From ‘Me Too’ to ‘Too Far’? Contesting the Boundaries of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Activism

Abstract

This chapter examines how definitions of sexual violence are contested and potentially disrupted through feminist activist movements such as #MeToo. Drawing on key case studies from #MeToo, we examine how the boundaries of what constitutes sexual violence are destabilized. Debates emerging from #MeToo represent a power struggle over who is able to name and define what sexual violence is and whose experiences ‘count’. The movement provides a moment of rupture in which definitions of sexual violence are simultaneously opened up and pulled back toward more conservative understandings. This chapter critiques claims that the movement has gone ‘too far’, instead arguing the need to further open up the parameters of sexual violence in a way that centers victim-survivors’ experiences, resists bounded, hierarchical definitions, and recognizes mundane and ‘extreme’ experiences as interconnected. In short, it argues that rather than having gone ‘too far’, the #MeToo movement is yet to go far enough.