Anderson's ethical vulnerability: animating feminist responses to sexual violence

Pamela Sue Anderson argues for an ethical vulnerability which “activates an openness to becoming changed” that “can make possible a relational accountability to one another on ethical matters”. In this essay I pursue Anderson’s solicitation that there is a positive politics to be developed from acknowledging and affirming vulnerability. I propose that this politics is one which has a specific relevance for animating the terms of feminist responses to sexual violence, something which has proved difficult for feminist theorists and activists alike. I will demonstrate the contribution of Anderson’s work to such questions by examining the way in which “ethical vulnerability” as a framework can illuminate the intersectional feminist character of Tarana Burke’s grassroots Me Too movement when compared with the mainstream, viral version of the movement. I conclude by arguing that Anderson’s “ethical vulnerability” contains ontological insights which can allay both activist and academic concerns regarding how to respond to sexual violence

The politics of the personal: the evolution of anti-rape activism from second-wave feminism to #MeToo

When second-wave feminists declared that \u27the personal is political\u27, they were doing at least two things: they were exposing the previously concealed reality of a political economy based on the subjugation of women, and they were announcing a radical feminist politics that would change the meaning of what it means to be political. This agenda for social change is nowhere clearer-or more complicated-than within the anti-rape movement, a sub-movement of second-wave feminism.1 On the one hand, anti-rape activists have sought to highlight the deeply political nature of sexual violence as a product of women\u27s social, cultural and legal subordination, and to use this knowledge to facilitate institutional reforms. On the other hand, activist projects have also attempted to provide space for the recognition of personal experiences and an opportunity to articulate the impact of sexual violence. Both of these perspectives have suffered from backlash and criticism, and in this chapter, I seek to demonstrate how this oscillation between the personal and the political within anti-rape activism has been playing out since the 1970s and where it manifests within the #MeToo movement.