Sexual violence is an incredibly polarizing subject. On the one hand, sexual violence can incite outrage and moral indignation from the public and politicians alike. On the other hand, survivors who speak out about sexual violence routinely face scrutiny from their friends, family, police and the public. Many are accused of lying about their experiences, and others for not being âauthenticâ victims or traumatized enough. Some are blamed for being assaulted: that they were âasking for itâ.
At the same time, feminist activists have long sought to challenge these views, along with the assumption that rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are the products of the random acts of individual men who are regarded as âsickâ or âsocial deviantsâ and unknown to their victims. Instead, many feminists argue that these acts are a reflection of a ârape cultureâ, a highly contested term that refers to the social, cultural and political processes that condone violence against women but also blame women (and all other victim-survivors) if and when violence is perpetrated against them (Buchwald, Fletcher, & Roth, 1993). The flood of participation in #MeToo reaffirmed publicly just how widespread sexual assault and harassment actually are; that most victim-survivors know the offender; and, significantly, that these experiences are routine and normalized, in short, confirming many feminist arguments about ârape cultureâ.
Millions of individuals around the world used the #MeToo hashtag on social media within 24 hours of Alyssa Milanoâs call to arms on 15 October 2017, generating a significant and overwhelming response in support of survivors of sexual harassment and violence. Yet, as contributors to this collection demonstrate, #MeToo also faced swift backlash and accusations of having gone âtoo farâ. The testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who, in September 2018, accused the now associate justice to the Supreme Court of the United States of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, further demonstrates our polarized responses to victim-survivors. The public and political backlash against Ford illustrated the depth of hostility and trepidation that remains within the American public toward survivors who speak out against powerful men. Such a response was indicative of the continued failure to hear and take seriously survivors when they speak out. This occurred despite the seemingly significant impact of the #MeToo movement and alongside Fordâs experience and testimony being heralded as credible and âbelievableâ (see Rosewarne, this collection). The backlash against Dr. Ford is reflective of the long-standing struggles, challenges and complexities within feminist activism and justice claims regarding sexual violence that have been prevalent since at least the 1970s. These challenges, intricacies and polarizing discourses that the #MeToo movement has once again given rise to are precisely what this edited collection seeks to address.
In this introductory chapter, we discuss the emergence of and responses to the #MeToo movement, placing it in dialogue with historical critiques of feminist efforts to raise awareness about sexual harassment and violence. Our intention here is to establish a critical framework through which to examine the #MeToo movementâand feminist activism and justice efforts to address sexual violence more broadlyâand consider the potentials, limitations, complexities and necessities of social, cultural, political and legal changes.
#MeToo as a Moment of Reckoning
In October 2017, the hashtag âMeTooâ exploded on social media. In the wake of a string of sexual harassment and assault allegations against high-profile Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, broken by journalists Meghan Twohey and Jodi Kantor in The New York Times, actress Alyssa Milano took to Twitter, encouraging women to share their own experiences of sexual violence using #MeToo.
âIf youâve been sexually harassed or assaulted write âme tooâ as a reply to this tweet,â Milano posted through her Twitter account accompanied by the following text:
Me Too. Suggested by a friend: âIf all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote âMe tooâ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.â
The response, arguably, was nothing short of phenomenal with millions of survivors across the globe using the hashtag to disclose their own experiences of sexual harassment and violence. Some disclosed incidents and their aftermath in intimate detail; others simply marked themselves as survivors: âme tooâ (see Gleeson & Turner; Mendes & Ringrose, this collection). With the hashtag used 12 million times in the first 24 hours, the âmagnitude of the problemâ of sexual violence in womenâs (and othersâ) lives was all too apparent.
The social media campaign quickly evolved across local contexts: French women used the #BalanceTonPorc (âname your pigâ) hashtag; #RiceBunny was used in China (see Zeng, this collection); Italian actress Asia Argento tweeted #QuellaVoltaChe (âthat time whenâŚâ), encouraging other Italian women to come forward with their stories of sexual harassment; and Spanish women joined in using the hashtag #YoTambien (Di Caro, 2017). Argentine women took advantage of the momentum of #MeToo to further advance the goal of legalizing abortion put on the agenda by the earlier #NiUnaMenos (ânot one woman lessâ) campaign (see Garibotti & Hopp, this collection). The movement generated substantive and sustained global media coverage and public debate (see Newman & Haire; Royal, this collection). Months of intensive media reporting culminated in the women who spoke out about Weinstein and othersâthe âSilence Breakersââbeing named TIMEâs people of the year in 2017.
Lest the social media campaign be viewed as all talk and no action, #MeToo drove the development of more tangible activist movements and support for those experiencing sexual harassment and violence, particularly in the workplace. Notably, the #TimesUp project, driven (at least initially) by Hollywood actresses, aimed to address âthe systemic inequality and injustice in the workplace that have kept underrepresented groups from reaching their full potentialâ by providing resources and legal support to women experiencing workplace harassment (Times Up Now, 2017). Similar efforts were established internationally, including the NOW campaign in Australia, spearheaded by journalist Tracey Spicer. In the wake of the movement, France passed new legislation to address public sexual harassment, with lawmakers passing a bill that outlawed catcalling in August 2018 (Masri, 2018). As we began preparing this collection, the Australian Human Rights Commission announced the first national inquiry into workplace sexual harassment.
At the time of writing, Weinstein had been accused of sexual assault by over 70 women, and in May 2018 he surrendered himself to police after being charged with rape, sexual misconduct, sexual abuse and committing a sex act against two women (ABC, 2018). Many other high-profile men were outed and publicly shamed as perpetrators, with varying degrees of consequence, including Louis C.K., Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and Kevin Spacey. While the movement was initially focused on Hollywood, it quickly proliferated across other industries and contexts. One report estimated that more than 400 men (and a small number of women) across a range of industries spanning far beyond Hollywood had been âbrought downâ by the movement (Green, 2018).
The Politics of Social Change
On the face of it, our brief overview suggests that the #MeToo movement was a highly successful one: an act of solidarity with and between survivors arguably on a scale that has not been witnessed before, a movement that has generated tangible action and consequences for some perpetrators, and driven substantive public debate on sexual violence. In addition, the use of social media was instrumental in spearheading discussion in new and nuanced ways.
Yet, to stop here would lead to an overly optimistic and simplistic rendering of the campaign. As the chapters in this edited collection highlight, a much more nuanced and critical unpacking of the movement in dialogue with broader discussions relating to gender, sexuality, race, geography, law, politics and history, is needed in order to understand the disruptive potential (and limits) of #MeToo and indeed question whether we can expect anything to change or be different moving forward (Alcoff & Gray, 1993). The development and circulation of #MeToo brought to a head a series of questions regarding who is able to speak and be heard, what constitutes sexual violence, whose experiences are included and perceived as worthy of redress, and how activist communities should go about the âbusinessâ of generating change. Moreover, is it possible to conceptualize #MeToo in and of itself as a social movement, and is it capable of driving substantive change, and change for whom?
Importantly, many of the perceived issues and critiques of the movement are by no means limited to #MeToo, with the movement reproducing many historically problematic features of public feminism and anti-rape activism, which is discussed further in several of the chapters in this collection (see Loney-Howes; Ryan, this collection). It is vitally important that the movement be situated within a broader context and across the multiple histories and trajectories of anti-sexual violence activism and justice efforts. This collection seeks to complicate, critique and contextualize the #MeToo movement within this âbigger pictureâ view of feminist agitation: we aim to examine the movement in its own right, while connecting it...