ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore the experience of being public feminist criminologists, the multiple roles or identities that we hold as such, and the tensions and challenges that we must navigate in the course of our work in violence against women policy. In doing so, we draw on examples from our own professional lives to consider the opportunities and impact of feminist criminologies, some of the problematics of emotional appeals in violence against women policy activism, and the increasing challenge of backlash in the social media age. Ultimately, we suggest that there exists a “triple-burden” facing the public feminist criminologist working to influence violence against women policy. Our experience as feminist criminologists, then, is one where the public, political, and the personal cannot be disentangled from our professional work. Though this triple-burden undoubtedly places additional pressures on the public feminist criminologist, rather than diminishing us and our work, we conclude that is also the very thing that motivates and convinces us that we need to keep engaging publicly to achieve change.
