Feminist Media Studies

ISSN: 1468-0777 (Print) 1471-5902 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfms20

#YesAllWomen: Intersectional Mobilization Against Sexual Assault is Radical (Again)

Michelle Rodino-Colocino

To cite this article: Michelle Rodino-Colocino (2014) #YesAllWomen: Intersectional Mobilization Against Sexual Assault is Radical (Again), Feminist Media Studies, 14:6, 1113-1115, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2014.975475 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.975475

Published online: 07 Nov 2014.

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ANZALDUA, G. E. 1987. Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. MANES, CLAIRE [INTENSETWEETING]. 2014. “@classynogin @MHarrisPerry @hashtagfeminism Brought us together, felt less alone. It would be prejudicial if SM influenced court cases!.” [Tweet], April 10. Accessed April 10, 2014. https://twitter.com/intensetweeting/status/ 454297043507216384 SANDOVAL, CHELA. 2000. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. SANDOVAL, CHELA. 2002. “AfterBridge: Technologies of Crossing.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited by G. E. Anzaldua and A. Keating, 21–26. London: Routledge.

#YESALLWOMEN: INTERSECTIONAL MOBILIZATION AGAINST SEXUAL ASSAULT IS RADICAL (AGAIN)

Michelle Rodino-Colocino, Pennsylvania State University

#YesAllWomen is a key moment in the genealogy of feminism that underscores the old-in- the-new and suggests an urgent course of action for feminist media scholars. One Muslim identifying woman of color who wants to remain anonymous introduced the hashtag1 into the Twitterverse as a global feminist forum for discussing sexual violence against women in the wake of the May 2014 UCSB area Isla Vista shootings. The male shooter described the massacre as his “Day of Retribution” to exact revenge on women who rejected his sexual advances (Ishra Aran 2014; Emily Cosgrove Baylis and Kelli Bender 2014; Erin Grinberg 2014). In response to the shooter’s articulation of homicide with sexual rejection by women, and challenging the feminist-derailing argument that “not all men” commit violence, #YesAllWomen’s tweeters share statements, stories, statistics, and sentiments about sexual assault especially by intimate partners. Tweeters discuss related anxieties, fears, media clips, and comments by trolls.2 Demonstrating its significance as a feminist hashtag, tweets connect such discussion to the status of feminism and its inclusion of women in the US and around the world. As discussion on #YesAllWomen and beyond suggests, centuries old feminist issues are new again. Rather than signify a new “wave” of feminism, tweets highlight an enduring mobilizing issue—sexual violence—and problematize grounding feminist solidarity in white, middle-class, US-centric, heteronormative privilege. One example of such grounding is nineteenth-century feminists Susan B. Anthony’s and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s mobilization to end marital rape through a eugenic feminism that imagined straight, 1114 COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM white middle-class women as deserving of empowerment (Nicola Beisel and Tamara Kay 2004; Dana Seitler 2003). For Stanton and Anthony, the category “all women” was narrow, based on cultural and economic privilege. #YesAllWomen talks backs to Stanton and Anthony and their brand of feminism. Illustrative of past and present struggles to include black women in “all women,” “Ashleigh M.” linked to one documentary on the “dehumanization of black women in videos.”3 “SomeGuy” challenged #YesAllWomen’s inclusiveness with, “#YesAllWomen dont include black women ... but yall think it do.” “SophiaBanks” called on feminists to support trans women, “Regarding rape and death threats in my mentions tonight. What do I need? Cis feminism making space for trans women like me.” “Snuffyart” initiated a conversation about poor women with, “I must perpetrate the deserving #poor myth to be treated like a human being in a grocery store. #Poverty is a women’s issue.” Tweeters have called for an end to other forms of oppression including disability-based discrimination and Iranian women’s struggle for choice in wearing the hijab. As it mobilizes around violence against women, #YesAllWomen inspires self- reflexivity among feminists regarding intersectional inclusivity, and in so doing, spawns further hashtagged discourse. In the days after #YesAllWomen’s debut, black feminist scholar Jenn M. Jackson began tweeting with #YesAllWhiteWomen because corporate news would not have covered—nor would the Twitterverse have responded to—a massacre at an historically black college (Monica Venditouli 2014). #YesAllWhiteWomen is still being tweeted as of this writing, but trolls have frustrated users like Jackson who later joined others deserting the feed, “I am also abandoning #YesAllWhiteWomen in favor of a HT that includes ALL women—#EachEveryWoman.” #EachEveryWoman contains similar comments (by supporters and trolls) as #YAW and #YAWW. Can #EachEveryWoman further the inclusion of all women in struggles against sexual assault? Not unless wider feminist activism creates safer spaces for mobilizing against sexual assault while doing the radical work of creating intersectional solidarity. The woman who initiated #YesAllWomen has pulled back from the hashtag because, as she tweeted in August 2014 on her timeline and on #YAW, “I am not for it being monetized and co-opted” and because “people took the opportunity to erase the fact that I was a WoC [woman of color] and a Muslim, and push those groups of women out of the way.” Death threats she has received since initiating #YAW have also silenced her by discouraging her from accepting media requests. The woman who launched #YAW has encountered sexual violence in doing the work of agitating against it. Thus, feminist media scholars need to construct ways to create safer spaces for those who initiate and contribute to the radical notion that all women can mobilize for women’s freedom from sexual violence. We also need to think about what “safer spaces” mean—safer from trolls? Death threats? How do we create such spaces while making them public—and inclusive? To say the least, discourse on and around #YesAllWomen demonstrates that mobilizing for “all women” against sexual assault is as insightful and inciting as it has ever been and is as urgent as it ever was. The feminists of #YesAllWomen demonstrate that there are no waves, only mobilizing threads and necessary action. Will we all answer the call?

NOTES

1. “Hashtags” organize comments on Twitter into “feeds” or channels. COMMENTARY AND CRITICISM 1115

2. “Trolls” criticize, lambast, or otherwise serve as contrarians who disrupt or inflame threads in online discourse. 3. Tweets discussed in this essay appeared between May 24, 2014 and August 14, 2014.

REFERENCES

ARAN, ISHRA. 2014. “#YesAllWomen Trend is Uprooting Everyday Misogyny One Tweet at a Time.” Jezebel, May 25. Accessed October 23, 2014. http://jezebel.com/yesallwomen-trend-is- uprooting-everyday-misogyny-one-t-1581432502 BEISEL, NICOLA, and TAMARA KAY. 2004. “Abortion, Race, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century America.” American Sociological Review 69: 498–518. COSGROVE BAYLIS, EMILY, and KELLI BENDER. 2014. “#YesAllWomen, a Response to California Rampage, Reaches 1 Million Tweets.” People, May 27. Accessed October 23, 2014. http:// www.people.com/article/yes-all-women-hashtag-movement-santa-barbara-shooting GRINBERG, ERIN. 2014. “Why #YesAllWomen Took off on Twitter.” CNN.com, May 27. Accessed October 23, 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/27/living/california-killer-hashtag- yesallwomen/ SEITLER, DANA. 2003. “Unnatural Selection: Mothers, Eugenic Feminism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Regeneration Narratives.” American Quarterly 55 (1): 61–88. VENDITOULI, MONICA. 2014. “Campus Shootings Prompt Online Discourse about Gender-Based Violence.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6. Accessed October 23, 2014. http:// chronicle.texterity.com/chronicle/20140606a?pg¼11#pg11