“It’s Not the Abuse That Kills You, It’s the Silence”: The silencing of sexual violence activism in social justice movements in the UK Left

Widespread doubt and disbelief of women and non-binary survivors who disclose, speak out and demand accountability for the violence they have experienced within social justice movements in the UK Left reveals a painful impasse and persistent barrier in movement building. Systemic failures of criminal justice responses to rape, sexual assault and domestic violence coupled with State violence and regulation of social justice movements and marginalised groups has led to consideration of community alternatives to help transform activist communities into cultures of safety and accountability. However, ‘counter-organising’ (INCITE! 2003; 2006) can distort, scrutinise and dismantle the work of survivors and their supporters in developing community accountability and safer spaces processes. The salvage research project (Downes, Hanson and Hudson, 2016) used participatory action research approaches and qualitative interviews with 10 women and non-binary survivors to explore the lived experiences of harm, violence and abuse experienced in activist communities in the UK. This article will explore how resistance to disclosures of gendered violence and anti-violence activism can be as (or more) harmful than the violence initially experienced. Five key silencing strategies are explored: (i) discrediting survivors and supporters; (ii) questioning the legitimacy of claim; (iii) questioning the legitimacy of community accountability; (iv) avoiding troubling recognitions; and (v) placing burden on survivors. The silencing of survivors and their supporters permits unequal power relations to remain unchanged and removes any need for the misogyny and sexism produced in activist communities to be critically examined

‘Let Me Hear You Depoliticise My Rhyme’: Queer Feminist Cultural Activisms and Disruptions of Conventional Protest

Many, feminist identified and not, commentators have criticised contemporary feminism as lacking a strong public presence. In his summary of the British women's movement, Paul Byrne asserts that in the contemporary British landscape, 'the autonomous women's movement has largely disappeared' (1997, p.127). In a similar vein, Ruth Lister draws attention to what she terms the 'lack today of a collective, big 'F' feminist movement', constructing contemporary feminists as isolated and deprived from collective support(2005, p. 457). This belief, however, is not restricted to intellectual opinion as repeated assertions of the 'death of feminism' are a regular feature in the mass media (Hawkesworth 2004). This has led to a surge of soul searching and anxiety amongst women's movement participants, often leading to the question 'what happened to the women's movement?' (Epstein 2001; Staggenborg and Taylor 2005). In this chapter, I wish to draw attention to the potentially problematic tenets upon which claims for an active feminist movement are made. I argue that 'bounded' conventional conceptions of what constitutes 'legitimate' activisms and feminisms can be (re)produced within these accounts. In particular, reliance upon the contentious politics approach within social movement studies (McAdam and Tilly 2001; Tilly 2004) tends to privilege social movement strategies that are public, national, and state-focused. Perpetuating these conceptualisations of conventional protest tactics and targets, silences the contemporary presence and legacy of 'un-bounded' unconventional activist tactics within feminism, which push for social change in locations beyond the state's gaze. In the UK and US, feminist activists are engaging in cultural production strategies and grassroots organisation, to expose and resist the cultural invalidation of women in art and film worlds (Guerilla Girls,Big Miss Moviola, Birds Eye View) and music culture (Riot Grrrl, Ladyfest, Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls).Therefore, I wish to advance an understanding of queer feminist protest forms (Roseneil 2000). These tactics challenge multiple authorities through an engagement with a plethora of cultural, performative and discursive forms of resistance. Allowing for a dynamic set of tools within which hegemonic cultural norms of genders and sexualities are exposed, resisted and transgressed. I argue that research on contemporary feminist activism needs to broaden its definitions of activism and protest, to attend to the shifting targets and tactics of feminist activism. To re-situate contemporary feminist activism as an 'un-bound' dynamic praxis which responds to changes in social, cultural, political and technological climates (Staggenborg and Taylor 2005).This chapter also encounters the various causes, conflicts and contexts in which claims for the death of a contemporary feminist movement can emerge. This exploration inevitably confronts diverse tactics of 'soft repression' that aim to disarm feminist identification and dismiss the threat of feminist activism within industrial democracies (Ferree 2004). The issues feminism gives voice to run the risk of becoming incorporated, and some would say neutralised, in governmental committees, academic feminism, popular culture and organisations. This creates a situation where it is possible to talk about and gain empowerment from feminist issues, albeit in a depoliticised manner, often avoiding explicit references and involvement with feminist politics and activism altogether. This cultural shift is accompanied by a crisis within the contemporary feminist milieu, wherein the impacts of post-structuralism, queer theory and post-modernism has fragmented the feminist movement. It has become increasingly difficult to identify a coherent feminist subject or feminist activism. This dilemma in feminist subjectivities has led to a critical reconstitution of feminism, often associated with the 'third wave', that questions what it means to be a feminist, what issues are feminist issues, and what feminist activism should look and sound like. In this contemporary location the boundaries of feminist activism have become critical sites for the continuous discipline and negotiation of feminisms. In particular, I interrogate the constructions of 'authentic' feminist subjectivities within 'generational' debates and tensions between so-called 'second wave' and 'third wave' feminisms, drawing upon my own (and others) experiences as a 'third wave' feminist cultural activist in the UK. In order for a fuller recognition of feminist activism the benefits of dialogue and 'radical openness' (Purvis 2004) will be briefly explored. Generational divisions are challenged through re-situating 'third wave' strategies within ahistorical feminist legacy. Forms of social protests that engage decentralised targets of social and cultural experience to resist hegemonic genders and sexualities often termed as 'third wave', can be reconceived as a continuation and defence of radical feminist possibilities in a contemporary UK context

Salvage: Gendered Violence in Activist Communities

How to best deal with sexual violence in radical social movements is a contentious issue in the UK Left. The persistence of and inability to deal with sexual violence contradicts the core values of equality and social justice at the heart of radical social movements. A legacy of being marginalised and subjected to state repression and scrutiny has led radical activist communities to develop important self-protective strategies to establish trust and belonging. Safer spaces policies, transformative justice and community accountability processes have been attempted to address gendered violence without recourse to the state. Debate has focused on the effectiveness and negative impacts of these interventions often at the expense of survivors and anti-violence activists. However, safer spaces policies and accountability processes are set up to fail without a critical exploration of wider power relations and self-protective cultural practices that already frame activist communities. We chose to develop knowledge and understanding about gendered violence in activist communities from the perspectives and experiences of survivors. Our project has a particular focus on exploring the experiences of women, transgender and non-binary individuals. August 2015 and January 2016 we interviewed 10 survivors who had experienced sexual violence within a range of different activist groups and communities across the UK. These accounts map out how layers of silence and denial can work in activist groups and communities to allow and maintain violence, abuse and harm. There was little evidence of a ‘one size fits all’ solution. Instead there is a need to better recognise how intersections of cissexism, homophobia, classism, racism, sexism and ableism shape survivors’ experiences and meanings of harm, available resources and solutions, and impacts of harm on individuals and communities. Understanding what can produce a ‘conducive context’ for sexual violence against women, transgender and non-binary individuals in activism offers crucial clues in how we can undo these harms. Progressive change requires no less than a reconceptualisation of culture that recognises violence as embedded in an ongoing struggle for power and control of activist arenas

DIY Queer Feminist (Sub)cultural Resistance in the UK

This thesis examines the role of music, power and DIY (sub)culture involved in resistance to hegemonic discourses of gender, sexuality and feminism (re)circulated within dominant society and culture. In particular, attention is focused upon young peoples' experiences within riot gml and contemporary queer feminist music (sub )cultures situated within the fabric of social change and protest cultures of contemporary Britain. A critical interdisciplinary approach and set of qualitative methodologies were employed to understand music as collective social action that incorporated (i) oral histories of British riot gml, (ii) an auto/ethnography of DIY queer feminist (sub)culturallife, and (iii) case studies of queer and feminist amateur music-makers. I argue that music provides participants with a set of vital spatial, emotional and sonic resources to provoke radical political imaginaries, identities, communities and life-courses into being. In the context of a neo-liberal post-feminist consumer society, the creation of DIY queer feminist music (sub )culture attempts to resist the disarticulation of feminism and the dominant regulation of gender and sexual diversities. These social practices offer critical insights into the continuities of the (sub)cultural resistance of girls, young women and queers throughout modem history and demands the recognition of (sub)cultural resistance as crucial to British feminism within the wider transformations of protest and activism in contemporary society

‘We are turning cursive letters into knives’: the synthesis of the written word, sound and action in riot grrrl cultural resistance

In spring 2007, I was writing a chapter on riot grrrl histories for Riot Grrrl Revolution Girl Style Now, volunteering at Ladyfest Leeds and the DIY feminist collective Manifesta, and playing drums in the all-girl band, Fake Tan. At that time there was little information about riot grrrl, especially in the UK, and I made it my doctoral mission to find its protagonists and see if they would be willing to share their stories with me. Riot grrrl seemed like a moment from which I could make sense of what my friends and I were trying to create in the UK: a DIY queer feminist community of fanzines, music, art and culture. Discovering artefacts and experiences of riot grrrl across the UK was addictive. Simultaneously, making and researching contemporary DIY feminist culture enabled me to see the interconnections of the written word and music in riot grrrl and contemporary queer feminist culture. The written word, in many guises, as manifestos, lyrics, band names, fliers, posters, notebooks and fanzines, is an integral part of the musical moments of riot grrrl. Riot grrrl critiqued and used language in provocative ways to encourage viewers, readers and listeners to shift their subjectivity and take action. Music performances - fused with sound, affect, bodies, words - helped construct radical subjectivities and cultural acts. This connection between the written word and music in riot grrrl is the focus of this chapter, which addresses the following questions: What work did words do? What did music add to the written word? What decisions were made in the creation, circulation and performance of riot grrrl music and writing

Controlling a mobile robot with a biological brain

The intelligent controlling mechanism of a typical mobile robot is usually a computer system. Some recent research is ongoing in which biological neurons are being cultured and trained to act as the brain of an interactive real world robot�thereby either completely replacing, or operating in a cooperative fashion with, a computer system. Studying such hybrid systems can provide distinct insights into the operation of biological neural structures, and therefore, such research has immediate medical implications as well as enormous potential in robotics. The main aim of the research is to assess the computational and learning capacity of dissociated cultured neuronal networks. A hybrid system incorporating closed-loop control of a mobile robot by a dissociated culture of neurons has been created. The system is flexible and allows for closed-loop operation, either with hardware robot or its software simulation. The paper provides an overview of the problem area, gives an idea of the breadth of present ongoing research, establises a new system architecture and, as an example, reports on the results of conducted experiments with real-life robots

Revealing ensemble state transition patterns in multi-electrode neuronal recordings using hidden Markov models

In order to harness the computational capacity of dissociated cultured neuronal networks, it is necessary to understand neuronal dynamics and connectivity on a mesoscopic scale. To this end, this paper uncovers dynamic spatiotemporal patterns emerging from electrically stimulated neuronal cultures using hidden Markov models (HMMs) to characterize multi-channel spike trains as a progression of patterns of underlying states of neuronal activity. However, experimentation aimed at optimal choice of parameters for such models is essential and results are reported in detail. Results derived from ensemble neuronal data revealed highly repeatable patterns of state transitions in the order of milliseconds in response to probing stimuli

Guest editorial: Queer theory and criminology

In 2015, queer theorist Heather Love called for her fellow queer scholars to recognise the centrality of the study of norms and deviance to ‘the intellectual genealogy’ of queer studies. She argued that queer approaches and understandings, with their ‘embrace of a politics of stigma’ and ‘reliance on a general category of social marginality’, were ‘borrowed’ from mid-20th century social science studies of deviance (Love, 2015: 75). For most criminologists, it is axiomatic that this tradition is equally central to our own genealogy, and our concerns with deviance, normativity, social control and the production of power and marginalisation. Despite this shared set of concerns, queer theory and criminology have little contemporary crossover. We share Love’s concern around this state of affairs, but where she is primarily concerned about the stakes for queer studies, the focus of our Special Issue is on what criminologists can gain from greater engagement with the analytic and conceptual tools of queer theory

DIY queer feminist (sub)cultural resistance in the UK

This thesis examines the role of music, power and DIY (sub)culture involved in resistance to hegemonic discourses of gender, sexuality and feminism (re)circulated within dominant society and culture. In particular, attention is focused upon young peoples' experiences within riot gml and contemporary queer feminist music (sub )cultures situated within the fabric of social change and protest cultures of contemporary Britain. A critical interdisciplinary approach and set of qualitative methodologies were employed to understand music as collective social action that incorporated (i) oral histories of British riot gml, (ii) an auto/ethnography of DIY queer feminist (sub)culturallife, and (iii) case studies of queer and feminist amateur music-makers. I argue that music provides participants with a set of vital spatial, emotional and sonic resources to provoke radical political imaginaries, identities, communities and life-courses into being. In the context of a neo-liberal post-feminist consumer society, the creation of DIY queer feminist music (sub )culture attempts to resist the disarticulation of feminism and the dominant regulation of gender and sexual diversities. These social practices offer critical insights into the continuities of the (sub)cultural resistance of girls, young women and queers throughout modem history and demands the recognition of (sub)cultural resistance as crucial to British feminism within the wider transformations of protest and activism in contemporary society.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceESRCGBUnited Kingdo

Spatio-temporal dependencies in functional connectivity in rodent cortical cultures

Models of functional connectivity in cortical cultures on multi-electrodes arrays may aid in understanding how cognitive pathways form and improve techniques that aim to interface with neuronal systems. To enable research on such models, this study uses both data- and model-driven approaches to determine what dependencies are present in and between functional connectivity networks derived from bursts of extracellularly recorded activity. Properties of excitation in bursts were analysed using correlative techniques to assess the degree of linear dependence and then two parallel techniques were used to assess functional connectivity. Three models presenting increasing levels of spatio-temporal dependency were used to capture the dynamics of individual functional connections and their consistencies were verified using surrogate data. By comparing network-wide properties between model generated networks and functional networks from data, complex interdependencies were revealed. This indicates the persistent co-activation of neuronal pathways in spontaneous bursts, as can be found in whole brain structures