contemplation 1

Women & Language

Volume 42.1, Spring 2019 doi: 10.34036/WL.2019.014

Forum Intersectional Feminisms and Sexual Violence in the Era of Me Too, Trump, and Kavanaugh

Judy E. Battaglia Loyola Marymount University

Paige P. Edley Loyola Marymount University

Victoria Ann Newsom Olympic College

HasHtags sucH as #Metoo, #tiMesup, #StopKavanaugh, and #MuteRKelly1 illustrate anger in the aftermath of sexual violence. Normalizing rape culture, the U.S. President mocked and construed the #MeToo movement as creating “a very scary time for young men in America. . . [but] Women are doing great” (Diamond, 2018). Activists have used hashtags and other forms of advocacy to express their outrage about sexual harassment in Hollywood and business, Trump’s comments about grabbing women “by the pussy” (Jacobs, 2017), and Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as Supreme Court Justice after the world witnessed Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s powerful, moving, precise, and credible Senate testimony about how Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as a teenager. Those in power continue to protect the privileged cis- hetero, “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks, 2000, p. 118).

Outrage to unchecked sexual violence has resulted in movements like #MeToo and the election of more than 100 women to the most diverse U.S. Congress ever in 2018. Additionally, worldwide movements have emerged, such as #MeTooIndia, Italy’s #QuellaVoltaChe, Spain’s #YoTambien, Arabic-speaking countries’ #AnaKaman, and others (Adam & Booth, 2018). It is imperative that white cis-hetero people be disruptors/contrarians to stand up against the wrongs perpetrated on marginalized bodies by white systems. White silence is violence. We argue in brief that marginalized voices must be centered and call for intersectional scholarship, activism, and advocacy for and about the

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most vulnerable voices—children (Crowe, 2018; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 2019), black trans people (Morgan, 2018), sex workers (Carr, 2019; Raghurim, 2015), and students whose schools strive to protect their brand rather than vulnerable students (Dick & Ziering, 2018; Freitas, 2018; Grigoriadis, 2017). We conclude with four steps to emphasize intersectional voices.

Complexities and Intersectionality The complex intersections of sexual violence and multi-marginalized identities and lived experiences of children, cisgender femmes, and non-binary individuals worldwide need to be unpacked vigilantly. In the era of Trump, Kavanaugh, and Fox News, open racism and (hetero/cis) sexism have become normalized in everyday life. Political polarization has generated tensions, open hostility, and dichotomous language that encourages “us versus them” narratives and prevents the “both/ and” (Pew, 2014). Complexities of identities are not represented in contemporary political, feminist, patriarchal, and hegemonic languages, resulting in erasure of multiply marginalized voices. We must elevate the voices of the multi-marginalized.

Political rhetoric often works to construct various kinds of dichotomies: feminists versus men, blacks versus whites, queers versus heteros, and globalists versus nationalists. Such manufactured divisiveness can empower authoritarian narratives. Activists who speak and work against hegemonic norms often have to build coalitions, forcing them to choose between oppressions that need the most aggressive action. Both conservative and progressive arguments often neglect multiple and alternative narratives and oppressions. The problematic language of political argument does not allow multiplicities of identity, experience, and standpoints that need voice and opportunity to promote social change. For instance, Martínez’s (1998) notion of the “oppression Olympics” describes the process whereby marginalized groups compete with each other and thereby reduce their collaborative power as a whole.

Erasure is itself a form of violence. Similarly, those who remain silent when people of color, queer, and trans individuals are maligned due to their race, sex, or gender identities, trivialize their commitment to human dignity. Privileged white cisgender women must realize the work accomplished by multiply marginalized peoples, both domestically and globally, and recognize when to step in and when to step aside. Black, brown, trans, queer, and other marginalized women/femmes

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are already doing sexual trauma movement work; privileged, white, cis- hetero women must stand alongside as supportive bodies in the room, if we are fortunate enough to be invited into those spaces. Moreover, white cis-hetero men and conservative voices must stop saying “but not all men” and realize the Me Too movement is about the pain of sexual assault, not an opportunity for cisgender men to redirect the focus on themselves. (Bateman, 2018). We must center the marginalized, listen to the voices of survivors, and believe them. All bodies must feel safe to recover from trauma.

Multiple Lenses, Methodologies, and Movements In analyzing global rape culture, we use Halualani’s (2018) critical lens. Halualani stresses the need to confront our own privilege and implicit bias through what she calls Clear Sight, which “optimally positions us to work for social change and intercultural justice. This bestows on us the space and opportunity to connect and help others around us (and especially those whose interests are marginalized) in a real and authentic way” (p. xiv). We also build on Allen’s (2011) Difference Matters to further the argument that categories of difference and experience must be recognized in their own right and not as monolithic sets of need. Moreover, we argue the language of oppression and sexual violence, frequently constructed as a binary choice between victimhood or survival, may be too limiting. Feminist scholars have debated about the language of sexual violence for decades (see, in chronological order, Lorde, 1984; Irigaray, 1985; Anzaldúa, 1987; Trinh, 1989; Taylor, Hardman, & Wright, 2009; Freitag, 2018).

We call on feminist scholars within and beyond the field of communication to consider sexual violence, especially the #MeToo, #TimesUp, #StopKavanaugh, and other hashtag movements through intersectional feminist and Halualani’s (2018) Clear Sight lenses to understand the most vulnerable, invisible, and erased populations. We are not the first to call for intersectional feminist scholarship on vulnerable populations. As three cisgender, hetero, white women, working with an intersectional feminist perspective, we recognize the need to be more than allies and to be co-conspirators (Patterson, 2018). Recognizing our own privilege as we write this provocation essay emphasizes distinctive intersectional positions among scholars, topics/ texts, and research participants.

As one example of using these multi-methodological, multi-linguistic, intersectional, intercultural, transnational, and interdisciplinary lenses,

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we foreground Tarana Burke’s creation of the Me Too movement 12 years prior to white feminist celebrity Alyssa Milano’s 2017 invitation, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet” in response to allegations of sexual harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein, a former Hollywood producer, resulted in a viral tweetstorm (Garcia, 2017). But Burke started the Me Too movement in 2005 when she created the nonprofit JustBeInc.com in an effort to facilitate healing for black women and girls in her community.2 In describing the original Me Too movement, Burke (2018) argued:

This is a movement for and about survivors. If you let mainstream media define who the “survivors” are[,] then we will always only hear about famous, white, [cisgender] women. But they don’t own the movement. […] We are building something that has never existed[,] and we will need your help. The work of the #metooMVMT will happen on and off-line. We want to make sure survivors have the tools they need to craft their own healing journey. I have no expectation of mainstream media to tell the stories of marginalized people unless it serves them. But when these groups speak out[,] are our communities ready to stand in the gap? That’s how the movement grows.

Thus, we call on our colleagues to be strategically inclusive about whom we listen to and whose pain we take seriously—both domestically and internationally. As scholars, advocates, and accomplices/co- conspirators, we must do better. We must keep in mind Burke’s original mission and vision. Celebrities have supported the movements financially and through their activism.3 As white, cisgender women, we call on all our readers of privilege to make reparations and expand on the valuable activism already being done to heal sexual trauma. Burke (2018) explains how her work focuses on healing:

We don’t believe survivors have to detail their stories all the time. We shouldn’t have to perform our pain over and over again for the sake of your awareness. We also try to teach survivors to not lean into their trauma but lean into the joy they curate in life instead. […] Imagine […] you are trying to do that when the news media keeps on erasing your experience or people continuously reduce you to your pain. (Burke, 2018)

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Burke’s focus on healing rather than reliving trauma leads to our use of the word “survivor,” despite Freitag’s (2018) powerful argument that the word suggests the trauma is not ongoing. Burke (2018) argues: “Trauma halts possibility, movement activates it. Movement creates possibility.” Creating growth and possibility is crucial for healing.

Moreover, it is imperative to foreground Burke’s voice, which has been co-opted as her movement gets redefined by white cisgender women. This critical movement work must be enacted through intersectional inclusivity (Crenshaw, 1989, 1992) and anti-racism. To address problematic dichotomous language, we need to be more collaborative in our research in terms of multi-voice/collaborative methodologies, as well as joining alongside activists and advocates (rather than as consultants). In opening up the complexities of voice, we call for the inclusion of personal and multi-linguistic narratives; poetry; rhetorical, textual, and content analyses; feminist (auto)ethnographies; and community-based participant action research to keep mainstream media from systemically redefining a movement founded and led by a black woman and created specifically for black girls’ healing.

We are intersectional and intergenerational in our perspectives within our multifaceted, embodied lives. We question through different lenses and multiple standpoints. We speak from certain and specific social locations, seeking to make material differences in the lived experiences of individuals who are sexually assaulted often without consequences for their attackers. Also imperative for healing is for white people to elevate, rather than claim as their own, the intellectual and emotional labor of people of color. This is what happened in the case of #MeToo. When Burke learned Milano’s tweet had spread like wildfire, she had to decide if she wanted to be “In concert or in conflict” with these white women (Burke, 2018). She chose to collaborate. This example is not meant to diminish Milano’s established work as a gender justice activist,4 but in celebrity fashion, her tweet simultaneously brought her own story to the forefront while erasing Burke’s important hands-on Me Too movement.

Call for Action There must be action—scholarly and hands-on activist and advocacy work. We call our academic colleagues to join the conversation being led by activists and by students behind closed doors in dorm rooms. We must enact real change and center the most vulnerable voices in leadership, development, and narratives. Collins (2000) wrote, “Placing African-American women and other excluded groups in the center of

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analysis opens up the possibilities for a both/and conceptual stance, one in which all groups possess varying amounts of penalty and privilege in one historically created system” (p. 224). We must center marginalized and multiply-marginalized experiences. The case of Cyntoia Brown is a poignant example: a sex trafficked black teen, Brown received a 51-year prison sentence for killing the man who forced her into sex slavery. Thanks to the organizing and activist work of black women, the governor of Tennessee recently granted Brown clemency (Grafas & Burnside, 2019). This case illustrates how sex, violence, and racism intersect in the lives of children and women of color and how crucial it is to believe all survivors, not just white cis-hetero women. In addition, institutions of power, such as the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention (Phillips & Wang, 2019), have admitted recently to covering up sexual assaults of children and adults by clergy. The Vatican has defrocked multiple priests and most recently a cardinal (“U.S. ex-cardinal,” 2019) and confirmed stories of priests’ abusing nuns and keeping them as sex slaves (“Pope admits clerical abuse,” 2019). Admission is one thing, defrocking another, but we must stand up against powerful institutions to help heal the traumas of the vulnerable and the voiceless.

Moreover, we need to examine our own implicit biases. Those invited to the table from outside any given group need to be co- conspirators (rather than allies) with survivors of all races, nationalities, creeds, education, classes, abilities, sexual orientations, and gender identities. We encourage our readers to view all co-conspirators with healthy “cispicion” (Patterson, 2018, p. 146). Co-conspirators must perform reality checks and exhibit real humility when we mess up. Co- conspirators need to pass the mic, need to learn when to step in and when to step aside. As co-conspirators ourselves, our first step is writing this provocation essay and inviting intersectional responses alongside us. Our next step is to release a call for intersectional and international voices to contribute to our upcoming edited book and expand the conversation begun here. Step three is to join our students in an intergenerational movement to bring forward their alternative zines and podcasts to tell survivors’ stories. Step four is to move out of the ivory tower and into the streets to work alongside nonprofits and intersectional leaders who are already doing and succeeding in Me Too movement work.

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Judy E. Battaglia (MA, California State University, Northridge) is clinical associate professor in Communication Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Her research focuses on post- & transmodern theories of representation in various media forms and on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, & (dis)ability in the nonprofit and educational sectors. She worked as Director of Communication for I Live Here Projects, a nonprofit founded by Mia Kirshner to tell stories of marginalized and disfranchised peoples worldwide, and was instrumental in initiating the projects in Malawi & Burma. She is advisor of the student-run mental health initiative, To Write Love on Her Arms, which seeks to break the silence of students living with anxiety, self-injury, depression, eating disorders, and struggling with suicide. She is also a poet.

PaigE P. EdlEy (PhD, Rutgers University) is professor of Communication Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections of gender, power, and identity, especially in the contexts of work-life balance, relationships, gender equity in organizations, and a feminist critique of friends living with chronic illness. She has published articles in such premiere journals as Management Communication Quarterly, Communication Yearbook, and Women & Language, as well as numerous edited books. Her teaching, scholarship, service, and activism are mutually informative. She works with nonprofit organizations, protests corporate greed, and works to promote social justice on campus in the Los Angeles community and beyond.

Victoria ann nEwsom (PhD, Bowling Green State University) is professor of Communication Studies at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington. Her research centers on the negotiation of power, gender, and identity in performative and communication contexts. Her current projects include work in international media activism, peace studies, postcolonial feminism(s), Islamophobia studies, performative pedagogies, and cultural studies-grounded analyses of transnational diplomacies and policy making. She has published articles in, among others, International Journal of Communication, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Global Media Journal, Communication Studies, Communication Yearbook, Journal of International Women’s Studies, and Feminist Media Studies. Victoria’s current research and activist interests focus on the intersection of post- truth media, consumerism, and activism.

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The authors’ names are in alphabetical order to demonstrate equal collaboration in this essay.

Notes 1 The documentary Surviving R. Kelly broadcast on Lifetime (2019, January) and social media movements #MuteRKelly and #BlackGirlsMatter prompted RCA Records to dissolve their business contract with Kelly (Sisario, 2019). The power of the movements focused on black girls’ and women’s sexual trauma won over the power of the wealthy entertainer who had rumors of sexual misconduct with teenage girls swirling around him for two decades. 2 Throughout this essay, we distinguish between Burke’s original Me Too movement without a hashtag and the social media movement as #MeToo. 3 Alyssa Milano, America Ferrera, Emma Watson, Kiera Knightly, and others have donated to the Me Too and Time’s Up movements to help marginalized groups affected by sexual violence (Tribune Content Agency, 2019; “Emma Watson”, 2019; “#MeToo: UK Stars”, 2019). 4 This includes her activism for breastfeeding mothers’ rights, queer rights, and HIV/AIDS health status. When Milano was a child actor, she appeared on The Phil Donahue Show and kissed Ryan White, a child sick with HIV/AIDS in order to show that HIV/AIDS was not spread by casual contact (Chuck, 2017).

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