#MeToo as a variegated phenomenon against men’s violences and violations: Implications for men and masculinities

#MeToo has also become a long-term, complex, expanding, transnational, and variegated phenomenon, metaphorically marked by different colours that stem from men’s violences and abuse. To speak of variegation in this way is to seek to address the dynamic picture across political and spatial shifts, movements, and interpretations rather than talking only of diversity or multiplicity. The chapter focuses, first, on what appears distinctive about #MeToo, by way of the metaphor of variegation, in terms of: cyberpolitics, online-/offline; celebrities and the significance of workplaces; the relations of individuals and collectivities; memory, forgetting and surprise; and shifts across sexual harassment, sexual violence, violences. The latter part of the chapter considers the implications of such variegation are for critical analysis, politics, policy and practice of men and masculinities, specifically in terms of: absence-presence; and causes-positionings-responses, that is, the differing positionings of men and masculinities before, during and after violences and abuse, in relation to #MeToo — before concluding comments on changing men and masculinities.