Week 3 Blog Post

Ruth Osorio's article "I Am #ActuallyAutistic, Hear Me Tweet: The Autist-Topoi of Autistic Activists on Twitter" highlights the importance of categorizing topics (or topoi) discussed in movements through the use of a hashtag. The use of hashtags help establish a sense of community for several activist groups and gives them a voice to express the truth and correct the misconceptions that have been made about them. Unfortunately, the Internet, while it can be a great way to spread a message due to its accessibility and convenience, because of these factors, it can be another way to spread massive amounts of misinformation. Osorio addresses an instance of this here: "Recognizing that non-autistic people leveraged the autism tag of social media to promote topoi of erasure/violence, autistic activists created the #ActuallyAutistichashtag in 2011 to claim an autistic space for and by actually autistic people (Hillary). Though the tag originated on the blogging site Tumblr, #ActuallyAutistic writers quickly transported it and its autist-topoi to Twitter by 2012, allowing for a wider audience and greater access to public figures discussing autism (@Marikunin)." Using this hashtag can really help those in the autism community drive home the message that autism is something that should be accepted and embraced, not stigmatized, feared, or feel the need to be "cured".

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Regarding my current research on my movement, I began to look for potential testimonies from SA survivors discussing the clothes they were wearing when they were assaulted in order to drive home the point that clothes 1) do not have to be inherently "provocative" in order for someone to be assaulted and 2) a woman's means of self-expression should not be seen as an sign of seduction. Through the Google search of "me too movement what were you wearing", I found that there is actually an art exhibit called "What Were You Wearing?" that houses descriptions and displays of clothes given by SA survivors that show what they were wearing when they were assaulted. The exhibit includes a website, where you can read several of these testimonies labeled under the clothes they were wearing, some of these clothes ranging from skirts, jeans, sweats, and even a sari. I intend to use this website and the testimonies found on it for my blog post, focusing mostly on the idea of clothes in the #metoomovement and branching out to broader topics in regards to clothing.

Link to the exhibit here: https://wwyw.forestry.oregonstate.edu/