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This book locates #MeToos traction among elites with "womenomics" theories that attribute feminized poverty, welfare dependency, and sexual violence to traditional femininity and toxic masculinity. Such neoliberal anti-sexual violence policies seek to empower women through paid work and reform men through fatherhood. This volume shows that mens movements and conservative concerns about "fatherless families" developed toxic masculinity discourse before popular feminism incorporated it. It analyses how discourse on #MeToo issues in the workplace reveals a shift away from representations of women as traumatized victims in need of empowerment toward a focus on men as both problem and solution, setting new standards for masculine workplace conduct. However, this discourse reproduces a toxic/good men binary that serves to consolidate a new form of hegemonic masculinity. The book concludes that neoliberal sexual violence politics obscures how globalization fosters inequalities and sexual violence by blaming these and other social ills on toxically masculine men. This book will be of interest to scholars whose research focuses on sexual violence, feminist studies, masculinity studies, and neoliberalism.

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- Acknowledgements -- Series Editors' Preface -- Introduction -- 1 Documenting Sexual Violence as a Problem of Individual Freedom -- 2 Unspeakable Outrages and Expertise on Women's Problems -- 3 Atrocity Propaganda, International Organizations and the Science of Peace -- 4 Silence on Sexual Violence? World War II and the United Nations Women's Bureaucracy -- 5 Pathologizing Unfreedom: Western Cold War Models of Human Rights and Public Mental Health -- 6 The Medicalization of Peacekeeping and Government of Sexual and Gender-based Violence -- 7 Gender Experts and Gender Police: Policing the Peacekeepers and Empowering Women? -- 8 Knowledge and Techniques for Governing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) -- Conclusion -- Bibliography

The politics of rape was a marginal field until the 1990s when rape suddenly emerged as an international security problem. Carol Harrington traces the historical change in the politicization of rape as an international problem, explaining the fascinating transference of the expert authority gained by early international women's organizations to intergovernmental bureaucracies.

The United Nations'(UN) response to reports of UN personnel perpetrating sexual violence proclaims "zero-tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA)." Drawing on Carol Bacchi's "what's the problem represented to be (WPR)?" framework, this article unpacks how UN policy solutions represent the problem of SEA. It explores the discursive effects of the UN's problematization of SEA drawing on Sara Ahmed's analysis of audit systems and non-performativity within performance cultures. It scrutinizes the Secretary-General's reports on SEA data and policy documents, including training and risk assessment materials. The analysis shows that UN policy problematizes SEA as transactional sex, inevitable in conditions of poverty and gender inequality. Solutions individualize perpetrators as rule-breakers subject to discipline and generalize victims as among the many impacted by SEA globally. Such solutions situate the UN as the answer to, rather than cause of, SEA and restore a narrative of the UN as defender of the vulnerable.

Coined in late 20th-century men's movements, "toxic masculinity" spread to therapeutic and social policy settings in the early 21st century. Since 2013, feminists began attributing misogyny, homophobia, and men's violence to toxic masculinity. Around the same time, feminism enjoyed renewed popularization. While some feminist scholars use the concept, it is often left under-defined. I argue that talk of toxic masculinity provides an intriguing window into gender politics in any given context. However, feminists should not adopt toxic masculinity as an analytical concept. I consider the term's origins, history, and usage, arguing that it appears in individualizing discourses that have historically targeted marginalized men. Thus, accusations of toxic masculinity often work to maintain gender hierarchies and individualize responsibility for gender inequalities to certain bad men.

This article considers the YouTube 'My Rape Story' genre in light of critical feminist analyses of rape survivor stories. The feminist mobilization that developed out of the political ferment of 1968 told a 'rape story' of male power and women's oppression. However, as first-hand rape stories proliferated in late 20th-century popular media, psychological experts typically framed them with therapeutic narratives of individual self-efficacy and self-transformation. Critical feminist analyses of such rape 'survivor discourse' called for new discursive spaces that would allow survivors to eschew therapeutic accounts. A new generation of women have spoken out on a variety of digital platforms, confronting established limits on talking about rape. Considering YouTube 'My Rape Story' videos as one manifestation of this new wave of speaking out, my analysis shows that examples of such videos evidence the impact of incitements to self-disclosure through self-branding built into much social media. I argue that these videos exemplify how first-hand rape stories can provide a site for the construction of neo-liberal subjectivity by positioning rape trauma as something survivors must work on in order to achieve self-efficacy. Nevertheless, these accounts also show resistance to victim-blaming rape myths.

Feminists have celebrated success in gendering security discourse and practice since the end of the Cold War. Scholars have adapted theories of contentious politics to analyze how transnational feminist networks achieved this. I argue that such theories would be enhanced by richer conceptualizations of how transnational feminist networks produce and disseminate new forms of global governmental knowledge and expertise. This article engages social movement theory with theories of global governmentality. Governmentality analysis typically focuses upon governmental power rather than political contention or the collective agency of political outsiders. However, I argue that governmentality analysis contributes to an account of feminist influence on the fields of development and security within global politics. The governmentality lens views politics as a struggle over truth and expertise. Since experts have authority to speak the truth on a given issue, governmentality analysis seeks to uncover the social basis of expertise. Such analysis of expertise can illuminate important aspects of the power of movements. The power of transnational women's movements lies in production and dissemination of knowledge about women within global knowledge networks.

Feminists have celebrated success in gendering security discourse and practice since the end of the Cold War. Scholars have adapted theories of contentious politics to analyze how transnational feminist networks achieved this. I argue that such theories would be enhanced by richer conceptualizations of how transnational feminist networks produce and disseminate new forms of global governmental knowledge and expertise. This article engages social movement theory with theories of global governmentality. Governmentality analysis typically focuses upon governmental power rather than political contention or the collective agency of political outsiders. However, I argue that governmentality analysis contributes to an account of feminist influence on the fields of development and security within global politics. The governmentality lens views politics as a struggle over truth and expertise. Since experts have authority to speak the truth on a given issue, governmentality analysis seeks to uncover the social basis of expertise. Such analysis of expertise can illuminate important aspects of the power of movements. The power of transnational women's movements lies in production and dissemination of knowledge about women within global knowledge networks.