Hostility, Harassment, and Violence: On the Limits of ‘Free Speech’ for Minority Feminist Scholars

Robyn Bourgeois

doi:10.7202/1074012ar

Abstract

Following the rich tradition of Indigenous and Black feminists and authors, this article makes use of storytelling to explore the limits of freedom of speech in the academy for feminist scholars belonging to socially marginalized groups and, particularly, Indigenous feminist scholars. Through autoethnography, I expose the ways that freedom of speech was been weaponized against me by people with power to silence and suppress my freedom of speech. Moreover, I draw attention to the ways this has been done to me in order to secure the freedom of speech of other dominant and powerful people. This paper concludes with some recommendations about disrupting this violence and better supporting feminist scholars from minority groups.

Highlights

Following the rich tradition of Indigenous and Black feminists and authors, this article makes use of storytelling to explore the limits of freedom of speech in the academy for feminist scholars belonging to socially marginalized groups and, Indi genous feminist scholars. rough autoethnography, I expose the ways that freedom of speech was been weaponized against me by people with power to si lence and suppress my freedom of speech
As someone who lived for several years in Nova Scotia—or more appropriately, Mi’kmaw’ki, as the local Indigenous peoples refer to this territory —and as an Indigenous feminist scholar whose ca reer has focused on genderbased violence, I followed the developments of this case intently
E 10 stories I share expose the ways that people, es pecially those with power and privilege, weaponize freedom of speech against minority scholars. ese tactics range from microaggressions to public “calling outs” to physical and sexual violence

Summary

Article abstract

Following the rich tradition of Indigenous and Black feminists and authors, this article makes use of storytelling to explore the limits of freedom of speech in the academy for feminist scholars belonging to socially marginalized groups and, Indigenous feminist scholars. I expose the ways that freedom of speech was been weaponized against me by people with power to silence and suppress my freedom of speech. I draw attention to the ways this has been done to me in order to secure the freedom of speech of other dominant and powerful people. This paper concludes with some recommendations about disrupting this violence and better supporting feminist scholars from minority groups

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Conclusion