French and American Feminists Write About #MeToo

This review essay considers books published in 2018 by authors from three successive generations assessing the achievements and stakes of the #MeToo movement and reflecting on the backlash against it. Chroniques d'une onde de choc: #MeToo secoue la planète by Annette Lévy-Willard, a novelist, blogger, and senior investigative reporter for Libération, brings her background covering the Middle East, anti-semitism and the French Extreme Right to her understanding of #MeToo in an international context. In Une Révolution sexuelle? Réflexions sur l'après-Weinstein, Laure Murat, journalist and Professor of French Studies at UCLA, examines the series of scandals (beginning with Weinstein) in order to reflect on consent, misogyny in rap music, the dilemmas of free speech, and the gendered aspects of capitalism, among other topics. Rebecca Traister's Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger asks why anger works for men, while women's anger is systematically dismissed. She brings the transformative role of women's righteous rage back into the national narrative. With their varying perspectives and emphases—and their varying degrees of optimism—the three books together offer a multi-faceted and carefully documented portrait of our current historical moment while reflecting on the social norms that perpetuate women's still subordinate status.