An analysis of men's responses to accusations of sexual violence

What is it about?

As in many other countries, the #MeToo movement in Poland brought forth a wave of accusations of various forms of sexual violence. In this article, we analyze public statements of men accused of sexual violence in order to explore their constructions of gendered power relations and expose the internal logic of male privilege. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, we distinguish five discursive repertoires employed in the statements: new facts, the real victim, the decent feminist, good reputation, and explicit stigmatization. We argue that our discursive repertoires are similar to strategies extracted in different cultural contexts, thus indicating common connections across cultures in how male privilege operates. We have also observed characteristics specific to the Polish context, including the high importance of the supposed neutrality of the law in the debate around #MeToo and the predominant use of the good reputation repertoire to enhance credibility of privileged men. Given the specificity of the material analyzed and the exploration of the logic of privilege and misogyny, this article aims to contribute to efforts to counter harmful narratives about sexual violence that are prevalent in many countries.

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