Sexism and Sexual Assault in Social Justice Movements

• In Event: 1429 - Informal Discussion Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 11: Feminism and Social Justice

Abstract

Contemporary social justice activists experiment with prefigurative politics, applying political beliefs to their daily lives. The application of politics to daily life is imprecise and the emphasis on solidarity within the movement can obfuscate complications faced by women and gender queer/non binary people. For the last 15 years, social justice movements have been engaged in contentious discussions around intragroup sexism, sexual assault, and abuse. Activists have extensively written and read about problems faced in more than one hundred zines, articles such as Courtney Desiree Morris’s “Why Misogynists Make Great Informants,” and books like Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. The leftist microcosm has foreshadowed some of the same complications faced by the ‘Me Too’ movement, such as defining abuse, ‘calling out’ individuals, and not wanting to use the criminal justice system. This roundtable will discuss gender dynamics in contemporary leftist movements, how values of feminism are/are not incorporated in activists’ practices, and various strategies used to address sexism and sexual assault in social justice movements.

Author

• Sarah Megan Hanks, CUNY Graduate Center