: This essay provides a critical analysis of rape prevention since the 1980s. I argue that we must challenge rape prevention's habitual reinforcement of the notion that fear is a woman's best line of defense. I suggest changes that must be made in the anti-rape movement if we are to move past fear. Ultimately, I raise the question of what, if not vague threats and scare tactics, constitutes prevention.

With the #MeToo movement and the Women’s Marches behind us, it has become clear that women are angry. This anger is often criticised for being disruptive or uncommunicative, with calm rationality being praised as a superior alternative. In this article, I use the framework of Fricker’s (2007) Epistemic Injustice to examine the communicative disadvantages and merits of what I call feminist anger. I explain how feminist anger can be subject to both testimonial and hermeneutical injustices, but that this does not (...) mean it should not be used to communicate. Importantly, feminist anger can challenge the patriarchal status quo and it can provide an epistemic bridge towards hermeneutical justice. By listening to feminist anger, both our own and others’, we can get one step closer to epistemic equality. (shrink)

This essay examines the contradictions often found in third wave feminist texts that function as strategic choices that may shape, foster, and enhance an individual's sense of agency. Many third wave feminists utilize contradiction as a way to understand emergent identities, to develop new ways of thinking, and to imagine new forms of social action. Agency, then, stems from the use of contradiction as a means of self-determination and identity, of transcendence of seemingly forced or dichotomous choices, and counter-imaginations of (...) a better future. (shrink)

Existing public relations ethics literature often proves inadequate when applied to social movement campaigns, considering the special communication challenges activists face as marginalized moral visionaries in a commercial public sphere. The communications of counter-hegemonic movements is distinct enough from corporate, nonprofit, and governmental organizations to warrant its own ethical guidelines. The unique communication guidelines most relevant to social movement organizations include promoting asymmetrical advocacy to a greater extent than is required for more powerful organizations and building flexibility into the TARES (...) principles to privilege social responsibility over respect for audience values in activist campaigns serving as ideological critique. (shrink)

The article analyses Finland’s and Norway’s female politicians’ war rhetoric with reference to the war in Afghanistan and contrasts it with Laura Bush’s rhetoric and feminism. In the Nordic countries the strong liberal and equity tradition of feminism could open up spaces for thinking differently about war, and yet the co-optation of hegemonic war rhetoric occurs in several ways. The ideograph ‘women-and-children’ is often evoked and added to the hegemonic foreign policy rhetoric without questioning the actual rhetorical work it does. (...) Gender-neutral rhetoric is used to hail into being a collective and unitary western do-gooder identity and to distance Nordic involvement from the US ‘war on terror’. The panegyric of UN Resolution 1325 facilitates the metamorphosis of the militaristic and masculine US-led NATO into a collective peacekeeper capable of saving ‘brown women from brown men’. (shrink)

How much do animal rights activists talk about animal rights when they attempt to persuade America’s meat-lovers to stop eating nonhuman animals? This study serves as the basis for a unique evaluation and categorization of problems and solutions as framed by five major U.S. animal rights organizations in their vegan/food campaigns. The findings reveal that the organizations framed the problems as: cruelty and suffering; commodification; harm to humans and the environment; and needless killing. To solve problems largely blamed on factory (...) farming, activists asked consumers to become “vegetarian” or to reduce animal product consumption, some requesting “humane” reforms. While certain messages supported animal rights, promoting veganism and respect for animals’ subject status, many frames used animal welfareideology to achieve rights solutions, conservatively avoiding a direct challenge to the dominant human/animal dualism. In support of ideological authenticity, this paper recommends that vegan campaigns emphasize justice, respect, life, freedom, environmental responsibility, and a shared animality. (shrink)