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NEWSLETTER | The American Philosophical Association Feminism and Philosophy FALL 2019 VOLUME 19 | NUMBER 1 INTRODUCTION Robin Zheng Lauren Freeman Women, Work, and Power: Envisaging the #MeToo and Philosophy Radical Potential of #MeToo ABOUT THE NEWSLETTER ON Julia R. S. Bursten FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY Field Notes on Conference Climate: A Decade with the Philosophy of Science SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND Association’s Women’s Caucus INFORMATION BOOK REVIEWS ARTICLES Hilkje Charlotte Hänel: What Is Rape? Miranda Pilipchuk Social Theory and Conceptual Analysis Reviewed by Caleb Ward Good Survivor, Bad Survivor: #MeToo and the Moralization of Survivorship A. Altman and L. Watson: Debating Pornography Sarah Clark Miller Reviewed by Mari Mikkola Beyond Silence, Towards Refusal: The Epistemic Possibilities of #MeToo Shelley L. Tremain: Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability Reviewed by Catherine Clune-Taylor Cassie Herbert The Speech Acts of #MeToo NEWS FROM THE CSW Lori Watson ANNOUNCEMENTS #MeToo? CONTRIBUTOR BIOS Alice MacLachlan #MeToo vs. Mea Culpa: On the Risks of Public Apologies VOLUME 19 | NUMBER 1 FALL 2019 © 2019 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION ISSN 2155-9708 APA NEWSLETTER ON Feminism and Philosophy LAUREN FREEMAN, EDITOR VOLUME 19 | NUMBER 1 | FALL 2019 way and to a different end. At around noon on October 15, INTRODUCTION 2017, Actress Alyssa Milano encouraged spreading the hashtag #MeToo on social media, in order to draw attention #MeToo and Philosophy to the prevalence and pervasiveness of sexual harassment and assault by showing how many people have personally Lauren Freeman experienced such events. By six o’clock p.m. on the same UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE day, the hashtag had been shared over 200,000 times; by noon the next day, over 500,000 times. On Facebook, the [Content warning for discussion of sexual violence.] hashtag was used by over 4.7 million people in 12 million posts in the first 24 hours. Facebook has estimated that 45 Continuing an important legacy of Black women’s advocacy percent of US users had at least one friend who had posted for sexual violence survivors, in 2006 Tarana Burke, a Black the statement “me too.”2 As of October 2018, #MeToo has feminist, social activist, and community organizer, founded been tweeted more than 19 million times.3 the Me Too movement. Her founding of this movement was a culmination of sorts, after having worked with Black As Tarana Burke has recently said, “What #MeToo allowed female survivors of sexual violence for over a decade. people to do was create community with these shared Beginning in the late 1990s, Burke was working in Selma, experiences. You have a built-in group of people who Alabama, with youth, many of whom had been victims of automatically gets you, who automatically believes you, sexual violence. Burke herself had also been a victim of who automatically wants to hear you. That’s the wildfire repeated sexual assault, beginning from the age of six. One of it.”4 As Miranda Pilipchuk discusses in her contribution day, Burke was talking to Heaven, a thirteen-year-old girl to this issue, “This emphasis on marginalized survivors is who she could tell wanted to confide in her about abuse particularly important given that many of the white-led she’d experienced. Knowing where the conversation was anti-violence movements that have gained national uptake going, and that Burke herself was not in a place where she have largely failed to address the concerns of marginalized could properly respond to someone else’s trauma, she survivors.” For Burke, the aim of the movement is to cut the conversation short, before it went there. Later, she provide resources to people to help them heal and to regretted that decision immensely. “I cut her off,” Burke advocate for changes to laws and policies. Specifically, recounted. “She was so hurt and devastated. That moment she’s emphasized goals like processing all untested taught me the power of empathy. All she needed was to rape kits, re-thinking local school policies, improving the hear the words, ‘Me, too’.”1 ways in which teachers are vetted, and updating sexual harassment policies.5 For Burke, the aim of the movement Burke knew that these girls needed help. She also knew ought to be focused on survivors and not on perpetrators. that, at the time, she was not equipped to offer the kind of For Milano, a priority of #MeToo is to challenge the laws help they needed, so she sought advice from and possible surrounding sexual harassment and assault, for example, collaboration with a local rape-crisis center. This proved to implementing legislation that makes it difficult for publicly be a dead end, as she was told that the center would only traded companies to hide cover-up payments from their work with girls who had gotten a referral from the local stockholders and to make it illegal for employers to require police department after they’d filed an official report. Burke new employees to sign non-disclosure agreements as a knew how sexual assault worked and how police are often condition of employment.6 the last people survivors go to, let alone trust, after having experienced sexual assault. So, in 2003, she started Just #MeToo continues to loom large in the national and Be, Inc., a non-profit organization that aims to help women international consciousness as increasingly more men are heal from sexual assault. In 2006, she named the movement accused and charged of sexual harassment and sexual Me Too. The focus of this movement was to respond to the assault. And yet the number of cases that go unreported experiences of abuse suffered by Black and brown girls and and the number of women who remain silent is even larger, women who are and remain disproportionately vulnerable, pointing to the systemic problems of injustice for victims of specifically, by connecting survivors of sexual assault to abuse, assault, and harassment and the systematic failures the resources they need in order to heal. of our institutions to bring about justice. All of these problems are complicated by the class, race, nationality, More than a decade later, in the wake of the growing immigration status, sexuality, gender identity, and disability accusations of sexual harassment and assault by film mogul of victims. Harvey Weinstein, the term “me too” resurfaced in a different APA NEWSLETTER | FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY #MeToo is a crucial form of resistance and the #MeToo an epistemic transformation, and, more broadly, as a lens movement, in all of its complexity, is ripe for philosophical to better understand some of the epistemic dimensions of engagement and analysis. In October 2018, in collaboration what she saw happening around her. Of import, Miller coins, with The CUNY Graduate Center Advanced Research unpacks, and develops the term “epistemic refusal,” which Collaborative, the Center for the Humanities, the Philosophy refers to the strategy of breaking one’s silence, in one’s own Program, and Hunter College, Linda Martín Alcoff and way, on one’s own terms, thereby refusing the dominant Charles Mills organized and hosted an interdisciplinary epistemic structures that have kept us tightly in check. conference on “#MeToo and Epistemic Injustice.” Aside from that, there has been no sustained philosophical Miller’s paper shows how the mass informal disclosure of treatment of the #MeToo movement. The present issue survivor status of #MeToo that took place in conjunction of the Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy aims both with other hashtags like #WhyIDidntReport and to fill this lacuna and also to start more of a profession- #BelieveHer has created space for epistemic, ethical, wide discussion about what philosophy and philosophers and political community between survivors of sexual have to contribute to the movement. Because this is the violence, specifically by denying the hegemonic epistemic first sustained treatment of #MeToo by philosophers, it discourses of contemporary rape culture. A key insight does not claim to be comprehensive by any means. Yet, of Miller’s paper is her discussion of the ways that mass the papers that you will find here begin some important informal disclosure of sexual violation can “shift the conversations. focus from the credibility of the survivor to the wrongful actions of the perpetrator—moving feelings of shame and Miranda Pilipchuk’s article, “Good Survivor, Bad Survivor: responsibility away from victim and back onto perpetrator.” #MeToo and the Moralization of Survivorship,” examines The implications of this point have great moral and political how #MeToo’s reliance on disclosure has resulted in promise as we consider how to move forward in building moral dilemmas for survivors and, more generally, in a communities of solidarity and epistemic subcultures for moralization of survivorship itself. She begins by situating and between survivors in the #MeToo era and beyond. This Burke’s original version of Me Too within the historical idea might also help us to reconcile some of the goals of legacy of Black women’s advocacy for sexual violence #MeToo with the original guiding initiatives of the Me Too survivors and then highlights the central features that movement. differentiate Burke’s original version of Me Too from the viral social media version of the movement. Pilipchuck Though it seems as though #MeToo has launched a then goes on to discuss the nature of disclosure within the paradigmatic shift in the way that we collectively understand context of #MeToo and argues that the impetus to disclose sexual assault—just look at the number of times the hashtag has created a moral hierarchy of survivors, where survivors has been shared on social media—in “The Speech Acts of who publicly disclose receive greater moral standing than #MeToo,” Cassie Herbert asks whether the movement has survivors who remain silent.

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