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Title Subverting Rape Culture: A Study Of #Metoo in Rebecca Solnit's and Roxane Gay’s Works

Author(s) Farheen Shakir

Abstract The current phenomenological research rationalizes Feminism’s struggle to subvert rape culture after the re-emergence of the voyeuristic Young Adult stories in the twenty-first century’s American literature and the popularity of #MeToo. The American women’s role in subverting sexual violence, as their refusal to accept being inherently rapeable and being raped by White men, has been critically evaluated in the memoirs of Rebecca Solnit and Roxane Gay. For this purpose, Erin Wunker’s and Sara Ahmed’s intersectional concepts about Feminist Killjoys’ Willfulness have been used to underpin the argument, employing Belsey’s and Mary Evan’s auto/biographical textual method. Solnit and Gay share their lived experiences of sexual violence, and the transition in their choices of dresses and body-size in the American rape culture, with the problematic ‘I’, ‘We’ and ‘Me’ to end the toxic silence. In this manner, their sympathy towards the incapacitated rape victims, through the craftiness of #MeToo moment, transform their willfulness into a movement. The purpose of the research is to critically investigate the rape culture, problematic androcentric societal values, customs, and beliefs as supportive towards rape culture and the resultant feminist killjoy’s snap while subverting rape culture and asserting women’s credibility. Feminists’ willfulness has been assessed and justified in the research as their effort to undermine androcentric peer support for offenders that garners gendered and sexual abuse. Feminist killjoys’ defiance against the patriarchy- assisted sexual violence becomes more problematic when they share their personal stories on digital media with the global audience through #MeToo networking. It has been understood that by substantiating Wunker’s guerilla tactics of refusal, Solnit’s and Gay’s tactics of armouring the body with fat, steel armour, gun, or pepper spray, wearing men’s dresses, and digital means of synoptic surveillance and Dataveillance of #MeToo on digital media, provide women the ephemeral security, and effective evidence for testification to end self-blaming and normalize #MeToo. Supporting victims through feminist friendships on digital platforms, creates anti-race, anti-rape, and anti-gendered-crimes society to create space for all victims in America. The outcome of such activism becomes the joy-killing experience for patriarchy, making feminists the problematic willful body against the status-quo.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2022-06-02

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