ABSTRACT
The MeToo Movement, initiated in 2017, inspired massive sexual assault disclosures on digital platforms via the #metoo hashtag. Among the thousands of disclosures, Latina thespians America Ferrera and Salma Hayek disclosed their sexual abuse in distinct social media platforms that garnered varied responses. This chapter analyzes their digital disclosures of sexual violence and the thematic responses the admissions garnered. We situate their disclosures as digital testimonials that are contextualized within and against cultural milieus of Hollywood practices, which circumscribe Latina artistry and presence, and of racial-ethnic-gendered dynamics that shape responses to sexual assault. We also examine how their accounts situate readers given the option of engaging at different levels. Where the overlying theme across both disclosures is one of support and solidarity via the #metoo hashtag, we argue that the thematic clustering of responses expand upon conceptions of testimonio to account for a digital dynamic of witnessing and participating. We first explore how technology allowed Ferrera and Hayek to craft their Latina positionality in ways that promote solidarity and identification and further consider how witnessing is made more dynamic through technology. Although many readers reframed and deflected the disclosure of each actress, other readers chose to disclose experiences of sexual assault that they admittedly had not shared in other contexts. The study concludes with attention to the unique dynamics of centering one's testimonio amid rhetorical scripts that reinforce inequitable power relations and careful consideration of how such communicative acts resist a complacent and individuated approach to sexual assault.
