An ecofeminist account of cyberbullying: Implications for environmental and social justice scholar-educator-activists

ABSTRACT

According to the American Association of University Professors and the Chronicle of Higher Education, instances of targeted faculty harassment are rising. I therefore begin this article by discussing how I ended up on the receiving end of a sweeping harassment campaign because of my critical scholarship on environmental and social issues. I then employ an intersectional ecofeminist lens to analyze articles written about me as well as the ensuing reader comments. Next, I explore how academic institutions, professional associations, academic publishers, and personal relationships can support, at the local and the “cyber” level, academics who are most vulnerable to these kinds of retaliation in the deeply vitriolic sociopolitical contexts of cyberspace. I conclude by teasing out the implications of this incident for critical researchers in environmental education and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecofeminism
• cyberbullying
• intersectionality
• care

Acknowledgments

I thank all of my family, friends, and colleagues who supported me through this incident, especially Drs. Christina Chavez-Reyes, Catherine Hart, David Hassenzahl, Pamela Moss, Walter “Tony” Rosenbaum, Connie Russell, and Joshua Russell.

Notes

1. It should be noted here that the vast majority of commenters use profile photos and names that mask their own identities, allowing them to enjoy the fruits of anonymity, while I did not.

2. The Chronicle of Higher Education's recent piece, “Professor's Growing Risk: Harassment for Things They Never Really Said,” highlights how the far right news media carefully selects and misinterprets professors’ words. By doing this, they make professors the target of bullying and harassment (Schmidt, 2017).

3. For a similar discussion of the emotional consequences of these kinds of cyberbullying tactics, see Ferber (2017) who discusses her own experiences as well as those of other targeted female faculty members. She notes, for example, “Some [targeted women] found it difficult to do anything for the first couple of days [after the attacks] due to the shock, trauma, and flood of emails…every time I discuss or write about this subject, I feel a knot in my stomach, and my entire body tightens” (p. 38).

4. As Oliver (1993) highlights, Kristeva actually rejected feminism, or at least the French bourgeois kind that dominated the landscape during the time of much of her writing. Further, due to the timing of the publication of Powers of Horror, Kristeva would not have had the opportunity to engage with theories of intersectionality even if she had so desired given that they did not become prevalent until the late 1980s and early 1990s (e.g., Collins, 1991; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991), although serious critiques of white feminist theory had already been published by this time (Oliver, 1993, p. 111, footnote 4). Nevertheless like Oliver (1993, 2009), this article demonstrates how her theories of abjection can be valuable to feminist thought, particularly that which seeks to understand how species injustices intersect with gender, sexuality, body size, race, and ability status (e.g., Corman & Vandrovcová, 2014; Deckha, 2006, 2013; Lloro-Bidart, 2017; Russell & Semenko, 2016).

5. The “little pink hats” refers to those worn by many women during the Women's Marches of 2017 to represent women's genitalia. These “little pink hats” are not beyond critique nor are the Women's Marches given the way they center white and cis-gender women's bodies. However, it is clear that this comment was made in the spirit of anti-feminism more generally without giving thought to differences among women.

6. Although I do not provide examples of comments here that express homophobia, transphobia, or ableism due to length constraints, my review of the comments indeed uncovered the presence of these sentiments as well.

7. See also Holm (2012).

8. I have removed the actress’ name here to avoid replicating these disparaging remarks made about her.

9. See also emerging scholarship in the political ecology of education (e.g., Lloro-Bidart, 2015a, 2017a; Meek & Lloro-Bidart, 2017).

10. For an essay exploring further strategies of support, see Grollman (2015).