Week 6: Meme Project Proposal

Memes are typically used to convey a statement or question in a humorous manner. During these weeks of exploration, especially the analysis of political events last week, I found interesting phenomena. People will express their opinions in a unique way in the memes. In particular, sexual assaults have occurred frequently in various fields in recent years, and the voice of gender equality has become more and more important in society, such as #Metoo Movement. Feminists use the meme to express their views on gender equality rights on the Internet. 

I will select memes from various fields, such as sexual assault cases of politicians, gender discrimination, and some female public figures.

Here are two examples I picked.

This meme was created based off of the comments of Republican politician Todd Akin when asked his opinion on abortion rights in the case of rape. Todd akin said, “It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” Akin later apologized for this statement, but still made it clear that he did not believe in abortion in any case.
I chose this because it is very humorous. The speech of this politician ignores gender equality and discriminates against women's legitimate rights. Feminists use a very ironic approach to criticize this statement.

This meme if from my blog last week. 
During the 2012 election campaign. On April 4, 2012, a 2-panel image containing separate photographs of President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both texting, were posted on a Tumblr blog. It imagines an exchange between the two, with Obama casually asking Clinton "whatchu doing?" to which she responds, "Running the world" There is a symmetrical juxtaposition between its verbal and visual content. Obama is relaxed, positioned as lying down while simultaneous reading and texting.
 I chose this because feminists highlight Hillary's witty, capable, independent qualities as a female politician through this meme. This is a feminist call for gender equality through the positive female image. Women have the same right to work as men at work, and even stronger.

These two memes laid the foundation for my research. Through these two memes, I saw feminists using different methods to express the right to gender equality. So I want to focus on the theme of gender to study the meme released by feminists. I want to analyze what feminism expresses through meme and what methods are used. And the impact of these memes, such as the impact on politics.