LAWRENCE, Kan. — The #MeToo movement was created to help survivors of gender-based violence find solidarity, share their experiences and demand accountability. Yet a new study from the University of Kansas suggests that public conversations about the movement often shift away from prevention and social change toward punishment—sometimes treating imprisonment, economic deprivation and permanent exclusion from public life as the primary forms of justice.
The research examined how ordinary members of the public discussed the question of what should happen to prominent men accused of sexual misconduct. Meggie Mapes, an associate specialist in communication studies at the University of Kansas, and Daniel Chick of Western Kentucky University analyzed reader comments posted in response to a 2018 New York Times opinion article by writer Katie J.M. Baker. The article asked a question that became increasingly urgent as accusations involving high-profile men spread across entertainment, politics, media and business: “What do we do with these men?”
Rather than measuring public opinion through a survey or experiment, the researchers studied the language and arguments used in the online comments. Their approach focused on the “vernacular public,” a term used in communication research to describe everyday people participating in public discourse outside formal institutions. By examining recurring claims, moral judgments and proposed consequences, the researchers traced how punishment was framed as a common-sense response to gender-based harm.
The most frequent proposals involved criminal punishment, particularly imprisonment. Many commenters argued that men who committed gender-based violence should be removed from society and placed behind bars. Others went further, calling for the accused to lose their professional influence, wealth and access to positions of authority. Some explicitly suggested that perpetrators should be forced to live in poverty for the rest of their lives or be restricted to low-paying work.
Mapes said these comments reveal more than anger toward individual offenders. They also expose assumptions about poverty, employment and social status. When commenters describe poverty as an appropriate punishment, they may imply that economic hardship is something people choose or deserve. Similarly, the demand that an offender “take a job at the local Wal-Mart” can reinforce the idea that people working low-wage jobs have failed morally rather than facing structural barriers such as low wages, discrimination, limited education or inadequate social support.
The researchers connect this pattern to carceral feminism, a framework that treats the criminal legal system as a central solution to gender-based violence. In this model, safety and justice are pursued primarily through policing, prosecution, imprisonment and other forms of state control. Although criminal accountability can be important to survivors and communities, critics of carceral feminism argue that the approach may overlook the social conditions that make gender-based violence widespread, including unequal power relationships, institutional protection of abusers and cultural norms that normalize harassment.
The study also identified a second major theme: atonement. Many commenters did not argue only for confinement or material suffering. They said wrongdoers should acknowledge the harm, apologize publicly, educate themselves and help prevent similar violence. These demands suggest that some members of the public see accountability as a process that should include repair and participation in healing, rather than as punishment alone.
However, the researchers found that even calls for education and public apology were frequently embedded within a broader retributive framework. In other words, atonement was often presented as an additional requirement after punishment, not as an alternative pathway for addressing harm. This combination produced what the authors describe as “vernacular retributive rhetoric”: everyday public language that defines justice largely through deserved suffering, removal and deprivation.
The findings raise questions about what happens when punishment becomes the default way of discussing social problems. Imprisonment can isolate individuals, but it does not necessarily explain why violence occurs, prevent future abuse or transform institutions that enabled misconduct. The researchers also point to well-documented inequalities in the criminal legal system, where people from marginalized racial groups and lower socioeconomic backgrounds are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates. A justice model centered almost entirely on confinement may therefore reproduce some of the inequalities it claims to address.
Mapes said the online commenters did not identify themselves as carceral feminists, yet their arguments reflected many of the framework’s assumptions. She plans to continue studying how punishment is communicated in media and public narratives, including how young people understand discipline, justice and institutional responses to wrongdoing. The researchers argue that the popularity of punitive responses should not obscure other possibilities, such as survivor-centered support, prevention, institutional reform, restorative practices and efforts to change the social conditions that allow gender-based violence to persist.
Subject of Research: People
Article Title: #MeToo, carceral feminism, and vernacular retributive rhetoric
News Publication Date: 30-Jun-2026
Web References: University of Kansas; New York Times opinion article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/opinion/sunday/metoo-comebacks-charlie-rose.html
References: Critical Studies in Media Communication, DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2026.2688243
Keywords: #MeToo, gender-based violence, carceral feminism, punishment, criminalization, poverty, restorative justice, public discourse, media communication, vernacular public, sexual misconduct, social justice
