Beyond Metoo

A book that unboxes the #MeToo movement beyond the headlines and hashtags and repositions to its equally deserving urgency as a social issue.

#NiUnaMenos #Aufschrei #LoSHA Before #MeToo became a massive global movement, these were the hashtags that represented activists from Ukraine to Peru who demanded accountability for the sexual violence and racism, xenophobia, and misogyny inflicted on women, transgender people, and girls. Led by activists such as Tarana Burke, who popularized the phrase "me too," these movements provided a call to action for survivors across the world to speak out about their experiences. In #MeToo and Beyond, M. Cristina Alcalde and Paula-Irene Villa bring together scholars and activists from various backgrounds to approach #MeToo from multiple spaces, positionalities, and areas of expertise, many from regions and contexts often overlooked and understudied in the mediascapes of the global North. This volume includes perspectives from around the world and touches on diverse topics spanning masculinity studies, transgender people's heightened risk of suffering sexual harassment and violence, the internal conflict in American Jewish communities as activists began speaking out against prominent members who relied on shared cultural values to shame their victims, as well as many other significant aspects of the first all-inclusive international effort to end gender-based violence. The editors and contributors heed Burke's call to amplify marginalized voices so that instead of becoming footnotes, these voices guide activists to frame polyphony as central to understanding past, current, and future forms of gender-based violence and resistance. The goal of #MeToo and Beyond is to examine both profoundly universal and specific experiences of sexual violence, as well as the collective effort to stop gender-based violence wherever it occurs. Activists and scholars will find this book an important and necessary contribution to current and future discussions on sexual violence and global movements.

#NiUnaMenos #Aufschrei #LoSHA Before #MeToo became a massive global movement, these were the hashtags that represented activists from Ukraine to Peru who demanded accountability for the sexual violence and racism, xenophobia, and misogyny inflicted on women, transgender people, and girls. Led by activists such as Tarana Burke, who popularized the phrase "me too," these movements provided a call to action for survivors across the world to speak out about their experiences. In #MeToo and Beyond, M. Cristina Alcalde and Paula-Irene Villa bring together scholars and activists from various backgrounds to approach #MeToo from multiple spaces, positionalities, and areas of expertise, many from regions and contexts often overlooked and understudied in the mediascapes of the global North. This volume includes perspectives from around the world and touches on diverse topics spanning masculinity studies, transgender people's heightened risk of suffering sexual harassment and violence, the internal conflict in American Jewish communities as activists began speaking out against prominent members who relied on shared cultural values to shame their victims, as well as many other significant aspects of the first all-inclusive international effort to end gender-based violence. The editors and contributors heed Burke's call to amplify marginalized voices so that instead of becoming footnotes, these voices guide activists to frame polyphony as central to understanding past, current, and future forms of gender-based violence and resistance. The goal of #MeToo and Beyond is to examine both profoundly universal and specific experiences of sexual violence, as well as the collective effort to stop gender-based violence wherever it occurs. Activists and scholars will find this book an important and necessary contribution to current and future discussions on sexual violence and global movements.

“A decisive snapshot of this moment in history that considers where we were, and sets the stage for where we might go, and will no doubt be used to describe this moment long after we move on to a new normal.” —Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People An illuminating, timely look at the changing landscape of sexual politics by the author of Crazy Town. For nearly two years, Globe and Mail reporter Robyn Doolittle investigated how Canadian police handle sexual assault cases. Her findings were shocking: across the country, in big cities and small towns, the system was dismissing a high number of allegations as "unfounded." A police officer would simply view the claim as baseless and no investigation would follow. Of the 26,500 reported cases of sexual assault in 2015, only 1,400 resulted in convictions. The response to Doolittle's groundbreaking Unfounded series was swift. Federal ministers immediately vowed to establish better oversight, training, and policies; Prime Minister Trudeau announced $100 million to combat gender-based violence; Statistics Canada began to collect and publish unfounded rates; and to date, about a third of the country's forces have pledged to review more than 10,000 sex-assault cases dating back to 2010. Had It Coming picks up where the Unfounded series left off. Doolittle brings a personal voice to what has been a turning point for most women: the #MeToo movement and its aftermath. The world is now increasingly aware of the pervasiveness of rape culture in which powerful men got away with sexual assault and harassment for years: from Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Bill O'Reilly, and Matt Lauer, to Charlie Rose and Jian Ghomeshi. But Doolittle looks beyond specific cases to the big picture. The issue of "consent" figures largely: not only is the public confused about what it means, but an astounding number of police officers and judges do not understand Canadian consent law. The brain's reaction to trauma and how it affects memory is also crucial to understanding victim statements. Surprisingly, Canada has the most progressive sexual assault laws in the developed world, yet the system is failing victims at every stage. Had It Coming is not a diatribe or manifesto, but a nuanced and informed look at how attitudes around sexual behaviour have changed and still need to change.

This edited collection on #MeToo activism challenges the overwhelming whiteness and straightness of #MeToo discourse and coverage. Using intersectional and decolonial frameworks and historical, archival, organizational and legal methods, these essays offer a rich exploration of #MeToo to understand how activism around sexualized violence reproduce and harm a wide variety of people. The swift and powerful arrival of #MeToo as a compilation of complaints about sexual misconduct (especially in the workplace) has created pressure to dive deeper into the history of sexual assault and abuse in the United States. #MeToo: A Rhetorical Zeitgeist answers the call for more complicated analyses of systemic sexual harassment and abuse with essays that are deeply concerned with the whiteness and heterosexuality of #MeToo coverage and media framing to understand how and why #MeToo began to capture the public’s attention in 2017 against the backdrop of Donald J. Trump’s presidential administration. These essays offer the first comprehensive study of the rhetorical politics of #MeToo. They tackle the complexities of sexual harassment, sexual violence and rape beyond white celebrity discourse to understand: how both violence and #MeToo activism affect transgender people; how #MeToo fails Black male victims of assault and rape; how Indian-American masculinity and comedy skirt sexual accountability; how the legal and affective precedent in the Supreme Court during the Kavanaugh hearings amplified concerns about sexual assault and rape; decolonial approaches to resisting sexualized violence from indigenous peoples; and narratives about assault from within the higher education community. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Women's Studies in Communication.

Since the MeToo hashtag went viral in 2017, the movement has burgeoned across social media, moving beyond Twitter and into living rooms and courtrooms. It has spread unevenly across the globe, with some countries and societies more impacted than others, and interacted with existing feminist movements, struggles, and resistances. This interdisciplinary handbook identifies thematic and theoretical areas that require attention and interrogation, inviting the reader to make connections between the ways in which the #MeToo movement has panned out in different parts of the world, seeing it in the context of the many feminist and gendered struggles already in place, as well as the solidarities with similar movements across countries and cultures. With contributions from gender experts spanning a wide range of disciplines including political science, history, sociology, law, literature, and philosophy, this groundbreaking book will have contemporary relevance for scholars, feminists, gender researchers, and policy-makers across the globe.

#MeToo for Women and Men provides an overview of sexual violence and an accessible guide to the #MeToo movement, presenting a timely look at the evidence from diverse fields. Its evidence-based approach builds upon public health and health psychology principles to increase the reader’s understanding of sexual bullying and aims to help inform the building of safer communities. The book identifies patterns of sexual harassment and considers how sexual bullying can be used to express power. Intended to widen readers' knowledge of the causes and impacts surrounding sexual harassment and abuse, the book encourages open discussion of these topics to enable society to move closer to combating it. Using first-person accounts alongside evidence of both individual behaviours and the ways the topic is dealt with in laws, institutions, cultures and organisations, the book ensures that voices of survivors and their experiences are emphasised throughout. A wide audience of public, professional, academics and clinicians will benefit from the book’s extensive look into the impact sexual harassment has on survivors and its insight into how connections across a range of fields help us to understand, but more importantly, prevent perpetration and victimisation. This guide is also for non-academics wanting to understand what #MeToo means, what it tells us about prevention and how to address the increasing problem of sexual harassment, violence and abuse.

#MeToo has sparked a global re-emergence of sexual violence activism and politics. This edited collection uses the #MeToo movement as a starting point for interrogating contemporary debates in anti-sexual violence activism and justice-seeking. It draws together 19 accessible chapters from academics, practitioners, and sexual violence activists across the globe to provide diverse, critical, and nuanced perspectives on the broader implications of the movement. It taps into wider conversations about the nature, history, and complexities of anti-rape and anti-sexual harassment politics, including the limitations of the movement including in the global South. It features both internationally recognised and emerging academics from across the fields of criminology, media and communications, film studies, gender and queer studies, and law and will appeal broadly to the academic community, activists, and beyond.