The #MeToo movement created more opportunities for women to speak up about sexual assault. But we are also living in a time when “fake news” and “alternative facts” call into question the very nature of truth.
This troubling paradox is at the heart of this compelling book. The convergence of #MeToo and the crisis of post-truth is used to explore the experiences of women and people of color whose claims around issues of sexual violence are often held in doubt. Banet-Weiser and Higgins investigate how the gendered and racialized logics of “believability” are defined and contested within media culture, proposing that a mediated “economy of believability” is the context in which public bids for truth about sexual violence are made, negotiated, and authorized today.
Table of Contents
Introduction: (Post)Truth, Belief, Media, and Sexual Violence1 Construction: #MeToo Media and Representations of Believability
2 Commodification: Buying and Selling Belief in the #MeToo Marketplace
3 Contest: Media, ‘Mob Justice’, and the Digitization of Doubt
4 Conditional: Kavanaughs, Karens, and the Struggle for Victimhood
Conclusion: #BelieveWomen, Revisited
References
Index
