University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Archaic Rape Myths Circulated by Modern Technology: Queering Survivor Narratives

Kapczynski, Alexandria

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/114245

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Title
Archaic Rape Myths Circulated by Modern Technology: Queering Survivor Narratives
Author(s)
Kapczynski, Alexandria
Issue Date
2022
Keyword(s)
  • English
  • Writing Studies
Date of Ingest
2022-06-01T16:57:43Z
Abstract
Autoethnographic research of internet-based anti-rape social movements is simultaneously immersive and distancing. Such investigations demand a willingness to question positionality—to gaze at pieces of myself made visible (thus malleable) to digital publics and to critically question the purposefully concealed. The level of privilege my online presence re-embodies dictates affective reception. Fissures mark my identity layers: a neuroatypical first-generation-college-student, an aesthetic maximalist covered in tattoos, a 30-year-old white woman with PTSD, a rape survivor, a lesbian. The metadata tag, #MeToo, is a smooth monolith, queer fractures like #MeTooButDifferent are exiled outside of the collective. I must choose what is more important: assimilating or expressing the script-defying state of being a woman raped by another woman, a crime still unrecognized in the largest anti-rape initiative? What are the consequences if the latter is more important to my research, to my healing, to my fight? Baring these layers, I am politicized, fetishized, villainized, or worse: unacknowledged—something people don’t believe. If I must be reduced to myth, I’d choose a queer-coded monster. If I am to be gazed upon, I want to gaze back, entrapping voyeurs. I embrace the monster that survivors different-like-me are portrayed as when their existence calls for accountability.
Description
I'd like to thank Dr. Lindsay Rose Russell for encouraging me to apply, Dr. Justine S. Murison for her affirming support, and Dr. Paul A. Prior for offering me the word "multimodal" to articulate these strange compositions I feel compelled to make.
Type of Resource
  • Text
  • Image
Language
eng
Handle URL
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/114245
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2022 Alexandria Kapczynski

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