Whisper Networks: On the Feminist Function of Rumor

Date
Thu November 7th 2019, 5:00 - 7:00pm
Event Sponsor
Clayman Institute for Gender Research
Location
Oak Lounge, Tresidder Union
Whisper Networks: On the Feminist Function of Rumor

Whisper networks, informal information channels between those who lack institutional power, have long served a vital function for women. But the revelations of sexual violence around #MeToo made this not-quite-private communication public. Some disparaged the results as “gossip,” though often the accusations against power figures such as Harvey Weinstein had been widely known and tolerated.

In this event, journalists Moira Donegan and Evette Dionne join Clayman Institute Director Adrian Daub to discuss the ways #MeToo and technological change have upended traditional hierarchies of information. What is at stake in this transition from private rumor to public reckoning?

About the Speakers

Moira Donegan is a writer and feminist living in New York. She is an opinion columnist at The Guardian, and her writing has appeared in n+1, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of BooksBookforum, and other places. Her first book, Gone too Far, is forthcoming from Scribner.

Evette Dionne is a Black Feminist culture writer, editor, and scholar. She’s the author of the forthcoming Fat Girls Deserve Fairytales Too: Living Hopefully on the Other Side of Skinny and Lifting As We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box (Viking). Presently, she’s the editor-in-chief of Bitch Media, and writes extensively for a number of print and digital publications, including CosmopolitanTime, the New York Times, the GuardianSELF, and Harper’s Bazaar