Abstract
The #MeToo campaign has given victims/survivors of sexual violence a space to speak and is challenging engrained misogyny. However, queer communities have largely been absent from the movement, despite increasing recognition that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA) communities experience similar levels of relationship violence as heterosexuals. This chapter examines the reasons for this silence in relation to queer experiences of sexual violence, including histories of queer oppression through the criminal justice system, and the ongoing impacts of heteronormativity. Yet, our communities must hold perpetrators to account and allow survivors to speak out. This chapter also offers some examples of queer responses and resistance to sexual violence and overall asks: what do queer responses to sexual violence offer to the #MeToo campaign and anti-sexual violence efforts?
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Notes
- 1.
Femme is a queer identity that can relate to a person’s sex and/or gender. It does not necessarily or by necessity relate to womanhood or femininity.
- 2.
This chapter has been read, edited and workshopped by many queer people, in order to queer the act of writing by engaging with the community and incorporating their voices. Particular thank you to Karen Bland, Carolyn D’Cruz and Cee Devlin (in alphabetical order).
- 3.
The biography Dirty River by Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2016) grapples with this complexity in incredible nuance.
- 4.
Heteronormativity, coined by Michael Warner (1993), relates to the systems and norms that enforce heterosexuality as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’.
- 5.
This issue was addressed as early as Vickers’ (1996) article The Second Closet: Domestic Violence in Lesbian and Gay Relationships: A Western Australian Perspective. Revisiting this article, one can see that much of the argument is still relevant today.
- 6.
For example, the It’s Time campaign from Get Up (2013) ends on the two men hugging each other after a marriage proposal.
- 7.
I have chosen to redact the name of the victim-survivor as this information was leaked without his permission. While this is not something he has necessarily asked for, I hope that it stands in solidarity with him and his rights to privacy.
- 8.
It must be noted, her claims to feminism have been disputed (Chu, 2018).
- 9.
Something that could be related to the Kevin Spacey case as well.
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Ison, J. (2019). ‘It’s Not Just Men and Women’: LGBTQIA People and #MeToo. In: Fileborn, B., Loney-Howes, R. (eds) #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_10
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