Feminist solidarity and hopeful imaginings in the MeToo movement in Iceland

Abstract

In this article, we build on feminist scholarship to narrate how the MeToo movement in Iceland was formed through collective reflexivity and resistance, ultimately connecting different groups of women in affective solidarity. In our exploration of how the movement unfolded, we draw on anonymous MeToo testimonies and media discussions. We argue that the feminist lexicon, particularly the notion of ‘returning the shame’, was instrumental in hailing different groups to the movement. We trace how the concepts used restructured the women’s affective relations to their experiences and thus enabled the ‘feminist snap’ that reverberated across and connected different groups. Speaking positions on different social locations revealed the intersectional nature of sexual violations and were necessary for seeing connections between and among different groups and going beyond politics centred on middle-class pain. We conclude that painting a bigger feminist picture of sexual violence is always an incomplete and ongoing process but is necessary for allowing us to hope for a better future for everyone.

Introduction

In January 2022, five well-known entrepreneurs in Iceland were publicly accused of sexual violence by a 24-year-old woman, Vítalía Lazareva. In the aftermath of that story breaking in the media, the men had to take a leave, resign or they were fired from their jobs (Jónasdóttir, 2022). All of them were publicly vilified, and the polls revealed the public’s belief that the perpetrators should be removed from their positions (Flestir hlynntir brottvikningu við ásakanir, 2022). When the news broke, we were stunned and thought that this series of events marked a shift in how testimonies of sexual violations entered and were received in the public mainstream. We were not accustomed to news of high-ranking men being forced to leave their positions due to sexual violations (Pétursdóttir, 2017), and like many people, we considered whether this turn of events had been sparked by the MeToo movement. It seemed as if it had become harder to overlook sexual violations and that the general public was more open to listening to and believing women who had experienced sexual violence. This inspired us to explore how the MeToo movement unfolded and gained prominence in Icelandic society.

The MeToo campaign has its roots in the feminist activism of Tarana Burke in the United States, but it only captured global headlines when the US actress Alyssa Milano used the hashtag #MeToo to break the film industry’s silence about US movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual aggression (Hearn, 2018; Rodino-Colocino, 2018; Zarkov and Davis, 2018). The movement put sexual violations firmly on the global agenda, but this played out differently in different contexts (Chandra and Erlingsdóttir, 2022). In Iceland, the MeToo movement started in November 2017 and dominated public discussion for months. It was inspired by the Swedish MeToo campaign (Alvinius and Holmberg, 2019; Salmonsson, 2020), where the published testimonies were anonymous, and the perpetrators were unidentified. This strategy was meant to ensure that individual men’s sexual violations would not dominate the much-needed discussion about how to reform a culture (Pétursdóttir and Rúdólfsdóttir, 2022). Initially, the campaign invited women in Iceland to share and reflect on their experiences of sexual violence in the relatively safe space of closed Facebook groups organised around specific work sectors. Subsequently, a selected collection of those testimonies was published anonymously in the media, without naming the perpetrators. The closed Facebook groups thus worked as feminist counter publics (Fraser, 1990; Goker, 2019; Salmonsson, 2020) that collected and questioned the taken-for-granted understanding of gender relations that resulted in the women’s discomfort, humiliation, pain and anger. In this regard, the Facebook groups provided a venue for the formation of affective feminist solidarities (Åhäll, 2018; Hemmings, 2012; Probyn, 1993) or ‘feminism with attitude’ (Probyn, 1993: 139), where the dissonance between how we feel in relation to dominant norms is placed in a political context (Hemmings, 2012; Probyn, 1993). The Facebook groups were an example of an affective feminist solidarity that was driven by the desire to connect rather than identity politics (Hemmings, 2012). The testimonies are gripping from a feminist viewpoint, not only because they provide nuanced reflexive accounts of how women experience and deal with situations where they have felt degraded, uncomfortable and even in danger, but also because they serve a political purpose and are put forward in the hope of a better, more equal society. As such, MeToo has become an important reference point for the feminist movement in Iceland (Pétursdóttir and Rúdólfsdóttir, 2022).

Previous analyses of the MeToo movement highlight how public discussion about MeToo has been dominated by privileged groups (e.g. Hearn, 2018; Phipps, 2020). We argue that the MeToo movement in Iceland was compelling because it provides an example of how connections form between different groups, both privileged and marginalised, and what kind of implications that has for our understanding of sexual violence and feminist movements. In our narration, we focus on how the MeToo campaign in Iceland unfolded and how important feminist concepts such as the notion of ‘returning the shame’ were for initiating collective reflexive moments, thus, generating affective solidarity. As we trace how the campaign has moved onwards, we are concerned with who is granted a speaking position and enabled to air and define their grievances about sexual misconduct and how the movement includes different groups of women. We argue that although MeToo did not draw in all marginalised voices the ones that did find a home there changed the tenor of the arguments put forward by the movement.

MeToo and speaking positions

Federici (2018) points out that in recent years, there has been a shift in the relationship Western media has with women’s voices and feminism. Whereas, previously, women were not supposed to speak about political matters, the current neoliberal zeitgeist encourages them to speak up and find their voice. This shift has in part enabled the MeToo movement to break into mainstream media. However, not all voices have been of equal interest and speaking up about politics and sexual violence does come with a risk (Kay, 2020).

Speaking positions in public spaces, such as the media, take their cue from normative assumptions about who is worth listening to. Mainstream popular feminism – whether it is the postfeminism of the early noughties, celebrity feminism or neoliberal feminism – have all been framed by individualistic market driven ideologies of consumer culture and neoliberalism (Riley et al., 2023). In line with the neoliberal ethos, the voice that is given a platform represents the subject who has the right entrepreneurial mind-set for success and is positive and disciplined (Rottenberg, 2018). In 2009, McRobbie pointed out how one of the tropes of this culture was the supposedly empowered, ambitious, and successful ‘top girls’ who for the most part were middle-class young women. A similar idea comes across in Orgad and Gill’s (2022) analysis of confidence culture. It is a culture that regards women’s fate as being in their own hands. To be heard, the voice should manifest self-confidence and be authoritative (Kay, 2020; Orgad and Gill, 2022) and complaints are not welcome (Ahmed, 2021).

In a Western anglophone context, MeToo has been criticised for its focus on singular voices, rather than on a structural critique. This is reflected in the overexposure of the pain and injuries of white celebrity women, in particular, where the experiences of marginalised voices become no more than a footnote (Phipps, 2019). In their analysis of the UK media’s coverage of the MeToo campaign, De Benedictis et al. (2019) found that although the media was largely supportive, there was a variation in how sexual violence was reported. Sexual violence was mostly presented as human-interest stories of how individual women overcame their plight by seeking help. De Benedictis et al. detected a tendency to depoliticise and even present sexual violence as one-off occurrences rather than as symptoms of structural problems and power relations. White, respectable, young, middle-class women who named their perpetrators were lauded for their courage, whereas women in less privileged positions were obscured. In this sense, it was interesting that the experiences of women in sectors such as ‘hospitality, domestic services and administrations’ (De Benedictis et al., 2019: 734) were not accounted for as these sectors tend to be dominated by non-white, low-income and often migrant women. These women were simply not part of the story. Sexual violence was up for discussion and given attention as Alyssa Milana’s case illustrates but only insofar as it related to privileged groups. What was lacking was a focus on how sexual violence is enabled by misogyny, racism and ableism.

For ideas about how feminism can be more inclusive, that is, include people with different speaking positions, we have found the scholarship on affective feminist solidarities useful (Hemmings, 2012; Probyn, 1993). In her analysis of feminist connectivity, Probyn (1993) refers to the movements that result from connections between differently situated women as feminism with attitude. She draws on hooks’ (1991) idea of imaginations where we ‘articulate rhizomatic lines that touch and connect with the aspirations of others’ (Probyn, 1993: 148). As she points out, this does not mean that we can use experience ‘as a transparent rallying call to all women regardless of our very long histories of difference’ (Probyn, 1993: 170) or render the experiences of others the same as our own. Rather, Probyn argues that it means that we must move forward and speak in a way that also creates speaking positions for others. We cannot ask feminist questions about how the world works only by drawing on our own experiences. She also (Probyn, 1993: 169) points out that affective solidarity or feminism with attitude implies that to care for oneself, one must care for others: ‘The self is not an end in itself, it is the opening of a perspective, one which allows us to conceive of transforming ourselves with the aid of others’. Rodino-Colocino (2018) refers to this process as transformative empathy. In this regard, she makes a distinction between passive empathy, where marginalised people are treated as exotic others, and transformative empathy, where engagement with others involves genuine self-reflexivity and listening with a view to pushing for changes. This can lead to a collective breaking point or a snap, as Ahmed (2017) calls it.

How then can we see and draw out the rhizomatic lines between our experiences? Enloe (2013) points out those feminist concepts can work as searchlights as they shed light on women’s experiences and name them. The connections made through concepts such as ‘sexual harassment’ make the invisible visible and can provide an explanation for the unease Hemmings described when the way you feel does not fit with dominant social descriptions resulting in affective dissonance (Hemmings, 2012). As we put our unease into words, we can share it with others. Feminist concepts, ‘enable people to move beyond either denial or self-blame, toward collective actions and meaningful change’ (Enloe, 2013: 127). The feminist lexicon is thus one of the most important tools in the women’s movement armoury. They provide us with the concepts that move us affectively and can move us together and draw out the structural basis for our experiences, generating affective feminist solidarities. Concepts like patriarchy, misogyny, ableism are important concepts to think through. In this regard, Enloe (2018) argues that feminist solidarity is about making connections between diverse experiences and that doing so is indeed a radical act. Despite the difficult experiences remembered and addressed, these connections can be perceived as hopeful imaginings (hooks, 1991) because they are focused on better futures, not only for privileged women but also across different groups of women. The feminist concepts both unpack cultural norms and provide us with ways to bring difficult experiences into light. They also shed a light on the strategies that sustain masculine privileges and other structures of inequalities.

The Icelandic cultural context

Currently, Iceland scores highly on several international indices of gender equality and has been branded as some sort of a utopian feminist state in international media (Einarsdóttir, 2020). Iceland’s reputation as a frontrunner in equality is a source of national pride that establishes and maintains an aura of gender equality. Within this aura, people convince themselves that equality reigns despite structural evidence indicating otherwise (Pétursdóttir, 2009), as illustrated in the high prevalence of sexual violence (Snorradóttir et al., 2020) and institutional and systemic oppression of immigrant women (Kjaran and Halldórsdóttir, 2022).

As in other western countries, neoliberal ideology has rooted itself both in structures and people’s mentality in Iceland (Pétursdóttir, 2009). Confidence culture has become part of feminine technologies and is considered the key to success and becoming the best version of yourself (Auðardóttir and Rúdólfsdóttir, 2022). However, feminist movements have made several interventions in gender politics that have left a mark on societies’ collective memory (Rúdólfsdóttir and Jóhannsdóttir, 2018). The most memorable one was when an estimated 90% of women in Iceland, representing different classes and ages, mobilised to take the day off from work or go on strike in 1975. The intention was to draw attention to women’s invisible and unappreciated labour, both outside and inside the home. It served as an important showcase for how women could connect across differences in class, age and residence to form feminist solidarity (Rúdólfsdóttir, 2005). These cultural memories along with recent feminist protests, such as #freethenipple and #slutwalk, have used concepts such as shame and patriarchy to challenge the neoliberal idea that equality has already been accomplished (Rúdólfsdóttir and Jóhannsdóttir, 2018). In this regard, feminist protests have been particularly successful in drawing attention to sexual violence and how seriously it blights the lives of women in Iceland.

In recent years, the population in Iceland (currently close to 390,000 people) has become more heterogeneous with a sizable immigrant segment. Presently, about 20% of the population of Iceland are immigrants (Innflytjendur 15.5% íbúa landsins, 2021). For our purposes, it is significant to note that people identifying as women comprise almost half of all immigrants in Iceland, with the majority coming from Poland and the second largest group originating from the Philippines (Innflytjendur 15.5% íbúa landsins, 2021). There are reports of xenophobia (Eyþórsdóttir and Loftsdóttir, 2019) and evidence that people of foreign origin are excluded from society and its institutions based on their lack of knowledge of the Icelandic language (Kjaran and Halldórsdóttir, 2022). Kjaran and Halldórsdóttir (2022) argue that these systems of inequality further isolate and marginalise immigrant women as their voices are smothered. These experiences of inequality in the supposedly gender equal Iceland support the idea that the sufferings of immigrant women are caused by mindsets from the cultures they are considered to represent, rather than the oppressive elements of the culture they have moved to (Símonardóttir et al., 2021). Immigrant women are, thus, cast as victims that need to be saved by their enlightened and liberated western white sisters (Orgad and Gill, 2022).

The study

MeToo provides rich empirical material for exploring how different groups take up speaking positions. In tracing how the movement unfolded, we build on testimonies published in the Icelandic media from November 2017 to January 2018. The testimonies were published with the women’s consent but were originally collected in 16 private Facebook groups, organised according to work sectors, organisations and institutions. One by one, different women’s groups in the following fields made their stories public: politics, stage art and the movie industry, IT and the software industry, music, the justice system, science, the medical profession, aviation, the media, the health system, the educational system, craft and industry, sports, and female priests in the Lutheran Church. In addition, women with an immigrant background formed a group that they named ‘women of foreign origin’ (konur af erlendum uppruna); we refer to them in line with the label they chose for themselves throughout our analysis. The group was organised in cooperation with the Women of multicultural ethnicity network (W.O.M.E.N.) in Iceland (Kristinsdóttir, n.d.).

Each group sent selected testimonies to the media, along with a joint statement signed by members of the group. The testimonies were published in various mainstream media, but the online news outlet Kjarninn.is collected the statements and testimonies and published them all together on a designated page on their website (Beck, 2017). All information that could identify the writer of each testimony was removed by the organisers of the Facebook groups before media publication. In total, 750 testimonies were published on Kjarninn.is. We also collected data from a current affairs programme that featured the MeToo movement, shown on national television, specifically, two episodes featuring spokeswomen for two separate MeToo groups. One episode included women in politics, and the other presented women of foreign origin. In addition, we refer to two interviews with the spokeswoman for the women of foreign origin group whose testimonies were published in the media. We used the interviews to get a clearer idea of the group’s aims and how members of the group were mobilised.

A pertinent question, and one that we can only partially answer, is who the participants in this feminist movement are. All of them identify as women; their Facebook groups are named ‘women’, and most of them refer to different sectors. The exception to this rule is the group called ‘family relations’ (excluded from our analysis and the last group to come forward in the media), but it is clear from the stories that they are written by people who identify as women. We thus refer to the participants as women. This strategy of naming the group ‘women’ excludes non-binary people (Salmonsson, 2020) and forms of violence outside heteronormative contexts.

The women vary in age, and the memories shared are both old and recent and based on their experiences in Iceland. From the nature of their testimonies and of their work, we deduce that most of the women belong to work sectors, organisations and institutions that require formal education; thus, they are from the middle class. Þorvaldsdóttir and Hjartardóttir (2020) refer to the women who participate in the MeToo movement as the ‘talking classes’, in other words, women who were educated to work with text and language, with the exception of women in craft and industry. They also note how women in more precarious work environments, such as the hospitality and service sectors, are not represented in the women’s Facebook groups. An exception here is the women of foreign origin, many of whom describe their experiences in the hospitality and service sector. Kjaran and Halldórsdóttir (2022) analyse how the testimonies from women of foreign origin describe institutional and systemic exclusion and oppression, among which ‘language stood out as a significant issue in power relations’ (p. 355). In other words, women of foreign origin lack important resources such as the Icelandic language, which results in epistemic violence. As with the other groups, we did not know precisely who these women were but noted that their description of violence tended to be more serious, and half of the testimonies described intimate partner violence.

We carefully read all 750 testimonies, separately and together. The testimonies consist of the participants’ spontaneous responses in the Facebook groups focusing on sexual violations. When we coded the data, we specifically looked for reflexive moments in terms of what MeToo meant to the women and how it formed and transformed the empathic relations between themselves and with other participants in the movement. As we looked through the data, we searched for reoccurring concepts, which we took as indications of how important they were for making sense of the violence. In our analysis, we trace how MeToo was facilitated by a feminist lexicon and illustrate how women’s use of feminist concepts created speaking positions. We argue that this lexicon and the opening up of different speaking positions led to a certain kind of transformative empathy and affective solidarity. We specifically explore what role ‘women of foreign origin’ played in the MeToo movement, that is, how they opened up spaces to reflect on and speak about sexual violence and, thereby, created a shared emotional world for differently situated women. To support our analysis, we include excerpts from the testimonies. All translations to English of the excerpts that were in Icelandic are our own.

Collective reflexivity and resistance

The MeToo movement unfolded in two parts, and we use the metaphor of the choir to trace how the voices of the participants appeared. In the first part, ‘top girl’ and privileged women formed a nuanced yet monophonic choir. However, in the second part, the choir became more polyphonic when women of foreign origin joined, and although not all feminist identities found a home in the movement, we witnessed feminist solidarity and a more inclusive feminist collective.

First part: Top girls and entitled women return shame

A standout moment that acted as an important catalyst or ‘a snap’ (Ahmed, 2017) for the MeToo movement in the public realm was when the first group, women in politics, sent their stories to the media in November 2017. Following their publication, three representatives of different political parties appeared on a panel organised by a current affairs programme aired on national television. One of the panel’s members, Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir, who was also the youngest member of Parliament and the political secretary of the right-wing Independence Party, described how she almost declined the offer to join the panel because she thought it could be perceived as ‘weak’ to discuss her experiences of sexual violations. However, on further reflection, she recognised that such an attitude was part of the problem:

I found myself to be the problem when I was invited to come here [television program] because I found myself thinking it was too weak to discuss this and I thought that I, women don’t think that this is going to help them and that it is better to sit, to sit on this [experience], not to talk about it and somehow not deal with this problem instead of standing up for yourself and others, uhm, so that of course we have to do that and it is very necessary. (Arnardóttir, 2017)

In many ways, the young politician was an embodiment of what McRobbie (2009) refers to as the ‘top girl’ residing within the aura of gender equality (Pétursdóttir, 2009). She was a beautiful (by all conventional accounts), young and politically powerful woman who fought for market freedom and individual choice (Allt í góðum tilgangi, 2019). She is, thus, a good example of someone who has excelled in the technologies of confidence culture (Orgad and Gill, 2022). As she stepped forward, along with other women from across the political spectrum, the audience in Iceland witnessed an important reflexive moment of her feelings of unease and those of the other representatives in the programme that invited other voices into the fold. The young politician did not command the stage, in line with her usual and expected speaking position as the confident top girl. As she spoke, she created a distance between her present and previous positions. She invited others to join her in examining her experiences, not only as a young woman in politics but in recognising the feminist questions raised by gender-based violations and abuse.

Similar kinds of reflexive moments were described in the MeToo testimonies that followed. Women explained how MeToo and the stories that were shared had handed them a feminist searchlight (Enloe, 2018), which enabled them to revisit and even reinterpret some of their previous experiences:

I started thinking, after many decades in the business. I can’t recall sexual harassment, unless you count dirty phone calls late at night from middle aged drunk men when you still had your number in the telephone catalogue and men that went too far in nightclubs. (Media)

This is in line with Rodino–Colocino’s (2018) description of transformative empathy. The women did not distance themselves from other women’s stories but viewed them as shedding light on and reflecting their own experiences:

What I find so ominous is that with every story, I recall an incident I had decided to forget so that I could do my job. (Health)

Thus, instead of distancing themselves from the incidents to be able to carry on with their lives, the women connected their own experiences with the experiences of other women by saying ‘MeToo’.

A concept that reoccurred throughout the testimonies was the concept shame. Probyn (1993) points out how shame always plays on the doubleness of the public and the private. Perceiving oneself as shameful from the parameters of the outside does fill the self, as Ahmed (2004) argues. It plays on the subject’s feelings that there are aspects of oneself that cannot be revealed to anyone else. The notion of ‘returning the shame’, much used by the survivors’ movement in Iceland (Skömm, n.d.), is a good example of a concept gaining feminist meaning that subverts the usual narrative of victim blaming (Steinþórsdóttir and Pétursdóttir, 2019) and changes the flow of negative affect. Instead of shame, room was created for sadness and anger. In the incident below, a former top girl returned the shame that previously engulfed and broke her down. She recognised the silencing and isolating effects of shame (Ahmed, 2004). Casting off shame is akin to losing your shackles:

I want to remember; forgive the young girl who was childish and gullible, and I, now almost seventy, no longer want to carry this shame that I have had inside myself. I have blamed myself for just managing to have potential as a politician, and I want to return decades’ worth of shame. I was a smart young girl and woman and should not have allowed (them) to break me down. (Politics)

In their testimonies, the women expressed negative emotions, such as frustration about sexual violations, but were also relieved to be able to talk about these experiences. The women discussed how MeToo allowed them to air their grievances:

I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for way too many years. I am about to burst open from the vulnerability, humiliation and injustice. (Theatre Arts)

I find it difficult to write this, but at the same time, it is liberating. (Priest)

To sum up, MeToo managed to provide women with not only a safe emotional space to revisit those risky and difficult memories but also a purpose. They shared their stories to establish sexual violence as a collective experience, thus moving away from the neoliberal individualised framework. The women’s decision to step forward was not flippant and was facilitated by the sense that their experiences were shared with others. It was a transformative experience in the sense that as they recognised themselves in each other’s stories, they unearthed memories that hitherto had been too difficult to consciously think through. This was especially facilitated by the concept of shame and the feminist understanding that the shame was not theirs to carry. In the process, the women’s self-empathy increased. However, it was essential that they did not step forward as individuals but as an anonymous mass of people who had been wronged. This was experienced as liberating as it allowed the participants to rethink oppressive affective relationships and how those relations had negatively influenced their standing in society. Nevertheless, the first groups to step forward were middle class and privileged, and their stories lacked the layers to shed light on intersecting inequalities. We now turn our attention to the second part of the MeToo movement as it progressed in Iceland.

Second part: A polyphonic movement in process?

As noted, mainstream representations of the MeToo movement have been criticised for their focus on privileged women (Phipps, 2020). Affective solidarity (Hemmings, 2012) or feminism with attitude (Probyn, 1993) requires transformative empathy (Rodino-Colocino, 2018) that welcomes different speaking positions and is a catalyst for changing or seeking to change, oppressive structures. Neoliberal feminism allows limited solidarity that tends to preclude women from marginalised positions (Rottenberg, 2018). We now outline how important participants with different identities and social positions were for the evolution of the MeToo movement, but also argue that it is still not fully inclusive.

The Facebook groups that initially made the experiences of their members public mostly consisted of middle-class women. Consequently, women of foreign origin got together as they felt that their voices and experiences were not represented in the movement (Við erum ekki búin að afgreiða #metoo: Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir og Tatjana Lationvic ræða næstu skref, 2018). Altogether, 660 women joined the group ‘women of foreign origin’, but it was a marker of their position in Icelandic society that only 34 testimonies were made public. Many were in precarious work positions and described how both men and women took advantage of their vulnerability (Mosty, 2020). Their accounts highlighted the intersectional nature of sexual violence and how perpetrators could include women who serve as the ‘handmaidens of patriarchy’ (Enloe, 2018). In addition to sexual violations, many also mentioned the threat of being reported to the authorities and then deported from Iceland:

I cannot talk about this [sexual violence], or I will lose my chance to finish university. They will take it [work] away from me because I work in his place for money off the books. He pays me like this; I never asked. I cannot tell my family [because] it will be their shame, too, if I cannot finish university and must leave the country due to a crime [black market work]. (Foreign Origin)

Their testimonies show how shame sticks more readily to some bodies than to others. Women enter situations that already privilege certain bodies, voices and experiences (Ahmed, 2004). In this testimony, the participant recognises how not only her own dreams and aspirations are discarded but also those of her family.

Within a day of their testimonies being made public, in January 2018, three spokeswomen for the group were invited to the same current affairs television programme that featured the representatives of ‘women in politics’. Tatjana Latinovic, one of the spokeswomen for women of foreign origin, noted how their testimonies created ‘additional layers of horror and humiliation’ as women of foreign origin had felt abandoned and isolated, not just by men but also by women in Iceland (#MeToo, migration, race and class, 2019). However, she also said this about their decision to step forward:

If we had been the first to step forward, we would have been treated as isolated examples of victimised foreign women [. . .]. We made it clear that we did not want to be treated as victims – this is empowerment, and the women who stepped forward are very brave. Finally, they could claim their voice. (Við erum ekki búin að afgreiða #metoo: Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir og Tatjana Lationvic ræða næstu skref, 2018)

As they stepped forward, women of foreign origin challenged neoliberal discourses where women who do not belong to the privileged group are seen as victims. They wanted to step forward as agents for change and not be automatically placed in the passive category of women who need to be saved. In neoliberal societies, such as Iceland, there is a tendency to view violence as exclusively located within pathological backward cultures (Símonardóttir et al., 2021). The MeToo stories from the women of foreign origin pinpoint how the perpetrators are Icelandic and include women; sexual violence thus becomes both more intersectional and complicated. Nevertheless, the use of the concept of sexual violation and returning the shame tie the different stories together. As Enloe (2018) argues, feminism is about making connections or joining the dots. The women joined the movement, originally based on their identities as women of foreign origin, but as they shared their experiences, the recognition of joint discontent due to structural violence, irrespective of cultural background, became the key issue:

We are going to tell some stories that are going to make people notice us and know it’s not our fault and only our problem. This society must change. (Foreign origin)

Similar views were expressed by Latinovic, who called for structural changes:

This is really a change in attitude that we all need. It does not matter whether you are the woman who is the Prime Minister or the one who cleans the floors in the Parliament – we are all in this together. (Við erum ekki búin að afgreiða #metoo: Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir og Tatjana Lationvic ræða næstu skref, 2018)

Latinovic pointed out that feminism should not just be fronted by high-ranking women. Feminist movements should not only include the Prime Minister but also the cleaners.

To sum up, women of foreign origin entered the movement despite their stigmatised histories of being found wanting and backwards thinking (Símonardóttir et al., 2021) and they claimed a speaking position. This transformed the movement into an affective and collective flow of resistance that included different bodies and histories. Probyn (1993) points out that feminism with attitude goes beyond the binary opposition between self and other: ‘an anaclitic model of identity would gently fold expressions of difference upon themselves so that like acetate transparencies one can no longer tell which one was first’ (p. 139). The first to step forward was a privileged group (i.e. women in politics, including top girls). However, the ‘narrow reality’ that was highlighted by that group and in those that followed did not dominate the campaign in the end. Women of foreign origin expanded the movement and, importantly, invited other marginalised groups into the fold.

In this regard, Haraldsdóttir (2022), a former member of Parliament, recounted how as a woman with disabilities and experiences of violence that differed from those of able-bodied women, she was rebuked for sharing her story in the group of women in politics and was reminded that the focus should only be on gender. She described how she only felt that she belonged to the movement when women of foreign origin stepped forward. Her experience revealed how a narrow focus on gender provided a limited picture. A case in point is how an activist group for cis and trans women with disabilities and for non-binary people, Tabú, felt the need to call for further MeToo stories as some important intersections were missing (Tabú skapar vettvang fyrir #MeToo frásagnir, 2022). Those stories have not yet been published. This is in line with Hemmings’ (2018) observation that we need to go beyond the binary conceptualisations of violence that only happens to cis women. The voices that need to be part of the larger choir are thus not yet all in place. Their absence shows that forming a polyphonous feminist resistance is an ongoing process.

Hopeful imaginings

MeToo in Iceland invited women to collectively voice their experiences in a greater feminist polyphonic framed by a shared feeling of unease and disquiet. In this sense, the testimonies moved difficult experiences from the private (and hidden) to the public realm, not just at an individual level but as part of a collective snap. A pulsating mass of stories were aligned like pearls on a string, and demanded to be heard and acknowledged. Despite different textures of the testimonies, they were narrated so that the participants could face the same way – forward to change the future. The testimonies from women of foreign origin were particularly important as they moved the campaign from the politics of the middle class and managed to highlight the patriarchal (and other oppressive) structures’ grip on the whole society. As is evident in the connections between women in politics and women of foreign origin, this is an example of feminist solidarity where ‘beside becomes alongside, where one side is not “against” the other’ (Ahmed, 2006: 169). These connections play an important part in creating hopeful imaginings (hooks, 1991) and aspirations for feminist movements that are more intersectional and not dominated by privileged women.

It is worth considering the movement’s effects, both on the individuals who stepped forward on behalf of the groups and on social structures. The young politician and top girl Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir who relayed her experiences in the early days of the MeToo movement in Iceland later served as the Minister of Justice. Her participation in MeToo did not make her position ‘weaker’; in fact, there are signs that her participation in the movement strengthened her resolve to use her position to bring forward legislation that would improve women’s legal positions as victims of gender-based violence (Ákvæði um umsáturseinelti orðið að lögum, 2021; Frumvarp um kynferðislega friðhelgi orðið að lögum, 2021). However, supporting feminist movements can be complex, and recently, Sigurbjörnsdóttir liked a Facebook post from one of the perpetrators in Vítalía Lazareva’s case, where he declared his innocence (Segir samkennd með Loga Bergmann ekki fela í sér afstöðu né vantrú á frásagnir þolenda, 2022), thus realigning herself with the patriarchal world order and the neoliberal ethos. Latinovic, one of the main spokeswomen for ‘women of foreign origin’, was the first immigrant to be elected the president of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association, which was established in 1907 and is a well-respected and very vocal feminist organisation in Iceland (Hvað gerum við?, n.d.). She is thus now a spokesperson, not just for women of foreign origin but for all women in Iceland.

If women manage to maintain the affective dimensions of the movement, MeToo could lead to structural changes. In this regard, it was refreshing to see how feminists in Iceland created their own platforms on social media such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and podcasts, and added an extra layer to existing mainstream media. There was a sense of urgency in the way that they used these venues as feminist counter publics where they unapologetically presented their stories and felt able to name and shame perpetrators, including the well-known men in Vítalía Lazareva’s case. These feminists have experienced considerable resistance (Jónsson, 2021) but would not have been able to take up these speaking positions without the collective effort of MeToo.

The process of change does not only revolve around gender, as it did in the first part of MeToo, but also around the many structures of inequality in Iceland, which shape experiences of sexual violence, as became apparent in the testimonies shared by women of foreign origin. However, in light of recent anti trans discourses in Iceland (Hlynsdóttir, 2023) more emphasis needs to be placed on subjects outside ‘the heteronormative authority’ (Hemmings, 2018: 972).

In no uncertain terms, MeToo raised public awareness of sexual violations and gender-based violence and is a constant cultural reference point. MeToo also showed that the feminist movement can make room for different groups and concerns and, can only be effective if it does. The connections drawn across different groups during the MeToo movement changed and deepened the understanding of sexual violations in Icelandic society. As Probyn (1993) points out, ‘without her I am nothing’ (p. 138). Indeed, this is the core of feminist solidarity.