194 Chapter 9
POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES IN ACTION . . . THE ME TOO MOVEMENT
EVENTS: In 2006, the social activist and community organizer, Tarana Burke, first used the phrase ‘Me Too’ on the Myspace social network to indicate solidarity with sufferers of sexual violence, focusing especially on the threat posed to black women andwomen from low-income communities. Burke was later to be acknowledged as the leader of the Me Too movement. However, it was not until October 2017, when allegations surfaced of serial sexual misconduct by the Hollywood movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein, that the movement began to spread virally as a hashtag (#MeToo) on social media. This was encouraged by the US actor Alyssa Milano, who proposed that Twitter be used to gauge the magnitude of the problem. In 2020, Weinstein was convicted of rape and sentenced to 23 years in prison. SIGNIFICANCE: Feminists have long worked to promote bodily autonomy and to protect girls and women from brutal crimes such as rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence. This focus, indeed, has sharpened since the 2010s, as issues such as sexual harassment in the workplace, campus sexual harassment, body shaming, sexist imagery in the media and online misogyny have attracted greater attention. In this context, #MeToo has both raised awareness of the extent of sexual abuse and provoked debate – among men as well as women – about the norms of personal, professional and sexual behaviour, helping, in the process, to strengthen legal protections for women and girls. #MeToo’s impact in these respects stems significantly from the benefits of social media-based political
activism and the media attention generated by high-profile cases. However, #MeToo has also generated controversy within feminist circles.One sourceof tensionderives from the allegedly declining emphasis on addressing the concerns of socially marginalized women, in view of the prominence that celebrities have assumed within the movement. A second source of tension focuses on differing understandings of sexism and how it should be challenged. On the one hand, those who support #MeToo typically assume that sexual harassment and assault are systemic problems, which can only be tackled by the transformation of society, using the power of empathy and solidarity. On the other hand, #MeToo’s mainly liberal-feminist detractors claim that the movement fails to recognize individual women as moral agents, who must, at some level, take responsibility for the decisions they make. From this perspective, the goal of feminism is not so much to transform society as to better equip women to navigate their way within society.
agenda, which would enable women to compete in public life on equal terms with men, regardless of sex. Equality thus means equal access to the public realm. Socialist feminists, in contrast, argue that equal rights may be meaningless unless women also enjoy social equality. Equality, in this sense, has to apply in terms of economic power, and so must address issues such as the ownership of wealth, pay differentials and the distinction between waged and unwaged labour. Radical feminists, for their part, are primarily concerned about equality in family and personal life. Equality must therefore operate, for example, in terms of child care and other domestic responsibilities, the control of one’s own body, and sexual expression and fulfilment.
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