Paper short abstract:

This discussion piece explores unmutings within the #metoo movement, and tensions within anthropological spaces between (un)muting and insights gained from the #metoo movement.

Paper long abstract:

Edwin Ardener's 'Belief and the Problem of Women' suggested that women were a 'muted group' within most societies. While his concept of mutedness has since been applied to many other social identities, the #metoo movement offers a textbook case study for Ardener's concept of gender-based muting. This paper will explore two tensions in #metoo unmutings for anthropologists. Firstly, as Henrietta Moore articulated in her discussion of layers of viricentrism (in 'Feminism & Anthropology'), one of the ironies of Anthropology as a discipline is that we work within spaces where misogyny and viricentrism are rampant, while at the same time offering powerful tools for analysis, disruption and change. Secondly, while cultural relativism is supposedly foundational to our discipline, feminist anthropologists have often been slow to embrace insights offered by discourses of intersectionality, with anthropology often a particularly vulnerable space for women of colour (Behar pun intended).