The Crunk Feminist Collective are a community of women of colour, who believe that collectivity is the answer to the limitations of the individual’s ability to live and thrive. Working together as a group of women to tackle the hardships of daily life, these women have created a strong online and offline community that ensures the emotional, spiritual and financial support of the members of the community. They believe that self-care should be used as a preface to their activism because only once a community is made up of strong individuals, can it have an impact on society at large. They make an important point that the online community can only really thrive if it is supported by an offline one, a physical community that can offer emotional support, childcare and food. Therefore, the women of the CFC congregate regularly to share support and advice with each other, be it about business or relationship advice, the CFC provide a support network of women who hold space for one another.
The CFC recognise the importance of technology as a means to reach people en masse, giving a widespread group of women the opportunity to become a part of the network. They hold google hangouts and strategy sessions to design game plans for figuring out work situations. They also blog and publicise their love for each other using their online site. They show their care for each other online by moderating the comment sections of especially contentious blog posts, ensuring that there is constant communication between members of the group. Sometimes they start a thread that simple poses the statement ‘self-care is’, to which the members of the feminist group respond and add suggestions if they feel the self-care plan offered is insufficient. Occasionally, the group disengage from the digital space altogether when it is required for their self-care.
Recognising the need to engage in an expanded cultural conversation, the Digital Humanities allows the group to use technology to ream and create carefully designed networks where they can live and thrive. The collaborative approach this group has to self-care and feminism correlates with the collectivism required in DH. The importance of working collaboratively to create something more significant than that would be created by a singular person is something that the CFC and DH have in common.
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