The Borders of Personal and Political: Argumentative Analysis of a (Possible) Sexual Harassment Case in the “#MeToo Era”

Veronika Valkovičová

doi:10.5817/soc2021-2-125

Abstract

Facilitated by the widespread use of the communication tool #MeToo, the online public space has been opening up to survivor stories and is providing interpersonal emotional support to individuals with experiences of sexual harassment or violence. Witnessing the widespread and collective demand for de-stigmatised survivor-centred and empowering approaches to violence, the scholarly community has been discussing these events as the example of (feminist) counter-publics with counter-narratives, or as the “transformative politics of visibility”. This case study contemplates the reactionary forces, focusing on negotiating discursive practices which aim to resist (feminist) counter-narratives in the Slovak online environment. We wish to enrich the existing literature by drawing on the developing scholarship of discourse analysis studies in the “#MeToo era” and by looking at the argumentative strategies applied by the discussants with regards to one (potential) case of sexual harassment. We do so by proposing to treat the interpretative frameworks of the discussants as stemming from experiences with dominant media narratives, and as being built around the discursive negotiations of “public-private space” and “personalpolitical issues”, well-known to feminist theorisations of sexual harassment and violence since the 1970s.

Highlights

In October 2018, one year after actress Alyssa Milano prompted her audience to share their experiences with sexual harassment and violence, online searches for the term “#MeToo” skyrocketed once again
While the results reveal a variety of strategies ranging from polarising (Maaranen and Tienari 2020) and trivialising (Lockyer and Savigny 2020) to distracting (Bogen et al 2019, 2020), other discursive strategies such as recalling “individualised responsibility” (Hindes and Fileborn 2019; Worthington 2020) remind us that the interpretative repertoires of the decades-old feminist scholarship and activism motto “the personal is political” continue within hashtag activism (Clark 2016; Suk et al 2019; Maaranen and Tienari 2020)
A small group of comments under both posts included verbal abuse (n = 39). These comments lacked any interpretative potential for the analysis since they did not contain any argument or position. We believe this to be a major limit of argumentative analysis or any kind of discourse analysis which draws from social media communication

Summary

Introduction

In October 2018, one year after actress Alyssa Milano prompted her audience to share their experiences with sexual harassment and violence, online searches for the term “#MeToo” skyrocketed once again. A different line of qualitative scholarship has been developing vis-à-vis the recent online discursive events whereby scholars seek to understand the discursive practices which are applied to counter the advocacy connected to the #MeToo. Such scholarship has focused on how individual actors make sense of the events and which argumentative strategies they deploy – i.e. how narratives which trivialise and legitimise harassment and violence are reproduced in speech.

Results

Conclusion