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Sessions ‘[convert] an involuntary outburst of agonized helplessness into an intentional expression of power’

A Catholic university professor is promoting “supportive group scream sessions” for women as a way to “[convert] an involuntary outburst of agonized helplessness into an intentional expression of power.”

Writing at Ms. Magazine on Sunday, English Professor Laura Haigwood said photographer Whitney Bradshaw began the “social justice practice project” known as OUTCRY in 2018 during the Women’s March.

“Bradshaw’s practice is a timely model of feminist leadership, and includes telling her own illuminating stories of victimization and resistance,” Haigwood wrote. She is a professor emeritus of English at Saint Mary’s College, a private, Catholic institution in Indiana.

The “scream sessions,” which Bradshaw photographs, are the subject of a new documentary, “OUTCRY: Alchemists of Rage,” which comes out March 14.

Haigwood  promoted the film in her article, writing: “The short film follows the photographer from her home in Chicago to D.C. for a reproductive freedom march, then to Denver for an OUTCRY exhibition, and on to Dayton, Ohio, for a scream session just prior to voting on Issue 1, which enshrined abortion rights into the Ohio Constitution.”

The professor wrote:

Sadistic abuse of women is so widely normalized in traditional visual culture and popular entertainment, that the current lack of universal political outrage at the known tortures inflicted by abortion care denial and sexual assault suggests just how numbingly familiar patriarchally-staged tropes of women’s victimization have become. In sharp defiance to that systemically brutal and callous perversity, Bradshaw’s sessions allow women to choose for themselves when, how and what to scream, converting an involuntary outburst of agonized helplessness into an intentional expression of power.

Through the screaming project, women “[reject] traditional, hyper-sexualized representations of women’s bodies,” and “[deny] the traditional predatory viewer’s pleasure in spectacles of men wielding power to make women scream,” Haigwood said.

To-date, she said Bradshaw has photographed more than 500 women screaming, including students at UC Berkeley in 2022.

Bradshaw told UC Berkeley News at the time:

“I wanted to use this project as a way to continue to propel the #MeToo movement, by encouraging womxn to speak up and out for themselves in any situation. Not only sexual assault and harrassment, but also in the workplace when you have an idea and want to express it, but you have grown up in the patriarchy and are told to be quiet and let men take up space. I wanted womxn to practice expressing themselves, taking up space and being heard.”

Bradshaw’s website states she began the project, which is on-going, in response to President Donald Trump’s first election.

“In 2018 in response to the rise of a predator to the highest office in the land, the long history of silencing womxn and girls, and in an effort to help propel the #metoo movement forward, I began making portraits of womnx screaming,” the website states.

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IMAGE: UC Berkeley/YouTube

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