ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the theoretical-political links between sexual abuse and structural oppression, including the quotidian labor of “difference” that queer people of color (QPOC) perform in everyday life. It argues that anti-sexual assault campaigns on college campuses and elsewhere, as well as efforts to end childhood sexual abuse, would benefit from centering QPOC analytics. Centering queer and trans of color lives in #MeToo discourse and on conversations on sexual abuse on college campuses is one implementation of this politico-theoretical tactic. Understanding ourselves as innocents/victims/survivors is especially unhelpful for women of color, and queer women of color in particular. Relatedly, centering women of color in conversations around sexual abuse also allows us to learn from the strategies of survival that WOC and/or queer students mobilize, which can only serve to enrich conversations around #MeToo. Rethinking the relationships between queerness and sexual abuse, not only through causality but also through power and difference, allows for QTPOC lives to be centered in #MeToo.
