Rhetoric Society Quarterly Mar 2018

“Tweet Me Your First Assaults”: Writing Shame and the Rhetorical Work of #NotOkay

Shari J. Stenberg Schlumberger (Ireland)

Abstract

This essay features a study of the #NotOkay Twitter thread, which arose as a response to the Access Hollywood Trump tape and comprises thousands of tweets by women who describe their first experience of sexual assault. I analyze this hashtag as an act of what Elspeth Probyn calls “writing shame.” I first trace the cultural habitus of emotion around sexual assault and harassment, which teaches survivors to internalize shame and normalizes assault. I then examine how #NotOkay contributors—both before and after the election—participate in writing shame, a practice that does the following rhetorical work: serves as an invitational space for women to rewrite assault-related shame; revises the locus of shame from the individual to the culture that shames; and generates calls to transform this emotional and rhetorical sphere.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2018-03-15
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2017.1402126
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Topics
rhetorical criticism social media editorial matter
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (6)

  1. Kalim (2024)
    Unveiling the affective digital counterpublic: A rhetorical ecological analysis…
    Computers and Composition
  2. Walston (2023)
    Technofeminism, Twitter, and the counterpublic rhetoric of @SheRatesDogs
    Computers and Composition
  3. Schoettler (2023)
    “Make your feed work for you”: Tactics of feminist affective resistance on soci…
    Computers and Composition
  4. Adams et al. (2020)
    Acting with Algorithms: Feminist Propositions for Rhetorical Agency
    Computers and Composition
  5. Larson (2019)
    “Just let this sink in”: FeministMegethosand the Role of Lists in #MeToo
    Rhetoric Review
Show all 6 →
  1. Geiger (2019)
    Forgiveness Is More Than Platitudes: Evangelical Women, Sexual Violence, and Ca…
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

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CrossRef global citation count: 12 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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