Taiwan is often identified as a gender equality champion. Yet, for years its lack of a #MeToo movement defied Lee and Murdie’s (2020) theory that #MeToo is more likely to spread to countries where...Show moreTaiwan is often identified as a gender equality champion. Yet, for years its lack of a #MeToo movement defied Lee and Murdie’s (2020) theory that #MeToo is more likely to spread to countries where civil and political rights are better protected. This left academia and feminist activism puzzled until May 2023, when Taiwan surprised its observers again by suddenly developing a strong #MeToo wave. This thesis argues that the peculiar development arc of Taiwan’s #MeToo suggests a theoretical gap about the movement as a whole, and attempts to fill it by researching the empirical question of what shapes Taiwanese sexual violence survivors’ ability to Speak Out. The thesis answers these questions by employing an anti-carceral feminist take on the Politics of Speaking Out framework to conduct a thematic analysis of online archives. It concludes that Taiwan’s #MeToo movement simultaneously showcases #MeToo’s strengths, confirming its positive contribution towards gender justice, as well as its structural weaknesses. Findings indicate that survivors Speak Out when they perceive the opening of an opportunity window for accessing justice. #MeToo’s Speaking Out tactic, unlike the carceral state’s legal tools, can provide that window. However, the carceralist contexts it emerges in quickly co-opt the movement, limiting the extent of the cultural change it can generate.Show less
In recent years, novels centring on female characters form Greek mythology have quickly grown into a popular subgenre. Many of these novels use their mythological sources as a backdrop to focus on...Show moreIn recent years, novels centring on female characters form Greek mythology have quickly grown into a popular subgenre. Many of these novels use their mythological sources as a backdrop to focus on feminist issues, revising classical narratives to show the continuity of feminist concerns. This is typically done by shifting the focus away from male characters who recieve most attention in their classical sources and focussing instead on female characters who have been pushed to the margins or silenced entirely. This thesis uses Alicia Ostriker's term "feminist revisionist mythmaking" to describe how adaptation of Greek mythology can be used to bring forth silenced voices of female characters and simultaneously speak out against patriarchy and oppression of women. With this in mind, three recent feminist revisionist novels are analysed: Circe by Madeline Miller, The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, and Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. These novels are part of the wave of feminist revisionist retellings following the rise of the #MeToo movement and an argument is made that the movement's concerns are reflected in the novels. This thesis aims to show that revisions of Greek mythology can be used as a potent vehicle for feminist issues of today, not in spite of their ancient source material, but precisely because the seeds of these issues are already present in Greek myths themselves.Show less
"So then one question arises: who truly is legitimate to say “me too” in any social movement. As it does so, it interrogates: is there truly a way to know who is or isn’t to be the advocate of a...Show more"So then one question arises: who truly is legitimate to say “me too” in any social movement. As it does so, it interrogates: is there truly a way to know who is or isn’t to be the advocate of a cause. In this is the idea that there exists by opposition individuals who are considered to hold a justified role in defending a cause and are drawn as referents and entitled to a responsibility. Perhaps getting at the root of such interrogations then implies understanding how do those individuals define the origin of their responsibility in situations of social unrest. How to pinpoint such ‘responsible’ individuals is a question of first order. Responsibility entails putting something at stake in order to carry charge for a given issue. Its origin, however, is tricky to untangle as it emerges from an idiosyncratic balance between a personal sense of duty and a specific context which thrusts individuals into their engagement with hardly distinguishable degrees of influence.10 Because of how unfathomable this distinction can seem, a time-based comparison of ‘responsible’ agents in different settings yet with similar objectives would allow one to retrace whether beyond specific contexts, intrinsic features unite the process guiding their political involvement. (...) As gathering evidence is a tricky task in social movement analysis, this study cannot avoid stumbling upon its shortfalls if it is to ascertain a metaphysical truth about the origins of individual responsibility in politics. It can, nevertheless, couple representative data with observations made throughout the history of thought to hint at its general teneur and how it sheds light on the perception of legitimate participants of political action. In this attempt, the present work will study whether the mechanisms which trigger individual responsibility in politics can be identified through a time-based comparison of feminist activism in the United-States looking at the movements represented by Angela Davis and #MeToo.Show less
In dit onderzoek worden werken onderzocht met geseksualiseerde afbeeldingen van minderjarigen en wordt er gekeken in hoeverre deze in opspraak kunnen komen in verband met de groeiende #MeToo en ...Show moreIn dit onderzoek worden werken onderzocht met geseksualiseerde afbeeldingen van minderjarigen en wordt er gekeken in hoeverre deze in opspraak kunnen komen in verband met de groeiende #MeToo en #TimesUp beweging. Vervolgens wordt er gekeken naar de sociale acceptatie van deze werken binnen de kunstwereld en bij de toeschouwer om te zien of de positie van deze werken is veranderd. Ook wordt de grens tussen kunst en pornografie besproken om te zien wat de status van deze werken is als men kijkt naar de definiëring rondom pornografie.Show less
