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Creating a Public Pedagogy for Anti-Rape Activism: How We Learn to Advocate for Others (open access)

Creating a Public Pedagogy for Anti-Rape Activism: How We Learn to Advocate for Others

This thesis explores the way we learn to advocate for sexual assault survivors. This multi-methodological, qualitative study examines both popular cultural representations of sexual assault and official training materials provided by rape crisis centers and domestic violence organizations as sites of pedagogical messaging. I argue that it is imperative to incorporate intersectional feminist frameworks into understanding how advocacy is animated in these different sites of learning. This project offers an intersectional feminist analysis of two television shows: Netflix's Unbelievable and HBO's I May Destroy You, in addition to the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA) training manual and supplemental training materials from six different rape crisis centers within a 75-mile radius of the Dallas Ft. Worth metroplex. Together, both sets of texts work pedagogically to teach us who is a worthy victim, what counts as "real" rape (and to challenge this very framework), and who deserves organizational resources. This thesis concludes by offering an Intersectional Rape Advocacy Toolkit, aimed at offering a set of values, lessons, and practices necessary for activists to grow in mutual advocacy for survivors and mutual support for fellow activists working to put an end to rape culture.
Date: August 2021
Creator: Garcia, Kayleigh Elaine
System: The UNT Digital Library
Just Reproduction: Explorations of Struggle, Resistance, and Empowerment Imbued in Labor and Birth in Black Bodies (open access)

Just Reproduction: Explorations of Struggle, Resistance, and Empowerment Imbued in Labor and Birth in Black Bodies

By analyzing the lived experiences of Black birthing people through a plurality of medical and emotional ethos, I illuminate themes of experience that allow or disallow the subjectivity of the birthing person to thrive or falter. I specifically focus on a spectrum of dynamics of reproductive trauma versus empowerment, resistance versus trust, and feelings of fear versus safety expressed by the birthing person. In the face of birth trauma, the Black birthing community is creating care alternatives that offer support in ways the traditional US medical system is failing. The modes in which communities participate in the birth justice movement and collectively practice modes of resistance that offer safer, more respectful care models are valuable in eliminating racial health disparities in the United States. For this research endeavor I deployed a feminist methodological approach consisting of in-depth, semi-structured, ethnographic interviews, to explore the dynamics of power hierarchies within the realm of labor and delivery. Care paradigms chosen by Black birthing people can be divided into four specific situations which yielded profoundly discernable positive or negative results: (1) Birth experienced as a Black pregnant person delivering in the hospital under the care of a non-black OBGYN and birth team, (2) Birth …
Date: December 2022
Creator: Langlitz, Margaret
System: The UNT Digital Library