Symbolic Struggles: #MeToo and the Power to Make Things Seen

• In Event: Pluralism as a Democratic Commitment

Abstract

Why have cases of sexual harassment and violence rarely been reported and tried, or otherwise publicly discussed? Given the long-held reticence to talk about sexual misconduct, where did the motivation for #MeToo come from? The present work considers how the invisibility of injustice is maintained and considers the role that pluralism—in particular, the role that intersectionality—plays in motivating efforts to make injustice seen. Drawing on the example of gender-based sexual violence and the #MeToo movement, I first consider how structural relations can create incentive structures that prevent those disempowered by social hierarchies from expressing their experiences, resulting in internal exclusions from social collectives. Specifically, norms regulating women’s sexuality can disincentivize women who have experienced sexual harassment or violence from expressing their experiences and from actively identifying with others who experience social environments that similarly condition their experiences and actions. Internal exclusions from social collectives—groups of women—entail harms of oppression. I describe the #MeToo movement and the backlash against the movement as “symbolic struggles,” or struggles to make a vision of social reality seen and believed (or rendered invisible and forgotten as second nature). Drawing on Black feminist theorists, I argue symbolic struggles are often instigated by the disempowered—particularly those who experience intersecting group-based disempowerments—when there is a tension between what the social order tries to render invisible and what the disempowered see as reality in their everyday lives. The broader purpose of this analysis is to illustrate that the capacity to engage in self-development—to express oneself and one’s experiences—is the very stuff of politics, and to highlight the centrality that pluralism (and intersectionality) plays in deepening democracy.

Author

• Edana Beauvais, Simon Fraser University