Following the 6th International Conference on Women’s Studies (Leeds, January 2020), the special issue of the journal Facta Universitatis on #METOO Movement is now out:

#METOO MOVEMENT: PAST, PRESENT AND WHAT NEXT?

Guest editor: Dr Martina Topić, Leeds Beckett University
Special contribution from Mirela Polić who authored an article.

#metoo movement has gained prominence in 2017 with Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse case, which triggered many celebrities to accept the hashtag and tweet about their experiences of sexual harassment. Ultimately, this spread to the general public and many women started to openly tweet and talk about harassment and abuse they endured during their lifetimes. The movement soon achieved international recognition and became a truly global movement of women talking about harassment and fighting the prejudice from the post-feminist argument of all battles being won.

However, the term was originally created by a Black woman Tarana Burke in 2006 who started to tweet using ‘me too’ words to warn about harassment and abuse. Thus, #metoo hashtag movement has both raised an important issue and created awareness of harassment women face in their everyday life whilst, at the same time, creating a bitter feeling because it feels as if the movement has been hijacked from Black women whose equality plight is intersectional and fundamentally tied to their race and not just gender.

While the importance of movement and its positive impact is unquestionable, the question is how do we continue from now on and how do we make sure that all voices get heard? How do we teach about #metoo movement? However, these questions are relevant to the West. In other parts of the world, #metoo had a different context and was experienced differently, which again raises an issue, what next?

Therefore, this special issue tackles some of the problems outlined above. The special issue is divided into two sections:

1. problematising #metoo movement
2. teaching about #metoo movement

An introductory article outlines a timeline of the movement, its impact and some issues and debates that arose, and then discusses these against articles in the special issue.

Here you can access the special issue and papers list

 #METOO Special Issue