Bodies and sexual pleasures have always been entangled in public, moralizing discourses. #MeToo, in its articulation of the very real sexual harassment and violence that too often accompanies the pleasure of some at the expense of others, takes shape in and through an intensified and hypermediatized morality that reconfigures bodies and pleasures as matters of contract and law, appearing in the contemporary media landscape in language that speaks nothing of desire.
For these women, “free speech” had gone too far with #MeToo because its speech impinges on men’s “freedom” to make advances toward women, which they suggest is a man’s primordial right. In their “defence” of men and in the name of women’s pleasure, it was time, they claimed, for women to liberate “another speech” .
What should we understand from all this? We are bombarded with many statements about sex that are often contradictory or incommensurable. One side emphasizes the diverse “risks” and “dangers” that lie in wait; it gestures to the powers — both formal and informal — that should oversee and regulate the expression of sexuality. The other would revel in and celebrate sexual pleasure as such.