Once Davis shifted from expert to citizen testimonies, her supporters became more invested and moved from identification to empathy. To shift from expert to lay testimony, Davis said, “Now, members, I’m going to begin to read testimony from people who were unable to testify before the House Committee. [They] waited many, many, many hours for the chance for their voices to be heard. And unfortunately, the Chair of the Committee . . . around 1am, made a decision that no longer would testimony be accepted, in his words, ‘because it had become repetitive.’”487 Netizens noticed immediately that Davis was “now reading public testimony from those turned away from a public hearing nights ago.”488 Netizens rebutted the committee chair, claiming the, “Testimony . . . is not at all ‘repetitive’. THANK YOU [Davis] FOR GIVING US A VOICE!”489 Another contrasted Davis’s inclusion of female voices with Mitt Romney: “Who knew binders full of women could be so useful?”490 This sort of gratitude among Davis’s
constituents prompted them to move from observations and identification to forwarding affective and argumentative claims.
As Davis read the thirty-one citizen testimonies omitted from committee hearing, the pathos appeals engaged her audience’s emotions. These emotional appeals first used humor and
486 Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, 2011, 56. 487 Mardoll 2014, location 620.
488 Riley, Clayton (JCRiley09). 25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
489 Gill, Kelly. 25 Jun 2013. “Testimony that @WendyDavisTexas is reading is not at all "repetitive". THANK YOU
FOR GIVING US A VOICE! #standwithwendy #sb5.” Tweet.
sarcasm, then defiance, and then sadness. Gary Oldham’s testimony included the sarcastic line, “The wonderful thing about science is that it’s true whether you believe it or not.”491 This line was Tweeted verbatim.492 Oldham also said he was “embarrass[ed]” that Texas Senators were calling scientific consensus “speculation” when their only counter-evidence was “unverified anecdotal stories.”493 Oldham ended with a strong chastisement: that rejecting scientific due to religion or “ideology is the greatest form of ignorance imaginable.”494 By first reading the expert testimony from five medical organizations, and supplementing it with biting analysis from a citizen letter, Davis was able to use a double- and triple-voiced discourse to breach Senate decorum and impute to colleagues unbecoming tactics. Double-voicing allowed her to maintain plausible deniability: he said it, not me. As with La Follette, who imputed poor behavior to Aldrich, and Smith—who stealthily attributed corruption to Paine, Davis used social media and expert testimony to stretch Senate decorum and associate her colleagues with poor behavior.
As Davis read the next citizen testimony, netizens moved from sarcasm to defiance. In Kathryn Genet’s fifth citizen testimony, she described “the very real emotional, financial, and spiritual weight” of having three kids, which is “hard, quite expensive and scary at times, and . . . intensely personal.”495 Genet followed with a much quoted line telling the legislators to stay out of these personal decisions: “You are cordially not invited to share that experience with me.”496 Tweets of this line included two small, yet important emendations. Virginia in Texas, for instance, captured the emphasis of the quotation and added the effect: “You are cordially NOT
491 Mardoll 2014, location 705. This comment came after Oldham’s troubling observation that “Science is being
routinely rejected by this body [the Texas Legislature].”
492 Alyssa. “The wonderful thing about science is that it’s true whether you believe it or not.’ #StandWithWendy.”
25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
493 Mardoll 2014, location 705. 494 Mardoll 2014, location 722. 495 Mardoll 2014, location 737. 496 Mardoll 2014, location 737.
invited to share that experience with me.’ applause [sic] from the gallery.”497 Davis emphasized “NOT” in her reading, and the result of her line delivery was applause by the immediate
audience. Hearing this line and the reaction roused netizens to become more defiant themselves. The third type of pathos appeal in the citizen letters was sadness, which moved Davis, members of the gallery, and netizens to empathy. Their empathy was signaled by collective tears. While Davis read the heartbreaking citizen testimony (#17) from “Carol, in Austin,” she began to tear up, as did netizens. Carol and her husband found out their unborn baby “had a terminal condition,” and the baby would either be miscarried or die within minutes of birth.498 The doctor gave them three choices: wait to miscarry, induce labor, or “have a dilation and extraction.”499 Carol and her husband were heartbroken, and were constantly reminded of the pain: “Every time . . . someone would comment on my pregnancy . . . I would turn around and burst into tears. So eventually I stopped leaving my house.”500 At this point the transcript notes: “[Senator Davis wipes her eye with one hand. Over the next few minutes her voice grows shakier and more tearful and she pauses several times to use a tissue.]”501 The story and Davis’s empathetic tears affected members of the gallery: “People in the gallery [are] tearing up.”502 Since the tears of netizens could not be seen by the community, some began Tweeting about it: “My mascara is running,”503 and, “OMG I AM CRYING REAL TEARS RIGHT NOW.”504
Other women so strongly empathized with Carol’s testimony and Davis’s reading that they began to merge into consubstantiality. One wrote, “As a mother, I can only imagine how
497 Virginia in Texas (TooTwistedTV). “You are cordially NOT invited to share that experience with me.’ applause
[sic] from the gallery. #sb5 #txlege #standwithwendy.” 25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
498 Mardoll 2014, location 1028. 499 Mardoll 2014, location 1028. 500 Mardoll 2014, location 1043. 501 Mardoll 2014, location 1043.
502 Villalobos, Pedro A. (pedro_villa). 25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
503 Spangler, Emily (EFSpangler). “My mascara is running. #StandWithWendy.” 25 Jun 2013. Tweet. 504 Virginia in Texas (TooTwistedTV). 25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
heart breaking it is for [Davis] to read these stories. #hero.”505 This netizen, “As a mother,” could walk in Carol’s shoes due to Davis’s rendering. Motherhood is a topos Carol, Davis, and this netizen share that none of the male legislators can fully understand. Through the shared topoi of motherhood and the shared empathetic reaction of tears, those who testified, Wendy Davis herself (as she read and became an “embodied witness[]”), and those who spectated became a consubstantial “community of sufferers” who shared a common pain.506
At least one netizen, Julie Gillis, heard Davis read Gillis’s own citizen testimony during the filibuster, became fully consubstantial with Davis, and moved to participation. Gillis’s letter began by recounting her mother’s wisdom about not going back to the pre-pill and pre-legal abortion days. Next she lamented the “chipping away at Planned Parenthood, sex education” and the rise of “the influence of the religious right on reproductive rights.”507 Gillis also provides three action steps: 1. comprehensive sex education, “Education is power”; 2. easy access to clinics and birth control, “Access is power”; and 3. a robust social safety net for mothers and families, because, “Resources are power.”508 It is an exemplary piece of rhetoric.
Gillis was profoundly affected by hearing Davis read Gillis’s previously-ignored
testimony. Whereas Gillis had previously Tweeted humorous things,509 after hearing Davis read her story, Gillis immediately shifted from humor to tears: “OMG she is reading my
testimony!!!!!! Crying!”510 Gillis’s affective response went beyond crying; she was “shaking and
505 Deal.Me.In (viulasea). 25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
506 Sophie Oliver, "Sacred and (Sub)Human Pain: Witnessing Bodies in Early Modern Hagiography and
Contemporary Spectatorship of Atrocity." At The Interface / Probing The Boundaries 63, 2011, 125, 119.
507 Mardoll 2014, location 758. 508 Mardoll 2014, location 774.
509 Gillis, Julie (JulieGoneRogue). “Sen Davis Kinda like Hands on a Hard Body, cept It’s Keep Your Laws Offa
Our Bodies!” 25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
proud and thrilled.”511 At that moment Gillis was consubstantial with Davis—they shared the same pain, the same testimony, the same affective investment. It was the confluence of identification (proud), emotion (thrilled), and the transmogrification of identification and emotion into effect (shaking). Gillis didn’t stop with shaking, either. While she didn’t return to the capitol,512 she picked up the phone and called Jimmy Johns to help feed the feminist army. She then encourages others to do the same: “Food for #standwithwendy #sb5 Jimmy Johns Austin 515 Congress Tel: 512-457-4900.”513 While Gillis seemingly stopped her participation at Tweeting and purchasing that day, she watched and lent her support till the end. “If this thing goes down over a backbrace [sic] there may be a freakin' riot.”514 In the case of Julie Gillis we gain insight into the process of emancipation from live-streaming and casually commenting to empathy, consubstantiality, and participation.
If division is the corollary to identification, then antipathy may be the corollary to empathy. As Davis read Carol’s heartbreaking testimony, many empathized and cried, but some lashed out in anger at the opposition. Senators who were visible in the live-stream but unmoved due to being distracted incurred a special amount of wrath from netizens. “As [Davis] cries through testimony Lt Gov Dewhurst is on phone, laughing.”515 This sentiment was re-Tweeted a few times due to the massive incongruity between the heartbreaking testimony being read and Dewhurst’s inappropriate laughter. The antipathy of these netizens was later broadened when Davis read the nineteenth citizen testimony from Peggy in Austin, and quoted the line,
“Lawmakers, either get out of the vagina business or go to medical school.”516 This memorable
511 Gillis, Julie (JulieGoneRogue). “I am shaking and proud and thrilled. #standwithwendy @WendyDavisTexas
#sb5 #txlege.” 25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
512 She had been there and was kept from testifying at the committee hearing, after all. 513 Gillis, Julie (JulieGoneRogue). 25 Jun 2013. Tweet.
514 Gillis, Julie (JulieGoneRogue). 25 Jun 2013. Tweet. 515 Shira (toastedgrrl). 25 Jun 2013.
quotation was circulated by multiple netizens. One Tweeted the line and added the context that Davis was “quoting a constituent.”517 Another netizen created a meme from the quotation.
Figure 3: From testimony to floor to live-Tweet meme
This meme takes a dramatic quotation from the performance, superimposes it over an image of Davis, and circulates the picture far and wide. The addition of the picture would presumably catch the attention of more Twitter users than would a stand-alone quotation. Once the picture catches the eye and the user reads the quotation, they can look to the bottom of the meme for information on who is speaking, where, when, why, and about what. This snippet of information may prompt audience reactions and ensnare bystanders who were unaware of the day’s political events, but just happened to see this meme in a friend’s feed. If the user realizes that the event is still unfolding, they could re-Tweet the meme or get involved in other ways, such as watching the filibuster, or deliberating online with likeminded or opposition netizens.