contemplation 1

Question, process, challenge, and think deeply about how this week’s readings relate back to you. This is a place to share your thoughts and feelings: let them be raw and vulnerable. In 500 words minimum (2-3 pages), write a personal reaction about how the core arguments or stories of the readings relate to your understanding of identities, privilege and systems of oppression. Choose and include 1 quote from each of the assigned readings/sources and write 2 dialogic questions. Be sure to talk about each of the assigned readings/podcasts in your contemplations.  This assignment can also be submitted as a video, but we will be looking for the same amount of depth in what you say as we are in a written reflection.

Use these questions as a guide:

• What feelings came up for you as you read the readings/sources?  What stories and personal experiences may be connected to those feelings? 
• How did the readings/sources raise your level of consciousness around your identities, privilege and larger systems of oppression and your role in them?
• What questions do you still have or want to continue thinking/talking about with others?

easy to understandinggood grammar

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

134 Battaglia, Edley, & Newsom

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

Forum Provocation: Intersectional Feminisms & Sexual Violence 135

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,

136 Battaglia, Edley, & Newsom

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)

Forum Provocation: Intersectional Feminisms & Sexual Violence 137

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

138 Battaglia, Edley, & Newsom

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.

Forum Provocation: Intersectional Feminisms & Sexual Violence 139

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.

140 Battaglia, Edley, & Newsom

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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