Digital footprints of #MeToo

Abstract

When the #MeToo movement exploded onto social media in October 2017, it dramatically ruptured public consciousness in revealing the widespread nature of sexual harassment and violence around the world. Yet, despite the global attention afforded to #MeToo, it was preceded by numerous initiatives, which we argue created digital footprints instrumental in rendering #MeToo intelligible. As such, the aim of this article is two-fold. Firstly, it offers the first attempt to map a diverse range of initiatives which have mobilized to fight sexual violence, and in doing so, makes visible the global genealogy of digital feminist activism responding to sexualised violence. Secondly, building on these digital footprints and looking towards the future of digital feminist activism, the article demonstrates the power and potential of initiatives that expose the structural conditions enabling sexual violence to occur through the collective sharing of experiences across cybernetworks via processes of "ethical witnessing." We conclude by advocating for greater recognition of those voices and experiences that feminist scholars and activists alike continue to fail to witness, and call for greater efforts to archive the genealogy of digital feminist mobilisation in order to capture the complexity and diversity of its past, present and future.

Uncovering the low-profile #MeToo movement: Towards a discursive politics of empowerment on Chinese social media

“…By exploring how witnesses participated in the Chinese #MeToo movement by centring how sexual harassment serves and stems from power and privilege, we can see how these actors' acts of listening were key to making survivors/victims' stories meaningful. This further contributes to an understanding of how an individual experience has been transformed into a collective concern, through witnessing others' experience, to create the power-with possibility that can challenge gendered hegemonic structure (see also Loney-Howes et al, 2021). Although digital media can foster feelings of being in someone else's shoes (Rodino-Colocino, 2018), practices of collective listening 'would refuse the presumption that political solidarity arises automatically from stories of rape and sexual violence' (Serisier, 2018, p. 193); listening alone does not build solidarity or spark collective action.…”

“…Allen (1998) defines power-to as 'the ability of an individual actor to attain an end or series of ends that serve to subvert domination' (p. 35). Women are not passive victims who are inevitably and uniformly dominated, but are instead active agents capable of exercising power in the generative sense (Deveaux, 1994;Lister, 2003).…”

“…The study refers to this group of audience participants as ‘witnesses’ because they had no direct or indirect experience of sexual harassment but affectively engaged in the movement’s conversation and acknowledged these survivor/victim narratives’ entanglement in structural and systemic violence. As Loney-Howes et al, 2021 argue, through witnessing the experience of the ‘other’, it fosters the power-with ability to respond collectively to the dominant modes of sexual violence, which adds another layer of power relations to complement with power-to.…”

‘Merely a Compliment’? Community Perceptions of Street Harassment in Melbourne, Australia

“…Yet, since the mid-2000s onwards, activist groups such as Our Streets Now, Stop Street Harassment, and Right to Be (formally Hollaback!) have been agitating for change, disrupting the perception of harassment as 'trivial' or 'complimentary' (Desborough 2018;Fileborn 2022;Loney-Howes et al 2021). Contemporary discursive constructions of street harassment are, therefore, actively contested and evolving.…”

Understanding Discussions of Sexual Assault in Young Women on a Peer Support Mental Health App: A Content Analysis

“…The Me Too movement became an international phenomenon, reaching at least 85 countries ( Sayej, 2017 ), as survivors shared their personal experiences of sexual violence in conjunction with media exposés of powerful men. The Me Too movement has contributed to a cultural discourse on the implications of power, gender-based violence, and systemic silencing of survivors ( Loney-Howes et al, 2021 ).…”