"Me, Too" and "What About Us?": Old Stories, New Endings?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

In the fall of 2017, prominent men in Hollywood, Washington, and the media were fired or voluntarily resigned in the face of evidence of past and/or ongoing sexual harassment and assault. This roundtable discusses the “Me, too” moment wherein women exclaimed “Me, too!” to say that they, too, have been sexually harassed. “Me, too” may buttress victim status but it might also build solidarity. Sexual harassment of the vulnerable (women, workers, women workers, refugees, undocumented immigrants, prisoners) is an old story. Too often the way this story unfolds reiterates an affective stance of moral outrage, an outrage that lacking the revelation of structural and political inequities repeats patriarchal invocations of propriety, sexual norms, and polite behavior. Radical feminists of the second wave fought these battles in what was called the “sex wars.” What can we do to tell these stories in different ways? How do we invite political activism that mobilizes feminist politics beyond individual harms and the entrenchment of class and race hierarchies? Is the “Me, Too” moment a sex panic, a battle among elites, a media spectacle, a dramatic shift in popular norms and understandings, an instrumentalization of women’s struggles for other political purposes, something else entirely?

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 3: Normative Political Theory

Chair

• Jodi Dean Hobart & William Smith Colleges

Presenters

• Lori Marso Union College

• Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor Princeton University

• Lorna Norman Bracewell University of Nebraska Kearney

• Tara Bynum Hampshire College