AustLit

'#MeToo is the most recent, and potentially most significant, example in a long feminist tradition of ‘speaking out’, collectively narrating personal experiences of sexual violence in order to ‘break the silence’ and, ultimately, ‘end the violence’. As I have written about previously, as a form of feminist politics, speaking out has at least three elements. Individual women break the silence surrounding sexual violence to tell their stories; these stories collectively form the basis of a political movement; and this movement produces a new over-arching story of the political reality of sexual violence, contesting existing dominant narratives (Serisier 2018). Therefore, as these books show, when we talk about #MeToo we are often talking about at least three things: a collection of personal narratives of sexual violence and harassment shared on social media; a movement built through and in response to these stories; and an overarching and highly contested political story of the meaning of those narratives. The focus of the books discussed here can be read through these aspects.' (Introduction)