Bullying and sexual harassment:

a conceptual revision in the #MeToo era

Abstract

The problem with harassment and sexual harassment is marked by gender. The social movement in networks #MeToo has managed to overturn the public debate to practices of silencing and oppression of female whistleblowers in a relatively short time. However, it has also evidenced the lack of conceptual clarity on the terms bullying and harassment and how their relationship with structural forms of gender violence is understood. This article provides an overview of how the #MeToo movement originated and its implications for the feminist debate. Based on a review of the journalistic works that sparked the
movement and of the academic literature on sexual harassment and harassment, the paper 1) shows the multiple uses that are made of these terms, 2) examines the conceptual confusions inherent in terminology in different languages, 3) gives an account of how, from the eighties, a remarkable production of academic works dedicated to the subject began, driven by feminist reflection and the commitment to conceptualizing practices
that seek to keep women and feminized subjects in situations of subordination and 4) it reviews feminist positions that problematize the weight that sexuality has in discourses on violence against women.