Jennifer Jill Fellows: In 2006, Tarana Burke, a Black American woman had already used the hashtag metoo on MySpace to build a movement of solidary for victims of sexual violence. But it was 2017, when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted on the website formerly known as Twitter, quote “if you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted, write me too in reply to this tweet.” This is when the movement swept across the globe, going viral almost worldwide. The MeToo movement did so, in part, because it was able to be molded to fit the different contexts and needs of survivors across the globe. But not always. Not everywhere. Fears of white feminism and Western influence followed the movement as it spread, causing tensions that could not always be resolved.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Hi everyone, welcome to Cyborg Goddess, a feminist tech podcast, that’s right, we have rebranded for season three! This podcast is part of the Harbinger Media Group. And, I’m your host, Jennifer Jill Fellows. And, today, I’ve invited Dr. Iqra Cheema to the show to talk about the metoo movement and transnational feminism.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Doctor Iqra Cheema is an assistant professor in the Humanities Department at Graceland University. She is a scholar and teacher of contemporary literature and cultural studies of the global majority. Her research and teaching interests focus on twentieth and 20 first century literature and film digital cultures and transnational digital feminism.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Hi Iqra welcome to the show.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Thank you so much, Jill.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: this is fun. Because last time, that we were recording a, Podcast you were interviewing me. And now I get to interview you, which is super exciting. And I get to ask you all these questions about this awesome book that you edited called the other MeToo’s which is about me, too, movements around the globe, and I’m super excited to get into it.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. I’m very excited to talk about it.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So I’m going to pause for a moment and recognize that digital space is physical space. The Internet is built and sustained with physical infrastructure, and the servers and cables that connect us today, and that allowed the #Metoo movement to spread globally do occupy physical space. Digital space is created through resource extraction and maintained through energy consumption and human labor. And so I want to recognize that Cyborg Goddess, the Feminist Tech Podcast is recorded today on the unseeded territory of the coast. Salish people of the QiqĂ©yt nation.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Okay. So I want to begin with some background. How was it that you became interested in literature and film studies? Can you tell me like your academic journey?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah, of course. I had always been interested in literature like I grew up reading. I was a book worm. So I was reading a range of topics like, you know, that went from Children’s magazines to like books on Islamic exegesis, to novels, to travelogues, everything, even things that I wasn’t really interested in. But I wanted to know about them just so I could claim that I knew them. So I was doing a lot of that and I think gender was just kind of like a constant part of all of those conversations. Because it just has that kind of like omnipresence around us, and then the conversations that happen around you in your family, in your community, when you interact with people it’s like, mostly women or like men, they’re always talking about, you know, like the expectations, the roles like what one is supposed to do, and all of those things. So I was always kind of like thinking about those things. So, I kind of got introduced to gender and sexuality studies, and all of that in an informal way, at a very early age. But then I kind of started engaging with that more intentionally or more academically or critically in grad school. I came to film a little late, because I come from a very traditional family. So film was considered a bad influence.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Oh Wow.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: We had to devise these whole plans, like basically even to watch one film. So we could have this space, and find a time when nobody was home and like nobody could see us watching films and all of that. So I really kind of started watching films when I was actually doing my master’s, and I had, my own laptop, and all that, because then I could be doing like whatever you know. So I think that way. I could say that I came to literature first and then like gender studies and then film.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Okay, so it was like clandestine film watching before grad school. Interesting. And yeah, I take your point about like gender being kind of everywhere, and from a very early age, like, I have a kid who’s picking up on this stuff so early about like, well, this is the roles for girls in in the culture that she’s in, and this is the roles for boys, and I’m like, Whoa! Where did this stuff come from? It happened so quickly, and kids are so interested in it.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Right. Exactly. And maybe, you know, at that age like when I was a kid at that time I wasn’t really exactly thinking about, like, you know. Is it a good thing or a bad thing, or all of that right? I was just more thinking in terms of like, Oh, do I want to do this thing, or do I not want to do this thing right? So then, like. There were some instances where I was like, oh, my God! Like I never wanna do this thing. And I never wanna be this person or never want to be in this position. Right? We kind of like, get that kind of like, political entry.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: And yeah, the more critical political maybe comes later. Right?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Exactly. But then, the ability to critically think about that comes a little later.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Yeah, which is challenging, because that means that in some respect you’ve already kind of internalized a lot of norms before you start thinking about them. Right?
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So you are the editor of this awesome book. The Other MeToos, published in 2023, and I will have a link in the show notes if people want to check it out. Can you tell me a little bit about what motivated you to take on this project?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah, definitely. Thanks for the question. So I mean, we all saw the MeToo Movement unfold in 2017. I was very interested in it. I kept a keen eye on everything that was happening around it, things that people were writing about the movement, right? The comments that people were making about the movement. But one of the things that I noticed was that it gained more attention, or the kind of like people looked at the MeToo, movement outside of the West or outside of the United States, only on more, like specific days. For example, like there are posts on women’s day, right? But then there are like constantly conversations that are happening about the MeToo movement in the West on other days. But people weren’t really thinking or critically like commenting on like, what is it that the movement is doing internationally about the transnational impact of the movement, right or even the influence of the conversations that happen in the American context on the international feminist politics. In that instance, right? And it felt paradoxical also because it’s not that people stop committing violence when it is women’s day, or like the days beyond that or any of those things. So I was kind of looking for these kinds of commentary. I remember specifically this one photo essay that I read in Washington Post which had a bunch of images from Iran. France, India, Pakistan. Right? So it was just a collage of different photos from women’s marches in all of these countries, and that image kind of just stayed with me because I was looking at all of these photos. And even if you think about women’s choice to cover their heads or not, cover their heads, cover their hair, or not cover their hair, then too, for all of these images, for all of these women to find place in this one article was very interesting to me, which is associated with the MeToo movement itself, right? Because all of these people were able to look at it or come to it from their own different positions. So that’s also what kind of what got me interested into that, like I was consistently thinking about that image when I was thinking about the ways in which people were engaging with the MeToo movement. And when I was looking at the different scholarly or academic engagements with the MeToo, movement. There were some really interesting books that I read. So, for example, there was MeToo and the Politics of Social Change that was edited by Bianca Fileborn, and Rachel Loney-Howes and The Global MeToo Movement by Ann Noel and David Oppenheimer that focused on the field of law. So I read both of these books. Then there were other books that came during the process of me putting together the volume, The Other MeToos. Some of these were Reporting on Sexual Violence in the MeToo Era which was edited by Andrea Baker and Usha, Rodrigues, etc. And all of these books were wonderful. I learned a lot from all of these books, but all of these books also kind of highlighted the importance of doing something more comprehensive about the Global South or the international impact of the MeToo movement beyond the West. So then, you know, following Toni Morrison’s advice, like, you know, if there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. I thought, okay, I’ll get started on this project. So that’s how the project came to be.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: That’s awesome. Yay. Yeah, no, I think I think that’s really interesting, because I think it sounds like in the academic literature we still had quite a focus on the United States context or the Global West. But also I think that that’s often the picture that was put out by a lot of mainstream media as well, that a lot of it focused on on and particular voices which we’ll get to, but particular voices in the Global West as well. And so I really appreciate this volume for amplifying other perspectives and other voices that I don’t think the mainstream MeToo discourse, at least, as I understood it, necessarily highlighted.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Right. Exactly.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Thank you for taking on that challenge of writing the book you wanted to read.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So I think we’ve already kind of hinted at this, but the book is really expansive. It covers what the MeToo movement looked like in a number of different locations and cultures. Globally. There are chapters on indigenous communities interactions with me, too, on the shape the movement took in Morocco, in Pakistan, India, South Korea, Egypt, and the Czech Republic to name just a few. And this podcast episode will not be able to do justice to the breath of material covered. So please listeners, go find the book. But I do want to talk about some of the themes I noticed, and about maybe some individual chapters. Before we jump into all of that, though this is a work of transnational feminism, as you already kind of mentioned, so obviously transnational feminism is a huge discourse. But can you tell us a little bit about what this is as kind of an entry point, or what transnational feminism seeks to do or examine particularly for listeners who might not be familiar with this concept.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: So to answer this, I will go back to kind of the evolution of the term itself, where I’ll try to define transnational feminism and its shifts against and in comparison with other internationalist movements. So the term itself kind of goes back to initial contentions between white feminism and feminisms of color, both in feminist theory and practice, which then took us to global feminism and international feminism so it could be more inclusive to involve all these people from all these other countries and communities around the globe. But global feminism advocated for transcending national borders, which is a thorny subject. But at the same time, like you can’t just completely let go of that when you’re talking about feminist politics, especially when we are thinking in the context of imperial and colonial global histories whereas international politics presupposed nation states as discrete and sovereign entities, which is also a very thorny position to take as Caren Kaplan and Inderpal Grewal explain in their work. So both global and international feminism received criticism for their rather reductive approach to not only issues of racism and imperialism, but also for mischaracterizing women’s lives as monolithic and universal, and as a singular phenomenon, right? Much of which we see that Chandra Mohanty’s work and Hazel Carby’s work laid out, right. So that was a concern that remains very dominant in the conversations that all women of color, like Black feminists, are writing about talking about. So responding to that, then Third World feminists propose historicizing the Third World women’s oppression in their locations to examine their agency and diverse forms of their activism, as we in Kumari Jayawardena’s work in the nineties. However, then transnational feminism replaced Third World feminism and became more familiar, and more widely accepted term, much of which kind of like is laid out in Amanda Swarr and Richa Nagar’s work, Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis. We’ll talk about the evolution of the term in that way. Overall, I think transnational feminism challenges the assumption of women’s homogeneity or the conception of global sisterhood. It examines gendered epistemic privilege, intersectionality, deleterious effects of global capitalism and politics of international feminist solidarity and in doing so, it aspires to historicize and situate and examine the gendered relations and their formation in global, racial, colonial, and imperial contexts.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: That’s really helpful. So if we’re looking at global feminism, there might be a tendency to try and think of women as having kind of a woman’s experience in common, or something like that which is obviously threatening of reductivism and ignores kind of historical and contemporary contexts. And if we’re looking at international feminism, we’re presupposing nation states, which obviously, many of which came into being through colonial forces and conflict and things like that. And this might also erase or neglect certain ethnicities and other cultural contexts. So transnational feminism, if I’m understanding, just as an entry point, seeks to acknowledge the histories that have shaped particular women’s lives in particular cultural contexts and social locations, and that might include national politics and things like that. But it might include other things as well. Other kind of cultural, social, perhaps religious influences as well. Does that sound fair?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yes.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Amazing. Thank you so much for that entry point. Okay, so we’ve got kind of our our conceptual tool of transnational feminism here on the table. But for any listeners not familiar already, Can you tell us a bit about the origins of the MeToo movement and how the movement became a viral online feminist phenomenon?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Right? Yes, exactly. I think most of the listeners, probably are aware, with the MeToo movement as it started in 2017, with Alyssa Milano’s Tweet. But after Milano tweeted that, then a lot of the people learned that this was not a new movement. This was actually a movement that Tanara Burke had started in 2006 on MySpace with the same name. So Milan’s tweet made the movement international, in part because of the following that she has, and in part, because Twitter works in a very different way than MySpace did, right? And a lot more people have access to that but when Milano learned of Burke’s MeToo movement she acknowledged her contribution. Then Burke accepted her role as the leader of the MeToo, movement in that instance. But that is also the space where the question of the politics of solidarity comes into play, because Milano’s tweet received responses from celebrities like Lady Gaga or Jennifer Lawrence and Burke only started to get credit for her work after Black feminists and other allies started amplifying her work, and started advocating for her, and started highlighting all the work that she had already done to start the MeToo moment since 2006, and which had not been able to receive as much attention as Milano had done, right? So we can to think about all these different sociopolitical shifts like broader cultural acceptance of feminist politics, increased international recognition or the need for feminist justice, awareness about intersectional feminism, availability of feminist vocabularies that happened during that time period between 2006 to 2017. But at the same time, I think we can also think about the politics of white feminism at play in these instances as well. Right?
Burke, in one of her interviews, also commented that discrediting her work was perhaps unintentional, but somehow sisters of color managed to get diminished or erased in these situations. And Burke’s MeToo, remains international because of its origination. It imagines an international sisterhood of Black, Indigenous, and people of color survivors under the assumption that all of these survivors are equal, and they are equally deserving of justice, which is something that gets erased are not addressed when it comes to white feminisms a lot of times. But despite all of these, MeToo, continues to be a massively successful feminist movement of our times, I believe. Like, since 2017, when it was started like between October to November, the hashtags, MeToo and Women’s March had been tweeted more than 2.3 million and 11.5 million times respectively, in multiple, indigenous and national languages worldwide, right? And it is this grassroot appeal of the movement that made it successful. It is common’s people’s participation in the movement that made it into what it is. But women of color generally are on their own in times of crisis, like we see in the feminist responses and feminist engagement with Palestine right now, even in some instances, right? So I think, like these remain some very thorny questions around the MeToo movement itself. But despite all of these challenges, it has been very formative and very impactful internationally.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: And I think that points to a tension, that we’re going to draw out more throughout this conversation. I do think that a lot of people, myself included, did not know the MeToo movement until 2017. I didn’t know about it. I later, as many people did later, subsequently found out about Tanara Burke in 2006, and part of that might have been because I was never on MySpace. But part of it is probably also because of my social location as a white feminist living in Canada. Which definitely shapes what I regularly have access to and see, and what I don’t see. And so I think that that’s a really important conversation to have and to think about the way in which technologies work. So you mentioned Twitter as being a place that functions differently than MySpace, but also whose voices are being amplified, on which platforms is really important as well.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Right. Exactly. And when we talk about, especially when we talk about like feminisms and transnational feminisms, then the question of whose voices are getting amplified, whose voices are silenced, or, you know, who is blocked or kind of restricted in all these different ways that we witness every day becomes a difficult question, especially if you have to engage with the questions of like technology and the impact of social media in these contexts. But I think overall for at least for the MeToo movement, MeToo became the integrative site where both Burke and Milano could come together because they had, like one shared goal. This is generally accepted.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So now that we have the background a little bit. I want to take a moment and examine your own first interactions with the MeToo movement which you talk about in the preface to this collection of essays. So, it sounds like, similarly to me, you first encountered this movement in 2017, and in the collection of essays you write about encountering the hashtag MeToo trending on social media. Can you talk a little bit about that encounter and about why the decision over whether to participate in this movement was challenging for you.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah, definitely. I think there are 2 sides to that question. First is personal. Then there is like the communal side to it. So me, just like as a person I am more of an introvert generally. So that’s, you know, like, first reason, because I’m like, Oh, my God, I should not put this personal thing online on social media for other people to see. Like, I’m just kind of, like scared of people looking into my life in that way. But that’s something.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: I can relate to that.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: right? Exactly so. But that’s the minor thing in that context, I think, like the major concern for me was that how does our participation gets interpreted in these situations right? And in the current conversations? For example, the way media is engaging with the things that are happening in Palestine right now, right? A lot of times it is visible that this is clearly a feminist issue, but it’s not perceived as a feminist issue, right. All the violence that is being committed against Palestinian men, against Palestinians right now does not count as violence, and we have seen, like some of the reports from Israeli Media, where they’re like, “oh, these men are naked because it’s hot in Gaza and that’s why they’re not wearing any clothes and all that.” So a lot of these stereotypes that prevail in the West about Brown men and Brown women and Black men, now we see that they still are very much part of the public psyche, white feminist psyche in so many ways. And that was one of the major questions that I had to think about when I was deciding whether or not to participate in the movement itself. Because, if I say that… I have spent most of my life in Pakistan. I grew up there and then and if I said somewhere that I have experienced these and these things in Pakistan, then automatically, it proves a lot of those stereotypes true in an instance. Because, of course, nobody is like really kind of critically engaging with the politics of this kind of violence, right? And we don’t, especially on social media, we don’t have the space to engage with that in those critical terms where we can acknowledge all of the different challenges that come with this kind of experiences, right? So that was my major concern that in doing so am I further vilifying my own communities? But also at the same time, if people don’t have enough information to read into these experiences, then what kind of politics does that constitute? Because if we are talking about the reductiveness in so many of the engagements that happen around sexual violence and gender violence, then, if people don’t have all the information that helps them form a more nuanced position on a subject, then what kind of politics does it constitute? Does it strengthen our politics? Does it make it more valid? So those are some of the issues that I was thinking about when I was a little perplexed about my own participation in the MeToo, movement.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So, to put this in a bit of context, I have to tell the listeners that I record these episodes well in advance, and at the time of recording we are about 2, 2 to 3 months
past the October seventh, Hamas hostage taking. And the Israeli government’s response that has displaced, and caused harm and death to many Palestinian men, women and even more sadly children. I also wanted to say, though, that it sounds like one of the conflicts that you had regarding whether or not to participate in this movement is because of colonialism and white feminism’s complicitness in othering racialized men. Whether it’s Palestinian men, whether it’s Pakistani men and and perhaps the concern, it sounds like, if that’s fair, that participating in a MeToo movement as a woman who grew up in Pakistan would be seen as contributing to the Othering of racialized men. Is that part of what the concern was?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Right. Yes, I think a lot of times Western discourse specifically relies on these binaries when we are forced to have these conversations about global politics, right wing politics, or imperial colonial histories of violence. So that kind of binary that remains very prevalent like men against women or like women against men, in that instance then fails to account for all the different ways in which we have some shared goals or shared aspirations, or we have shared experiences of the same kind of violence, right? Whether we call it imperial, or whether we call it gendered, or whether you know it is sexual, or whether it is all of those things at the same time. So, I think it’s mostly that kind of binaristic approach to these conversations that sometimes can be a little uncomfortable if we don’t have the space to talk about that in detail.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Yeah, I think that makes sense. This also reminds me a little bit of some of Crenshaw’s discussions regarding intersectionality, right? That there are decisions that white women don’t necessarily understand or can, are concerned about trying to make with regards to racialized women and thinking about kind of this, the confluence of racism and sexism, and how that can make unique experiences, that white feminism often fails to acknowledge the nuance of.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Right. Yeah.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Okay. So, there’s a theme that appears in a number of chapters that we’ve already talked about a little bit. And the theme that appears in a number of chapters in this text is that the MeToo movement is perceived as a white and Western brand of feminism. So this kind of leads quite naturally off of what we were just talking about. And that the MeToo, movement is also often seen as a way of extending colonial or Western power or influence. Particularly once we start talking about different contexts. This makes the movement often becomes perceived as dangerous, and also people who join the movement or support it globally may also be seen as dangerous. Can you talk about how this manifests a little bit?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah, definitely, and you know this kind of like this configure with the term feminism in general also like, has this like very long global history, especially in the post-colonial world and in North America, in that instance right where we’re constantly like trying to then think of all the ways in which we can engage with feminism without giving into the white feminist tendencies in so many different ways. Right? Because a lot of times, if you think in that context, feminism basically equates imperial feminism and it kind of like weaponized in the service of these goals. Right? Rafia Zakaria’s book, Notes on Disruption, does a wonderful job of explaining this discomfiture, and why people generally are resentful about feminism, and consider it more of a Western influence or Western propaganda in that instance. So that’s one major thing I think that kind of like recurs again and again when we have these conversations. This is kind of like colonial and imperial baggage that the term feminism itself carries in its own right. Along with that, I think white feminism, as soon as it kind of like touches borders with international feminism, especially feminism in the Global South and the Global Majority communities, it tends to become very apolitical. Or its whiteness that would also be read as imperial, colonial, or its capitalistic aspirations take over very immediately. And a lot of times feminists are not even aware of that or that tendency in their own work in a lot of ways right? So we can also look back at the status stereotypes about like non-white bodies, most of which we see now, and most of which we see that remain very much intact in the white feminist psyche to a large extent, right? Especially if you look at the different kinds of violence that is unfolding all around the world right now in Africa and Middle East, right? In Asia. So like those are some of the things which then kind of give us a logical explanation or rationale, a rationale for the discomfiture that people generally feel when they have to engage with the term feminism, or anything that originates from the West, especially anything that originates from American grounds for that instance, right? But along with that, I think one good thing about MeToo, has been that people have been able to modify the term, adapt the term, translate the term in different ways, so it could be Indigenized, it could be localized, and it could still, like sustain some of its transnational character in these instances. So, in that way it has offered an inclusive model of solidarity via a hashtag which is instantly accessible and available, and in some instances is a lot safer than on ground political work can be in a lot of places. And another thing that I can think of, and that I discuss in my book is also the different goals of feminisms that we engage with right. So, for example, even if you think of the public space in feminist conversations, I think the goal in terms of like visibility and access to public space looks very different in the Global West and in the Global South. So, for example, achieving visibility in public spaces has been a goal for women in South Asia for a long time, right? We have seen initiatives like Girl at Dhabas in Pakistan, and Why Loiter? in India, which basically are about women’s ability, and then, like being them being able to safely like go, and, you know, like drink tea at a roadside hotel, or like, sit outside in public and feel safe, right? But this kind of like visibility kind of becomes de-politicized when it comes to the West, because the goals for that are very, very different here. Right? So in Global West, then it kind of like becomes the economy of visibility, where it’s associated with the new liberal capitalistic aspirations and market. But in the Global South, in a lot of the countries, I think it is still a politics of visibility where it is very deeply entrenched with the feminist politics itself, beyond any other kind of goals that may be attached with that. So those are just some of the things that make our engagement with feminism a little bit more of a reluctant interaction, I think.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: I think that makes sense. But I think there’s something kind of hopeful in what you said there as well, which is this idea that the MeToo movement specifically is malleable, flexible, is able to change shape and serve people’s interests and needs in different contexts, in a way in which, perhaps just kind of feminism in general has been a little bit like feminism, coming from, particularly the United States, has been a little bit harder to engage with in ways that recognize the contexts and lived experiences of South Asian women, for example, or of women in other parts of the globe.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think you’re right in saying that. And I think that’s one good thing about like this kind of reductiveness that is generally associated with a lot of these concepts, especially when we talk about the MeToo movement, because it is reductive in the sense, because it is like, okay, we are all like gathered on this one issue of gendered violence, sexual violence, right? But then there’s room, there’s a place, that is like malleable enough that we can add more information on to that, so that it is nuanced for the context in which it is being used. It is being mobilized as a political tool.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Right! So kind of the reductive or like flat nature of the of the #MeToo, message allows it to honor the kind of different, or to reflect different contextual issues of gendered violence or of harassment in different in different contexts.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah. And that can’t happen without everybody’s, or, you know, like a lot of people’s participation in it. If there’s that participation doesn’t exist, then it is just that it is like a very reductive, meaningless movement. So it becomes meaningful because of all this place that other people can make for themselves in the movement.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: I think that’s so cool.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So, let’s talk about that a little bit. Because, as you said, there’s a lot of advantages that people have found in this global MeToo movement. And throughout the book there are many articles that detail a given community’s participation in, in the MeToo movement as a way to amplify voices, collect them to or connect them to this kind of global sisterhood or solidarity, but also raising awareness of particular issues in particular contexts. So can we talk a little bit about some of this about the advantages that that some people found or some communities or ethnicities found?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah, definitely. Yes, thanks for the question. I was lucky enough to receive, like so many interesting, amazing, wonderful essays for this collection. And a lot of these essays were great teaching tools for myself, too. Right? So, some of the essays that we discuss in the book or that, you know, like we read in the book, they kind of like highlight these community movements that emerge from this more transnational movement. So, for example #MosqueMeToo the chapters that I have in the book, they discuss that in the context of Pakistan, but then it kind of like becomes a place where all of these women from different Muslim countries, they can share an experience, right? They can share the experience of sexual violence, of gendered violence, that they experience while they are performing Hajj, right? The pilgrimage to the Holy Land for themselves in that situation. So, in that instance like it then becomes a model, or it becomes a place for another kind of movement that goes beyond national borders, right, that goes beyond even culture in this instance, and that is solely based on this like religious practice, which in itself looks very different for different people, because religion and culture, like generally so intertwined with each other. So, in that way, I think, like it becomes a really amazing model of like intersectional feminism, in that instance, too. Some other chapters that I, also received like one chapter, is contributed by Zoe Eddy about indigenous feminisms. There is one more chapter about the #MeToo movement in Morocco and Tunisia, right? So to give the reader a better understanding of what Zoe talks about in her chapter. I’m just going to read 2 paragraphs from her introduction.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: This is the chapter about Indigenous feminisms and the #MeToo Movement?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yes.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Awesome.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: So this chapter is titled “Deer Women Dancing.”
So in the introduction, then Zoe writes, “When me, too, swept the media. A frustrated sigh sounded across Turtle Island. This frustration echoed that of other activists. Tanara Burke started the movement for Black and Brown women and girls, and yet white women dominated the mainstream narratives. Indeed, Burke and others have criticized the campaign’s current iterations for its focus on white survivors. To an indigenous survivor among a community of Indigenous survivors, MeToo sometimes feels as though a bleeding wound has opened further. After all, Indigenous activists have long been seeking redress for the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people. A conversation with a friend epitomized my own sentiments. #MeToo, is in secret in Indian country. It’s literally a statistic. If you are looking at me and I am Native, then it’s literally probable that you know #metoo. Nevertheless, the popularization of works movement among white feminists and their adjacent circles has created a re-entry point for Indigenous survivors as Abigail Echo-Hawke in a 2018 interview: “Movements such as MeToo, have opened up this conversation nationwide. and I believe, created a more welcoming environment. For stories like these in North America, mainstream advocacy networks are literally, in the language of MeToo. Indigenous activists have seized on this moment to emphasize indigenous approaches to ending sexual violence.” Right?
So if you look at this like this kind of like shows us, then, how MeToo has been used to mobilize this other kind of politics, right? It created this space for an Indigenous movement. It created space for more localized movements where than, or these movements they kind of like contain their own character, their own politics, but are also able to like, bring that politics onto a broader forum that needs to engage with those questions that Indigenous feminists are talking about, that Indigenous feminists are speaking about right which this one is situated in American context. In North American context. But the other chapter that I was talking about #MosqueMeToo, movement that doesn’t really need any engagement from the Western media, from Western academia in that instance, that doesn’t need any engagement from Western political circles in that instance, anyway, because then it goes into a completely different context where it is Muslim women, whatever their definition of Islam might be, they are talking about their own experience in the context of their own community, and the people who are responsible for that, and people who are responsible for like redressing that, for addressing that for resolving those conflicts are completely different people. Right? It’s like, okay, like this, so the government need to give people more protection, right? Like, do they need to change their policies in Hajj? How do we address those issues? Right? So it kind of like expands in all these different ways, depending upon the people who are participating in that movement which I think has been a wonderful thing in raising awareness and kind of like bringing more visibility to the different kinds of gendered and sexual violence that people experience.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Yeah, I think those 2 examples are really helpful. So when we think about Indigenous movements. And we have talked on this podcast about MMIWG2S before or No More Stolen Sisters or Red Dress Project, and when we think about those movements, they existed independently of the 2017 MeToo viral movement. And you can hear the frustration in the opening paragraphs of that chapter that the MeToo, movement is going viral. And these other, both online and offline activist movements have existed and haven’t gone viral in the West. And that this was both a frustration but also an opportunity. But then, when you talk about Mosque MeToo. It is the MeToo movement again, but in a different context and responding to different issues. And so it takes a different shape right in the Mosque MeToo, movement. It’s not about getting Western media to respond the way Indigenous movements use the MeToo movement to kind of leverage visibility. It’s about using the MeToo movement to build solidarity among Muslim women in this case in, I think most, I think a lot of them ask me to in those chapters is Northern Africa and the Middle East largely though I’m sure Mosque MeToo may appear in other Islamic countries or for other Islamic women as well. But it’s it’s about building solidarity in those situations, and not necessarily trying to get Western media to respond, to be involved at all. And I think that’s really interesting to talk about kind of the malleability of this movement that it can take on different characteristics in different places.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Definitely. And I think it takes us back to the question that you were asking earlier about the ways in which people engage with feminism. A lot of times right where, like white feminism or the conversations about white feminism which Rafia Zakaria does not associate with people’s skin colour. It’s more about the kind of politics you practice. Just to clarify, that when I use that term I am using it to mean that, and not necessarily to mean white people practicing feminism.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So like a white cultural feminism.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: White cultural feminism, yeah, exactly. If you talk about Indigenous movements in that instance, it is critical for these movements to get engagement and attention from the western media right, like from the mainstream media in that instance, which is not necessary when we talk about the MosqueMeToo movement, because it’s not directly in any way influenced by all of these practice. Right? So that is helpful. Another chapter that I really love in the book is written by Nicolás Juárez, called Native Men Too: Settler Sexual Violence, Native Genocide, and a Dream of Fire, where he talks about Native men’s experience, and, like Native men, saying, MeToo, which he says that it is not to undermine women’s claim than women’s experiences, but just to kind of complicate and deepen their discourse on sexual violence and agency, specifically as they relate to gender and race, which is very critical to engage with, because a lot of times when people think of like gender or sexual violence, the automatic victim that emerges in many people’s minds is women, right?, which is not always the case, and violence against men remains so understudied, and it doesn’t get the attention that it should receive in that instance which is becoming more and more clear I think. So, I think that chapter is also very critical, and that is actually the only chapter written by a man that I have in the book. But I received that chapter, and I wanted to make some room to talk about these other generally unimagined victims of violence, too.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Yeah, I think that’s really important. I know in my own context, in Canada that men statistically are much more likely to be victims of sexual violence than to be falsely accused of being perpetrators of sexual violence. And yet the false accusation narrative largely coming out of high level US Politics stuff is definitely influencing the Canadian context, such that a lot of people are more, seem to be more concerned about false accusations. So I do think we really do have an understudied area here when it comes to men as victims of sexual violence, for sure.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: definitely. Yeah.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So we’ve talked about the ways in which this movement, because of its malleability and its ability to adapt to local contexts can be really really helpful. But chapters in your book also looked at the ways in which sometimes the MeToo, movement was not that helpful depending on what was going on locally? So can we talk about regions where the MeToo movement just didn’t seem to gain ground. So we know it’s viral globally. But there were certainly local regions where it just didn’t really take off.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yes. So, I have a bunch of chapters that talk about that. Some of the chapters talk about the #MeToo movement and the kind of influence and impact it had it in Nepal. One chapter talks about it in Sri Lanka, another chapter talks about the MeToo Movement in Czech Republic, right? And, as you said, depending upon the local context, depending upon, like all the different ways in which feminism has been vilified or has been used, or has found some kind of like roots in these different, like cultural and political contexts. It was used by feminist or and it was helpful and influential, but also in some instances it wasn’t, right? So I think like one thing that we see happen again and again is what we were just discussing, like people’s kind of like discomfort with the term feminism itself. And it’s Western origins. And a lot of times, a lot of these agents come from these organizations or come from these groups of people that live in the West. And they could be living in the West for like any number of reasons, it’s not necessarily only white people. It can also be people in the diaspora, immigrants, right? Any of those communities. But then the kind of trust and the kind of relationship that the local communities might have with all of these different people, influencers, with these organizations, deeply affects how effective the MeToo movement could be in those instances right? And sometimes I think, even when the MeToo movement was successful in a lot of cultural context, or actually, I guess, like not the MeToo movement, but when feminism had gained a ground, and it had, like a positive presence in these cultural contexts, then, like MeToo, also kind of like, became a negative force in those instances, too, because then those feminisms could be labeled Western Propaganda, or a Western influence, because now MeToo, was a part of the feminist movement in that instance. Right? So it mostly was used like for a good reason, but I think at the same time, like there was this like potential for it to be used as a negative force in a lot of Indigenous context because of the imperial baggage that it carries. Because of, like the white baggage that it carries. That is basically the part of this origination part of the evolution of the movement itself, right? And along with that I think, is NGO’s A lot of times that like work in different communities, also have a complex role in those situations. And I’m not an expert on NGO’s, but Rafia Zakaria in our book has a really good chapter on that where she talks about how a lot of times NGO’s fail to consider the local conditions and cultures and end up hurting the causes a lot more than actually benefiting the local communities in many instances. And I think some of those factors then like contribute to demonizing feminists, along with the feminist goals.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So if I’m understanding correctly, there are definitely some contexts where there were even online hashtag feminist movements that were gaining ground and making a difference. Possibly changing public policy or gaining solidarity and sisterhood. And as MeToo swept around the globe these movements sometimes were negatively affected by the perception that they were connected to MeToo, or perhaps people had tweeted me to along with the local hashtag. And this led to the suspicion that this was a kind of colonial, imperious Imperialist force rather than a grassroots feminist movement. This perception is not always helped out by certain contexts where NGO’s might be pushing for specific Western white feminist type goals, for example, and therefore even further kind of tainting the idea of feminism, or you mentioned the Czech Republic, and I was fascinated by this chapter, where the MeToo, movement was viewed often with suspicion as something akin to kind of communism which the Czech Republic obviously has a history with and so the MeToo, movement was viewed with suspicion as something that was kind of a a trial of public opinion, moving away from fair law and order and fair trials, and also viewed as as Communist influences. And so in that way the movement also gained suspicion and didn’t gain ground which could also hamper kind of feminist activist goals within the Czech Republic, for example. But this came up in a few different chapters, obviously in different contexts, in different ways. So Communism was unique to the Czech Republic context. But there were other contexts where, again, a local feminist movement might become, might suffer or become undermined by a connection with MeToo, and I thought that that was really interesting.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Right. Going back to the origin of the term transnational feminism itself and its evolution ,I think that kind of like becomes interesting because there is a very complex relationship between the different states and heads of the States and the international character of a lot of political movements because of the way they have to respond to different kind of political crisis whether it is a crisis based on gendered and sexual violence, whether it is a crisis based on like racial violence, whether crisis that involves, you know, all of these intersecting elements together. So that kind of international pressure, international and engagement. Political engagement becomes necessary, but also is not always useful. And I think, like that’s the kind of complexity that we can’t really kind of like, you know, ever completely flatten, or that we can’t ever really reduce to like one thing or the other. That’s something that we will always have to engage with and think about and like, try to find like a balance between both of those things. Because this international engagement, you know, it has a potential like being a good thing and a bad thing at the same time.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Yeah. no, I think that’s really interesting. So for a lot of locations, the MeToo Movement was helpful but, you can’t not engage with it, and engaging with it is not always helpful. And that’s what I think, is, on the one hand, I want to call it the messiness. But, on the other hand, it’s like the rich complex complexity of transnational feminism, right? It’s messy and complicated. And you can’t just reduce it to something simple. And that’s kind of the point. Reducing is erasing.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: So there’s obviously this tension in the MeToo movement, which we just kind of talked about in terms of feeling like you have to engage in this kind of international viral movement, but also the flexibility of the movement that it might be helpful, but also the movement has definitely this kind of United States origins, and that carries with it certain dangers and risks and undermining perceptions, perhaps of white feminism and colonialism and that kind of thing, and I wonder if some of the tension in the MeToo movement is in part a tension stemming directly from the way the movement went viral. You have this quote in the preface of this book that I just want to read out for our listeners, because I can’t really stop thinking about it. And so the quote you said, “Burke’s MeToo supports an International sisterhood of BIPOC survivors under the assumption that all survivors are equal. But famous MeToo cases went viral after Milano’s tweets suggest that some survivors are more equal than others.” Can we talk a little bit about this tension between kind of finding international solidarity and amplifying voices versus the way the MeToo, movement went viral, which is a prioritizing of very privileged white Western feminist voices, and how that might complicate the nature of MeToo, in general.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Yeah, definitely. And you know, thinking about the MeToo moment, or sometimes I have wondered about the question of like, okay, when Alyssa Milano, like tweets MeToo, who is she tweeting at, Right? Is she thinking of like every person who has experienced this? Is she thinking about majority of our followers? Right? Is she just thinking like of the place where she’s situated where she lives. And then she is thinking in that context, right? And I don’t have, of course, an answer to that question. That’s just something that I think, relates to this whole question of engagement with the MeToo movement, and, like, you know, some survivors being more equal than others. In that instance, right? That holds very true, because so many of the cases, not only in the United States, but outside of the US, have been the cases of people who holds these positions of privilege already. Like the movement, could not be the movement that it is if just common people, like everyday people, people who are living their daily lives, did not participate in it right? But a lot of times then, like the critical conditions, the critical decisions that are taken about different issues that people face about different positions or laws that are kind of, you know, like they, they’re shaped around the cases that basically don’t really concern common people in a lot of instances. I think, like they, you see one case. And then, you know, it’s like a celebrity. Right? It’s like a contestation between them, and it may share, like some of the things, some of the instances, with every other person’s experience. But then, in same way this case remains very special because of like how powerful all the people who are in the case, like involved in the case are in that instance. So any conversation that happens around that case, then how valid is that, or how relatable is that, or how constructive could that be? If we are thinking in like culturally specific context, right? That’s like one, I think contestation that remains still today in different ways. And there is, I mean there is literally, I guess, no way it wants again to just kind of find a solution for that, you know. Because so much of the culture that exists around us is basically culture of engagement at this point, right? And we can say that, okay, like, these are the people that we are interested in. These are the people whose voices matter actually, right. But then, who gets our attention and like who we pay attention to? So that kind of like economy of attention, I think, also is a deep part of the MeToo movement and the conversations that happen in that. And that’s something that I don’t really talk about in the book, but something that I constantly think of.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: Yeah. And it is something that comes back to the movement going viral on social media in particular, right? And who are we all paying attention to on social media? And I don’t want to say we all. Obviously every individual makes their own choices. But it is still true that, like, Alyssa Melano has a lot more followers than I think either you or I do. But I really like the point you made. I thought it really resonated with kind of some of the things I was taking out of the book. This idea that the movement couldn’t exist without all the average people who tweeted out their experiences or shared something under the hashtag right? Like that’s what kept the movement alive. And yet, and yet, it is also true in the United States that the movement went viral because of celebrities. Tanara Burke’s movement did not go viral. It wasn’t till 2017. And it is also a theme in a number of your chapters that the movement gains a boost in certain contexts, often because of high profile, powerful, privileged people in those contexts. And so it’s a way in which the movement is very flexible, but also risks silencing the very voices that are keeping it alive, like if it’s all of us who keep this going, and yet we’re only paying attention to certain high profile individuals, there is this issue with the way the movement is moving around online, right? And where our attentions are being directed, which is, we could unpack issues of algorithms here, and celebrity and intention economy. But it’s shaping the movement.
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Right. Exactly. And I guess with part of it is just like the human desire to make heroes out of people, too. Right? So it’s like certain celebrities presented at like feminist icons, it’s not really political.
JJF: So it’s more about seeing individual heroes succeed rather than necessarily changing the political conditions that lead to this structural violence right?
Iqra Shagufta Cheema: Exactly, right.
Jennifer Jill Fellows: The MeToo movement is still viral and still growing. And I hope it keeps spreading and prompting more conversations. I want to thank Iqra for sharing her research on the global MeToo movement and transnational feminism with me today. And thank you, listener, for joining me for another episode of Cyborg Goddess. If you have a comment or a question about anything you heard today, please reach out on the social media site formerly known as Twitter at @Cyborg_Goddess, or on Bluesky at CyborgGoddess.bsky.social, both links in the shownotes, or leave a comment on this podcast. Music provided by Epidemic Sound. This podcast is created by me, Jennifer Jill Fellows. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider buying me a coffee at Ko-Fi. You’ll find a link to my Ko-Fi page in the shownotes.
Until next time, Bye!!