online public shaming as a feminist practice for social change,a double-edged sword for fighting gender violence: the case of the ‘feminist funa ’ in Chile

Abstract

This research investigates the political practices of online public shaming (funa) with regard to gender violence in Chile and their ability to trigger feminist social change. The central argument is that funa, as a feminist practice, offers a problematic pathway to social change, which, despite contributing to denaturalising violence against women, does not address the structural causes of gender violence. Online public shaming, as a feminist practice and strategy for change, triggers critical moral and social dilemmas, generating a questionable feminist transformation. The research explores those dilemmas, presenting the advances and setbacks of this practice in current feminist movements globally and in Chile. It contributes to the reflection on feminist movements in terms of their ability to trigger social change.

Keywords

feminist movements gender violence online public shaming social change Chile

Introduction

In Chile, to refer to the old practice of public shaming, we use the word ‘funa’, which comes from Mapudungun (the Mapuche language) and means the act of decomposition or ‘to rot’ (Muñoz, 2005). Funa, as a social practice, has historically been used to reject or express repudiation against a person, group or institution that has committed an act perceived as contrary to the social norms (Schmeisser, 2019). It is a public complaint that aims to seek justice. The origin of funas in Chile is related to groups of relatives of political prisoners who were tortured and disappeared under the Pinochet dictatorship. During the 1990s, these groups would meet at the house or workplace of the accused to blame them socially, publishing critical information about the case (Gahona, 2003). The purpose of funas was to ‘compensate’ the lack of effective justice in matters of torture, murder and human rights violations. In those times, funas were carried out by formal groups, such as Comisión Funa,¹ who through a process of information review and collective deliberation, applied this social sanction in cases in which they considered that the courts had not provided justice (Schmeisser, 2019). In doing so, they were aiming to look for justice, generating social reflection through defending the victims’ rights (Comisión Funa, 2020). Over time, funas expanded to other social complaints, and with the technological revolution their online version became a widespread tool for activism, making it a low-cost, anonymous, instant and often ubiquitous practice (Klonik, 2016) used against companies, the state, public institutions and also individuals.

During recent years, funa has become a very common practice in Chile. However, this recent online version has a certain distance from the funa regarding human rights. The current version is an ‘over-determined punishment with indeterminate social meaning’ (Klonik, 2016, p. 1032) that works individually, spontaneously and without collective deliberation. Each individual performs their funa autonomously, without necessarily mediating a previous social reflection (Aillapan, 2014; Schmeisser, 2019), normally finding important support from digital audiences, who join the social complaint by ‘liking it’ and sharing it.

Online public shaming as a feminist practice has become a global phenomenon in current feminist movements, which have created global campaigns against sexual harassment and gender violence. Examples of this are #MeToo, #Cuéntalo in Spain and #MiPrimeracoso in Latin America, where millions of women recalled their experiences of harassment or sexual abuse, giving their testimonies and also publicly accusing the victimiser. In Chile, feminist funas focused on gender violence and sexual harassment (which is the focus of this research) began as a common practice in 2015 and became widespread in 2018 within the feminist university revolution. Over time, the use of funa against gender violence became more popular, leaving the university sphere and spreading across society, especially among new generations of activists. During the last years, funa has become a common practice for feminist activism, as a way to protest against and denounce gender violence and to search for gender justice.

This research aims to critically reflect on this feminist practice of online public shaming in the context of Chile, exploring the practice’s justifications, contradictions and ability to trigger social change. The article argues that funa, as a feminist practice, proposes a problematic path to social change, which, despite contributing to denaturalising gender violence and denouncing individual cases, does not address the structural causes of gender violence. Funa, as a feminist practice and strategy for change, triggers critical moral and social dilemmas that generate a questionable feminist transformation. In doing so, this article aims to contribute to global debates on feminist movements in Latin America and to analyse current feminist practices at a global level.

Funa as a feminist practice: a theoretical framework to situate the research

Public shaming can be understood as a practice that implies a stigmatisation trial: a group of citizens condemn a person or group of people for failing to comply with a social norm or ideal (Nussbaum, 2004). Martha Nussbaum (2004) differentiates between shame and guilt, referring to their difference in their scale, whereby shame is understood as a totalising judgement while guilt is proportional to the act committed (also see Adkins, 2019). In being shamed, the individual recognises the legitimacy of the community and remains ‘marked’ because of it (ibid.). Thus, public shaming is a practice established from a moral judgement (Nussbaum, 2004; Adkins, 2019; Billingham and Parr, 2020), where informal public enforcement is imposed against a person who has broken a social norm (Pundak, Steinhart and Goldenberg, 2021).

As mentioned previously, during the last few years, the historical practice of public shaming has seen a global transformation thanks to the technological revolution. Social media platforms have become spaces for a new version of the traditional practice, reshaping its characteristics, aims, limits and possibilities. The internet has expanded audiences, decentralised the practice and made it more accessible, amplifying its uses (Billingham and Parr, 2020; Pundak, Steinhart and Goldenberg, 2021). Online public shaming has become a ‘common’ tool to publicly accuse individuals, brands, offices and social leaders (Jacquet, 2015). Through a global audience’s ‘retweets’ or ‘shares’, individuals spread the practice globally, seeking to punish someone and enforce a social norm (Solove, 2007). Consequently, the crowd on Twitter has become the traditional ‘town square’ (Pundak, Steinhart and Goldenberg, 2021), amplifying the scope and effects of this practice.

Online public shaming: the moral dilemmas of an extended practice

Generally, the main debate around public shaming has been around the moral dilemma of citizens taking the law into their own hands and breaking the agreement on shifting the role of judgement and punishment judgements to a qualified third party (Nussbaum, 2004).

The online version of public shaming has expanded these debates and deepened the associated moral dilemmas. Globally, online public shaming has become a spontaneously expanded practice generating a form of digital activism for denouncing and expressing discomfort. Its widespread use and decentralised nature have led to this practice becoming a means to morally reform society (Direk, 2020). As Jon Ronson (2015) analyses, the use of Twitter as a democratising tool that gives a voice to the voiceless has proven to be a double-edged sword: online public shaming has become a powerful but coercive and borderless tool with growing influence. Paul Billingham and Tom Parr (2020) propose a framework composed of five dimensions to reflect on whether an act of online public shaming is morally justifiable or not. The five dimensions are:

(1) proportionality in social punishment;

(2) necessity, meaning that there is no other possible alternative for obtaining justice;

(3) privacy, requiring that the punishment respects the privacy rights of the ‘wrongdoer’;

(4) non-abusiveness, not allowing threats of violence (even if they are empty threats and not perceived as credible) towards or mockery of the person;

(5) reintegration of the transgressor (online shaming cannot imply a permanent social exclusion).

Based on their study, the authors concluded that given the internet’s decentralised nature, it is difficult (if not impossible) to control the effects of this practice (ibid.). Online public shaming operates autonomously under decentralised and dispersed principles that make it deeply problematic since it is not possible to control the outcome (therefore, it is usually disproportionated); it tends to disrespect people’s privacy (as it involves personal information), and thus it may easily become doxing since personal information can be used to harass, intimidate or blackmail the targets (Billingham and Parr, 2020; Eckert and Metzger-Riftkin, 2020).

Online public shaming can easily exceed its authors’ intentions (Norlock, 2017), becoming an abusive space that can trigger cyberbullying, grievous violence and even murder or rape, due to its large-scale audiences (Billingham and Parr, 2020; Pundak, Steinhart and Goldenberg, 2021). The literature has shown that online public shaming is a morally questionable practice since it does not allow for nuance or reflection, and it is not possible to control the consequences for the transgressor. Moreover, its widespread use never incorporates mechanisms to reintegrate the wrongdoer or the opportunity for more contextual analysis (Billingham and Parr, 2020). It is a social practice in which the shamer can assume a moral position of superiority only for their role as the victim, often not considering possible explanations or a space for dialogue (Direk, 2020).

Online shaming as a tool for social change: feminist movements fighting against gender violence

However, and despite extensive reflections on the moral problems of online shaming, for many scholars and citizens this practice is not simply a moral act but also an effective political tool for vulnerable groups who are disadvantaged in the search for social change (Jacquet, 2015). From this perspective, online shaming can effectively democratise and empower actors to pursue social justice (Mielczarek, 2018; Clark, 2019). In doing so, it can be a tool that enables social problems, such as sexist violence, to be made visible, generating support and even modifying cultural approaches to those topics (Pecheny, Zaidan and Lucaccini, 2019). For some authors, public shaming is understood as a constructive tool to overcome oppression that can be used only under certain conditions (Adkins, 2019). Empirical research has shown that when used as a tool to challenge authoritarian regimes, online shaming can help resist state persecution (Direk, 2020). Effective shaming stigmatises wrongful actions and challenges incoherencies or the breakdown of social norms (Jacquet, 2015). However, nowadays, this practice is being used under democratic regimes, opening up a more complex and highly debatable strategy for transforming society (Adkins, 2019).

As described previously, current feminist movements have played a relevant role in using this practice as a means to bring about social change. Worldwide, women have recognised themselves as victims and are seeking to shame the men who have committed abusive acts of physical violence, sexual abuse and rape (Pecheny, Zaidan and Lucaccini, 2019). Online public shaming in regard to gender violence can be interpreted as a symptom of a broken legal system where victims of gender violence frequently do not achieve justice through institutional judicial processes (Atwood, 2018). However, the struggle to justify mob justice has critical limits and risks, as it threatens the rule of law (Lamas, 2018). As a result, and from a feminist perspective, it becomes a practice crossed by social, political and moral tensions.

The first tension is related to the debate about punitive feminism and the use of punishment as a means to trigger social change. A punitive system imposes sanctions on the perpetrator as a way to achieve justice and social change and, therefore, allow reparation for the victim (Huarte, 2019). From a feminist perspective, this has been the subject of extensive debate and criticism (Bodelón, 1998), since it may imply a homogenisation of experiences of violence (Trebisacce, 2016) and the essentialisation of women (Pitch, 2003), without facing the structural causes of gender violence and patriarchal domination (Segato, 2020). Moreover, for some authors punitive feminism has even contributed to strengthening the patriarchal scheme through a ‘prison turn’, amplifying state violence and limiting the solution to punishment, rather than considering prevention (Lamas, 2016). Online shaming against gender violence can be understood as a non-institutional form of punitive feminism, since it aspires to a social transformation by excluding a community member, without allowing a space for guarantees, graduation and learning (López, 2019). A critical perspective on this strategy for change has questioned the effectiveness of prisons and the ability of punishments to transform society and generate social justice (Davis, 2017; Sepúlveda, 2019; Segato, 2020).

Complementarily, scholars have pointed out that online shaming with regard to gender violence is a practice that may intensify and strengthen the position of women as victims, risking the reification of victimhood to the detriment of their condition as subjects of law (Pecheny and Dehesa, 2014). From a feminist perspective, gender violence represents a dimension of a structural political problem (Lamas, 2018): it is the consequence of a patriarchal system that mandates a specific social role for men and women (Segato, 2020), making the lives of women and vulnerable individuals unliveable (Butler, 2002). Although it is critical to recognise the magnitude of the problem of violence and the reality of many individuals as victims, the search for social change through the position of women as victims has been the focus of important debates (Lamas, 2018). While feminist claims centred on the victim’s position have generated significant achievements and positive results in terms of the political agenda, legal reforms and even social approaches to this phenomenon (Pecheny, Zaidan and Lucaccini, 2019), this strategy is rather limited, risks essentialism and may reduce the complexity of a historical-cultural issue (Lamas, 2018). Victims acquire a space of privilege and recognition without being asked for any proof of veracity, reinforcing their identity as victims (ibid.) and establishing men as the enemy without really confronting the structural causes related to a patriarchal system that generates gender violence and injustice (Segato, 2020). While effective in punishing someone, this practice is rather limited in solving the structural problem of gender violence. As a result, there is a risk of constraining the understanding of, and possible solutions to, this complex and deep sociopolitical problem (gender violence), transforming it into a ‘fight’ between two people and reducing it to a personal/private matter (Pecheny, Zaidan and Lucaccini, 2019).

The feminist tsunami: contextualising the feminist funa into the Chilean context

There are critical reasons why Chile is an interesting case for studying online public shaming as a feminist practice of current movements.

Historically, the literature recognises three main feminist waves that operated globally, in Latin America (LA) and also in the Chilean context. The first wave of suffrage focused on formal citizenship, where women claimed civil and political rights (Pieper-Mooney, 2020). The second wave in LA is identified by women’s confrontation with dictatorships and authoritarian regimes (Baldez, 2003). In the case of Chile, this moment marked one of the most substantial periods for feminist action (Franceschet and Macdonald, 2004), since women from different social grounds fought together for human rights, questioning gender roles and the private/public division (Jelin, 2003; Donoso and Valdes, 2009; Haas, 2010; Guerrero, 2014; Waylen, 2016; Sepúlveda, 2018, 2019). Under the slogan ‘democracy in the country and democracy in the house’ and by implementing multiple practices, women became a strong social force that played a crucial role in questioning the dictatorship, contributing to the return of a democratic system (Baldez, 2003). A third wave can be situated at the end of the 1980s and is related to the political period of the transition to democracy, where feminist advocacy entered mainstream politics and policies, triggering institutional transformation and policy changes.

Globally, current feminism has entered a different phase characterised by a new generation, marked by the diversity of multiple feminist approaches and renewed political tools (Molyneux et al., 2021). The fourth wave of feminism has become a massive phenomenon that has reached multiple spaces of society (Alvarez, 2019), and Chile has taken a leading role in organising forces and proposing tools for global activism (Varela, 2020). The ‘Chilean feminist tsunami’ began with #Niunamenos in 2016, and then exploded through the ‘Feminist May’ in 2018 with a massive outburst in the university sphere, amplifying the feminist field of action and converting feminism into a crucial space for political activation (Follegati, 2018; Richard, 2018). In this context, funas focused on gender violence and sexual harassment began as a popular practice among young generations and became huge in 2018 in the university feminist revolution. Thousands of students used social networks to perform funas against teachers, classmates or people associated with the university. During those years, students and activists employed their own social network accounts and also created specific web pages and shared groups on Facebook to publish the names of transgressors and funados (men who have been prevoiusly shamed), producing a ‘public repository’ of transgressors (see Román and Retamal, 2019).

The Feminist May was a massive eruption mainly led by new generations that were implementing new practices, such as the feminist funas. In fact, despite a dialogue among both generations during 2018 and a certain degree of continuity to the feminist action of the dictatorship, this new wave (which has, on many occasions, been called the ‘feminism of the daughters’) proposed new ways of understanding the feminist actor and strategies for fighting feminism (Follegati, 2018). As this research will explore, these differences also generated tensions between feminist generations. Nonetheless, the Feminist May of 2018 transformed Chilean universities in multiple ways, affecting their culture, curriculum and organisational structure (Fernández and Moreno, 2019). Multiple universities developed a gender violence protocol, appointed Secretaries of Sexuality and Gender to deal with possible cases and also incorporated a ‘feminist’ revision of the curriculum (Blanco and Chechilnitzky, 2018). Moreover, its influence was not limited to the university sphere since the Feminist May forced a government reaction. Through an improvised response, Sebastián Piñera’s government called itself a ‘feminist government’ and generated a ‘Women’s Agenda’, with twenty-one proposals, of which eighteen had already been included in his initial government programme. Based on liberal feminism, this agenda was limited and deeply criticised by the movements because it was seen as declarative and did not confront the causes of gender violence and inequality (Reyes-Housholder and Roque, 2019).

Following the Feminist May in 2018, feminist funa started to become a generalised practice among women and feminist activists. In 2019, the Chilean outbreak exploded, triggering an exceptional national social outburst, which gave an account of a history of excesses, social disenchantment, irritations and detachment (Araujo, 2019). In this context of generalised unrest, feminist movements took centre stage, with enormous demonstrations against state gender violence through the performance Un violador en tu camino of Las Tesis,² adding a feminist perspective to the social crisis and aiming to transform the social fight into a feminist struggle (Hiner and Dietz, 2020), as this quote expresses:

Feminists are the ones who are leading the popular assemblies, the soup kitchen and the debates in poor neighbourhoods. We are the ones who are raising the fight […] like Las Tesis, who gave meaning to the outbreak, a feminist meaning … (feminist activist, 30–35 years old, public intervention in a meeting of Feminist National Encounter - Encuentro Nacional Feminista de las que luchan held in Santiago, 2020)

During these months of social protests, funa became a generalised form of feminist public denunciation. Fostered by the performance, a snowball force generated a wave of funas and online gender violence testimonies. Social networks became a public space to seek gender justice. With multiple and diverse practices, the ‘Chilean feminist tsunami’ invaded the public agenda and political debate, provoking a cultural transformation (Richard, 2013). Through the fight against structural violence in Chile, the feminist activists claimed a limited notion of democracy and citizenship (Sepúlveda and Vivaldi, 2019), challenging the very idea of politics (Follegati, 2018). They questioned the contradictions of a neoliberal approach to politics—marked by economic success and political stability, which coexist with a high level of inequality, vulnerability and social fracture (UNDP, 2017; Dammert, 2019; Güell, 2019; Prieto, 2021). This process of questioning the ‘Chilean model’ (el modelo) was particularly critical regarding women’s positions in society, adding a feminist perspective to the social crisis.

Methodology

To explore funas as a feminist practice to fight gender violence, the research proposed a multi-technique strategy that included thirty-two semi-structured interviews with multiple actors around this practice. The interview strategy was defined by a non-probabilistic sampling strategy, which started with a key informant list integrating actors from different social spheres. This key informant list was extended through a snowball strategy that lasted until a point of saturation (Blaxter, Hughes and Tight, 2010). The initial key informant list aimed to include people belonging to different areas of action (movements, policymakers, experts and academics, among others), of different ages and from differing social backgrounds and geographical locations. The snowball strategy was therefore triggered by multiple starting points, allowing for the creation of a network of interviewees across different approaches to feminism (integrating institutional feminism, autonomous activists, activists from lesbian-feminism collectives, ecofeminism and transfeminism, as well as people from professional feminist collectives, activists belonging to multiple generations and geographical areas and also, given the relevance of the Feminist May in 2018, university feminist activists and leaders, among others). While the final list of interviewees was not meant to be representative of the current feminist movements in Chile, it did aim to cover a wide range of people, incorporating multiple voices from different backgrounds, with different experiences of and approaches to feminist funas.

Complementarily, the methodological strategy included participant observations of multiple meetings of feminist collectives and organisations, as well as public demonstrations, performances, interventions and national encounters. Secondary data from literature, newspapers, public policies and documents facilitated by the interviewees were essential for triangulating the information provided in the interviews and participant observation. For this research, two different newspapers—with a national circulation that can be socially related to different political positions—were chosen: La Tercera (LT), an offline/online historical daily newspaper and El Mostrado, an online independent newspaper with a feminist section (El Mostrador Braga; EM) focused on topics directly related to the object of study. The selection of articles and news followed a filtering strategy based on a list of keywords (Funa Feminista-Funa Redes Sociales), which generated a pool of twenty newspaper articles (thirteen from LT and seven from EM) published between 2016 and 2021. Finally, given the online nature of the practice analysed, an analysis of the social network Twitter was carried out. Based on an initial review of Twitter conversations around the feminist funa focused on gender violence and secondary data analysis, this research defined a list of keywords and hashtags and also a time frame (from 7 March 2018, ‘Feminist May revolution: first “waves” of feminist funas’, to 31 July 2020, ‘End of the fieldwork’).³ The Twitter academic API (application programming interface) was used to obtain the tweets, yielding a total of 4,971 tweets. The second step defined a representative subsample (randomly calculated with a 95 per cent confidence level, an error of 5 per cent and a standard deviation of 0.5) in order to perform a qualitative thematic analysis of the data. The subsample included 671 tweets.⁴

The analysis strategy integrated the different techniques and sources of information by creating categories and developing relationships between categories until a ‘theory’ based on the data had been generated for each of the three practices separately and in an integrated way. The categories were defined according to the content of the data, going from a descriptive categorisation to an interpretative definition on themes. Although it did not subscribe to any particular theory, it was inspired by Grounded Theory (Glasser and Strauss, 1967), triggering theoretical development through conceptualisation and a theoretical relationship that emerges from analysing empirical material (Strauss and Corbin, 1994). Additionally, the strategy of analysis followed a feminist perspective, which implied an active commitment to analysing power relations and problematising gender in society, aiming for social justice (Burns and Walker, 2004). This implied a special focus on the practice of funa and its implications for society, going beyond the specific cases but aiming for a critical analysis of the practice. In doing this, this research sought to contribute, through an analytical reflection, to the search for gender equality, promoting a critical analysis of the political practices of funas in the Chilean context.

Finally, the notion of positionality refers to the implication of the researcher in knowledge production (ibid.), which not only includes possible biases but also requires taking an active and critical position regarding the research process (Mason, 2002 [1996]). Following Sandra Harding (1987), the researcher’s subjectivity, life experience and personal convictions about the object of study—in this case, the relevance of gender justice—are crucial elements to understanding the researcher’s point of view. The choice of the research topic and the development of the research were inevitably affected by the researcher’s personal experiences and perspectives. In this case, the researcher’s positionality was affected by a constant movement between her roles as an insider (being a woman, Chilean and participating in feminist practices) and an outsider (being a PhD Candidate outside of Chile—an observer of the phenomena—living in the UK). While the insider role may have been helpful for knowing the context of the studied phenomenon and recognising possible resistances, these elements could also have generated expectations and affected the research findings (Hoffman, 1999). During this research process, there were some cases in which being an insider meant sharing the ‘feminist cause’; therefore, the role of the researcher was strengthened, allowing a better understanding of the phenomenon and facilitating the fieldwork process, particularly during the interviews and participant observations. On the other hand, being an outsider allowed the researcher to gain perspective and think critically about the subject matter. To address the possible limitations, the research followed an iterative strategy integrating different stages, each of which incorporated a moment of data collection and, then, a moment of data analysis. As a result, the research strategy was continuously being redefined by a critical analysis of the collected data, allowing both the fieldwork and process of analysis to be flexible and dynamic.

Analysis and discussion: understanding funa as a feminist practice for social change

Funa as a cry of despair at a failing system: the illusion of excluding the state

It is not easy to define the boundaries of a practice like funa when it is used in multiple ways by thousands of people in diverse contexts. Based on this research’s analysis, it is possible to define feminist funas as a form of vindication of an injustice, in this case related to an experience of sexual abuse, in which the shamer gives a testimony of her experience and publicly exhibits on social networks the name of the attacker, his photo and even in some cases personal data (such as an address, telephone number or workplace, among others). During the last few years, this form of vindication has been widely used by feminist activists in what can be understood as a cry of despair, a reaction towards a judicial system that is considered to fail at protecting the victims and providing justice for them.

The reflection on the failures of the Chilean institutional system regarding gender violence is widespread among feminist activists and experts: gender violence in Chile represents a deep social problem that keeps increasing (Segovia and Perez, 2021), and the justice system is not adequately addressing this reality (Canales, 2020). According to a study by the Judiciary of Chile, there are different barriers for victims of gender violence when it comes to finding justice, which are institutional, legal, social and systemic (Poder Judicial de Chile, 2020). As a consequence, the study concludes that in Chile there is a deficient and problematic judicial process when it comes to resolving cases of gender violence (ibid.). This was one of the most frequent themes within the analysis, giving an account of a very well-informed critique of the justice system in Chile from state actors, activists and academics but also citizens in general (through Twitter conversations), as this quote expresses:

A judicial system that is not enough, that victimises, blames women for what happened to them, that humiliates them, that re-victimises them every time they ask them to give the same statement again six or seven times. (Lesly, member of the Chilean judiciary, 55–60 years old, interview)

Faced with this reality and paraphrasing human rights groups, activists across the country have been using social media to take justice into their own hands in an attempt to exclude the institutions that should provide justice: ‘If there is no justice there will be funa, until every rapist is denounced and imprisoned’ (excerpt from Twitter). However, the implementation of the practice has demonstrated that this ‘exclusion’ of public institutions represents an illusion, given the backlashes, legal repercussions and potential ‘secondary victimisation’. In fact, the interviews, Twitter analysis and also newspaper analysis showed that many women who had carried out a funa in Chile had become victims of threats and intimidation and had been legally sued. Although no law explicitly regulates doxing and funa in Chile, its application has legal effects. According to the feminist lawyer Francisca Millan, every funa in Chile risks legal consequences, such as a denunciation for the crime of libel and slander, or an appeal in regard to the right of the accused to protect his honour, personal reputation and private life, or even a civil claim for compensation related to damages, both physical and moral (El Mostrador, 2020). In this context, feminist organisations have taken specific care regarding funas for gender violence: feminist lawyers and legal associations advise women and defend them in court and psychologists and health professionals support them during these processes.

Multiple functions of funa as a feminist practice

A critical starting point for understanding this practice is the analysis of the functions of funa as a feminist practice and the justifications that activists use when it comes to analysing the phenomenon. Based on the fieldwork, especially interviews with feminist activists and also the Twitter conversations analysis, this research categorises this practice into four groups of functions or uses. These functions are not mutually exclusive and represent a source of validation for feminist activists when using this practice.

Funa as healing: Under this function, funa becomes a therapeutic process since the person who does it somehow finds it cathartic due to publicly sharing a traumatic experience of sexual abuse. In this case, funa works as a tool for the victims to heal by identifying themselves as victims and saying it publicly. This function is related to a complex process of recognising the complexities of gender violence and helping women to de-naturalise violence and repair traumas that are often silenced and hidden due to social and cultural factors:

Funa has helped many women because no one else does anything for us. (excerpt from Twitter)

It can be therapeutic […] there is something very powerful in being able to say publicly, I experienced this […] this happened to me, identifying oneself as a victim of violence. (feminist therapist on gender violence, 40–45 years old, interview)

Funa as revenge: A second possible function of funa as a feminist practice is related to its implementation as a tool for social justice through an act of revenge, where the transgressor receives direct consequences for the actions carried out. In this way, funa is functional only when the transgressor is exposed to public disapproval: ‘I want to see the macho shitting in his pants … please give me that joy’ (excerpt from Twitter). Funa as revenge is aimed at a specific person and seeks to do justice via social punishment through non-institutional means: ‘There are funas that are done as revenge. I want to harm the other person, and that seems valid to me’ (influencer and feminist activist, 25–30 years old, interview).

Funa for prevention and protection: The preventive function of funa is probably one of the most commonly used arguments by feminist activists when it comes to justifying this practice. For feminist activists, the judicial system does not protect women, and therefore funa is considered a tool to warn other women about possible abusers and protect them. Under this function, the breadth of the audience becomes particularly relevant because the more people that see the funa, the more effective it is in its role in preventing and protecting possible future victims:

[Through my funa] I want those people who are a danger to women to leave the spaces where there are women […] I think the main objective of funa is not only to talk about your [experience] but to prevent other women from it. (feminist activist, 20–25 years old, interview)

Funa as a mechanism to denounce a social problem: Finally, there is a social function to funas, where they are used as a mechanism of resistance and protest against institutions, seeking—through individual experiences—to make visible a social problem. Under this function, the funa operates as a denouncement, triggering social change by generating fear of being shamed and accounting for gender violence from particular experiences:

It is a different way of putting yourself in opposition or presenting your disagreement with how things work … a type of protest […]. It is an irritation with the power structures. (feminist political leader, 35–40 years old, interview)

These four functions of funas represent the multiple uses and justifications of this practice for feminist activists in the Chilean case. However, despite the variety and multiplicity of their implementation, funas for gender violence have become a space of tension and debate over time—legal, moral, psychological and political—triggering complex effects inside and outside feminist movements.

Funa and its internal effects: unifying, dividing and triggering exclusions within the feminist movements

On the one hand, this practice represents a massive act of collective denunciation, unifying activists and generating networks of solidarity and protection among them. These networks act as grids that support activists and politically activate them as a collective: ‘Funa is not just to screw the lives of the macho men, it is to protect us. It is so beautiful how feminism brings us closer and unites us even without knowing each other #funa’ (excerpt from Twitter). Funa, while starting as an individual act, becomes a collective endeavour of denouncement that gives a voice to women in the public agenda, challenging the historical division between the private and public spheres.

On the other hand, funas have opened up dilemmas that have divided the current feminist movements in Chile and threatened the political activation process. This was a critical theme in the analysis, especially among feminist activist interviewees, illustrating the tensions between this practice and the different approaches within feminist movements. The first group of tensions can be related to the lack of control over the effects of funas. Under this group and due to its decentralised online nature, funa is strained because it tends to lack proportionality; it cannot quantify the harms committed (or tell the difference between the various types of sexual assaults) and it is not possible to control its effects. It is, therefore, a form of punishment that does not have clear borders and does not incorporate forms of inclusion/learning for those who transgress the social norm. The second group of tensions is related to the legal framework and the violation of due process. Since funa breaks the legal principle of innocence, it does not allow the accused to have a proper defence or present evidence. As a result, the victim’s version becomes true simply because she/he is a victim and has decided to say so, as these Twitter fragments illustrate:

The funa is positioned as a blind faith where the victim does not lie, and the accused is always guilty.

It seems there are no innocent men, there is no investigation that is [worthy] … for some the courage to tell a testimony is a guarantee of veracity. (excerpt from Twitter)

Given these tensions and dilemmas, feminist movements tend to show different approaches to funas, opening up divisions among collectives and activists and installing a critical reflection about this practice and a possible feminist transformation. This has raised a deep question about what it means to be a feminist and how to produce feminist social change. For some part of the movements, mainly coming from older generations and feminist activists related to an institutional feminism, this practice threatens the feminist transformation: excluding members of the society will not solve the problem of gender violence or trigger a feminist transformation. Moreover, the extensive implementation of funa is deeply problematic given the internal dynamics that this practice triggers. This reflection points to funas as triggers of some internal distortions, since making a funa is often interpreted as an indicator of the activist’s high ‘degree of feminism’. Under this context, being a ‘good’ feminist implies being able to recognise violence and being brave enough to denounce it in public. Consequently, funa has become proof of feminism, validating activists within movements and creating a sense of duty for feminist activists. Funa has become part of what Marta Lamas (2021) describes as a ‘feministhermometer’, which distinguishes between a ‘true feminist’ and the rest, as these quotes express: ‘Do I feel less feminist for not having done a funa? A little bit, yes … less coherent. I wonder if I did everything in my power to change this reality’ (feminist member of Parliament, 35–40 years old, interview); ‘I think there is a distortion in the funa […] If you do not do a funa, you are not [an internal] subject of desire … not a good feminist’ (leader of a feminist NGO, 50–55 years old, interview).

While funas operate as a collective phenomenon, their role as a ‘seal of quality’ within feminist movements highlights an individualist discourse towards gender violence: doing a funa is an individual practice that comes from a sense of responsibility in which women have ‘the duty’ to share their experiences, much of the time without considering the risks, possible legal reprisals and problems that this can generate. It is then a personal action that aims to trigger justice and, internally, helps activists to become ‘good feminists’ and grant them membership:

It is a hyper-individualistic response […] you hurt me-I hurt you. And it does not move or challenge politics; it does not challenge the State or challenge justice […] in terms of results, funa generates the opposite. […] it privatised the conflict. (feminist activist and academic, 50–55 years old, interview)

This individual dimension of funas accounts for a restricted approach to gender violence, since it understands it as a problem between two people, not taking into account the social, cultural and political roots of gender violence. By punishing the perpetrator, feminist activists react to the act of gender violence without necessarily addressing its structural causes.

Funa and its external effects: limitations on social change

However, despite these problems, for many activists, mainly from younger generations, funa, although not perfect, responds to a desperate reaction from vulnerable groups and is a valid practice that aims to generate social change: ‘It is the voice of the voiceless’ (feminist activist member of an indigenous feminist collective, 30–35 years old, interview).

One interpretation of this practice as a trigger for social change refers to understanding it as the result of a long process of consciousness in which victims of sexual abuse face a difficult path towards recognising themselves as victims, redefining the guilty as outside of them and deciding to share their experiences. Part of this research exploration, mostly coming from the interviews, Twitter analysis and also newspaper analysis, identified funa as a practice that has broken the historical silence of gender-based violence, allowing women to stop considering it as a ‘normal’ and silenced event:

I was in a personal debate for a long time before doing this, but finally I came to the conclusion that it is not fair that I have to live with this weight on me, while he is still doing his normal college life, interacting with our classmates like nothing has happened. (quoted in Roman and Retamal, 2019, p. 12)

This process is individual, although it triggers a domino effect in which funas become a collective phenomenon, triggering solidarity and sisterhood networks and allowing space for repair with others. This was recognised by diverse feminist activists, academics and leaders, as this quote expresses:

What I have personally found in feminist spaces is a level of support that is exciting, […] that is beautiful. You know that you are not alone […]. This is absolutely restorative, and this is the society that I dream of. (Feminist therapist on gender violence, 40–45 years old, interview)

Funa acts as a reaction to the personal process of consciousness and responds to emotions of anger and helplessness. Consequently, a collective space is opened to talk about what previously could not be discussed, making visible gender violence and provoking a sense of collective action among various groups and feminist activists. This transformation that funa initiates has implications for institutional and social change. For many activists, because funa makes gender violence noticeable and, for example, can generate fear in men, it triggers attitudinal and behavioural changes on the micro level—in everyday practices—that subsequently are transmitted and become societal practice: ‘I believe that the men who have been shamed (funados) are much more afraid than before. […] it generates behavioural change’ (Solange, feminist activist and academic, 40–45 years old, interview).

Despite the tremendous power of funa in opening up spaces to share previously silenced experiences, its ability to trigger social change is debatable, especially when it comes to configuring women as active and empowered citizens. While the shamers can feel empowered when recalling their experiences and shaming the perpetrators, this feeling of encouragement is limited and tends to fade quickly. On the one hand, this empowerment is conditional upon an experience of violence since it occurs to the extent that the shamers have been (passive) victims and have decided to denounce the transgressor, as this quote reflects: ‘This should not mean that your life will be subject to the notion of being a victim. I cannot remain linked to him [the transgressor] for my whole life’ (Magdalena, university feminist activist, 30–35 years old, interview).

There is an important debate in the literature regarding the limits of discourses and humanitarian frameworks that emphasise the victimhood of women at the expense of their political agency (Klein, 2013; Sutton and Vacarezza, 2021). According to Lamas (2018), within current hegemonic harassment discourses, victimhood tends to be conceived as an integral part of female life, defining the person’s whole identity. A second element that explains this practice’s limited empowerment is related to possible backlash, since the shamer often becomes subject to grievances and legal actions. Funa’s capacity to transform women’s lives seems to be paradoxical since it may strengthen the victimhood condition while transforming women into victimisers, putting them at risk due to potential threats, legal action and intimidation.

Final reflections

The analysis in this research provides an important contribution to the understanding of funa as a feminist practice, accounting for the widespread use and multiple functions of this practice, as well as its advances and limitations in terms of its conception of gender violence and, therefore, its ability to help bring about social change.

On the one hand, funa has opened up individual and collective spaces to think about and denaturalise gender violence, making it public and increasing the awareness regarding it. On the other hand, it proposes a restricted notion of gender violence without really addressing its structural causes and sociopolitical roots. Although some activists consider funa a ‘necessary’ reaction to a failing system, the analysis in this research concludes that it is a practice that tends to contradict feminist principles in regard to social change. The article argues that funa is problematic because it proposes a restricted approach to gender violence and feminism, limiting it to an individual phenomenon and punitive feminism, which aims to do justice through social punishment. Moreover, funa gives an account of feminism centred on women against men, without necessarily challenging the structural causes of violence. Scholars have debated the questionable capacity of punishment to transform society and generate social justice (see Davis, 2017; Sepúlveda, 2019; Segato, 2020). As a result, funa ends up being: ‘a practice against men, in circumstances where the real enemy is patriarchy’ (feminist activist and academic, 50–55 years old, interview).

By analysing the limits of funa as a feminist practice, this article has opened up a reflection on the social principles behind the practice and the type of society that is promoting it. Funa could be considered limiting and risky when it comes to thinking about the society, since it promotes a society based on cancelling and excluding community members without rigorous judgement and without demanding proof of veracity, and limits the possibilities for those members to learn, evolve and integrate. This reflection opens up deep questions and possible future research regarding feminism today, how feminist social transformation occurs and by which means movements are aiming to trigger a profoundly feminist society.

Footnotes

Notes

Author Biography

Blanca Larrain is a social scientist and PhD in Social Development Planning at University College of London, UK. She studied psychology at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (2010) followed by an MA in Sociology at Alberto Hurtado University (2014) and an MSc in Social Development Practice at UCL (2018). She has worked as a researcher, consultant and practitioner for international organisations, public institutions, the private sector and NGO/civil society organisations. Her work and research explore social development, public policies analysis and citizen-state relationships (governance and participation), as well as gender and inclusion, mainly in Latin America and the UK.

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