Theoretical and Social Implications of Alternative ‘Feminist’ Media: Sexual Harassment and Intersectional Advocacy in India

Introduction

It is a compelling argument that ‘critical content’ makes alternative media genuinely alternative. Critical ‘alternative’ media should vocalize the perspectives of the oppressed and the exploited (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010). In our present state of social and political ambivalence digital media frequently function as an alternative media go-to for activists and victims of systemic oppression to find solutions and safer spaces. Representations of social problems on digital media, and the public affect surrounding them, have significantly impacted contemporary users’ perceptions of such issues (Williams et al., 2021). But, for digital media to be considered alternative media that champion social justice, they must feed and circulate “critical content and/or complex form” rather than idealistic content in a “standardized form” (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 145). They should challenge and attempt to change mainstream media's exclusionary discourses or power disparities.

In India and among its transnational publics, activism and affect surrounding survival stories of sexual abuse victims have surfaced in traditional and alternative media more recently, albeit with differing degrees of blame allotted to offenders. Mainstream media like The Times of India and Economic Times and social media are exposing perpetrators and “issues of sexual abuse among the Indian elite including Bollywood celebrities, journalists, politicians, and well-known media personalities who employ Twitter as a space for “coming-out”” (Dixit, 2022; Nanditha, 2021; Pain, 2021). However, traditional media have either depoliticized the severity of these acts or not addressed the intersectional nature of the crimes, their contexts of perpetration, and the fate that befalls its victims (Mishra, 2020; Nanditha, 2021; TOI, 2018). The reasons, of course, for such journalistic censorship are complex and sometimes politically authorized or fear-mongered.

India's current sociopolitical environment has curtailed media freedom, consequently impacting the publication of critical issues such as gender-based violence [GBV] and class-caste discrimination. To uphold the Hindu conservative and right-wing leanings of the ruling party in India, many journalists, media agencies, and “critics and independent news organizations” continue to be targeted, threatened, and surveilled by the government on charges of “spurious terrorism and sedition” (HRW, 2022a). For example, the imprisonment and recent death of Stan Swamy, an “84-year-old tribal rights activist,” represents the ongoing persecution of anti-caste activists and the discrimination they expose through media reports (HRW, 2022b). Journalists, both mainstream and digital, have risked indictment “under the Information Technology Act and IT Rules of 2021 for content critical of the authorities” (HRW, 2022a). The states’ alleged use of spyware to prey on journalistic freedom and “the authorities’ frequent internet shutdowns” have impeded mainstream media's ability to function as government watchdog or to obtain and publish information to which the public has a right (HRW, 2022a). Moreover, female journalists who critique issues like GBV and sexual abuse, and are “critical of the government, face a growing backlash on social media that has included rape and death threats” (HRW, 2022a).

In the same sociopolitical climate, we also find the presence of ‘alternative’ media platforms (primarily digital) that have eluded or not been answerable to Indian mass media's gatekeeping. This media pushes content critical of oppressive systems, includes the excluded, and advocates contextually-relevant social change (family, work, community, state, patriarchy, gender, religion, class, caste). An Indian journalistic platform, and our case study for critical alternative media, is the digital zine Feminism in India or FII (feminisminindia.com) and its coverage of the #MeTooIndia movement from 2017 to 2021. The visual resources presented on FII relate to digital zines, posters, news features, and gender campaigns (#GBVinMedia, #IndianWomenInHistory, and #MyBodyMyMethod campaigns). The structure of their website is incredibly informative. It involves its audience in contemporary and critical issues using digital artifacts such as social hashtags, commentary, and hyperlinks to other news media. The top of the page features topics that relate to India and feminism. Each section contains articles that fit into each appropriate topic, including ‘culture,’ ‘health,’ ‘history,’ ‘intersectionality,’ ‘society,’ ‘videos,’ ‘podcasts,’ ‘campaigns,’ ‘resources,’ and ‘job board.’ The site also features ‘shop’ and ‘Hindi’ tabs that take readers to FII's branded merchandise E-store and its Hindi zine version, respectively. FII offers workshops, events, and resources for those who wish to get involved with the platform, and its digital community, including writers, activists, or volunteers. Additionally, the site has led large-scale studies on GBV in India. The platform's journalistic work has been acknowledged for contributing to social activism and using digital media for positive change (Manthan Award 2015, Summit Young Innovators Award 2021, SM4E Awards).

In this article, we draw on Sandoval and Fuchs’ (2010) critical theory of alternative media, and the transnational intersectionality framework (Patil, 2013; Purkayastha, 2012) to understand Feminism in India's impact as alternative media and its possibilities for polyphonous perspectives and protest opportunities. In the context of the ‘critical’ alternative media and intersectionality frames that we are applying to our critical-cultural review methodology, our article explores the following research question: What are the theoretical, sociopolitical, and change-making implications of Feminism in India or FII, mainly in the case of India and its transnational #MeToo mobilizations?

FII as Alternative ‘Feminist’ Media: Theoretical Implications

Seeing the impact of #MeToo and how it has affected women worldwide, we chose to look at one geocultural context and one digital media outlet that encourages women to be vocal about the sexual harassment they face daily. Digital media provides affective spaces for users and researchers to feed and engage with news, issues, and perspectives (including controversial and taboo topics) in monitored, moderated, trolled, or broadly open ways. In many cases, these media have become channels to break oppressive silences and advocate for organized protests. In rare cases, such media act as alternative outlets for recognizing the complex intersectionality within social issues and injustices.

Feminism in India (FII), our case in point for critical alternative media, describes itself as a “digital intersectional feminist media organisation,” that intends “to learn, educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth” (FII, 2022). For political and social movements to grow, what counts is how alternative media are structured and how “they might organize social movements through innovations in cultural form” (Hamilton, 2000, p. 373). Harcup (2003) clarifies that alternative media are known to “privilege the powerless and the marginal” (p. 371) compared to mainstream media that often advantages the powerful. Each of these journalistic forms uses “different casts of sources,” and has a different link tying consumers to sources/producers, “with alternative media sometimes blurring the lines between the two” (Atton, 2002; Harcup, 2003, p. 371). Building on Horkheimer's (2002) work on critical theory, Sandoval and Fuchs (2010) contend that for media to be considered alternate it must be critical of the “structures of oppression and exploitation” that have disenfranchised many and should advocate radical changes through “social struggles” within its content (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 146). Japleen Pasricha, who self-admittedly “smashes the patriarchy for a living,” founded FII in 2013, first as a Facebook page dedicated to the discussion of gender issues and later as an independent “one-stop platform for everything related to feminism in India” (FII, 2022).

In an interview conducted by Megan Boler, Amy Goodman, who is the host and producer of Democracy Now, an independent news program “airing on over 500 stations in North America,” explains that the way people learn about what is happening around them is through media. She argues that this mediated knowledge “cannot be about just one lens,” because there is a “power that is immeasurable in hearing someone speak for themselves” (Boler, 2008, p. 210). So, for media to be critical, change-making, and an alternative platform that is inclusive of disparate voices and is horizontally democratic for users and consumers alike, Goodman insists that “it's got to be free for all, open to all, accessible to all” (Boler, 2008, p. 210). FII's editor-in-chief Pasricha's keen interest in Indian feminist movements, as well as her frustration at the inaccessibility, cost, rigor, and largely western-POV of gender information in academic sources and media gatekeepers, led her to create FII as an alternative platform “with a vision of having easy-to-understand, accessible, popular Indian feminist content on the internet written by Indian women for Indian women” (FII, 2022).

FII provides a bilingual (English and Hindi) democratic space for citizen journalists to write candidly and critically about gender, sexualities, minorities, dis/abilities, social justice, and other issues. They also publish achievements, advocacies, and ‘Positive Stories’ in alternative formats (like the early journalism blogs Daily Kos, Instapundit, Feministe) that “challenge the media monopoly in determining what counts as newsworthy and what the narrative frame for those stories is” (Glaser, 2004, as cited in Travers-Scott, 2008, p. 276). Digital “produsers” (Bruns & Jacobs, 2006) in alternative media platforms can ideally create, curate, and critique content in ways that transcend normative systems of media censorship or gatekeeping. As a civic media forum, FII gives its ‘prosumers’ (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 145) a chance to fracture the social stigma around feminism/s. It gives its ‘produsers’ (Bruns & Jacobs, 2006) the tools to “unravel the F-word and demystify the negativity surrounding it” via categories such as “art, media, culture, technology, and community” (FII, 2022).

With its critical “media content and form,” FII extends its “ideal-typical alternative media” ideology to its team of “actors,” that is, its journalists, content creators, and stakeholders, including its editor-in-chief (English iteration), who is a practicing academic and transnational feminist. Pasricha is also an activist for “multiple women's rights NGOs in India like Breakthrough India and Point of View…[and] Freedom House, a non-profit based in the USA,” where she worked on an “advocacy campaign on gender-based violence online” (FII, 2022). “At the actor level,” as Sandoval and Fuchs (2010) explain, “ideal-typical alternative media abolish the distinction between producers and consumers” (p. 145). We find examples of this among members of the FII editorial and production team comprising individuals who have won media awards (Laadli Media Award, and Breakthrough Reframe Media Award) for groundbreaking journalistic work on marginalized communities and gender issues, who practice law and publish poetry, and are also filmmakers and digital artists (FII, 2022). Similarly, “all consumers of alternative media products can also actively engage in the production process” (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 145), as apparent from the list of FII's independent advisors. Many are guest writers and pursue diverse professions in psychotherapy, social work, policy research, gender and development, queer affirmative counseling, gender studies, and entrepreneurship. Some work in youth media organizations, and as legal counsel, while others are actors and media influencers (FII, 2022).

Further, many journalists and guest writers of our 36 sampled FII features on #MeTooIndia (except those who selected anonymity) script their multiple roles as author, curator, producer, and consumers, or as Sandoval and Fuchs’ (2010) “prosumer(s)” into their features in ways that are “critical in the sense that (s)he critically interprets existing media content and is able to produce new critical media content” (p. 145). Several FII writers share their personal and professional contexts, locations, and perspectives as authors of critical content communicated via alternative media. They write about “planning electoral campaigns for political parties,” being a “content writer for Reform The Norm,” founding “Paint It Red, an organization that aims to empower women through knowledge,” as well as “working on gender and disability rights” and serving as “probationary deputy collector” (FII, 2022). A repertoire of transnational and local experiences informs FII journalists’ intersectional writings and helps their “objective media products turn into subjective knowledge” (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 145).

Feminism in India's purpose is to “serve as a one-stop platform for everything related to feminism in India” (FII, 2022). As its mission statement explains, it is the “go-to place to find feminist resources, jobs, events in your city, cute merchandise, products related to women, research publications and much more!” (FII, 2022). Moreover, the “Become an FII Member Page” is transparent in its economic disclaimer that “it's getting tougher each day…to sustain ad-free, independent and honest feminist journalism…we are therefore launching a paid membership programme that offers premium content and benefits to our supporters,” with the promise that “Each and every membership will help sustain our work and ensure we thrive in these uncertain times” (FII, 2022). That said, why does a feminist digital news site market platform merchandise and offer paid membership deals?

The reason is an obvious, if not an exalted one. Hamilton (2000) argues that despite debates pitting alternative media into mass-mediated modes of “reproduction, amplification, and fixing,” versus communication rituals that are “better seen in cultural terms: as the creative making of a social order” (p. 361), there is no reason why they should not engage in critiques of social inequities, “nor be practiced in professionalized, corporatized forms” (p. 373). Canada's Adbusters zine, for instance, is “financed by donations and sales and has a paid circulation” of a substantially large amount, and yet is “critical of capitalism, supports social movements and calls for political activism” (Adbusters, 2009, as cited in Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 148). FII is also an alternative media platform that produces critical content. However, it does so by functioning within the same neoliberal capitalist order that sustains mainstream media in India. Thus, “alternative media at some levels can also employ capitalist techniques of media production to advance their political aims” (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 146) and bring about social change.

Over the years, FII's material and readership has evolved from English-only content focused on women's issues primed for the urban intelligentsia and liberal feminists to much more diverse content and audience. Now, they publish in both English and Hindi for an acknowledged audience of “millennial and Gen Z women and youth” (FII, 2022), as well as activists, feminists, and people across genders, urban-rural locales, and transnational borders. For alternative media like FII to make a social and political impact, “reaching a broad audience for their critical ideas is of central importance,” and essentially “depends on their ability to gain public visibility for their critical media content” (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 148). In their evolution “from a one-woman army to an awesome all-women's team of eleven, reaching a million people monthly,” FII's engagement metrics include 8000 + articles, a reach of over three million users, more than 350 videos on YouTube, and other social platforms. Their content production also includes two podcasts, over 50 campaigns on social problems, 80% mobile traffic, and a community of citizen journalists that has crossed 1000 members (FII, 2022).

Jennifer Rauch (2007) outlines a salient observation about alternative media producers who may “either have a non-commercial/non-profit orientation” or decide to “designate themselves alternative” (p. 996), much like FII, whose “mission is to increase the representation of Indian women and marginalised communities on the internet and amplify their concerns using tools of digital storytelling” (FII, 2022). Similar research on alternative ‘critical’ media argues that its form and function hinge on its “critiques of mainstream media” (Atton, 2002; Rauch, 2007, p. 996). Alternative media in our present social milieu (activist news media, news blogs, and nonprofit media organizations) should function ideologically, intersectionally, and altruistically as “institutions of counter-information and agents of developmental power, with goals of socio-political action as well as communication of facts or opinions” (Atton, 1999; Downing, 2001; Rauch, 2007, p. 996). We find this attribute in sites like FII, in how they report on social/gender injustices (India's #MeToo narratives), and in their claim that they are an “intersectional feminist media organization…[who] aim to create a generation of young people that are aware and educated about feminism and social justice” (FII, 2022).

Empowering sexual assault survivors to speak up and seek justice has long been a transnational feminist effort and is not exclusive to North America's #MeToo movement. Transnational feminist intersectionality encourages “cross-regional research and theoretical exchange [that] can actually assist in producing relevant instruments for locating and embracing urgent issues in the transnational feminist context” (Milevska, 2011, p. 52). This approach seems a timely and critical framework for theorizing the transnational reach and global circulation of social movements like #MeToo, and their local iterations on alternative media platforms, including Feminism in India. Typically, intersectionality and transnationalism are considered mutually exclusive (Falcon & Nash, 2015), but more recent research has explored their ontological overlaps (Patil, 2013).

Purkayastha (2012) explains how nation-states have expanded their abilities to control people within transnational spaces and how by controlling people within these liminal spaces, other ideologies that sustain gender within nations have expanded in new ways and across borders. Thus, transnational spaces can now exist across multiple venues: geographical and virtual (Purkayastha, 2012). Transnational feminists argue that “several categories of race, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, nation, and gender not only intersect, but are mutually constituted and transformed within transnational power-laden processes such as European imperialism, and colonialism” (Patil, 2013, p. 848).

Patil (2013) surmises how patriarchy plays a crucial role in this transnational process. However, Patil also points out that a critical factor is missing from research on patriarchy that is translocally positioned. This missing factor is the “potential and actual interrelationships of historically and geographically specific patriarchies to such transterritorial and transnational processes” (Patil, 2013, p. 848). To understand such historically and geographically specific patriarchies that support and sustain the endemic of sexual violence against Indian women, it is imperative to understand the contexts and norms that have historically othered these women at home and in society (Haq, 2013; Patil, 2013). The goal of FII, as an alternative critical medium, is to expose such historical and geographical factors that intersect within local contexts of transnational movements like MeToo “with the vision of dismantling patriarchy and social injustice by centering the voices of those that these structures oppress” (FII, 2022).

Intersectionality is not so much a feminist theory (with roots in Black feminism, and the works of Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, and others) as it is a pedagogical, practical, and critical-cultural paradigm with diverse applications across diverse contexts of social and structural injustices. The advantage of adopting an intersectional framework to make sense of discrete instances or systems of oppression, or in this case, sexual harassment against Indian women in the wake of the MeToo movement, is to understand how women experience womanhood and “various interlocking oppressions differently in different contexts” (Samuels & Ross-Sheriff, 2008, p. 6). Paying attention to the complexity and uniqueness of experiences women of color go through, in this case, Indian women and their unfiltered stories of sexual harassment digitized in an alternative media platform, create more room for a deeper analysis of the oppression they experience in their lives. When it comes to harassment and misogyny affecting women of color, it bears notice that transnational intersectional “feminist efforts are simultaneously embedded and woven into their efforts against racism, classism, and other threats to their access to equal opportunities and social justice” (Samuels & Ross-Sheriff, 2008, p. 6).

Digital activism is a critical communication tool for connective publics to advocate for inclusion, intersectionality, and diverse perspectives within participatory and dialogic spaces, as seen with hashtivisms such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter (Jackson, 2016). The opening of social spaces and democratic opportunities that facilitate grassroots activism, affective publics, counterpublic discourses, and digital journalism has allowed “marginalized voices to become influential online in ways that may not have been possible before” (Jackson & Welles, 2015, p. 935). Alternative media in these contexts, as Rauch (2007) claims, “play an important role in educating and mobilizing activists and that activists comprise a significant portion of the audience for alternative media” (p. 997).

Alternately, Yang's (2016) contention that online activism “happens in social and political context, [so] its forms may vary when contexts change,” prompts us to be cautious and assess if alternative critical media are indeed ‘critical’ or ‘alternative’ in their reporting of social issues, without risking a slip into clicktivism. There is also the risk of limited reach with alternative media, according to research that reveals “activist groups use more alternative media than non-members do” (Boyle, 2005, as cited in Rauch, 2007, p. 997). Despite such warnings against online activism (#MeToo, #TimesUp) and doubt about its ability to create real change, one thing that is real is the wake-up call that alternative media (for example, Twitter, Instagram, and Korea's OhmyNews) have raised for a society that hinges on technological consumption (Jackson, 2016; Kim & Hamilton, 2006; Mukherjee, 2021; Yang, 2016). The same research that limits the public reach of alternative media also shows that compared to non-activists, social activists use mainstream media much more. The latter group presents the “‘most-likely case:’ most likely to interpret the messages of mainstream news in a critical or resistant manner and most likely to have consumed alternative news sources that informed their opposition” (Boyle, 2005; Rauch, 2007, p. 997). It is through this ‘critical’ and ‘resistant’ consumption of mainstream and alternative news and the “attention to the material, spatial, and temporal impacts of social conflicts” (Jackson, 2016, p. 378) curated by alternative media at key moments and in intersectional fora like Feminism in India, that we are also examining in our work.

#MeToo and Sexual Harassment in India

The #MeToo movement gained recognition on social media starting in October 2017. Yet, it took a decade, and a slew of celebrity interventions across media and on-the-ground, for it to accrue social awareness on a global scale. American activist Tarana Burke, who pushed the MeToo moment back in 2006 for her work with young Black victims of sexual violence, admires how the hashtag had successfully created “empowerment through empathy” for its othered survivors (Parker, 2017). In India, Sengupta reports that along with “angry protests, stories spilled out from ordinary Indian women…about degradation they had been too ashamed to speak of before…to file police reports after they had been assaulted…[and] The country was being forced to listen” (2017). This became, in a sense, India's initiation into the #MeToo mo[ve]ment. The soft power of Bollywood, India's influential media, music, and movie hub, marshaled the nation's engagement with #MeToo. Many performers, models, and journalists spoke of their sexual harassment and called out their harassers, including Indian celebrities, and media, music, and film stalwarts.

Justice on systemic levels for rape and sexual crimes is still a far cry, despite courts legislating capital penalty in some cases. Indian law enforcement is mostly “reluctant to initiate criminal investigations, particularly if the victim's family is considered to be low on the caste ladder” (Sengupta, 2017). Health providers continue subjecting survivors to “degrading examinations,” and victims of sexual assault report being regularly “shamed in court” (Sengupta, 2017). Sexual harassment is a public crisis, and a “social and cultural problem” (Johnson-Hostler & O’Neil, 2018). Depoliticizing its incidence or criminality is unjust to its victims and limits changes in policies and laws that should address the intersectionality of such injustices.

The “power of culture in a culture of power” adds to the sexual oppression women face in professional and public spaces exacerbated by mainstream media's sexist framing of such issues (Pain, 2021; Pazzanese & Walsh, 2017). Power is understood and appropriated differently by men and women in the workplace, with the former often associating sexual conquest with the acquisition of power and status, including the use of coercion (Pazzanese & Walsh, 2017). American attorney Catharine MacKinnon, who in the late 1970s labeled the abuse women were facing at work as sexual harassment, confirms that it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Basu, 2003). MacKinnon later shared her take on #MeToo affirming her admiration for “the brilliance, heart, and grit of all the survivors who are speaking out and reflecting on their experiences of sexual violation, and being listened to…given decades of stonewalling and recalcitrance and siding with abusers” (Pazzanese & Walsh, 2017).

In India, sexism, sexual assault and sexual harassment have repeatedly and regrettably been combined or confused. Advocates and scholars often turn to western legal policies and interventions to address Indian cases of sexual harassment against women in the workplace. The laws addressing sexual assault and harassment and their consequences are Sections 354, 354A, and 509 of The Indian Penal Code (IPC). For example, section 354 of the IPC has outlined sexual assault as:

Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty…Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any woman…shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than one year, but which may extend to five years, and shall also be liable to fine (Sharma, 2015).

These generic punitive steps do not address the assault's situation, nor do the legal descriptions list the types of sexual harassment women do/can encounter in Indian workplaces or other spaces. Indian law blogger, Smriti Sharma (2015), points to the relative progress in society's acceptance of this crime and its legal parlance that assures “intention of the accused is the crux of the matter.” However, the author also alludes to IPC's trepidation about defining workplace harassment and their veiled attempt to place its burden on female victims via their legal claim that the “essence of her modesty is her sex” (Sharma, 2015).

In India and other countries where sexual violence against women is endemic, abusers commonly adopt a tactic called DARVO. It is a social-psychological acronym coined by Jennifer Freyd, who describes it as a process to ‘Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender’ status. It exposes the power discrepancies in our heteronormative legal, social, and media systems that grant males the entitlement to deflect blame by shaming their abusers instead (Pazzanese & Walsh, 2017). Be it an influential American woman like Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony against Brett Kavanaugh's sexual misconduct, or Indian activists’ appeals to capitally punish the rapists of Jyoti Singh, the college student who was brutally gang-raped on a Delhi public bus, the ethical burden is sadly still borne by the Fords and Singhs of our misogynist societies.

FII and India's #MeToo Coverage: Social Implications of Critical Media Content

Our critical review of this case study considers alternative social and theoretical implications of selective data ¹ from an ongoing textual analysis of 36 news articles from FII (2017–2021). We are performing this exploratory critique as part of a pilot thematic analysis that offers intersectional themes related to India's #MeToo movement and sexual harassment against Indian women. The most salient theme, for our current purpose, addresses how traditional and digital media have simultaneously empowered and taken power away from women and sexual abuse survivors/victims. On the topic of India's #MeToo movement, several FII articles uncover the sanctioning of sexual harassment in mainstream news, music, TV, movies, and mature media content that is “heavily directed towards the male gaze…[and] propagate non-consensual sex, rape, torture, abuse, slavery, confinement, humiliation, suppression, and more often than not, pain,” endorsing the incidence of sexual abuse against Indian women (FII Team, 2018).

In contrast, newer media, and OTT platforms in India (Netflix, Hulu, Hotstar) are experimenting with alternative content that push normative boundaries regarding topics (gender, sexuality, class, caste, dis/ability, politics), genres, and modes of representation and dissemination. These include films, streaming, and web series like Mai, Family Man, The Fame Game, Aranyak, The White Tiger, Jalsa, and Panchayat. Many FII articles in our sample review, reflect, and critique media texts that politicize sexual harassment or somehow fall short. For example, praising media creator Sumukhi Suresh's “contributions to ‘unstereotyping’ media” in the Indian context, an FII author talks about the Amazon Prime series Pushpavalli that is not only “emblematic of a new era of relatable, honest, realistic Indian television…With respect to the #MeTooIndia movement,” but also “fills two gaps in the Indian screen. First, it gives us a strong, central female character. And secondly, it shatters the romance of stalking that 90s and 2000s cinema has normalised” (Sastry, 2018).

In digital discussions on #MeTooIndia, most FII articles functioned as alternative ‘critical’ media for activism by mobilizing transnational movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp on social media. #TimesUp, according to Johnson-Hostler and O’Neil (2018), has opened a different kind of polyphonous space compared to #MeToo, where women publicly share their stories of being sexually targeted in the workplace. It is an act of power that has proved “both painful and therapeutic,” and from “a communications lens…We’re having regular public conversations about sexual violence in which systems of inequality are central. And we are putting forth strategies to fix these systems” (Johnson-Hostler & O’Neil, 2018).

Alternative media is considered radically critical of societal structures, unlike mainstream media's perspectival bias and censorship politics, and it advances an “alternative vision to hegemonic politics, priorities and perspectives” (Downing, 2001, p. v). The impact of media on the creation of awareness and interventions around sexual harassment emerged as a critical and repeating theme across the sample of FII articles. This theme, as collectively understood from the diverse perspectives of FII journalists/authors, can be described as the critical role media needs to play to increase awareness about the systemic nature of sexual harassment in India, to curate and provide resources to support its survivors, victims, and advocates, as well as to offer feminist solutions to curtail its incidence in the wake of India's #MeToo movement.

Social media by architecture is participatory. For it to be considered alternate and critical, it must comprise politically impactful “media communication that avowedly reject[s] or challenge[s] established and institutional politics, in the sense that they all advocate change in society, or at least a critical reassessment of traditional values” (O’Sullivan, 1994, p. 10; Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010). In the case of the FII sample of articles featuring #MeToo mobilizations in India (2017–2021), the theme of media awareness and interventions emerges as genuinely intersectional. It addresses complex interventional needs, including the need to challenge structures that support sexual harassment, misogyny, and patriarchy. The theme includes a call for male allies committed to dismantling systemic gender abuse and for female supporters to help the cause. We found examples of digital support for victims’ fight for survival against harassment and demands for perpetrator responsibility, within this category. Academic interventions, including calls to politicize India's #MeToo movement and adapting radical and global frameworks like Black feminist epistemology, deontological vs. utilitarian ethics, and feminist economics, are seen in the FII sample as intersectional practices to mitigate harassment in Indian workplaces and public spaces. We found evidence of alternative media creators asking Indian institutions and industry to be accountable and impart legal redress in cases of sexual abuse and the need for Indian social structures to prioritize women's rights across class, caste, religion, age, ability, and status.

Citing Karl Marx's assertion that “To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter,” in his religious and political critique of Hegel's “Philosophy of Right,” Sandoval and Fuchs (2010) surmise that for alternative media to make a radical impact it should “contribute to emancipatory societal transformation by providing critical media content, content that questions dominative social relations” (p. 147). An FII journalist uses a radical and intersectional frame to disclose the “performativity aspect of toxic masculinity [that] rests on the idea of showcasing gender expression through the oppression of women” (Mehta, 2019). In their FII exposé, Mehta uncovers how such “superstructures of toxic masculinity masquerading with misogyny as ‘manhood’ are very destructive for women and men…they make women extremely uncomfortable…it's a complete negation of physical and emotional autonomy” (2019).

Other FII journalists contextualize the institutional and sexual control of Indian women who are muted, blamed, and othered for crimes committed on their bodies and souls. These include Indian society's denial that sexual harassment is a punishable offense and the public's apathy toward criminalizing it (Amber, 2018). Moreover, an FII writer urgently pleas that “as long as our private, familial, and socio-cultural circles keep associating an abstract notion of traditional honour with women's sexualities, the living, breathing, physical manifestation of the women around us will continue to be sexually objectified and victimized” (Joshi, 2020).

FII journalists, guest writers, and gender activists do not just stop at recounting their own or others’ survivor tales of sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement, using intersectional perspectives. We believe FII meets Sandoval and Fuchs’ (2010) caveat that alternative media are “critical producers that objectify their subjective critical consciousness into objective, critical media content that is distributed and can be consumed” (p. 147). FII does this by equipping free, accessible, and bilingual (Hindi and English) digital resources, media toolkits, online and in-person workshops, and critical-legal interventions for survivors, stakeholders, and advocates of systemic sexual oppression.

The “objective critical media content” facilitated by FII and its journalists contain instructional resources for Indian women (and the systems that oppress them) to counter harassment and seek justice, including adopting “gender sensitization” policies in workplaces instead of “gender segregation” (FII, 2018). FII writers advocate increasing representation and empowerment of women in industries and professions where they have been historically undervalued (FII, 2018). The fact that “Alternative media are critical media” (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 147) is evident in the FII team's sharing of resources and spaces (digital/offline) that help to voice, make visible, and support women afflicted by sexual harassment. Examples given are The Alternative Story, an “affordable, intersectional feminist, caste-aware, trauma-informed, and kink-aware” digital platform (FII, 2018; The Alt/ernative Story, 2022), and Feminism In India, which “amplifies the voices of women and marginalised communities using tools of art, media, culture, technology, and community” (FII, 2022). Research on critical media content indicates that it is primarily the “alternative press [that] frames social protest sympathetically, casting a positive light on activists” (Rauch, 2007, p. 996; Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010). Almost all #MeTooIndia articles published by FII identified ‘#MeToo’ as a reflective digital moment that made a woman's storytelling of abuse visible and their victim-activist agency central, unlike mainstream media reports that play to the politics of patriarchy and the powerful. Moreover, critically reflecting on the transnational, intersectional intervention that social movements like #MeToo have piloted globally and in India, an FII writer declares:

It is only now that these survivors have the means and the standing to expose their harassers…[and] the #MeToo stories being recounted on social media range from sexually inappropriate behaviour to brutal rape…any movement that encourages women to come to the forefront with their survivors’ stories cannot be detrimental to the cause of women empowerment along the entire socio-economic spectrum. (Amber, 2018)

Discussion

Digital media are the modern machines for connective publics and social hashtivisms. There are no spaces more alternative to share stories, issue call-outs, promote intersectional news telling, and resist systemic oppressions to sustain transnational movements like #MeToo. Alternative media can be participatory, as most social media are, but that does not inevitably render them critical spaces for news ‘prosumption’ (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010). As Harcup explains, the “‘interpretive communities’” of “producers, sources and readers” that make up alternative storytelling media have the power to transgress dominant media frames. Such media can offer “access to alternative voices, alternative arguments, alternative sets of ‘facts,’ and alternative ways of seeing” (Harcup, 2003, p. 371). Since “critical media content should be used as minimum requirement for defining alternative media” (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 148), we reason that Feminism in India is an alternative media platform. In response to our research question exploring the theoretical, sociopolitical, and change-making implications of Feminism in India, mainly in the case of India and its transnational #MeToo mobilizations, we concur that FII is a ‘critical’ journalistic site that democratizes gender-diverse narratives and introduces much-needed critical ruptures within India's politically-pandered and patriarchally-primed mainstream media.

In “deeply patriarchal societies” like India that celebrate non-disclosure of sexual violence and legitimize cultures of victim-blaming and shaming, it is only “when acts of extreme violence shock us to the core, do we look up and instead of despairing, we speak. We tell our stories to each other” (Sengupta, 2017). These are the critical and intersectional stories that authors, survivors, and activists of India's #MeToo movement have been telling using alternative media platforms like Feminism in India. Their goal is to reclaim agency, empower each other, and collectively survive the social-emotional toll of systemic sexual oppression. Moreover, as an alternative news repository, FII informs its audience about local nuances of a global movement like #MeToo using a transnational intersectional lens. It is a lens that critiques the cultural systems that create conditions of gender/sexual oppression in India and understands the ‘transterritorial and transnational processes’ (Patil, 2013; Purkayastha, 2012) that isolate and set them apart from the movement's international iterations.

Media promotes democratic participation, distribution, and consumption “when they themselves become more accessible and more accountable” and “when they put out more information and when they work hard to ensure accuracy” (Moeller, 2008, p. 185). Feminism in India, on its own admission, has critically, intersectionally, and “tirelessly created long-form stories, videos, podcasts, comics, infographics that have helped make feminism engaging and relevant to millennial and Gen Z women and youth” (FII, 2022). Our focus in this article is on reassessing selective data from an in-progress textual analysis that explores the function and scope of digital media like FII in reporting intersectional themes and mobilizing change for injustices like sexual abuse, and we concur with their mission statement. To echo Harcup's (2003) idea, the tools, locations, and language for advocating social issues will vary as time passes. However, the presence of “counter-hegemonic journalism in alternative media,” like FII, shows us that “there are alternative ways of seeing the world and other stories to be told” (Harcup, 2003, p. 372). The critical content and alternative format of FII operate much like Sandoval and Fuchs’ (2010) “ideal-typical alternative media” (p. 145). By disclosing alternative content that critique transnational intersections of misogyny and the social conditions that trigger sexual trauma for Indian women, Feminism in India has helped us recognize the structural and mediated muting and censuring that has long oppressed its survivors, activists, and interventionists.