Practicing Freedom Through Social Media
Social media has become a platform to practice freedom and spread love
I have been coming across many social media accounts run by Women of Color and Queer people of Color that highlight activist, artist, intersectional feminist, and badass women all in hopes to empower and build a community within social media to encourage self-love and acceptability. After reading bell hooks, “Love as the Practice of Freedom” I thought about my encounter with these accounts and how social media has become a platform to practice and spread love. bell hooks says, “Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed.” Without love we cannot free ourselves and without an “ethic of love” directing our visions and aspirations it can be easy to continue to take part in the systems of domination that oppress us. Hooks claims that this has to be done in mass and justifies her argument by correlating the Civil Rights movement to a movement of love.
Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez is a Nicaraguan Latina, the 29 year-old “chonga” feminist created Latina Rebels, a source that is “empowering fully present Latinidad, one Latina at a time, by disrupting the binary expectations that are placed on Latina bodies and minds” and whose missions is “to f*ck with your colonized expectations of ‘acceptability’.” In an article written by Raquel Reichard on Prisca, she was asked several questions about Latina Rebels and the reasons behind the creation of the source. Prisca wanted to create a source because after moving to a predominantly white city she began to seek support from Latinx organizations but she never found one that she felt was right for her. She found different social media accounts that she liked but they did not contain all of the different things that she felt were in her. Prisca, “wanted news, race theory, feminisms and sucia realness” and she figured that she start something that included all that she sought after. Through Latina Rebels Prisca and the other 4 women who run the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumbler accounts have built a community of Latinas to help them not feel alone in their struggles. I related Bell Hooks’ article to this because I feel like love towards the community was a huge motivation to create a source meant to help and bring together a community of like-minded Latinas to stand against the white feminism and patriarchy. We are so often told that we are not enough, that we are not beautiful, capable, and that our identities aren’t valid so having accounts that constantly remind women that we are beautiful and that we are enough is very inspiring.
Other accounts such as #Blackandbrownunitedforchange and #xicanismo are also examples of accounts that were created to spread love, to educate and inform and to practice freedom. While some will argue that social movements are small and insignificant I believe that social media is a good place to start, to inspire change, and to love.
