This comparative study examines the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund initiative from the US and the #MeToo initiative from Denmark, discursively, to uncover differences between the two, and in the contexts, they were created. To do this, the project uses the principles of Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model – the text dimension, the discourse practice dimension, and the social practice dimension – in combination with multimodal analysis, intersection theory, and stereotypes on the male and female gender. This is done with a social constructivist ontological stance, and an interpretivist epistemological stance. In terms of structure, the project is focused on three primary points of analysis; the first was the text, examining the vocabulary, metaphors, and intertextuality, the second point on interdiscursivity, and the third on the social practices and contexts.
To sum up, in the depictions on almost all accounts analysed, the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund and the Danish #MeToo initiatives are different, if in varying degree. Beginning with gender portrayals, Time’s Up portrays women as being victims and survivors, while at the same time encouraging change in the current state women have in the workforce. The #MeToo website, however shows women as victims only. Both sites depict men as being the perpetrators, but the #MeToo initiative also blames the culture in Denmark. Looking at intersection, Time’s Up uses intersection, when discussing the higher risk some women face as a consequence of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, immigrant status etc., while #MeToo is not, however, very concerned with intersection.
These different areas of concern for Time’s Up and the #MeToo website, is a result of the different contexts, they were created in. The United States has a long history of race conflicts, and a current situation, where race is a heated topic as well, and in terms of the actor world, there have in the past few years been a strong focus on creating a diverse industry, making room for people of colour, women, disabled people, etc. Furthermore, the US actor world is for the most part a liberal world, which goes against the current administration of the country. As such, Time’s Up is also concerned with subjects (sexuality, gender, and sexual assault) that has been cause for debate during and since the 2016 election.
The Danish #MeToo was created with Danish actors in the publicising of it. Denmark has not in the same way as the US had many problems due to demography, which seen in the lack of focus on it. However, the same could be said of many of the other categories mentioned in the paragraphs above. Another reason for the lack of diversity on the #MeToo website, besides that of demography, could be that people of colour and immigrants in Denmark have a bad reputation in political discourse, and mentioning either of these topics could remove focus from the sexual violations that are the main issue of the #MeToo website. In addition to this, the binary depiction of gender and sexuality with #MeToo, especially, could be seen as an attempt to pre-empt any criticism, it could have received in including diversity more, because of the ambiguous news coverage of the #MeToo movement in general.