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Beyond the Bright Lights: Are Minoritized Women Outside the Spotlight Able to Say #MeToo?

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#MeToo and the Politics of Social Change

Abstract

Globally, black and minoritized women are subjected to gender-based violence which is compounded by their intersecting oppressions based on gender, race, faith, caste, geographical location and more. In the context of the #MeToo movement, some women are left out of the conversation, silenced or self-censored due to fear of their entire ‘communities’ being judged. Notable by their absence, minoritized women’s experiences of violence, often characterized by the influence of state violence, structural racism and poverty, are seemingly not centered in the dominant definition of violence within this burgeoning movement. In this chapter, three black feminist practitioners ask what kinds of violence #MeToo is enabling women to call out. Presenting perspectives from different country contexts, the authors examine the ways in which structural responses fail minoritized women and ask what happens if and when minoritized women say #MeToo?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Banlieue literally translates to mean ‘suburb’, but the word is commonly used as a pejorative euphemism for low-income housing projects, many of which have high proportions of migrant residents who face poverty and discrimination in areas such as employment and education.

  2. 2.

    Such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s (2015) book Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now and articles by Carlotta Gall in The New York Times (November 2017) and Laure Lugon in Le Temps (October 2017).

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Correspondence to Neha Kagal .

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Kagal, N., Cowan, L., Jawad, H. (2019). Beyond the Bright Lights: Are Minoritized Women Outside the Spotlight Able to Say #MeToo?. In: Fileborn, B., Loney-Howes, R. (eds) #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15212-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15213-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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