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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical reflection on congressional testimony in the #MeToo era from the standpoint of a millennial graduate student. Design/methodology/approach This essay is based on observational data from a roundtable discussion between Anita Hill and Kimberlé Crenshaw moderated by Dr Dorothy Roberts and connects to themes in research on sex-based harassment. Findings The findings of this essay suggest there is still much work to be done in operationalizing intersectionally in the #Metoo era. Originality/value The thoughts and opinions expressed in this essay are the author’s own.

Allegations of sexual assault and violence engulfed the confirmation hearings surrounding President Trump's Supreme Court nominee (and now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh. Our work examines congressmembers' communication concerning sexual assault and #MeToo during this critical time of the Kavanaugh hearing and how this relates to perceptions of gender and partisanship today. While previous research demonstrated a strong role of gender in influencing which members discussed #MeToo, we show that partisanship played a much larger role in discussions of sexual assault during this hearing. The findings highlight the shifting narrative surrounding the #MeToo movement and how the multiple identities of members of Congress, namely partisanship and gender, can be activated and produce changes in how elites communicate about the issue, which may have broader policymaking implications.

[...]they might end up being left in a situation where they are forced to remain in close proximity to their attacker, and potentially remain vulnerable to further violation.39 Dotson illuminates the phenomenon of testimonial smothering by an examination of the case of domestic violence and intimate partner violence within Black communities. [...]some, though not at all, members of communities of colour have considered the ramifications of testimony about certain kinds of acts of violence to be a detriment to communities of colour in general, often at the expense of those particular individuals who have experienced such violence or violation. [...]it sets some people up with excess credibility44 and simultaneously places disproportionate risks on others (read: those with less social and institutional power) for speaking up in the event they experience violation. [...]of the norms of gendered testimony (i.e., who can get away with displaying emotion while testifying and still be taken seriously; who is determined to be a credible testifier before even speaking, and so on), Kavanaugh was interpreted sympathetically (as a \"misunderstood good guy\"), while Dr. Blasey Ford faced significant social backlash—backlash that included death threats so severe she had to flee her home.54 This is himpathy at work—himpathy largely supported by problematic epistemic norms, which are both caused by and function to reinforce the varieties of epistemic injustice so pervasive in the #MeToo movement.

Supreme Court Justices Thomas, in 1991, and Kavanaugh, in 2018, were accused of sexual violence by Anita Hill and Christine Ford, respectively, and were both later confirmed in their positions. To better understand these outcomes and the political context in which they occurred, we analysed headlines from US newspapers using a directed content analysis. We drew on Schneider and Ingram’s established social construction of target populations theory to examine how newspaper headlines characterised the relative power and valence of political figures in each year. Results identified both consistencies and shifts in social constructions across time. In 2018, there were more negative characterisations of the nominee, accuser and the President, and more negative and less powerful characterisations of the public. In both years, the Senate and political parties were characterised negatively and powerfully. These findings provide evidence that intransience in political institutions, increased negative partisanship, and weakened public power may illuminate the parallel outcomes despite changed social mores, such as the advent of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

The roundtable participants, responding to their own anger over the congressional hearing in which Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified about her sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh, turn to the nineteenth-century dramatic monologue for its rendering of extreme emotion, psychological intensity, and the poetic \"I.\" In doing so, they offer a new understanding of the dramatic monologue as a genre best suited for social critique and, arguably, as the poetic structure most appropriate for today's feminist struggles. Mew's work has been subject to a critical division \"between poet and speaker, depth and surface, authentic feeling and artificial performance-divisions that have their origins in nineteenth-century reading practices that have shaped twentieth-century (mis)readings\" (p. 361). The Fields use the book-object to collaboratively reimagine Mary Stuart, arguing that affective connection between audience and subject structures history-much like the theatrical performance. Immersion into the historical past through archival research and museumgoing also afforded Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge the opportunity to consider the representation of women's labor in the nineteenth century in their special issue \"Picking Up Threads: Women and Labour in the Nineteenth Century\" (Women's Writing 27, no. 4 [2020]).

Teaching Euripides' Ion in an undergraduate course filled with upperclassmen makes the contemporariness of the tragedy impossible to ignore. Having a sexual assault victim step forward to publicly condemn the god who violated her strongly resonates with much of our socio-political reality today. Creusa's role in the play is not only that of someone who says \"me too,\" but who also publicly denounces her abuser, risking the god's wrath. The significance of Euripides' tragedy for truth-telling today was highlighted when Michel Foucault shifted his attention towards parrhesia in the last years of his life. Ion is only one of the many Greek texts Foucault has referred to, but it is seen by him as a parrhesiastic play par excellence. The distinctness of this tragedy is that the truth is no longer revealed to humans by the gods, and so \"human beings must manage, by themselves, to discover and to tell the truth\". Foucault's argument that Ion \"concerns the human fight for the truth against god's silence\" has powerful implications allowing to theorize a secular, human-generated truth against the transcendental truth of power.

Editor's Note This column was prepared for press on Thursday, the day U.S. Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, were scheduled to give sworn testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. [...]a secondary plot emerged from Ford's claim that Kavanaugh attempted to rape her at a teenage house party that 1 find more fascinating than - let's face it - yet another tale of sexual abuse untold for so long that it's nigh-impossible to verify or debunk. While the other dude's lawyer said there would be no further statement, I hope there's a civil lawsuit that discovers just who knew so much about the appearance and childhood homes of Brett Kavanaugh's prep school classmates to help concoct this defamatory theory.

This article argues that three frames of witness competed in the 2018 Kavanaugh hearings: the life story of Supreme Court nominee—now Justice—Brett Kavanaugh that was fashioned for the nomination process, the survivor testimony of Christine Blasey Ford that interrupted it, and the cultural frame of #MeToo in which her testimony and his repudiation of it were heard, which includes the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearing and the accompanying pattern of erasing Black women as they bear witness. With reference to Judith Butler’s work on grievability, “Frames of Witness” identifies the potential affiliation of #MeToo discourse with other protest movements in order to underline how vulnerable subjects cross into testimonial spaces and find, or fail to find, a hearing.

Lara Bazelon, associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law; director of the Criminal & Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice Clinics (CA) Gloria Ochoa Bruck, City of Spokane, director of Local Government and Multi-Cultural Affairs (WA); Barbara Creel, professor of law and director of the Southwest Indian Law Clinic, University of New Mexico School of Law (NM;) The Honorable Bernice Donald, US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (TN); Daniela Donoso, law student at the Florida State University College of Law (FL); Maria Carmen Hinayon, founder and principal attorney at the Law Office of Maria Carmen Hinayon (CA); The Honorable Denise Langford-Morris, Oakland County Circuit Court (MI); Carla Laroche, visiting clinical professor and director of the Gender and Family Justice Clinic at the Florida State University College of Law Public Interest Law Center (FL); Tina Luongo, attorney-in-charge of the Criminal Defense Practice of The Legal Aid Society (NY); Rachel Pickering, assistant solicitor general in the Office of the Kansas Attorney General (KS); Sarah Redfield, professor of law at the University of New Hampshire School of Law (ME); Mara Senn, senior investigator and senior litigation specialist in the Integrity Vice Presidency at the World Bank (DC); and Major Susan Upward, senior defense counsel, US Marine Corps (CA). In addition to the esteemed members of this Task Force, Kim Parker, incoming chair of the Criminal Justice Section and Prosecutor Coordinator with the Kansas County & District Attorneys Association, will lead an advisor board of members that will help guide our work. TINA LUONGO is the attorney in charge of the criminal defense practice of The Legal Aid Society and co-chair of the Women in Criminal Justice Task Force.