Guerrilla Girls

Strategies

The group originally adopted the name Guerrilla Girls as a way to liken sexist politics to guerrilla warfare. Rather than employing direct confrontation, they use strategies of anonymity, mobility, and ambush. Instead of violent protest or military warfare, they engage in culture jamming aimed at [Page 153]sabotaging the overwhelmingly white, male, heterosexual power bloc.

Wearing gorilla masks and using pseudonyms of deceased female artists during their art assaults disguise member identities, keeping the focus of their grassroots feminist campaigns on the issues at hand as opposed to the individuals protesting.

(Wikimedia)

They also play on the term guerrilla by wearing gorilla masks during their campaigns. The masks disguise the members' identities, a strategy used to keep the focus of their campaigns on issues of inequality as opposed to their individual personalities. The Guerrilla Girls also adopt the names of deceased female artists and authors to protect their identities. This strategy pays homage to the talents of artists such as Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Käthe Kollwitz, Anaïs Nin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Gertrude Stein, among others.

In addition to securing anonymity, the gorilla mask displaces stereotypical definitions of feminine beauty. In many of their awareness campaigns, the Guerrilla Girls re-figure classical works of art, especially female nudes, with gorilla masks. The Guerrilla Girls themselves have also been pictured wearing the masks while also wearing stockings, high heels, or short skirts as a way to confound people's stereotypes of ideal feminine beauty. The Guerrilla Girls even consider the masks to play with the conception of manhood. In a comic move, they believe the masks bring a sense of “mask-ulinity” to their agenda.

“Reclaiming” is another important concept for the Guerrilla Girls. They actively seek to reclaim the “F word” (feminism), the “G word” (girl), and public space itself. Feminism holds a contentious place in the popular imagination. As part of an antisexist agenda, the Guerrilla Girls proudly use the F word in order to promote the ideals of feminism: equal opportunity, equal access to healthcare and education, freedom from harassment and sexual exploitation, reproductive rights, and human rights for women everywhere. They also use the G word to reconfigure the ways in which women are infantilized and marginalized. Finally, the Guerrilla Girls seek to reclaim public space for women. Because women have been historically excluded from full participation in public spaces, it is particularly significant that the Guerrilla Girls conduct most of their awareness campaigns in the city streets and other public sites.

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