nstances of Twitter shaming and commenting sections on stories written by or about women are often the most flagrant, with back and forth accusations of “slut”, “whore” and much worse.

social contract of the digital sphere,

instances of Twitter shaming and commenting sections on stories written by or about women are often the most flagrant, with back and forth accusations of “slut”, “whore” and much worse

bodily appearance (white, female, and blonde)

Let her speak

Senator Wendy Davis’s thirteen-hour filibuster

women have been relegated to the background of public speech or silenced altogether by a patriarchal structure of discourse.

Ellen Pao (an American woman of Chinese descent), experienced a large volume of harassment after banning and censoring the forum’s most hate speech-focused subreddits, eventually stepping down from her position

“for the past twenty-five hundred years in Western culture, the ideal woman has been disciplined by cultural codes that require a closed mouth (silence), a closed body (chastity), and an enclosed life (domestic confinement)”

The “closed mouth” and “closed body” dichotomies that Glenn brings to light are of great importance when women speak or write in public, because it is the body that is harassed or attacked when women resist the cultural expectations of silent or docile speakers.

The Sophists emphasized the development of “knowledge of fundamentals [that] becomes bodily rather than conscious,”

what is certain is that the Internet has created a ‘call-out’ culture, in which sexism or misogyny can be ‘called out’ and challenged

not limited to: barriers of access such as required usernames/registration to forums, using one’s actual identity on social media, the time required to participate in this discourse.

A disruptive rhetoric must unify power and action from preexisting avenues and harness the rhetorical power of digital visibility.

Yes, misogyny and patriarchal attacks against female speakers can more easily be brought to light and discussed online (take Davis and Beard for example), but a more visible and immediate space for writing and discussion itself does not yet merit a renaming of a social movement.

one traditional, competitive, agonistic, and linear mode of rhetorical 
 discourse but would rather incorporate other, often dangerous moves…” (Lunsford, 1995: 6).

subversions are allowing feminist rhetors to reclaim a bit of their material experience that so often comes under attack in spaces where the body is not immediately present, raising their hand and their voices, in a sense.

allegedly breaking the filibuster rules.

slinging the insult toward Davis’s filibuster topic and her bodily appearance (white, female, and blonde).

shape, race, origin, and more

The tongue is a crucial organ in ancient rhetoric

cutting out her tongue

disruptive technologies

“for the past twenty-five hundred years in Western culture, the ideal woman has been disciplined by cultural codes that require a closed mouth (silence), a closed body (chastity), and an enclosed life (domestic confinement)”

Today’s feminist rhetoricians are in the midst of seeking alternative avenues of shaping their voices

abortion Barbie

Attack, dissent, and harassment arise online when women speak/write/act outside of the expected cultural codes

Her social media presence

At what point must a female senator raise her hand for her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

Internet

“I doubt there’s a computer simulation on the horizon capable of accurately representing all the activity in a single cubic centimeter of soil or the entire sensory experience of clipping one toenail, much less an entire social world of thousands of human users” (Rushkoff 2013, 64).

When we transform our pedagogical practices in the face-to-face classroom to value the deep learning that comes with human interaction and embodiment—particularly when those bodies vary in identity markers of class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and disability—our students gain ethical knowledge that values human difference.

We note, for example, that the content that students post on social media does not, as Manovich (2012) notes, constitute “transparent windows into their selves; instead, they are usually carefully curated and systematically managed” (465). Instead, we focus on the texture of human lives, from what we see, hear, and feel to what we imagine, remember, and predict.

and here is an opportunity to link the student’s visual understanding of a concept to its expression in written English. It’s an opportunity to build off of the student’s existing cognitive abilities to develop a love for written English, rather than focusing only on what is “correct” in written English, effectively reducing her ASL expression of a concept into an uninteresting statement.

The tutor says, “And this is where, this is where she has problems with writing. Because in signing, you can say so much more with fewer words. I guess when you have ideas and concepts and all that, you can sign it. But on a paper you’ve gotta write it out” (Babcock 2008, 34).

By teaching students to access the multiple textures of human experience, they learn to see, hear, or feel more deeply than they could before.

she expressed through words the idea that thrift stores were probably a better consumer practice, but that she rarely acted on that belief. By the end of the semester, she reflected on her new practice of actively optimizing her consumer purchases through secondhand services and thrift stores. Over the course of the semester, she wasn’t just absorbing or observing knowledge, she was enacting it by having to create a physical record of her journey and convey the feeling of consumer excess through her body.

Language communicates emotion

By the end of the semester, and after a series of pedagogical activities which included the nonverbal skit, the student discovered the value of capturing his own facial expressions to communicate the critical and comedic aspects of his study. In the final revision, the student dramatized the physical impact of Tabasco sauce when it is consumed with the frequency the ad encourages

communicated not only with their words in formal written essays, but also with the power of visual and spatial metaphors expressed through nonverbal modes.

In embodying the gestures we see in the media, we’re reading body language in a way that moves us to identify with others and critically read the power imbalance in the pose.

With nonverbal skits, students are playing together in a planned interface.

If play is so valuable

We communicate relationships of power, aggression, insult, and fear via nonverbal gestures. When I replicated my dad’s performance of “The Teacher” in my own classroom, a glaring gender-power issue emerged. While my dad could humorously perform the act of being overpowered by a student in his classroom, topped off with the act of bending over and getting spanked with a paddle, my identity as a young female professor becomes compromised in the act of performing this sequence. Embodying a narrative becomes an act of critical reading

embodied classroom interface

The skit itself is a parody of the hearing classroom, in which the teacher delivers an oral/aural lecture, while the students express their dissatisfaction through physical mini-aggressions with their spitballs.

Instead, all of their eyes are on me. The stares make me slightly uncomfortable, because they make me aware that my nonverbal performance is different from theirs, informed as it is by Deaf culture. However, I have invited the stares and have made them a part of the pedagogical practice.[6] Through this practice, the attention of their eyes has been recalibrated and retrained to look at me rather than just listen to me. Their eyes respond to me as an embodied classroom interface, and I cannot be replaced by a screen.

nonverbal, gestural, and imagined

Most importantly, we wrap up the session with reflections on the visual and spatial affordances of expressing concepts with our bodies.

we are ignoring the embodied interface of the classroom and the multisensory affordances of shared space.

In ASL storytelling, “non-manual signals, such as facial expression, provide important information . . . By changing [the] body position so that each character faces a different direction, [the performer] help[s] the audience understand which character is doing the action” (qtd in Peters 2000, 83). ASL is a visual language, and adept Deaf storytellers engage in art forms that build upon the everyday gestural communication of deaf persons.

The nonverbal is typically poised as an extension of hearing culture rather than a fundamental expression of an embodied human experience, capable of infinite articulation.

It does not include signed English, it does not include captions on a screen, and it does not include visual aids. Rather, it is the story we tell with our bodies.

no matter how expressive I would be with my face and my gestures, and no matter how brilliant my slide show presentation, my parents would be bored and disconnected from the content and activity of the course.

I am engaging the concept of “universal design in writing pedagogy,” which points to methods in introducing “a variety of visual, aural, spatial, and kinesthetic approaches to tap into the intellectual chaos that goes into writing in the physical, literal sense” to show the connection between the inner eye of the signer and the inner eye of the poet (Dunn and Dunn De Mers 2002). In the sections that follow, I explore how understanding the gestural and nonverbal technologies of Deaf culture and languages can influence the public education of hearing, neurodiverse, and differently abled students

create clear images

As a child who was more comfortable with the visual expression of ideas, poetry became an instant lifeline for me to communicate my thoughts, feelings, and ideas within hearing culture. Poetry, like American Sign Language, engages with visual and imagistic pulses of expression, with narrative and storytelling following cinematic gestures through time that can be cut and edited.

I propose that we engage the physical space of the classroom as well as the expressive space of an embodied pedagogical practice.

Rather, developments in Deaf Studies over the past five to ten years have shown that “the highly visual, spatial, and kinetic structures of thought and language” that comprise Deaf culture may transform “hearing ways of knowing” (Baumann and Murray 2013, 246).

Along these lines, Lennard J. Davis (1995) argues that “disability is not a minor issue that relates to a relatively small number of unfortunate people; it is part of a historically constructed discourse, an ideology of thinking about the body under certain historical circumstances.

dystopian narratives of immobilized bodies

educators have increasingly turned to technology, such as Clickers and Twitter backchannels, to engage more deeply with their students’ learning.

raised hands, arched eyebrows, slumped shoulders, and crossed arms

become the expressive performers on the stage and the human technologies in motion

When we transform our pedagogical practices in the face-to-face classroom to value the deep learning that comes with human interaction and embodiment—particularly when those bodies vary in identity markers of class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and disability—our students gain ethical knowledge that values human difference.

multiple textures of human experience,

But we can choose to live in between the 1s and 0s—we can choose to live a life that is not programmed.

One of the ways we explore this complexity of human experience is through short readings in modernist literature, including an excerpt from the beginning of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925).

Such practices can be extended beyond deaf students to ESL students, as Babcock suggests, but also to neurodiverse, differently abled, and first generation students.

Instead of focusing on what is “right,” or what makes sense in English, I suggest focusing on the physical concept she is expressing in ASL and offer a variety of ways to communicate that highly visual concept in written English.

but she contorts her body to show the burden of weight, while also twisting her mouth to indicate her doubt about whether or not possessing two coffee mugs is a good idea.

distorts the lived experience

prewriting on their consumer identity

eading body language

her face squished, her arm limp—not in a passion, but in de-attachment. And then we become the sailor: the man, with his left arm locking the woman into his embrace, locking her head into a forceful kiss. The romance dissipates

Likewise, the classroom is no longer a single place, but rather an interface that is shaped by the bodies of the students in that classroom.

I cannot be replaced by a screen.

However, I have invited the stares and have made them a part of the pedagogical practice.

Instead, all of their eyes are on me.

we are ignoring the embodied interface of the classroom and the multisensory affordances of shared space.

his hearing loss was rendered less visible when he narrated a story with everyday facial expressions, gestures, and body movements. At the same time, his performance made visible the storytelling capabilities of the human body, and it demanded that the children decode his stories through careful watching.

Nonverbal communication is the story we tell with our bodies.

according to hearing standards,

viewing sign language as an extension or expression of poetry

a gulf between the words on the page and the ideas they symbolize.

performance of hearing culture

Yet, my formal education in English studies had de-emphasized the body as a vehicle for communication, locating knowledge primarily in oral and aural articulations.

being

normalize deaf persons as hearing persons

exchange their existing human capabilities for assistive devices and de-contextualized simulations.

able-bodied students have learned throughout their formal education to project a perfect blank stare.

Access to student feedback, however, is not the same as actual student feedback.

expressive space of an embodied pedagogical practice.

Let us note that in every one of us there are two guiding and ruling principles which lead us whither they will; one is the natural desire of pleasure, the other is an acquired opinion which aspires after the best; and these two are sometimes in harmony and then again at war, and sometimes the one, sometimes the other conquers. When opinion by the help of reason leads us to the best, the conquering principle is called temperance; but when desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us and drags us to pleasure, that power of misrule is called excess.

let us first of all agree in defining the nature and power of love, and then, keeping our eyes upon the definition and to this appealing, let us further enquire whether love brings advantage or disadvantage.

for here are we all alone, and I am stronger, remember, and younger than you-Wherefore perpend, and do not compel me to use violence.

You are a dear golden ass

I thought, though I speak under correction, that he repeated himself two or three times, either from want of words or from want of pains; and also, he appeared to me ostentatiously to exult in showing how well he could say the same thing in two or three ways.

Such are the feats which love exhibits; he makes things painful to the disappointed which give no pain to others; he compels the successful lover to praise what ought not to give him pleasure, and therefore the beloved is to be pitied rather than envied.

when you have given up what is most precious to you, you will be the greater loser, and therefore, you will have more reason in being afraid of the lover, for his vexations are many, and he is always fancying that every one is leagued against him.

but when non-lovers meet, no one asks the reason why

for they confer their benefits according to the measure of their ability, in the way which is most conducive to their own interest.

he will prefer any future love to his present, and will injure his old love at the pleasure of the new.

lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown when their passion ceases

But the non-lover has no such tormenting recollections; he has never neglected his affairs or quarrelled with his relations; he has no troubles to add up or excuse to invent; and being well rid of all these evils, why should he not freely do what will gratify the beloved?

Now I have no leisure for such enquiries; shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me.

Yes, my sweet one; but you must first of all show what you have in your left hand under your cloak, for that roll, as I suspect, is the actual discourse. Now, much as I love you, I would not have you suppose that I am going to have your memory exercised at my expense, if you have Lysias himself here.

I believe that I know Phaedrus about as well as I know myself, and I am very sure that the speech of Lysias was repeated to him, not once only, but again and again;-he insisted on hearing it many times over and Lysias was very willing to gratify him; at last, when nothing else would do, he got hold of the book, and looked at what he most wanted to see,-this occupied him during the whole morning; -and then when he was tired with sitting, he went out to take a walk, not until, by the dog, as I believe, he had simply learned by heart the entire discourse, unless it was unusually long, and he went to a place outside the wall that he might practise his lesson. There he saw a certain lover of discourse who had a similar weakness;-he saw and rejoiced; now thought he, "I shall have a partner in my revels." And he invited him to come and walk with him. But when the lover of discourse begged that he would repeat the tale, he gave himself airs and said, "No I cannot," as if he were indisposed; although, if the hearer had refused, he would sooner or later have been compelled by him to listen whether he would or no. Therefore, Phaedrus, bid him do at once what he will soon do whether bidden or not.

We need better policy, changing norms and real conversations about key issues.

But according the social model, while many people may have all kinds of medical conditions, people are disabled by the lack of accessibility in our society.

her before and after photographs are being used in the worst possible way to promote fat shaming of her peers, to impose the myth of indistinguishability and objectifying stereotypes that could actually harm her peers.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the content of these stories, of course, but the way they’re told conceals the real issues faced by the disability community.

Stella died December quite unexpectedly, but alas, inspiration porn still dominates depictions of disability in the news, so her work continues.

that deafness is something that is gained

The human body communicates far beyond words, yet its expressive art and multisensory experiences are being abandoned for the seemingly better technologies of language-driven social media and online learning.

these technologies are limited by linguistic expression, digital access, and data collection

human technologies

Why, because medicine has to define the nature of the body and rhetoric of the soul-if we would proceed, not empirically but scientifically, in the one case to impart health and strength by giving medicine and food in the other to implant the conviction or virtue which you desire, by the right application of words and training.

A very great power in public meetings.

discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole?

Is not rhetoric, taken generally, a universal art of enchanting the mind by arguments

arrangement of them, for there can be none in the invention

repetition was the especial merit of the speech; for he omitted no topic of which the subject rightly allowed, and I do not think that any one could have spoken better or more exhaustively.

whose success in love is the reward of their merit

The wise are doubtful

he ingeniously proved that the non-lover should be accepted rather than the lover.

I think, some sort of an altar of Boreas at the place.

Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia from the banks of the Ilissus

The reverse of good.

Mortals call him fluttering love, But the immortals call him winged one, Because the growing of wings is a necessity to him. You may believe this, but not unless you like. At any rate the loves of lovers and their causes are such as I have described.

Well, but are you and I expected to praise the sentiments of the author, or only the clearness, and roundness, and finish, and tournure of the language?

was ravishing

he is willing to say and do what is hateful to other men, in order to please his beloved

when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death,

Ilissus

I would not have you suppose that I am going to have your memory exercised at my expense, if you have Lysias himself here.

Acumenus

I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.

I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing

But there is something yet to be said of propriety and impropriety of writing

But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness.

this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves

rhetorician has; no need of truth

he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls-they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man

What power has this art of rhetoric, and when?

All of them agree in asserting that a speech should end in a recapitulation, though they do not all agree to use the same word. Phaedr. You mean that there should be a summing up of the arguments in order to remind the hearers of them.

rules of correct diction and many other fine precepts

There is the exordium, showing how the speech should begin, if I remember rightly; that is what you mean-the niceties of the art? Phaedr. Yes. Soc. Then follows the statement of facts, and upon that witnesses; thirdly, proofs; fourthly, probabilities are to come; the great Byzantian word-maker also speaks, if I am not mistaken, of confirmation and further confirmation.

our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear.

Is not rhetoric, taken generally, a universal art of enchanting the mind by arguments; which is practised not only in courts and public assemblies, but in private houses also, having to do with all matters, great as well as small, good and bad alike, and is in all equally right, and equally to be esteemed-that is what you have heard?

perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by us, and she might answer:

And yet, Socrates, I have heard that he who would be an orator has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely to be approved by the many who sit in judgment; nor with the truly good or honourable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion comes persuasion, and not from the truth.

Why, do you not know that when a politician writes, he begins with the names of his approvers?

you are aware that the greatest and most influential statesmen are ashamed of writing speeches and leaving them in a written form, lest they should be called Sophists by posterity

I divided each soul into three-two horses and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and the other bad:

Every one chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character, and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image which he is to fall down and worship.

And as he warms, the parts out of which the wing grew, and which had been hitherto closed and rigid, and had prevented the wing from shooting forth, are melted, and as nourishment streams upon him, the lower end of the wings begins to swell and grow from the root upwards; and the growth extends under the whole soul-for once the whole was winged.

And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired.

The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away.

There will be more reason in appealing to the ancient inventors of names, who would never have connected prophecy (mantike) which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with madness (manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed madness to be a disgrace or dishonour;-they must have thought that there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing; for the two words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter t is only a modern and tasteless insertion.

what an utter want of delicacy was shown in the two discourses

first of all agree in defining the nature and power of love

arrangement of them, for there can be none in the invention

The truth of writing, that is, as we shall see, (the) nontruth, cannot be discovered in ourselves by ourselves. And it is not the object of a science, only of a qistory that is recited, a fable that is repeated. The link between writing and myth becomes clearer, as does its opposition to knowledge, notably the knowledge one seeks in oneself, by oneself. And at the same time, through writing or through myth, the genealogical break and the estrangement from the origin are sounded

His name is Lysias. Phaedrus is keeping the text or, if you will, the pharmakon, hidden under his cloak. He needs it because he has not 'learned the speech by heart. This point is important for what follows, the problem of writing being closely linked to the problem of "knowing by heart." Before Socrates had stretched out on the ground and invited Phaedrus to take the most comfortable position, the latter had offered to reconstitute, without the help of the text, the reasoning, argument, and design ofLysias' speech, its dianoia. Socrates StOPS him short: "Very well, my dear fellow, but you must first show me what it is that you have in your left hand under you cloak, for I surmise that it is the actual discourse (ton logon auton)" (228d). Between the invitation and the start of the reading, while the pharmakon is wandering about under Phaedrus' cloak, there occurs the evocation of Pharmacia and the send-off of myths.

If a speech could be purely present, unveiled, naked, offered up in person in its truth, without the detours of a signifier foreign to it, if at the limit an undeferred logos were possible, it would not seduce anyone. It would not draw Socrates, as if under the effects of a pharmakon, out of his way. Let us get ahead of ourselves. Already: writing, the pharmakon, the going or leading astray.

It is at this point, when Socrates has finally stretched out on the ground and Phaedrus has taken the most comfortable position for handling the text or, if you will, the pharmakon, that the discussion actually gets off the ground.

Only a little further on, Socrates compares the written texts Phaedrus has brought along to a drug (pharmakon). This pharmakon, this "medicine," this philter, which acts as both remedy and poison, already introduces itself into the body of the discourse with all its ambivalence.

the author of the written speech is already entrenched in the posture of the sophist: the man of non-presence and of non-truth. Writing is thus already on the scene. The incompatibility between the written and the true is clearly announced at the moment Socrates starts to recount the way in which men are carried out of themselves by pleasure, become absent from themselves, forget themselves and die in the thrill of song (259().

Phaedrus reminds Socrates that the citizens of greatest influence and dignity, the men who are the most free, feel ashamed (aiskhunonta/) at "speechwriting" and at leaving sungrammata behind them. They fear the judgment of posterity, which might consider them "sophists" (257d).

"The Phaedrus is badly composed. This defect is all the more surprising since it is precisely there that Socrates defines the work of art as a living being. But the inability to accomplish what has been well conceived is precisely a proof of old age. "6

on Plato, who already said in the Phaetinn that writing can only repeat (itself), that it "always signifies (semainei) the same" and that it is a "game" (paidia).

Children’s Books

For me

These disruptions need to be powerful, bolstered by a digital presence and crafted with a rhetoric of awareness, activism, and engagement. A disruptive rhetoric must unify power and action from preexisting avenues and harness the rhetorical power of digital visibility.

the waves in which we frame feminist history should follow the model of radio waves

Hashtags as rhetorical interventions are visually powerful, working to categorize language for readers and immediately position this language within a larger visual body of work when searched for or curated in online spaces

After all, the online abuse that Beard herself experienced threatened to “rip out her tongue,” to remove the organ that allows her to verbally enact rhetoric as a woman.

She sought an alternative avenue to invention; her available means included an intervention of stereotypical “women’s work” that served to speak for her.

we must build from these scholars’ work and consider how contemporary feminist rhetoric might be bolstered, enhanced, and girded against erasure—specifically in the realm of digital writing and social media.

A system “socially agreed upon” by the existing power structures is problematic in who is “agreeing” upon these terms—largely male politicians.

Greek society was male-centric, as reflected in some of the most famous dialogues from the era.

The Sophistic movement, for example, was rooted in teaching commoners and those outside of the realm of traditional education how to speak and defend themselves in courts of law

The Greco-Roman tradition valued masculinity and class over all else, resulting in a centuries-long structure of authorial and oratorical expectations. To write or speak publicly, one must meet these criteria.

“how might contemporary feminist scholars, historians, and digital citizens use the complicated history behind us to propel a sustainable feminist rhetoric into the future?”

feminist rhetoric of intervention (her calm, impactful question caught on digital live stream) to subvert a traditionally regimented forum, enabling her to reach a wide audience that would have normally been relegated to just those within a congressional chamber.

When only words remain

Intersectional issues that we carry into digital spheres color each interaction, for better or worse. The cultural structure of online worlds are reflected and recycled from our in-person interfaces,

Feminist rhetoric is advancing feminisms online— a distinction that is important to make from “women’s rhetoric,” which is restricted to only women and does not capture the experience of feminist activists that might identify differently.

the Greek roots of rhetoric, asserting, “‘the word rhetoric can be traced back ultimately to the simple assertion I say (eiro in Greek)

Firstly, I define feminist rhetoric as any written or spoken act about feminisms

women have been relegated to the background of public speech or silenced altogether by a patriarchal structure of discourse.

thirteen-hour filibuster

At what point must a woman speak online in order for her voice to be recognized? More specifically, women of different backgrounds and contexts often experience different harassment when speaking outside these codes

#StandWithWendy