Weaponizing Your Name: How a Conservative Media Made Your Feminist Scholarship a Threat

This autoethnography examines the intersectional harm experienced by one Black American woman professor at a faith-based institution, whose feminist and critical pedagogy in communication became the target of conservative media in the United States. Written in second person to protect the professor’s identity and all involved, the piece demonstrates how epistemic surveillance and misrepresentation delegitimize Black women’s intellectual labor in white academic spaces. Through critical engagement with feminist and womanist thought, a central tension emerges between the public response the professor wishes to give, and the strategic silence required for survival and to minimize future targeting. The piece theorizes silence as calculated nonverbal resistance, revealing how Black women academics must navigate the impossible choice between speaking truth and protecting their precarious positions. This autoethnography illuminates the challenges women of Color face today when doing culturally responsive work in communication studies, centering the costs of such labor at the intersections of race, gender, and religion.