Papers by Kate Lockwood Harris
For decades, feminists have intervened in a sexually violent culture. Many public health professi... more For decades, feminists have intervened in a sexually violent culture. Many public health professionals, educators, and activists who design these interventions have called for complex conceptualizations of communication, yet communication studies scholars have not written extensively on consent. Moreover, researchers outside the field rarely rely on insights from the discipline. Accordingly, I offer a critical review of consent activism and research, and I highlight disciplinary assumptions that could enhance existing knowledge. I argue that many feminist academic/activist interventions use false ideas about communication, what I call communication myths: discourse merely reflects reality, and local discourse is disconnected from larger social Discourse. I show how these communication myths resonate with rape-supportive arguments. By suggesting communication should be unambiguous during consent, anti- violence educators/activists lower the standard for communicative competence, disconnect it from historical-cultural context, and miss opportunities to politicize consent. I argue feminists can challenge communication myths to build on existing interventions while more fully dismantling rape culture.
Text and Performance Quarterly, 2017
You care about difference. In this exigent mood we begin to rework reflexivity through disability... more You care about difference. In this exigent mood we begin to rework reflexivity through disability and trauma studies. Using performative writing, we trouble you, me, and we in order to uncouple analytical rigor from individual bodies and identities. As we consider violence, injury, and ability, we complicate an imperative for personal disclosure. While continuing to insist on accountability to privilege, we highlight queer vulnerabilities, alternative representation, and non-normative emotion. We draw together readers and writers in a recursive textual process, a feminist ethic attentive to inequality and suffering. We call this methodological presence with others reflexive caring.
This study experimentally examines the effects of participant sex, perpetrator sex, and severity ... more This study experimentally examines the effects of participant sex, perpetrator sex, and severity of violence on perceptions of intimate partner violence (IPV) seriousness, sympathy toward the victim, and punishment preferences for the perpetrator. Participants (N = 449) were randomly assigned to a condition, exposed to a composite news story, and then completed a survey. Ratings of seriousness of IPV for stories with male perpetrators were significantly higher than ratings of seriousness for stories with female perpetrators. Men had significantly higher sympathy for female victims in any condition than for male victims in the weak or strong severity of violence conditions. Men’s sympathy for male victims in the fatal severity of violence condition did not differ from their sympathy for female victims. Women had the least sympathy for female victims in the weak severity condition and men in the weak or strong severity conditions. Women reported significantly higher sympathy for female victims in the strong and fatal severity of violence conditions. Women’s ratings of sympathy for male victims in the fatal severity of violence condition were statistically indistinguishable from any other group. Participants reported stronger punishment preferences for male perpetrators and this effect was magnified among men. Theoretical implications are presented with attention provided to practical considerations about support for public health services.
Scholars have called repeatedly for more nuanced understandings of power and organizational knowl... more Scholars have called repeatedly for more nuanced understandings of power and organizational knowledge, but researchers have yet to integrate available critical frameworks that could link these concepts. Moreover, existing analyses of power in organizational knowledge tend to focus on role differences but do not yet consider how social differences – including gender, race and sexuality – shape knowledge. Working from a practice-based approach, I draw upon standpoint theory and intersectionality to show how whiteness, masculinity and heteronormativity are embedded in organizational knowledge. I construct this argument using a case study at a US university known for having some of the best systems for building organizational knowledge about sexual violence on campus. I argue that the university's practices – specifically those related to interpretation and definition – mask heterogeneity in knowledge across the university. I also show how practices give the university's knowledge the appearance of neutrality and, subsequently, can unintentionally defer important organizational actions.
The current study is concerned with the different types of gender stereotypes that participants m... more The current study is concerned with the different types of gender stereotypes that participants may draw upon when exposed to news stories about intimate partner violence (IPV). We qualitatively analyzed open-ended responses examining four types of gender stereotypes—aggression, emotional, power and control, and acceptability of violence. We offer theoretical implications that extend past research on intimate terrorism and situational couple violence, the gender symmetry debate, and how stereotypes are formed. We also discuss practical implications for journalists who write stories about IPV and individuals who provide services to victims and perpetrators.
Feminist communication scholars often adopt seemingly incommensurate stances to navigate tensions... more Feminist communication scholars often adopt seemingly incommensurate stances to navigate tensions among agency, discourse, materiality, and history. I argue that valuing these “contradictions” is a hallmark of feminist communication research, a tradition I label feminist dilemmatic theorizing. Because feminists seek to describe and transform the world, they employ constitutive and representative understandings of communication. Rather than assert these approaches as paradoxical, I reread existing scholarship for nascent feminist new materialisms. Using sexual violence as an example, I argue that feminist communication theory develops a distinct approach to the force of communication, one in which discourse is not all-powerful. Accordingly, I suggest communication theorists draw upon existing feminist scholarship to meet critiques of social construction and develop a material turn.
Intersectionality has increasing traction in interdisciplinary inquiry, yet questions remain abou... more Intersectionality has increasing traction in interdisciplinary inquiry, yet questions remain about qualitative intersectional methods. In particular, scholars have yet to consider how to write qualitative research in the service of intersectionality. Drawing upon my disciplinary training in communication studies, I argue that the field’s theoretical grounding offers useful resources for advancing intersectional writing. Because communication theory posits that symbols both reflect and make reality, it resonates with an intersectional desire to simultaneously describe and transform the world through critical analysis. Using exemplars from communication scholars, I highlight how this interplay of approaches can advance identity politics and trouble identity categories. Furthermore this approach can help qualitative writers to link what some perceive to be distinct ‘levels’ of analysis. By discussing techniques for coupling reflexivity and voice, I make communication theory intelligible for intersectional writing and also invite communication studies to become more intersectional.
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2014
Following calls to center nation, we analyze sexual violence discourse in the US Peace Corps. The... more Following calls to center nation, we analyze sexual violence discourse in the US Peace Corps. The texts we consider deploy three typical dichotomies—public/private, self/other, and agent/victim—that, in this case, reveal inconsistencies at the intersections of race and gender. We argue that these inconsistencies are evidence of lability, counterintuitive discursive shifts necessary to maintain white heteromasculine dominance. Instead of blaming individual victims of rape and assault, the masculinization of victimhood shifts culpability to the Peace Corps. This organizational blame maintains the moral position of the US and legitimates imperialism. By marking these instabilities, we trace the solidity and vulnerability of sexual violence discourse as it organizes global power.
Management Communication Quarterly, 2013
Engaging with calls from organization scholars, I analyze the communicative mechanisms through wh... more Engaging with calls from organization scholars, I analyze the communicative mechanisms through which individuals, rather than organizations, become the focus in discussions of violence. Reading a legal decision regarding rape at the University of Colorado, I argue that organizational conceptualizations of sexual violence are marginalized as (a) noncommunicative, container models of organization are prioritized and (b) violence is understood as an action rather than one element in a system of meaning. On the basis of this analysis, I offer a feminist rereading of the case that identifies the organization as a participant in sexual violence. To recognize not only individual, but also organizational sexual violence, I suggest that scholars problematize the racialized gendering of organization. Further, I show that a communicative approach that articulates complex relationships between meaning and action is central for highlighting the intersectionality of sexual violence and for unmooring sexually violent agency from individuated physicality.
Discourse & Society, 2012
In order to extend knowledge about the communicative aspects of intimate partner violence (IPV), ... more In order to extend knowledge about the communicative aspects of intimate partner violence (IPV), we ask how those who talk about IPV frame the relationship between gender and power. How does their framing account for the role of gender in IPV perpetration? A critical discourse analysis of conversations from focus groups and interviews reveals that when participants talk about IPV, they rely on ideological dilemmas in available understandings of the relationship between gender and power. As participants use disclaimers, competing interpretive repertoires, and extreme case arguments to navigate these dilemmas, their talk closes space for a critique of gender and power that considers systemic factors and benevolent sexism. Instead, participants focus more on individual pathology and the most overt forms of sexism. The tensions that produce this closure may also reveal contradictions that provide opportunities for reshaping public conversations about IPV and its relationship to gender and power.
Women's Studies in Communication, 2011
In this study I asked women how the word rape fu and did not fit their own experiences of forced ... more In this study I asked women how the word rape fu and did not fit their own experiences of forced or unwanted sex with acquaintances. Although some participants noted that the term removed self-blame and indicated severity, most suggested that the word was limiting. It did not distinguish varied harms, created uncomfortable expectations for participants' behavior, eliminated moments of agency, and dichotomized experiences. By considering these limitations of available vocabulary, scholars may develop more robust theories of sexual violence. Let's hurry and invent our own phrases. -Irigaray, 1985, p. 215 I scad, " You know I'm not going to sleep with you. " So about ten minutes later he's trying again and Tm telling him no. The more that happened, the more nervous I felt. And I could feel my heart speed up and feel myself freaking out, panicking, and just wanting to get out of there. And he told me that I couldn't leave. I felt like my heart stopped. It was just like, there's nothing I can do. Like, this is going to happen whether I want it to or not. And next thing I know he's just like, I mean, he literally held me down. He's like six foot three finches tall] and really strong. He forcefully ftook] my clothes off of me and threw them across the room. At that point I was thinking. There's no way I can get to my clothes without being grabbed back. There's no way Tm even going to be able to get up at this point. And I was like, "Tm not going to do this. You can't do this. " There was no hope. He had one hand on each of my arms and was holding me. At one point he even A previous version of this essay appeared online on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Communication Web site.
Journal of Family Communication, 2011
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Papers by Kate Lockwood Harris