Description
Book SynopsisIn the wake of the MeToo movement, revelations of sexual assault and harassment continue to disrupt sexual politics across the globe. Reports of widespread misconduct—in workplaces from doctors’ offices to factory floors—precipitate firings, legal actions, street protests, and policy punditry.
Meenakshi Gigi Durham situates media culture as a place in which these broader social struggles are produced and reproduced. The media figures whose depravity sparked the #MeToo movement are symbols of the complexities of sexual desire and consent. Pop culture fuels controversies about rape culture; social media users have launched feminist resistance that turned to real-world activism; and investigative journalists have broken stories of assault, offering a platform for survivors to speak truth to patriarchal power. Arguing that the media are a linchpin in these events, Durham provides a feminist account of the interrelated contexts of media production, representation, and reception. She situates the media as the key site where the establishment of sexuality and social relations takes place, and traces the media's powerful role in both reifying and challenging rape culture.
This timely and stimulating book will be of interest to students and scholars of media, communication, gender studies, and sociology, as well as to anyone concerned by the current state of sexual politics.
Trade Review“An accessible and thorough interrogation of the media, rape culture, and MeToo. The book does a fantastic job of detailing rape culture (as it is conceived by many feminist theorists and activists) as well as outlining, in a really impressive way, the complexity of the MeToo movement.”
Catherine Rottenberg, University of Nottingham
“Laying out with great clarity what needs to be done to remove rape culture and its residue from the media, this insightful, thoughtful, and generative volume demonstrates why this eradication is a social justice issue that should matter to all.”
Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, University of Pennsylvania
“Durham moves our understanding of rape culture into the twenty-first century with this compelling examination of the MeToo movement. The book will provoke discussions across disciplines and audiences.”
Carolyn Byerly, Chair of Communication, Culture, and Media Studies, Howard University
“This book reminds us that speaking out is powerful, and that whether we are survivors, advocates, journalists, or bystanders, we can all be silence breakers.”
International Journal of Communication
“Durham has deftly combined the rape myths with the critique of the Metoo movement from a historical feminist standpoint, which only makes the book more accessible to the readers.”
Media Practice and Education
“Gender and media scholar Meenakshi Gigi Durham has delivered a clearly written and confronting, yet engaging, text where she uses the media as a framework through which to discuss and analyse the international #MeToo movement.”
Australian Journalism Review
“It’s a timely and challenging book that offers a unique insight into the role and power of the media as well as the state of contemporary gender relations.”
Seattle Book Review
Table of ContentsTable of contents:Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Rapacity
Monsters, Inc.
Danger Zones
Of Presidents And Pussy-Grabs
Chapter 2: Representation
E-race-ures
The Naked And The Damned
Reporting And Rape Culture
Chapter 3: Resistance
Reckonings
Redress
Coda: Reformulating Desire And Consent
Notes
References
Index
