Social Movements; A Case Study of MeToo movement

Facta Universitatis, Series: Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology and History, 2020

Journal Space and Culture, India, 2024

Any form of sexual assault stems from the intersection of power, patriarchal structure and gender. While different countries take different measures to tackle cases of sexual assault, cases continue to rise like a pandemic. This study is a revisit to the # Metoo Movement that took the catbird seat in 2017 after Tarana Burke founded it in 2006. Although the #Metoo movement started with women calling out names of abusers, the movement was not confined to female voices alone. It helped expose the cases of sexual abuse across all genders. Taking examples of various instances of sexual assaults against gender across societies, committed under the bulwarks of power, domination and (or) patriarchy, and the newly emergent ways of exploitation of gender, such as Catfishing and Love Jihad, this communication aims to probe whether the #Metoo movement has faced backlash or is simply a rhetoric or both.

2021

The Me Too or #MeToo movement has come under the spotlight in recent years since more survivors/victims are now speaking out against their abuser. These survivors/victims repressed their abuse for years, ashamed to speak out in fear that they would not be believed or face extreme scrutiny and humiliation. Survivors/victims are now coming together to seek justice and to reform the judicial system and how they handle sexual abuse and violence cases. This movement has become more prominent now than it was when it first was formed in 2006 by Tarana Burke and reintroduced by Alyssa Milano using Twitter in 2017. The movement challenges everyday lifestyles and workplace environments to consider what behaviors constitute as appropriate. Companies and businesses are now implementing compliance workplace harassment training to avoid such incidences of sexual abuse and violence.

2019

The Twitter hashtag #MeToo has provided an accessible medium for users to share their personal experiences and make public the prevalence of sexual harassment, assault, and violence against women. This online phenomenon, which has largely involved posting on Twitter and “retweeting” to share other’s posts has revealed crucial information about the scope and nature of sexual harassment and misconduct. More specifically, social media has served as a central forum for this unprecedented global conversation, where previously silenced voices have been amplified, supporters around the world have been united, and resistance has gained steam. This Essay discusses the #MeToo movement within the broader context of social media activism, explaining how this unique form of collective action is rapidly evolving. We offer empirical insights into the types of conversations taking place under the hashtag and the extent to which the movement is leading to broader social change. While it is unclear w...

Springer eBooks, 2006

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2018

This Shortcuts section engages the debate on whether the #MeToo movement is best understood as a form of social justice, bringing heinous acts often shrouded in decades of silence into the public domain, or as mob rule, foregoing official legal channels to summarily shame individuals through unmoderated character assassination. The four contributors offer diverse views on the efficacy of the #MeToo movement to bring forth structural change. They consider the relationship between #MeToo and other longer-running civil rights initiatives, the role of new communication technologies in producing collective suffering, and the need to better contextualize the production of shame. They address questions of how love and desire might fit into twenty-first-century biopolitics, and critically assess the relationship between hashtag movements and institutionalized law.

In 2017, the #metoo movement took Hollywood by storm and brought international attention to the widespread issue of sexual violence. In the aftermath of its fervour, scholarly inquiry into the #metoo movement and its influence are just beginning. Feminist response to and engagement with the #metoo movement has been varied. This thesis considers three key exploratory questions: where did the #metoo movement come from? What is the #metoo movement? Furthermore, where is the #metoo movement going? Approaching these questions from a post-structural, intersectional feminist theoretical framework, I employ a genealogical approach to writing a history of the present of the #metoo movement and trace a number of the conditions that have made the #metoo movement’s popular emergence possible. Specifically, I attend to the role that social media, digital activism, and anti-feminist backlash have played in the emergence of the #metoo movement. Discussing these questions over the course of three chapters finds that the #metoo movement can be thought of as a contested and fragmented space of counter-public anti-sexual violence activism and as an alternative justice mechanism. At the same time, #metoo’s co-optation by white women in news media, entertainment, and popular culture poses significant dangers that could thwart intersectional social action. The #metoo movement presents numerous possibilities for enacting transformative social change, at the same time as it risks thwarting such efforts. Namely, the #metoo movement holds a significant possibility to challenge the mystical authority of formal justice mechanisms and realize a path to justice that centralizes the multiplicity of Survivor's needs and concerns. At the same time, there is nothing inherently feminist, nor is there an inherent-ness to #metoo’s feminism. The contrasts, conflicts, and contradictions within #metoo and across its relations to feminist activism and scholarship, highlights the urgency behind flagging the way #metoo has been activated and co-opted to reproduce the conditions necessary for intersectional forces of oppression and domination.

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2018

This Shortcuts section engages the debate on whether the #MeToo movement is best understood as a form of social justice, bringing heinous acts often shrouded in decades of silence into the public domain, or as mob rule, foregoing official legal channels to summarily shame individuals through unmoderated character assassination. The four contributors offer diverse views on the efficacy of the #MeToo movement to bring forth structural change. They consider the relationship between #MeToo and other longer-running civil rights initiatives, the role of new communication technologies in producing collective suffering, and the need to better contextualize the production of shame. They address questions of how love and desire might fit into twenty-first-century biopolitics, and critically assess the relationship between hashtag movements and institutionalized law.

2019

Sample…………………………………………………………………………………………. 144 herself, and tell her story exactly as she wants to, is nothing short of admirable. And for that, I thank her. I thank her for embracing the pain, terror, contradictions, and hope that all come with surviving sexual violence, because it gave me the words to describe so many complex emotions brewing within my soul, emotions I couldn't begin to understand before reading her book. Lastly, I need to thank my wonderful family for their infinite sacrifices that have made my education here at Dickinson possible. I never thought I would be in college, never mind writing a senior thesis that I would end up submitting for honors consideration. I am so proud of myself for getting here, but it does not escape me for one minute that it takes a village. So thank you to my village, my biggest supporters, the people I love most in this world.