#MeToo and Beyond: Perspectives on a Global Movement

by M. Cristina Alcalde (Editor), Paula-Irene Villa (Editor)

Overview

#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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813195605
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	07/26/2022
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

M. Cristina Alcalde is the vice president for institutional diversity and inclusion at Miami University in Ohio, where she is also professor of global and intercultural studies. She is the author or editor of several books, including Peruvian Lives across Borders: Power, Exclusion, and Home. Paula-Irene Villa is chair and professor of sociology and gender studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität–Munich, and president of the German Sociological Association. She is the author or editor of several books, including The Future of Difference: Beyond the Toxic Entanglement of Racism, Sexism, and Feminism, coauthored with Sabine Hark.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Disrupting the Familiar, Approaching #MeToo, by M. Cristina Alcalde and Paula-Irene Villa
Part I: The Politics of Inclusion, Space, and Change
1. #MeToo and the Future of Feminist Anti-Violence Activism in Australia, by Rachel Loney-Howes
2. Tackling Gender-Based Violence in South Africa: Organizing, Calling Out, Embracing #MeToo, by Kammila Naidoo and Denise Buiten
3. Changing Men and Masculinities in the UK and Beyond in the Wake of #MeToo, by Stephen Burrell
Part II: Law, Media, and Feminist Mobilization
4. In Singular and Plural Voice: #MeToo, Law, and Solidarity, by Srimati Basu
5. The Language of MeToo in South African and North American Media Discourses, by Desiree Lewis
Part III: Higher Ed and the Disruption of Everyday Violence and Exclusions
6. #GamAni: How #MeToo Inpsired the American Jewish Community to Look Inward...and Where the Human Family Goes From Here, by Keren R. McGinity
7. Intimacy, Transgression, Ethics: Scripts and Silences in Gendered Academia, by Rukmini Sen
8. Queering #MeToo: Working Toward Queer and Trans Inclusion, by Xavier L. Guadalupe-Diaz and Elizabeth Whalley
Part IV: Tensions and Conflicts Within #MeToo
9. On Being Public: Feminism, Sexual Harassment, and the Question of Palestine, by Ruth Preser
10. NiUnaMenos: Beyond the Rally, A Field in Dispute, by Fanni Muñoz
11. Afterword: #Metoo, Just a Hashtag?

Editorial Reviews

This book brings our attention to gendered power dynamics in public and private spaces of the #MeToo conversations while it stays with the trouble and keep up the polyphonic, complex, and partly arduous conversation about how intimacy and bodies within systems of dominance and hierarchies structure the values of individuals, organizations and institutions, and entire societies.

Andrea Pető

The editors did a fantastic job... showing #MeToo in multiple countries, contexts, and scenarios. Despite the multiplicity, the book shows the global cohesiveness of the movement and its struggles...(this work) brings a wider perspective to #MeToo outside of the United States and reflecting its global implications.

H-Net

Despite the seemingly unifying hashtag #MeToo, the continuum that runs from sexual harassment to unwanted touching to rape (and everything in between) is among the most complex, multi-valanced feminist movements that have gained prominence in recent decades—and nothing shows this more vividly than this collection of diverse narratives. While the movement is rightfully described as global in scope, the different national and cultural perspectives represented demonstrate just how important history and cultural context are to the differing shapes and priorities #MeToo has taken—as well as the distinctive dilemmas impeding and furthering progress. A very valuable, highly instructive collection.

Susan Bordo

#MeToo is a global movement concerning all genders, but in intersectional ways. This great book brings in multiple voices, tensions, and experiences that reflect diverse class, generational, racialized, and gendered positions. It also covers exclusions produced by feminist movements themselves. Disrupting hegemonial knowledges, it provides a polyphony for understanding past, current, and future forms of gendered violence and resistance, and highlights the power of self-reflexive transnational feminism for nonviolent futures.

Ilse Lenz

The #MeToo campaign on social media grew from a history of feminist activism against gendered violence. This fascinating book explores both the campaign's astonishing global reach and its troubled encounters with class privilege, racial inequalities, sexuality and state power. With case studies from five continents, it is a very rich resource for understanding contemporary gender politics.

Raewyn Connell

This volume provides a much-needed corrective to popular depictions of #MeToo as a movement led by white, wealthy, cisgender, heterosexual celebrity women in the United States and the Global North. The diverse voices that speak clearly from these pages decenter the perspectives and experiences of those with privilege, while simultaneously highlighting commonalities across diverse positionalities.

Claire M. Renzetti