadian men. To explore this, we draw on a survey of 1297 young Canadian men who al…
Moving beyond masculine defensiveness and anxiety in the classroom: Exploring gendered responses to sexual and gender based violence workshops in England and Ireland
Increasing rates of gender-based and sexual abuse, coupled with a rise in misogynistic influencers online, have become a growing issue in UK and Irish schools. This paper reports on the findings of a postlockdown study in England and Ireland that piloted workshops on gender-based and sexual violence. While most student responses were positive, we found that roughly 10% of girls and 20% of boys were resistant. In this paper, we explore these criti…
You Did It to Yourself”: An Exploratory Study of Myths About Gender-Based Technology-Facilitated Violence and Abuse Among Men
Gender-based technology-facilitated violence and abuse (GBTFVA) is a common experience for those engaging with digital technologies in their everyday lives. To better understand why GBTFVA persists, it is necessary to understand the false beliefs and cultural narratives that enable and sustain them. Drawing on the literature on rape myths, this paper explores the prevalence of seven gender-based online violence myths among Canadian men. To achiev…
Reclaiming Digital Intimacy for Youth: Piloting Digital Sexual Violence Workshops for Under-18s During the Covid-19 Pandemic in England and Ireland
Online sexual abuse and violence have become an urgent global problem for women and girls, and in particular for poor women, women of colour and LGBTQ women (Ging and Siapera, 2019). Online sexual harassment and abuse is an especially urgent issue for young people, for whom digital spaces are key sites of communication, identity formation, self-expression and sexual interaction. The toxic dynamics that frequently underpin these complex entangleme…
Sexual violence in contemporary educational contexts
It started with this one post: MeToo, India and higher education
In October 2017, Raya Sarkar, a 24-year-old law student from India, posted a crowdsourced list on Facebook of male Indian academics who allegedly harassed women. This led to the start of the #MeToo movement in India, where universities became key spaces of discussion, debate and activism. Due to failures of both the criminal justice system and the described capitalist, patriarchal, casteist structures of Indian academia, hundreds of survivors who…
Labour, media and technology: Editors' Introduction
Mapping #MeToo: A synthesis review of digital feminist research across social media platforms
A tweet by Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano using Tarana Burke’s phrase “me too” sparked a global movement. Despite the media attention #MeToo has garnered, little is known about how scholars have studied the movement. Through a synthesis review covering sources from 2006 to 2019, we learned that in this time period only 22 studies examined participation on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. We conclude that more research needs to be condu…
Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight Back Against Rape Culture
In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways…
Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight Back Against Rape Culture
From sites like Hollaback! and Everyday Sexism, which document instances of street harassment and misogyny, to social media-organized movements and communities like #MeToo and #BeenRapedNeverReported, feminists are using participatory digital media as activist tools to speak, network, and organize against sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. As the first book-length study to examine how girls, women, and some men negotiate rape culture through the…
Speaking ‘unspeakable things: Documenting Digital Feminist Responses to Rape Culture
This paper examines the ways in which girls and women are using digital media platforms to challenge the rape culture they experience in their everyday lives; including street harassment, sexual assault, and the policing of the body and clothing in school settings. Focusing on three international cases, including the anti-street harassment site Hollaback!, the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported, and interviews with teenage Twitter activists, the pap…
SlutWalk, Community and Cyberactivism
As the second of two chapters exploring results from interviews with 22 SlutWalk organizers from around the world, who were involved in the movement between 2011 and 2014, this chapter analyzes ways that satellite groups connected with one another, formed feminist communities, and fostered a larger SlutWalk movement. And while there is no doubt that offline activism (e.g. SlutWalk marches) was crucial to the movement’s success, this chapter highl…
Contextualizing the Issues
Chapter 2 provides an overview of literature, theories and concepts relevant to finding out how SlutWalk was represented in the media and experienced by organizers in eight nations (Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the UK and the US) which hosted marches between 2011 and 2014. This includes a scholarly review of modern feminism, violence against women, the anti-rape movement and post and Third Wave feminism. It also…
SlutWalk Hierarchies and Organizers’ Roles
Engaging with the work of social movement scholar Manuel Castells, this chapter explores theories of horizontal, leaderless and ‘postmedia’ movements in relation to SlutWalk. Drawing from interviews with 22 organizers from around the world, I demonstrate the ways that SlutWalks differed in their organizational structures, strategies and priorities, which in some cases shifted dramatically over time. Unlike other contemporary social movements whic…
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the past several years have witnessed the beginnings of cultural change. For the first time, perhaps ever, feminism is enjoying not only a resurgence, but mass popular approval (Valenti 2014c). Celebrities such as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Emma Watson, Lena Dunham and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have all recently announced to the world that they are feminists (Vagianos 2014; Valenti 2014c). Women’s issues, particularly domestic and s…
Situating SlutWalk
In 2011, amidst a range of other global protests such as the Spanish Indignados, the Occupy Movement, and the Arab Spring, news began to emerge about a string of SlutWalk marches, held initially in Canada, and then spreading to the US, UK, Australia, Europe, South and Central Americas and Asia. Although the next two chapters will focus on representations of what SlutWalk is , this chapter begins by examining where and when it was represented as t…
Representing the Movement: SlutWalk is Misguided or Opposed
Where Chapter 4 focused on the frames and discourses used to construct SlutWalk as a movement which challenges rape culture and victim blaming, this chapter focuses on the way the movement was framed as misguided and/or opposed. This chapter pays particular attention to feminist critiques of the movement as one which plays to the male gaze, and thus is incapable of challenging patriarchal rape culture. It also focuses on the ways the movement was…
Representing the Movement: SlutWalk Challenges Rape Culture
This is the first of two chapters that explore representations of SlutWalk in both my mainstream news and feminist media samples. Both chapters were organized using the results of a frame analysis, derived with the help of a qualitative content analysis. Frames were established after asking questions such as: What is SlutWalk said to be about?; Whose voices were used?; What ‘sparked’ coverage of SlutWalk (e.g. a forthcoming march, or one which ha…
Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on the Network News , by Bonnie J. Dow
Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on Network News, by Bonnie J. Dow. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2014. xii, 239 pp. $95.00 US (cloth), $28.00 US (paper). In Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on Network News, Bonnie J. Dow provides yet another excellent contribution to field of feminist media history. Although several chapters are based on previously published work, this book brings them …
SlutWalk: Feminism, Activism and Media
SlutWalk explores representations of the global anti-rape movement of the same name, in mainstream news and feminist blogs around the world. It reveals strategies and practices used to adapt the movem
Feminism rules! Now, where’s my swimsuit?’ Re-evaluating feminist discourse in print media 1968–2008
Using both content and critical discourse analysis, this article traces the emergence of and changes in the ways feminism has been discursively constructed in 998 British and American news articles between 1968 and 1982 – which I define as the ‘height’ of the Second Feminist Wave, and 2008 – marking 40 years after feminism began gaining momentum in both nations. In analysing the British Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail , and Guardian newspapers, a…
Reading Chatelaine: Dr. Marion Hilliard and 1950s Women’s Health Advice
This article explores key themes and discourses surrounding women’s health advice written by Dr. Marion Hilliard between 1954 and 1957. Her works, published in eight Chatelaine articles and a 1957 book, are of particular significance because they demonstrate some of the many paradoxes Canadian women faced: women were told to stay at home and be housewives, but that they could have an identity of their own; that women too were sexual beings, but t…
Framing Feminism: News Coverage of the Women's Movement in British and American Newspapers, 1968–1982
This article analyses the framing in four British and American newspapers of the second-wave feminist movement during its most politically active period (1968–1982). Using content and critical discourse analysis of 555 news articles, the article investigates how movement members were represented, what problems and solutions to women's oppression/inequality were posed and whose voices were used. This paper identifies: opposition to the movement, s…
SlutWalk: Feminism, Activism and Media
SlutWalk explores representations of the global anti-rape movement of the same name, in mainstream news and feminist blogs around the world. It reveals strategies and practices used to adapt the movem
Speaking ‘unspeakable things: Documenting Digital Feminist Responses to Rape Culture
This paper examines the ways in which girls and women are using digital media platforms to challenge the rape culture they experience in their everyday lives; including street harassment, sexual assault, and the policing of the body and clothing in school settings. Focusing on three international cases, including the anti-street harassment site Hollaback!, the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported, and interviews with teenage Twitter activists, the pap…
It started with this one post: MeToo, India and higher education
In October 2017, Raya Sarkar, a 24-year-old law student from India, posted a crowdsourced list on Facebook of male Indian academics who allegedly harassed women. This led to the start of the #MeToo movement in India, where universities became key spaces of discussion, debate and activism. Due to failures of both the criminal justice system and the described capitalist, patriarchal, casteist structures of Indian academia, hundreds of survivors who…
Moving beyond masculine defensiveness and anxiety in the classroom: Exploring gendered responses to sexual and gender based violence workshops in England and Ireland
Increasing rates of gender-based and sexual abuse, coupled with a rise in misogynistic influencers online, have become a growing issue in UK and Irish schools. This paper reports on the findings of a postlockdown study in England and Ireland that piloted workshops on gender-based and sexual violence. While most student responses were positive, we found that roughly 10% of girls and 20% of boys were resistant. In this paper, we explore these criti…
Sexual violence in contemporary educational contexts
Feminism rules! Now, where’s my swimsuit?’ Re-evaluating feminist discourse in print media 1968–2008
Using both content and critical discourse analysis, this article traces the emergence of and changes in the ways feminism has been discursively constructed in 998 British and American news articles between 1968 and 1982 – which I define as the ‘height’ of the Second Feminist Wave, and 2008 – marking 40 years after feminism began gaining momentum in both nations. In analysing the British Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail , and Guardian newspapers, a…
Framing Feminism: News Coverage of the Women's Movement in British and American Newspapers, 1968–1982
This article analyses the framing in four British and American newspapers of the second-wave feminist movement during its most politically active period (1968–1982). Using content and critical discourse analysis of 555 news articles, the article investigates how movement members were represented, what problems and solutions to women's oppression/inequality were posed and whose voices were used. This paper identifies: opposition to the movement, s…
Stop Being so Fkn Soft: Masculinity, Politics, and the Acceptance of Gender-Based Online Violence Myths Among Young Canadian Men
Defining manhood is a critical concern in contemporary politics, especially due to its increasing role in shaping cultural narratives toward gender-based violence-and in particular, toward gender-based technology-facilitated violence and abuse (GBTFVA). In this context, this study investigates how political affiliation influences perceptions of GBTFVA among young Canadian men. To explore this, we draw on a survey of 1297 young Canadian men who al…
You Did It to Yourself”: An Exploratory Study of Myths About Gender-Based Technology-Facilitated Violence and Abuse Among Men
Gender-based technology-facilitated violence and abuse (GBTFVA) is a common experience for those engaging with digital technologies in their everyday lives. To better understand why GBTFVA persists, it is necessary to understand the false beliefs and cultural narratives that enable and sustain them. Drawing on the literature on rape myths, this paper explores the prevalence of seven gender-based online violence myths among Canadian men. To achiev…
Labour, media and technology: Editors' Introduction
Reading Chatelaine: Dr. Marion Hilliard and 1950s Women’s Health Advice
This article explores key themes and discourses surrounding women’s health advice written by Dr. Marion Hilliard between 1954 and 1957. Her works, published in eight Chatelaine articles and a 1957 book, are of particular significance because they demonstrate some of the many paradoxes Canadian women faced: women were told to stay at home and be housewives, but that they could have an identity of their own; that women too were sexual beings, but t…
Framing Feminism: News Coverage of the Women's Movement in British and American Newspapers, 1968–1982
This article analyses the framing in four British and American newspapers of the second-wave feminist movement during its most politically active period (1968–1982). Using content and critical discourse analysis of 555 news articles, the article investigates how movement members were represented, what problems and solutions to women's oppression/inequality were posed and whose voices were used. This paper identifies: opposition to the movement, s…
Feminism rules! Now, where’s my swimsuit?’ Re-evaluating feminist discourse in print media 1968–2008
Using both content and critical discourse analysis, this article traces the emergence of and changes in the ways feminism has been discursively constructed in 998 British and American news articles between 1968 and 1982 – which I define as the ‘height’ of the Second Feminist Wave, and 2008 – marking 40 years after feminism began gaining momentum in both nations. In analysing the British Times, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail , and Guardian newspapers, a…
SlutWalk, Community and Cyberactivism
As the second of two chapters exploring results from interviews with 22 SlutWalk organizers from around the world, who were involved in the movement between 2011 and 2014, this chapter analyzes ways that satellite groups connected with one another, formed feminist communities, and fostered a larger SlutWalk movement. And while there is no doubt that offline activism (e.g. SlutWalk marches) was crucial to the movement’s success, this chapter highl…
Contextualizing the Issues
Chapter 2 provides an overview of literature, theories and concepts relevant to finding out how SlutWalk was represented in the media and experienced by organizers in eight nations (Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, the UK and the US) which hosted marches between 2011 and 2014. This includes a scholarly review of modern feminism, violence against women, the anti-rape movement and post and Third Wave feminism. It also…
SlutWalk Hierarchies and Organizers’ Roles
Engaging with the work of social movement scholar Manuel Castells, this chapter explores theories of horizontal, leaderless and ‘postmedia’ movements in relation to SlutWalk. Drawing from interviews with 22 organizers from around the world, I demonstrate the ways that SlutWalks differed in their organizational structures, strategies and priorities, which in some cases shifted dramatically over time. Unlike other contemporary social movements whic…
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the past several years have witnessed the beginnings of cultural change. For the first time, perhaps ever, feminism is enjoying not only a resurgence, but mass popular approval (Valenti 2014c). Celebrities such as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Emma Watson, Lena Dunham and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have all recently announced to the world that they are feminists (Vagianos 2014; Valenti 2014c). Women’s issues, particularly domestic and s…
Situating SlutWalk
In 2011, amidst a range of other global protests such as the Spanish Indignados, the Occupy Movement, and the Arab Spring, news began to emerge about a string of SlutWalk marches, held initially in Canada, and then spreading to the US, UK, Australia, Europe, South and Central Americas and Asia. Although the next two chapters will focus on representations of what SlutWalk is , this chapter begins by examining where and when it was represented as t…
Representing the Movement: SlutWalk is Misguided or Opposed
Where Chapter 4 focused on the frames and discourses used to construct SlutWalk as a movement which challenges rape culture and victim blaming, this chapter focuses on the way the movement was framed as misguided and/or opposed. This chapter pays particular attention to feminist critiques of the movement as one which plays to the male gaze, and thus is incapable of challenging patriarchal rape culture. It also focuses on the ways the movement was…
Representing the Movement: SlutWalk Challenges Rape Culture
This is the first of two chapters that explore representations of SlutWalk in both my mainstream news and feminist media samples. Both chapters were organized using the results of a frame analysis, derived with the help of a qualitative content analysis. Frames were established after asking questions such as: What is SlutWalk said to be about?; Whose voices were used?; What ‘sparked’ coverage of SlutWalk (e.g. a forthcoming march, or one which ha…
Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on the Network News , by Bonnie J. Dow
Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on Network News, by Bonnie J. Dow. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2014. xii, 239 pp. $95.00 US (cloth), $28.00 US (paper). In Watching Women's Liberation, 1970: Feminism's Pivotal Year on Network News, Bonnie J. Dow provides yet another excellent contribution to field of feminist media history. Although several chapters are based on previously published work, this book brings them …
SlutWalk: Feminism, Activism and Media
SlutWalk explores representations of the global anti-rape movement of the same name, in mainstream news and feminist blogs around the world. It reveals strategies and practices used to adapt the movem
Speaking ‘unspeakable things: Documenting Digital Feminist Responses to Rape Culture
This paper examines the ways in which girls and women are using digital media platforms to challenge the rape culture they experience in their everyday lives; including street harassment, sexual assault, and the policing of the body and clothing in school settings. Focusing on three international cases, including the anti-street harassment site Hollaback!, the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported, and interviews with teenage Twitter activists, the pap…
Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight Back Against Rape Culture
In recent years, feminists have turned to digital technologies and social media platforms to dialogue, network, and organize against contemporary sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. The emergence of feminist campaigns such as #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported, and Everyday Sexism are part of a growing trend of digital resistances and challenges to sexism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Although recent scholarship has documented the ways…
Digital Feminist Activism: Girls and Women Fight Back Against Rape Culture
From sites like Hollaback! and Everyday Sexism, which document instances of street harassment and misogyny, to social media-organized movements and communities like #MeToo and #BeenRapedNeverReported, feminists are using participatory digital media as activist tools to speak, network, and organize against sexism, misogyny, and rape culture. As the first book-length study to examine how girls, women, and some men negotiate rape culture through the…
Mapping #MeToo: A synthesis review of digital feminist research across social media platforms
A tweet by Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano using Tarana Burke’s phrase “me too” sparked a global movement. Despite the media attention #MeToo has garnered, little is known about how scholars have studied the movement. Through a synthesis review covering sources from 2006 to 2019, we learned that in this time period only 22 studies examined participation on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. We conclude that more research needs to be condu…
Sexual violence in contemporary educational contexts
It started with this one post: MeToo, India and higher education
In October 2017, Raya Sarkar, a 24-year-old law student from India, posted a crowdsourced list on Facebook of male Indian academics who allegedly harassed women. This led to the start of the #MeToo movement in India, where universities became key spaces of discussion, debate and activism. Due to failures of both the criminal justice system and the described capitalist, patriarchal, casteist structures of Indian academia, hundreds of survivors who…
Labour, media and technology: Editors' Introduction
Reclaiming Digital Intimacy for Youth: Piloting Digital Sexual Violence Workshops for Under-18s During the Covid-19 Pandemic in England and Ireland
Online sexual abuse and violence have become an urgent global problem for women and girls, and in particular for poor women, women of colour and LGBTQ women (Ging and Siapera, 2019). Online sexual harassment and abuse is an especially urgent issue for young people, for whom digital spaces are key sites of communication, identity formation, self-expression and sexual interaction. The toxic dynamics that frequently underpin these complex entangleme…
Moving beyond masculine defensiveness and anxiety in the classroom: Exploring gendered responses to sexual and gender based violence workshops in England and Ireland
Increasing rates of gender-based and sexual abuse, coupled with a rise in misogynistic influencers online, have become a growing issue in UK and Irish schools. This paper reports on the findings of a postlockdown study in England and Ireland that piloted workshops on gender-based and sexual violence. While most student responses were positive, we found that roughly 10% of girls and 20% of boys were resistant. In this paper, we explore these criti…
You Did It to Yourself”: An Exploratory Study of Myths About Gender-Based Technology-Facilitated Violence and Abuse Among Men
Gender-based technology-facilitated violence and abuse (GBTFVA) is a common experience for those engaging with digital technologies in their everyday lives. To better understand why GBTFVA persists, it is necessary to understand the false beliefs and cultural narratives that enable and sustain them. Drawing on the literature on rape myths, this paper explores the prevalence of seven gender-based online violence myths among Canadian men. To achiev…
Tinder for Teens: An in-Depth Exploration of Youth Intimate Cultures and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence on Snapchat
Snapchat has long been a pivotal space for youth digital intimate and sexual cultures, as well as gendered and sexual risks and harms. Despite being one of the most widely used social media platforms among youth in England and America, there has been little in-depth research that connects Snapchat’s unique features and affordances with an analysis of young users’ practices, behaviours, and experiences on the platform. Responding to this gap, our …
Stop Being so Fkn Soft: Masculinity, Politics, and the Acceptance of Gender-Based Online Violence Myths Among Young Canadian Men
Defining manhood is a critical concern in contemporary politics, especially due to its increasing role in shaping cultural narratives toward gender-based violence-and in particular, toward gender-based technology-facilitated violence and abuse (GBTFVA). In this context, this study investigates how political affiliation influences perceptions of GBTFVA among young Canadian men. To explore this, we draw on a survey of 1297 young Canadian men who al…
Tinder for teens: Youth digital intimate cultures and tech facilitated violence on Snapchat
Snapchat has long been a pivotal space for youth digital intimate and sexual cultures, as well as gendered and sexual risks and harms. Despite being one of the most widely used social media platforms among youth, there has been little in-depth research that connects Snapchat's unique features and affordances with young users' practices, behaviours, and experiences on the platform. Responding to this gap, our study used mixed methods to explore Br…
Sociology (20 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (19 works) · Political science (18 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Media studies (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Social Media and Politics (9 works) · Social media (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works)