Re-defining Gendered Harm and Institutions under Colonialism: #MeToo in Australia. Issue 105 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: van Rijswijk, Honni
• Is Part Of: Australian feminist studies. Volume 35:Issue 105(2020)
• Page Start: 244
• Page End: 260
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: #MeToo -- Indigenous women -- sovereignty -- gendered harm -- death in custody -- sexual violence -- colonialism; Feminism -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Australia -- Periodicals; Women's studies -- Periodicals; Women's studies -- Australia -- Periodicals; 305.42
• DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2020.1843134
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0816-4649

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Law's imaginary and logics are notoriously limited in their ways of thinking through and adjudicating sexual violence. The #MeToo movement is in large part a public, extra-legal response to the inadequacies of liberal law in responding to sexual violence. #MeToo has purportedly interrogated liberal institutions and the operation of gender within them. In particular, #MeToo has shown that gendered harm is a normalised part of the operation of liberal institutions. But more needs to be done within #MeToo to interrogate these concepts and to decolonise #MeToo. We need to decolonise and historicise the concepts of 'gendered harm' and 'institutions' in order to understand how these have failed and, at times, even been weaponized against Indigenous women. This article provides a reading of Australian liberal institutions and recent historical processes with a view to showing how these institutions need to be interpreted in view of a decolonial praxis of #MeToo.