Margaret Atwood, #BelieveWomen, and the Limits of Literary Criticism

Abstract

This article provides a rebuttal to a 2022 article “Margaret Atwood and Sexual Assault” published by Dr. Julie Rak in the journal Canadian Literature. Rak and others have taken Atwood to task for questioning the #BelieveWomen campaign that followed the #MeToo campaign, and for her role in the Steven Galloway affair, in which Atwood and others accused the University of British Columbia of mishandling accusations of sexual assault against a writer and professor. While others simply questioned Atwood’s feminism, Rak revisits Atwood’s past interviews, articles, essays and creative writing and finds that Atwood’s idea of feminism ignores the systemic role of patriarchy and overemphasizes the role of individual women in resisting male authority (and sexual assault). This article provides an alternate reading of Atwood’s work and raises questions about the role of academics in assessing literary work through the lens of ideology.