Drawing upon lived experiences, this article explores challenges facing feminist academics sharing work in the media, and the gendered, raced intersections of ‘being visible’ in digital cultures which enable direct, public response. We examine online backlash following publication of an article about representations of Meghan Markle’s feminism being co-opted by the patriarchal monarchy. While in it we argued against vilification of Markle, we encountered what we term distortions of research remediation as news outlets reported our work under headlines such as ‘academics accuse Meghan of dropping feminism like a hot potato’. Negative responses were polarised: anti-Meghan (drawing upon racist, anti-feminist, pro-empire, pro-Brexit/Trump rhetoric), and pro-Meghan (both general royal enthusiasts, and a smaller subsection viewing Markle in terms of politicised black uplift). In response, we received accusations of sexist, racist bullying, debate over definitions of feminism, claims feminism has gone ‘too far’, variously worded directives to ‘shut up’, gendered personal insults, and threats of doxxing. This article examines the tenor of public discourse around feminism and visible feminists. It questions the responsibility of institutions benefiting from public intellectuals for the wellbeing of employees in the public eye, particularly in the anti-intellectual socio-political context of Brexit and Donald Trump, where the costs for ‘visible’ women and feminist activism are ever higher. It also considers our responsibility as researchers to ensure our contributions to public discourse do not exacerbate existing harms of a white-supremacist, classist society. This article interrogates the risks – of misrepresentation, hyper-visibility, and reputational, psychological and potentially physical harm – faced by those engaging in acts of public feminism.

On 21st May 2018, two days after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wed at Windsor Castle, the Daily Mail published the headline "Meghan's Manifesto: 'proud feminist' the Duchess of Sussex will take the royals in a striking new direction". The piece by royal correspondent Rebecca English-part of thirty-one pages of wedding coveragedescribed in celebratory tone how Markle's "candid" biography on the official royal website highlights a host of work dedicated to "social justice and women's empowerment" (2018:1), appropriating the language of feminist activism to describe a "manifesto" of objectives. This approach to reporting upon the new royal is far from unique, with headlines like "Why the Royal Wedding Is a Coup for Feminists" (Wright, 2018) and "How the Duchess of Sussex is smashing the royal glass ceiling" (McGoogan, 2018) abounding across news, comment and women's magazine titles alike to position the event as a feminist, post-racial utopia: a bi-racial, divorced, self-proclaimed feminist, American actor "modernising" (Duncan and Low, 2018) an ancient patriarchal institution. The representation of people of colour in the ceremony, from the African American pastor to celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Idris Elba, has been interpreted as Markle disrupting monarchical status quo through a 'rousing celebration

This article offers a critical analysis of the British monarchy within wider political economies of wealth and power. While sociology has renewed its interest in ‘the elites’, the British monarchy is often positioned as an archaic institution, an anachronism in relation to corporate forms of wealth and power, and therefore irrelevant. This article counters this framing by revealing the mechanics, technologies and actors ‘behind the scenes’, in order to expose and demystify the relationship between the symbolic and political-economic functions of the monarchy. To do this, I (re)conceptualise the monarchy as a corporation, ‘The Firm’, oriented towards, and historically entrenched in, processes of capital accumulation, profit extraction and other forms of exploitation. The article maps out The Firm’s labour relations, financial arrangements, inter/national relationships and networks, and the legal status of The Crown and its components in order to demonstrate how ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of wealth intersect and converge in contemporary Britain. This article is intended as a provocation to sociological studies of elites to suggest that, in overlooking monarchy, we are overlooking a key component of contemporary capitalism, and a key component in the reproduction of inequalities today.

On 20 September 2014, in the wake of the Scottish Independence Referendum, the pro-union, right-wing British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph’ s front page was dominated by a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II in the grounds of her Balmoral Estate in the Scottish Highlands, under the headline ‘Queen’s pledge to help reunite the Kingdom’. This article takes the headline as a departure point through which to explore competing discourses of national identity during the Independence Referendum. Understanding the Queen’s body as a site of symbolic struggle over these discourses, this article undertakes visual analysis to unpack the composition of the photograph, in order to understand its social, historical, political and cultural meanings. In so doing, it argues that the use of ‘Queen of Scots’ in The Daily Telegraph at the specific conjunctural moment of the Scottish Independence Referendum reveals the complex intersections between monarchy, power, (geo)politics, symbolism, sovereignty, national identity/identities and landscape in the United Kingdom.

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