Feminist Studies Research Articles

Is the Transnational Female? Revisiting the Gender Metaphors of Global Connection

This essay takes up a rhetorical leitmotif in feminist studies of global political economy: theorizing the gender of geopolitical forms. Gender metaphors have revealed the systematic devaluation of scholarship deemed “too local” to constitute globalization theory, unveiled the bourgeois family romance animating modern nationalisms, and exposed the futility of depending on the modern state to adjudicate in women’s favor. Following in this tradition, I ask “Is the transnational female?” in order to illuminate both the sociological feminization of actors and institutions that move across national borders as well as the symbolic feminization of the qualities associated with transnationalism, namely flexibility, adaptability, and connectivity. These qualities make transnationalism subject to what Anna Tsing describes as the frictions of other trans-processes, notably translation, transgression, and transformation. Using an empirical case study from Uganda, I will argue that because the transnational circulation of women’s and sexual minority rights concepts depends on their translation by locally situated actors, they are fundamentally constrained by the national political contexts within which these actors work. In theorizing this case, this essay expands contemporary feminist analyses of the rise of the global Right to show how sexism and homophobia cross not only national borders but political ones as well, emerging, at times, under the very banner of women’s rights.

Response

Response Bernadette J. Brooten (bio) Thank you to Joseph Marchal, who organized this special section, to the respondents, each of whom has taken such care in engaging my work, and to the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion for publishing it. First, a word about the time in which I wrote. Jennifer Glancy and Mónica Rey have observed that, when I published Love Between Women in 1996, same-gender marriage was illegal. Beyond that, same-gender sexual contact itself was actually a crime in many states until 2003. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the United States Supreme Court overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 Supreme Court case, and declared that a Texas statute criminalizing consensual same-gender sex between adults was unconstitutional under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.1 As this goes to press, the constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy is at risk, which could mean turning back the clock on same-gender marriage and other hard-fought rights.2 [End Page 191] When New Testament scholars discussed Rom 1:26–27 at all, many assumed that Paul was speaking hypothetically about sexual relations between females: "For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the males, giving up natural intercourse with females, were consumed with passion for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error" (NRSV, slightly altered). I vividly recall speaking with a fellow, male member of the Society for New Testament Studies, who insisted to me that sexual relations between women did not exist in Paul's world, that Paul was simply hypothesizing such relations. Similarly, one well-known feminist theologian in Germany, speaking about my plans to write this book, once told another German feminist theologian, "I don't know any lesbians," to which her friend responded, "You know me." Silence. I cannot stress enough how wonderful I feel seeing more junior scholars working to interpret some of the same texts and artifacts about which I wrote and introducing new ones into the discussion. While writing about some of the more obscure texts, I felt as if I were excavating by drilling through ice in Antarctica, with no other experienced scholar in sight. I did, of course, discuss these sources with talented research assistants Denise Kimber Buell, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Caroline Johnson Hodge, and many others. But how encouraging it is now to be able to communicate with each of you in this panel, and to read of other interpretations, such as in Joseph Marchal's Appalling Bodies.3 Marchal deeply engages a broad range of ancient sources, proposing new meanings of being a receptive erotic partner. Angela Standhartinger has outlined some of the difficulties that I faced in the 1980s in Tübingen with Hans Küng, who opposed the very subject of the research. Numerous German feminists, LGBTQ+ individuals and groups, and simply fair-minded persons supported my work in numerous ways. I want to single out for special mention my friend of over four decades, Sheila Briggs, who spent countless hours with me in long-distance phone calls between Claremont, California, and Tübingen, counseling me on how to fight for the academic freedom necessary to write this book. Thank you, also, Angela Standhartinger, for mentioning my early work in addressing anti-Judaism within feminism and some of my other experiences and initiatives in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. I am thrilled about all that has lasted and grown since the meaningful years that I spent in the lovely small city of Tübingen. Thank you, Mónica Rey, for highlighting Love Between Women's contributions to women's history. I set out to establish that people in the Hellenistic and [End Page 192] Roman Mediterranean world knew of female homoerotic desires and acts. This largely involved studying male fantasies, some of them bizarre and distorted. I did, however, also find fragmentary evidence for women's history. Now, some people are not interested in history. That's all right. Not everyone has the same interests. Some think that a desire to write...

The representation of Thatcher's Theatre in Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls" : A social feminist study

Carly Churchill has a rare position within British contemporary’s post-war dramatists. She is perhaps the most innovative and elusive writer of her age, an ardent advocate of women’s equality and rights. The socialist feminist ideology of Churchill is indeed unquestionably the best of the postmodern society. Churchill lives under Thatcher’s leadership, and she is among the leader who, not just in her nation but across the western world, transforms the cultural and social landscape of the state. This pivotal event appears as a backdrop for Caryl Churchill to challenge how a competent lady in the patriarchal system has risen on the social ladder and what she does for women and the society in her era. This study aims at knowing how Thatcher’s theatre has depicted in Caryl Churchill‘s Top Girls . The work tries to set the effect of Thatcher on women and society in the period of her role as a prime minister of Britain and how her legacy makes citizens be successful in their jobs, but hates everyone around them, including their friends, coworkers, and even their families. The study hypothesizes that Churchill was affected by Thatcherism in her era and this influenced her style of writings. The paper starts with an Introduction of the Top girls play and Thatcher's regime , then follows the methodology of the study and the discussion comes afterwards and it ends with a conclusion that points out the results of discussion.

Novel Hilda: Image of Women Sexual Victim Violence (Gender and Feminist Study)

This study discusses the study of gender and feminism in a novel Hilda by Muyassarotul Hafidzoh. A novel that talks about the lives of survivors of sexual violence who struggle to get justice for themselves, fight trauma, and efforts to empower women within the scope of Islamic boarding schools. The purpose of this study is to analyze the study of gender and feminism in the novel Hilda, as well as to see the image of women who are victims of sexual violence. The research method used is descriptive-analytic with reference to the approach of feminism. The analytical knife used is the study of feminism and gender criticism. From the results of the study, it can be seen that Hilda is a representation of survivors of sexual violence who has experienced social discrimination, including expulsion from school, stigma, stereotypes, marginalization, violence, multiple traumas. The image of women in the figure of Hilda is depicted as a strong, intelligent character, and as a survivor of marital sexual violence, she also deserves to feel, because survivors are not unholy creatures. The image of pesantren can be categorized as an educational institution that is safe for women even in recovering past trauma by providing them with religious and social knowledge

Review: Latina Lives, Latina Narratives: Influential Essays by Vicki L. Ruiz, edited by Miroslava Chávez-García

Review: <i>Latina Lives, Latina Narratives: Influential Essays by Vicki L. Ruiz</i>, edited by Miroslava Chávez-García

Feminist Ecologies

In times of devastating ecological crisis, where can we find a route map to collectively halt current trends of destruction? In this review, we examine feminist studies’ recent contributions to activism and theorizing regarding extraction, emerging ecologies, and multispecies justice. By bringing in salient research from the fields of feminist political ecology, ecofeminism, and decolonial/anticolonial feminisms, we point to the ways in which feminist thought and action has opened up spaces for recognizing, envisioning, and making life-affirming ecologies rather than extractive systems of destruction. We refer to the former as emergent and emancipatory ecologies, that is, ecologies always in the process of becoming and capable of defying and subverting oppression based on gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, caste, ability, species and other forms of discrimination—and, thus, capable of protecting and defending life and living worlds.

Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research. Edited by Maryanne Dever. [Review

Originally published as a special issue for Australian Feminist Studies (volume 32, March–June 2017), this collection of writings poses a direct and thoughtful response to emerging discourse on feminist archives. It emphasizes community-focused, distributed, decolonized, and postcustodial archival approaches for many interdisciplinary and community uses and for community self-representation. Editor Maryanne Dever spends little time recounting the basic tenets of feminism or of archives and instead brings the reader directly into the challenge of the moment—interrogating the how and why of disruptive feminist advocacy and of practices that could crack open archival futures. Presented as 12 chapters by 17 contributors, it reads first and foremost as a work targeted at an interdisciplinary scholarly audience newly engaging with archival theory. First published in 2017, the writings, of course, predate the pandemic, #MeToo, #BLM, and the broader 2020 movement for racial and social justice and so only indirectly call for antiracism, reparative practices, and digital access equity. Nevertheless, in many ways, they presage those clarion calls by insisting the larger academic world must better engage with archival theory for a more just, equitable, inclusive, feminist future.

The Impact of the Woman in two Selected Novels of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Kate Chopin's The Awakening

The study deals with the impact of women writers who used feminist studies as a medium for advocating improvements and support for women's unequal roles in society. The study concerns two female writers, they are Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Kate Chopin's The Awakening. They show that women conquered barriers to achieve control and independence before getting married. In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the protagonist has changed her attitude toward the mother's role as well as the wife in a traditional Victorian marriage. She refuses the assigned positions. By closer analysis of the general perception of women writers and the popular concepts used by Chopin and Bronte to demonstrate the narrowness of patriarchal culture and its absence, the novels raise awareness about women's exploitation and help to create a road to women's long overdue emancipation and gender equality, concerning their fundamental human rights to freedom during this time. The study sheds light on similarities between the two novels, which portray Victorian society.

Gender and Literature: A Feminist Study in A Collection of Short Stories Rokat Tase' by Muna Masyari

This study aimed to reveal the gender injustice experienced by female characters using feminism theory, focusing on gender inequality from Mansur Fakih. The object of this research was a collection of short stories Rokat Tase' by Muna Masyari by taking five samples from twenty short stories population. This study uses a qualitative method, namely research that examines the condition of natural objects, where the researcher is the key instrument of the research. This research was a review study. Then to analyze the data, the researcher used the descriptive method. The results of this study indicate that there are gender injustices such as marginalization, subordination, stereotypes, violence, and the workload experienced by female characters in Muna Masyari's collection of short stories Rokat Tase. In addition, there are traditions and rules in the household and the domination of men over women, which causes women to be powerless.

Clitoral Anatomy in the Feminist Literature: Vagina obscura: An anatomical voyage (2020) and Clitoral Conventions and Transgressions: Graphical representations in anatomy texts, c1900-1991 (1995).

O'Connell et al. proposed that the vestibular bulbs be renamed the "clitoral bulbs" because of their consistent relationship to the clitoris and inconsistent relationship to the vestibule. Normally such proposed esoteric changes in anatomical nomenclature would get little notice by anatomists, yet alone the general public; however, many subsequent articles and books placed this change in the context of centuries of male anatomists and physicians downplaying female sexual anatomy and sexuality. Most prominent is a 2022 book by Rachel Gross, Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage. Here we review this "Anatomical Voyage" and find author bias in omitting/including erroneous facts in this book. We also present a critique of a 1995 article that appeared in Feminist Studies; Graphical Representations in Anatomy Texts, c1900-1991. This article, which has been repeatedly cited in the clinical literature, asserts that between circa 1950-1980 anatomy textbooks purposely eliminated depicting/labeling the clitoris in illustrations because the authors of the textbooks were reflecting societal norms that de-emphasized the importance of the clitoris. Unfortunately, the methods used by Moore and Clarke are not replicable; and further, their conclusions were not justified because of clear bias in their description and depiction of the anatomy sources they review.

Gendering Sweden's nuclear renunciation: a historical analysis

Abstract Contemporary developments in international affairs underscore the need for successful outcomes in the field of nuclear disarmament. However, feminist scholars have shown how linkages between masculinity and nuclear posturing continue to make disarmament appear as a policy of the weak, associated with emasculation and/or feminization. In this article I show how a feminist study of Swedish nuclear history has the potential to complicate, and disrupt, such linkages. Analysing a broad range of primary sources through a discourse analytical lens, the article shows how Sweden (re)constructed a white masculine self through its nuclear renunciation and disarmament engagement in the 1950s and 1960s. The article contributes with new insights about how gender, nuclear renunciation and disarmament interact; how lessons from the past can inform our understanding of disarmament dilemmas in the present; and the policy implications of such an analysis. Arguing that such knowledge is crucial for imaginative and transformative disarmament policy in the present, the article concludes that to reach a world free from nuclear weapons, it is crucial to expose, and challenge, those power relations that contribute to sustain a gendered and racialized nuclear order.

Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice ed. by Redi Koobak, Madina Tlostanova and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert

Reviewed by: Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice ed. by Redi Koobak, Madina Tlostanova and Suruchi Thapar-Björkert P. Watson Koobak, Redi; Tlostanova, Madina and Thapar-Björkert, Suruchi (eds). Postcolonial and Postsocialist Dialogues: Intersections, Opacities, Challenges in Feminist Theorizing and Practice. Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality. Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2021. xvi + 265 pp. Illustrations. Figures. References. Index. £120:00; £36:99; £33:99 (e-book). By bringing together the postcolonial and the postsocialist, until now addressed separately in feminist studies, this anthology aims to open the way to new sets of political questions with the potential for impacting global change. [End Page 591] Postcolonialism is rarely addressed through postsocialist perspectives, which have typically been concentrated on East European and post-Soviet countries. Moreover, as the book observes, after the Cold War feminists in Eastern Europe tend to engage with postcolonial discourse to the extent of describing their location as the internal other of Europe, while feminists from the global south are reluctant to engage in a critical discussion of postsocialism. Instead of abandoning past and present versions of socialism, the book contends, postsocialism should be productively rethought. The book is composed of eighteen chapters ranging from interviews and conversations to straight single author texts. The chapters traverse themes such as disability, gender, sexuality, migration, the EU and racism/whiteness. The diverse group of twenty-eight contributors includes activists, artists and scholars from a range of scholarly backgrounds. Chapters are organized under three headings: intersections/opacities/challenges, which represent broad axes for thinking between the postcolonial and the postsocialist. The first section considers intersections in terms of the interactions of cultures, epistemologies, ideologies and human conditions within modernity/coloniality. The second interrogates normative understandings of opacity with the aim of extracting the idea’s potential for resistance, while the third part grapples with the challenges posed by the complicity of feminisms in upholding a racist European imperial project. In her chapter on postsocialist precarity, Jennifer Suchland explores the ways in which East European and Eurasian postsocialism relate to the history of colonialism. Looking at postsocialism as a global condition, postsocialist precarity involves the defunding of public services, the promotion of austerity and of profit over wellbeing, as well as the criminalization of protest. Suchland encompasses postsocialist and decolonial critiques of power with the aim of exposing the hidden Eurocentrism in critical postsocialist theorizing. She offers a decolonial reading of precarity by analysing two images — Repin’s Barge Haulers on the Volga and an image of a sex-trafficked person — uncovering how hidden eurocentrism can be carried forward in the discourses around them. Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora’s intention is to bring back socialism as a way of framing analysis. They raise unasked questions such as: how is Eastern Europe racialized in complex ways through the commodification of bodies? How does such racialization complicate notions of US racial formations? What might be the implications for postcolonial theory? In her interview with Manuelā Boatca, Madina Tlostanova notes the way in which a new postsocialist feminist subject is abandoning past and present socialist phenomena, and the scale of the challenge of engaging feminists from the global south regarding this issue. Boatca identifies this as coloniality of knowledge, which produces categories such as Second versus Third World which come to constitute a field [End Page 592] within which competing political interests are played out. Deconstructing colonial categories is prerequisite for making transverse connections. In other chapters, Lidia Zhigunova discusses the racial status of Circassians who have become the epitome of ‘whiteness’ in US racial discourse yet who are branded as ‘Blacks’ in Russia together with other ‘Caucasians’. Tjaša Kancler pushes for a radical approach to analysis that interrogates or leaves behind Western-derived meanings of gender. Maria Mayerchyk and Olga Plakhotnik, writing on post-Maidan Ukraine, argue that ‘uneventful activism’ can help forge futures that can avoid the trap of nationalism, capitalism and colonialism, even at a time of war. Angéla Kóczé in conversation with Petra Bakos reflects on developing a critical race feminist agenda sensitive to the specific characteristics and needs of Eastern European Roma communities. Alyosxa...

미국-멕시코 국경지대 여성주의 연극의 이해

This paper is the first result of the project ''Understanding of the Feminist Theatre on the US-Mexico Borderlands'' and presents from a theoretical perspective and in an introductive manner the US-Mexico borderlands as a field of constant hegemony struggle and the study of postcolonial peripheral feminism as a new perspective in feminist studies. Suggesting the “ethical violence” (Butler 2013) and “mechanisms of ignorance, rejection and insult” (Honneth 2011) are also a key cause of conflict in this region, this paper also introduces the existence of female playwrights who use theatre as a means of resisting ethical violence and fighting for the recognition of identity in this “transnational and heterogeneous space” at the US-Mexico borderlands.

PESQUISAS SOBRE GÊNEROS E SEXUALIDADES NA EDUCAÇÃO: TENTATIVAS DE VER, REVER E ‘TRANSVER’ O MUNDO

This article aims to describe research carried out within the Group of Studies and Research in Sexualities, Education, and Gender (Gepsex) at the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS). The researches are theoretically-methodologically based on gender studies, sexuality studies, feminist studies, cultural studies, and Foucault's assumptions, from a post-critical and poststructuralist perspective. We sought to think the research based on fragments of poetry by Manoel de Barros to discuss issues such as the deconstruction of unique truths; resistance in daily life and in doing research; the transience of scientific knowledge; questioning the meanings of language as the production of realities and subjectivities and thinking about the micro at the expense of metanarratives.Keywords: Research. Genre. Sexuality. Education.

PESQUISAS EM GÊNERO, SEXUALIDADE E EDUCAÇÃO NA PERSPECTIVA PÓS-ESTRUTURALISTA

The field of studies of gender and sexuality articulated with education has been constituting and, today is already consolidated as a field of knowledge. This means that this field has mobilized study and research groups linked to CNPq with a focus on these interests, lines of research in Postgraduate programs, National Associations focused on discussions of Gender and Sexuality, Working Groups in the main academic associations, Seminars National and International, in short, a set of actions that allow us to affirm the studies of Gender, Sexuality, and Education as a field that produces and disseminates knowledge. This field has a strong influence from the post-structuralist perspective, which invests in the problematization of important and central issues for society, such as, for example, the production of gender and sexual differences and inequalities in their crossings with race/ethnicity, generation, and class. Bringing it to Education, this approach focuses on the school space and a sense of education beyond schools as contexts in which gender and sexuality relations produce subjects as the effects of discursive practices, knowledge, power relations, and actions between subjects. In this sense, the proposal of a dossier like this is so that we can welcome, know and disseminate research that has taken the poststructuralist perspective in dialogue with other studies, such as Gay and Lesbian Studies, Foucaultian Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies, Queer Studies as provocations to think about the constitution of subjects and their belonging in their intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, generation, religion, class, among others. Research that works with this sense of constitution of subjects as educational processes that involve not only schools but other educational spaces as well, in which relationships are marked by discourses, practices, and knowledge that produce identities and belonging, as well as allowing us to place under suspicion our ways of thinking, acting, being and being in the world. Our proposal is also to problematize how these researches based on the post-structuralist perspective, in dialogue with other studies, have mobilized our ways of looking at and understanding the field of gender, sexuality, and education studies.KEYWORDS: Gender. Sexuality. Education. Post-Structuralism.

PESQUISAS EM GÊNERO, SEXUALIDADE E EDUCAÇÃO NA PERSPECTIVA PÓS-ESTRUTURALISTA

The dossier proposes to welcome, know and disseminate research that has taken the poststructuralist perspective in dialogue with other studies, such as Gay and Lesbian Studies, Foucaultian Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies, and Queer Studies as provocations to think about the constitution of the subjects and their belonging in their intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, generation, religion, class, among others. Research that works with this sense of constitution of subjects as educational processes that involve not only schools but other educational spaces as well, in which relationships are marked by discourses, practices, and knowledge that produce identities and belonging.

The Scandal of Women’s Emancipation. Femonationalism, Right-Wing Sexual Politics, and Anti-Feminism

Abstract In the past decade, several publications in gender studies have been grappling with conservative and reactionary politics claiming to defend women and sexual minorities against immigrants. Sara Farris’s concept of femonationalism offers explanations for the paradox of far-right actors pretending to care about women and sexual minorities and some feminists making racist statements. Yet Farris’s methodology as well as her arguments show important shortcomings. In a close reading of Farris’s book, this article refutes her hypothesis of a conversion of far-right, EU, neoliberal, and feminist politics and lays out alternative perspectives in order to develop a better understanding of the ongoing phenomenon. The article deconstructs the false opposition of heterosexual familialist migrant and Muslim communities versus queer-friendly feminist Europeans. In presenting recent feminist studies, the article suggests it is necessary to understand paradoxical far-right sexual politics in their familialist, capitalist, and colonialist contexts.

Feminist and Nationalist Discourse in Kadınlar Dünyası

There is a widely presumed idea that Ottoman women did not ask for their rights but those rights were bestowed upon them. The bourgeoning feminist studies of 1980s, however, refuted this long-lasting myth as they discovered what has been buried within the annals of history. With the efforts of these studies shedding light on Ottoman women’s emancipation, we reach out to the knowledge that our grandmothers put up a valiant struggle under challenging circumstances. Ottoman women struggled not only to gain their rights within the national boundaries but also to circumvent orientalist dichotomies that have traditionally prevented their feminist voice to be heard internationally. Even after being discovered from the long-forgotten dusty shelves, accessing what has been discussed by our grandmothers was not simple and straightforward. As Ottoman women recorded their struggle in the Ottoman script, their ideas could not be conveyed effortlessly and needed transliteration into Latin script. Thanks to the transliteration project of women periodicals carried out by The Women’s Library and Information Centre, we can now access and analyse what had been discussed by our grandmothers. While there are several notorious women periodicals published for women, within the frame of this paper, I will conduct a contextualised reading of the feminist and nationalist discussion that has taken place within the Women’s journal Kadınlar Dünyası (Women’s World) and discuss how women of that time took the issue of feminism and nationalism. Did they relate themselves to the word, feminism, or tried to find a new way to defend themselves? How did they situate themselves within the frame of Western feminist ideals and Eastern nationalist norms? In this paper, I will mainly discuss how these rather opposite terms entangled within the discourse of female freedom.

Review of the Book by Rosi Braidotti “Posthuman”

The article offers reflections on Rosi Braidotti’s book “Posthuman”, which was published in 2021 by the Gaidar Institute Publishing House (translator Diana Khamis). Rosi Braidotti is a contemporary philosopher and feminist theorist, originally from Italy, currently teaching at the Utrecht University (Netherlands). Despite her connection with significant international organizations and associations (including UNESCO, Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, European Consortium for Humanities Institutes and Centres, EEC) and the role that her research plays in contemporary social and humanitarian discourse, her name is not widely known to the Russian-speaking reader in comparison to other authors of feminist trend, such as Judith Butler or Donna Haraway. Rosi Braidotti’s interest is directed towards the reflections on the subjectivity of a contemporary person. Based on critical theory, the project of nomadology, feminist studies, and using her own anti-humanistic optics, she affirms the idea of a posthuman who has a developing identity, overcomes anthropocentric limits in its essence, and is open to assemblies with living matter and the world of technology. In this review, I focus on the main structural elements of the book, its key ideas; I offer my interpretation of some plots of the text; I dwell on the discussion points of the work. I come to the conclusion that the concept of the posthuman and the posthumanistic method allow us to open new horizons for the current research practices of man and society.

Dot-Dot-Dot: A Feminist Critical Poetic Inquiry of Silence in Teacher Candidates’ Responses to Teaching Sexual Assault Narratives

This project emerges from a larger feminist study where 23 teacher candidate participants took up reading a trauma text set of sexual assault literature and responded to pedagogy for teaching such narratives with adolescents in Canadian K-12 public schools. This critical feminist poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2016; 2018a; 2018b; 2020a; 2020b; Ohito &amp; Nyachae, 2018; Prendergast, 2015) represents a significant piece of this project: how breath, pauses, slivers of silence(s), and slow pacing surfaced during teachers candidates’s disclosures of violence while discussing their learning about the pedagogical potential of Tarana Burke’s MeToo movement, centering sexual assault narratives in the English literature classroom, and resisting rape culture(s). Because participants’ testimonies of diverse trauma experiences demanded poetry of witness (Davidson, 2003), poetic inquiry allowed for attendance to these offerings through the composition of visual ‘silence poems’ that re-transcribe the disclosures by capturing nonverbal moments: gaps, pauses, trailings off, etc. With the aim of thinking ahead to how secondary English teachers might cultivate radical classroom communities prepared to cultivate radical solidarity as resistance to patriarchal violence, this paper explores how poetic inquiry might especially offer a significant methodological entrypoint for antirape research.