Special Section : Speaking Freely and Freedom of Speech Research Addressing Sexual Violence at Ontario Universities in the Context of Rising Anti Feminist Backlash

In  this  paper,  I  argue  that  anti­feminist backlash  at  Canadian  universities  is  fuelled  by,  and has  a  significant  impact  on,  anti­violence  efforts  on campus and, in particular, whether and how they en­ gage with male students and normative constructions of masculinity.


Introduction
Over the past decade, sexual violence has become the subject of heightened public attention and calls for action in Canada and beyond, as evidenced by the popularity of #MeToo (Bogen et al. 2019) and the response to high profile cases such as Jian Ghomeshi (D. . is momentum has been partic ularly visible at Canadian universities and, in the context of ongoing student activism, five provinces have recently passed legislation mandating the cre ation of sexual violence policies and expanded insti tutional response mechanisms. During the same time period, there has been a rise in antifeminist and so called "altright" backlash that also has a growing presence on Canadian campuses. Antifeminist back lash exists on a spectrum and ranges from threats of violence against feminists (Hopper 2015) and highly visible examples, such as university professor Jordan Peterson's characterization of Women's Studies as an "indoctrination cult" (CBC Radio 2017, para. 8), to more subtle resistance in everyday academic settings that serves to maintain existing institutional inequit ies. In this paper, I argue that antifeminist backlash is not simply part of the context in which contem porary antiviolence activism is unfolding in Canada but rather that it is fuelled by, and has a significant impact on, antiviolence efforts on campus, and, in particular, whether and how they engage with male students and normative constructions of masculinity. In other words, the threat of backlash shapes what can be said and done about the gendered nature of sexual violence perpetration at Canadian universities.
to the perception that specific feminist efforts are threatening the status quo (Faludi 2006). In this pa per, I argue that contemporary antifeminist backlash conforms to this definition to the extent that it re sponds, at least in part, to the perceived success of feminist activism in raising public awareness and passing provincial legislation on the issue of campus sexual violence. Sarah BanetWeiser (2018) claims that while antifeminist backlash is a reactive response to feminism, it is not linear or unidirectional. Instead, she conceptualizes this backlash as a form of popular misogyny, which she defines as a normative social and political structure that is networked across multiple sites and is in a constant dynamic relationship with feminism. According to BanetWeiser (2018), both feminism and misogyny are continually reconfigured through this relationship. is paper explores this re lationship with respect to efforts to address sexual vi olence on campus.
While there are ideological differences among anti feminist groups, they are generally united by a sense of aggrieved entitlement rooted in the perception that feminist gains have eroded white male privilege (Ging 2019). ese groups include Men's Rights Activists (MRAs), who have taken up a variety of issues, in cluding divorce law, child custody, men's mental health, and domestic violence, and posit the suppres sion of feminism and revalorization of normative con structions of masculinity as the solution to what they perceive to be a "crisis of masculinity" (Blais and DupuisDéri 2012). By contrast, involuntary celib ates, commonly known as "incels," are more con cerned with violent retribution than with the recuperation of traditional masculine norms. Al though incels often identify with subordinated "beta" masculinities and strategically distance themselves from dominant "alpha" masculinity, which they asso ciate with sexual success, they simultaneously main tain hierarchies of power through their violence (Ging 2019).
Rather than framing MRAs and incels as anomalous "fringe" movements, they must be understood as ex isting on a spectrum with more subtle mainstream ex pressions of popular misogyny (BanetWeiser 2018; Dragiewicz and Mann 2016). Michael Messner (2016, 16) points to the emergence of a more insidi ous version of antifeminism that is grounded in neo liberalism and maintains male privilege by "skirt [ing] analysis of structural inequalities in favor of a com monsense celebration of individual choice for women and men." Neoliberal antifeminism tends to be masked in depoliticized equality rhetoric and is the version that is most likely to resonate with educated, middleclass, white men and influence policy (Mess ner 2016). As BanetWeiser (2018, 33) points out, be cause "the legacy of patriarchy legitimates misogynistic arguments as common sense," they can be converted into policy and legal discourse "with terrible effi ciency." Examples of this version of antifeminism abound, ranging from opinion columns in main stream Canadian media (i.e. Kay 2014; Wente 2019a) to public policy, as illustrated by the Harper govern ment's restructuring of Status of Women Canada and the Family Violence Initiative (Mann 2016). As I will demonstrate in this paper, neoliberal antifeminism influences Canadian universities' responses to sexual violence in ways that serve to maintain existing insti tutional power arrangements.
Antifeminist backlash intersects with white suprem acy, heteronormativity, and other systems of oppres sion to the extent that it has been called a "gateway drug to the altright" (Futrelle 2017, para.7). e term "altright" refers to those who ascribe to a variety of nationalist, conservative, and farright ideologies and became popularized as a descriptor for a faction of Trump supporters (Perry, Mirrlees, and Scrivens 2018). While there are notable exceptions, the major ity of MRAs and incels are generally understood to be white, heterosexual, cisgender men and, as such, their entitlement to power and sex is framed as emerging from normative constructions of white masculinity (Marwick and Caplan 2018). Racism is rampant in these communities; for example, in the manifesto re leased prior to his shooting rampage in Isla Vista, California, Elliot Rodger complains about Black, Mexican, and Asian men who date white women and argues that he "deserves it more" as someone who is "half white" and "descended from British aristo cracy" (as quoted in Paradkar 2018, para. 10). ese intersections also shape the impact of this backlash; as the Twitter attack on comedian Leslie Jones (Madden et al. 2018) illustrates, women of colour often experi ence specific racist and misogynist backlash. Further, when backlash informs policy, marginalized women and trans folks generally bear the brunt of the impact (Faludi et al. 2020). As such, it is important to analyze antifeminist backlash from an intersectional perspect ive.
Canadian universities are not immune to antifeminist and altright backlash. In the remainder of this paper, I examine the specific ways in which backlash is circu lating on campus, as well as how it has been fuelled by recent efforts to address sexual violence. I also delin eate its impact on antiviolence efforts, ranging from threats and violence against individual activists to how it affects policy and prevention efforts. I conclude that this backlash shapes what can be said and done about sexual violence on university campuses, and in partic ular, about its gendered nature, in ways that may ulti mately impact the potential effectiveness of antiviolence efforts.

Methods
is paper draws on the findings of a qualitative study that I conducted between 2018 and 2019, which analyzed how Ontario universities have responded to sexual violence through the theoretical and methodo logical framework of intersectionality (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016;ornton Dill and Kohlman 2012). Under the leadership of the previous Liberal govern ment, Ontario became the first Canadian province to pass legislation on campus sexual violence in 2016. is legislation requires postsecondary institutions to develop sexual violence policies and, as such, I con ducted a discourse analysis of these policies at all of the public universities in Ontario. is analysis ap proached the policies as sites where "truths" about sexual violence-how it is defined, whose experiences are valued and in what ways-are (re)produced (Strega 2005).
To better understand how these policies translate into practice, I conducted semistructured interviews with 31 stakeholders from three Ontario universities that I selected as case studies. e selected institutions are all located in urban areas in different geographic regions of Ontario. Two of the institutions are large, while the other is mediumsized. e stakeholders that I inter viewed included student activists, faculty and staff in volved in antiviolence efforts on campus, and members of community organizations whose antivi olence work impacts the selected universities.
My recruitment strategy was informed by the desire to centre the voices of those who are typically marginal ized in mainstream research and public debates about campus sexual violence. While I did not collect demo graphic data, many of my participants addressed as pects of their identities during our interviews. Of the 31 participants, 7 identified as male; at least 3 identi fied as Indigenous or Métis; at least 6 identified as Black; at least 10 identified as survivors of sexual viol ence; and at least 8 identified as lesbian, gay, or queer. As the following discussion of my research findings demonstrates, their experiences with antiviolence efforts and antifeminist backlash underscore the im portance of analyzing these topics through an inter sectional perspective.

How Backlash Responds to AntiViolence Efforts
In the context of ongoing student activism, heightened public attention, and the recent provincial legislation directing Canadian universities to develop specific sexual violence policies, antifeminist backlash appears in a few different but interrelated forms, in cluding the characterization of this heightened atten tion as a "moral panic." For example, Margaret Wente (2019b, para. 12) mobilizes a sense of moral panic to argue that the problem of sexual violence is being overstated "by lumping together genuine assault with trivial misbehavior." Wente's argument is certainly not new and echoes socalled "postfeminist" Katie Roi phe's (1994) earlier assertions that feminist research exaggerates the prevalence of sexual violence by defin ing rape and sexual harassment too broadly. Similarly, Laura Kipnis (2017) characterizes campus antiviol ence efforts as a moral panic that threatens to regulate sexuality and reproduce patriarchal notions of femin inity as vulnerability. However, these arguments prob lematically assume that there is a consensus on the nature and scope of sexual violence, and that current remedies are not only adequate but excessive (N. Phil lips 2017). Sara Ahmed (2015, para. 49) cautions against framing student allegations of sexual violence against staff and faculty as a moral panic, as it "al low[s] a critique of power to be reframed (and dis missed) as an imposition of moral norms" and therefore risks reproducing dominant structures of power and the normalization of sexual harassment within academia.
Related to the notion that the prevalence of sexual vi olence is overstated is the argument that feminists have created an environment that encourages false re porting (Lonergan 2018). Lise Gotell and Emily Dut ton (2016) argue that antifeminist groups have strategically mobilized this argument to attract new members by capitalizing on young men's fear of being falsely accused. For example, in 2013, Men's Rights Edmonton launched the Don't Be at Girl campaign in response to the Don't Be at Guy antirape cam paign, which was popular on campuses across Canada. e countercampaign featured posters un dermining the credibility of sexual assault allegations with statements such as "just because you regret a onenight stand, doesn't mean it wasn't consensu al" (as quoted in Gotell and Dutton 2016, 67). is discourse is also visible in antifeminist threats posted online in September 2015, which included: "next week when a feminist at the University of Toronto tries to ruin your life with false sex rape allegations, rent a gun from a gang and start firing bullets into these feminists at your nearest Women's Studies classroom" (as quoted in Hopper 2015, para. 8). Al though the false reporting discourse may succeed in mobilizing MRAs, it ignores the overwhelming evid ence that sexual assault is grossly underreported (Con roy and Cotter 2017) and is more likely to be deemed "unfounded" by police than other crimes (Doolittle 2017).
Antifeminist backlash also manifests in the argument that free speech is under threat on Canadian cam puses. is argument is premised on the notion that in the era of "political correctness," controversial per spectives, particularly farright perspectives, are being censored by feminists and socalled "social justice war riors" (Pang 2017). In the Canadian context, Uni versity of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson is one of the most vocal proponents of the view that free speech is under threat. Peterson became (in)famous for ar guing that being asked to use genderneutral pro nouns and protections against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression constitute threats to his free speech (Pang 2017). In a New York Times interview, Peterson reportedly questioned the existence of patriarchy and suggested that existing hierarchies are the natural result of differing levels of competence (Bowles 2018, para. 5). He has referred to Women's Studies, Ethnic Studies, Sociology, An thropology, English Literature, and Education as "in doctrination cults" (CBC Radio 2017, para. 8) that are invested in producing "the next generation of pathetic whining radicals" (Pang 2017, para. 22). He also discussed plans to create a website cataloguing all "postmodern neoMarxist cult classes" (CBC Radio 2017, para. 8) to discourage enrollment, which is fairly hypocritical for someone so concerned with free speech. e characterization of feminists and student antiviolence activists as overly sensitive and censori ous is a means by which their claims are dismissed, and existing institutional inequities are maintained (Ahmed 2015).
Antifeminist and altright groups have deployed free speech arguments to legitimize their presence on cam pus. For example, in 2016, the Men's Issues Awareness Society (MIAS) at Ryerson University filed a joint lawsuit with two antiabortion groups against the stu dent union for allegedly discriminating against their right to free speech after they were denied official stu dent group status (Kivanc 2016). e Canadian Asso ciation for Equality (CAFE), a wellknown men's rights group, supported MIAS members in launching their lawsuit (Kivanc 2016). While the lawsuit was dismissed in early 2018, the MIAS founder warned that the verdict would not succeed in "silenc [ing] men" and that "it's going to create even more people who are willing to fight for these causes and they're going to be angrier than I am, so be prepared" (as quoted in Binning 2018, para. 7).
Studentled free speech clubs have also emerged at Canadian universities. While they tend to frame their mission in politically neutral terms, this framing is quickly betrayed by their choice of invited speakers. For example, the Students in Support of Free Speech (SSFS) group at the University of Toronto has hosted rightwing speakers including Peterson, Lauren Southern, Ezra Levant, and Ben Shapiro (Pang 2017). ey also held a rally in support of members of the white nationalist Proud Boys, which was attended by Paul Fromm, the director of the Council of Conser vative Citizens, a white supremacist group with ties to the Ku Klux Klan (Pang 2017). ese incidents must be contextualized within broader white nationalism at Canadian universities. In the wake of Trump's elec tion, posters appeared on campuses nationwide bear ing statements such as "it's only racist when white people do it" and "tired of antiwhite propaganda? It's time to MAKE CANADA GREAT AGAIN!" (as quoted in Perry, Mirrlees, and Scrivens 2018, 59). As these examples demonstrate, the argument that free speech is under attack on campus is inherently linked to the same sense of aggrieved white masculine enti tlement that animates antifeminist backlash.
By contrast, there are serious limits imposed on what can be said about sexual violence at Canadian uni versities. For example, Clea Schmidt, an Education professor at the University of Manitoba, reported fa cing increasing pressure to resign after she critiqued the University administration's handling of sexual vi olence cases, including her own substantiated com plaint of sexual harassment against a colleague (BotelhoUrbanski 2019). By drawing attention to the issue of campus sexual violence, Schmidt might thus be described as an "institutional killjoy," who "poses a problem because she keeps exposing a prob lem" (Ahmed 2017, 99). Meanwhile, highprofile fac ulty members may be protected from sexual assault allegations based their perceived value to the institu tion as "the patriarchal impulse to shield privileged men is intensified by the fact that the reputation of the perpetrator operates as a proxy for that of the uni versity" (Phipps 2020, 234). For example, some Cana dian universities have signed nondisclosure agreements as part of their settlements with faculty who perpetrate sexual violence to avoid long arbitra tion processes. ese agreements often prevent surviv ors from knowing the results of the investigation and allow the offending professor to seek employment at other institutions without disclosing this history (Ward and Gollom 2018). Workplace health and safety regulations may also limit institutions' ability to reveal information about complaints against faculty and staff, including the fact that they have been named in a formal complaint (Jones 2018).
Some institutions' sexual violence policies place re strictions on survivors' ability to discuss their com plaints, which have been described as "gag orders" (Jones 2018, para. 14). While the policies also typically include provisions that prohibit retaliation, one of my research participants described experiencing "major bullying" after her complaint against a class mate was dismissed: "I have heard things behind my back: 'oh, we don't want to be in a group with her be cause […] this happened.' I get looks. I'm the girl who cried wolf " (020). As a result, she said that she felt like she had no choice but to switch to a different major. Further, there is a risk that those who file com plaints will be sued for defamation (Kingkade 2017). For example, after he was fired by the University of British Columbia, Steven Galloway filed defamation lawsuits against a former student who accused him of sexual assault and over 20 others who are alleged to have repeated the accusations (Lederman 2020). Un surprisingly, these issues have not been taken up by the supposedly politically neutral campus free speech advocates.

How Responses to Campus Sexual Violence are Shaped by Backlash
While it may be tempting to dismiss expressions of antifeminism on campus as fringe concerns, it is im portant to recognize their ability to influence how universities are responding to sexual violence. At the level of policymaking, debates about due process and the rights of accused students, which are legitimate concerns, can become a vehicle to advance antifemin ist interests. In the United States, Education Secretary Betsy Devos invited MRA groups, including the Na tional Coalition for Men, who have been accused of publishing the names and photos of sexual assault sur vivors and of promoting misogynistic violence (Kreighbaum 2017;Scheinman 2017), to participate in a summit on campus sexual violence in 2017. Fol lowing the summit, the Trump administration intro duced new Title IX regulations that, among other things, encouraged postsecondary institutions to ad opt the higher "clear and convincing" standard of evidence and guaranteed the right of accused students to crossexamine their accusers (Green 2020). ese American debates have the potential to influence how Canadian institutions respond to sexual violence. I noted, for example, that some Ontario universities' policies avoid using the terms "victim" or "survivor," which is consistent with the critique that the use of these terms presupposes the guilt of the respondent (Kipnis 2017). ree Ontario universities included clauses stipulating that "vexatious" complaints or complaints made in "bad faith" can result in sanctions against the complainant. While such clauses are not unique to sexual violence policies, their inclusion has the effect of reproducing the fear of false reporting. Further, Ontario's Conservative Premier, Doug Ford, passed legislation shortly after taking office that re quires all postsecondary institutions to implement free speech policies and threatened to cut the funding of noncompliant institutions, which was widely inter preted as a gesture to appease his farright constituents (Jeffords 2018). ese examples clearly illustrate the potential for antifeminist backlash to inform policy. e neoliberal university is deeply invested in pre serving their public reputation as a means of securing scarce tuition dollars and research funding (Gray and Pin 2017). Allegations of sexual violence are therefore perceived as threats to the institution's reputation that must be carefully managed or silenced (Phipps 2020). Yet as institutions' sexual violence policies and re sponses are publicly ranked and evaluated in the me dia and by student activist organizations such as Our Turn (2017), they have become a significant measure of postsecondary institutions' performance. As such, "university branding becomes entangled with sexual assault prevention […] to further the public reputa tion of the university as proactive in enhancing stu dent safety […] as a component of institutional efforts to attract prospective students" (Gray and Pin 2017, 934). Postsecondary institutions must project the public image that they are committed to addressing sexual violence while simultaneously avoiding back lash and accusations of bias and infringement on free speech, particularly in Ontario.
My research suggests that some of the more subtle forms of backlash are present in institutional policy making processes, particularly with respect to whose voices and perspectives are represented. At two of the three institutions that I studied, participants described these process as being driven by administrative in terests, which caused tension among committee mem bers who questioned their priorities: "are you working to support survivors or are you here to support the university and worry about liability and tuition dol lars?" (018). One participant, who teaches in Gender Studies, felt that feminist faculty were excluded be cause "the university sees feminists on campus not ne cessarily as allies [but] more as people that they have to keep away" (029). Similarly, after being asked to join the policymaking committee at the third institu tion, a faculty member who researches campus sexual violence said that she felt "relieved because I know that at many universities, the people who actually had most expertise were not put on the commit tees" (025). Participants also raised concerns regarding the shallowness of consultations with students and community antiviolence organizations. Further, par ticipants at one institution said that their policymak ing committee was chaired by a "white male" administrator who exercised his privilege to silence other committee members: "it was a committee of strong women, strong voices, [and] sometimes those voices were not being heard, specifically racialized voices" (017). ese examples illustrate the ways that subtle forms of backlash serve to maintain existing in equities and silence those who are perceived to be in stitutional killjoys (Ahmed 2017).
Given these dynamics, it is unsurprising that my ana lysis of universities' sexual violence policies revealed a tendency to frame sexual violence as a depoliticized interpersonal issue. Of the 22 public universities in Ontario, 10 have policies that are completely identity neutral. is depoliticized framing may represent an attempt to expand the definition of sexual violence to include the experiences of those who do not conform to the "ideal" survivor, who is typically understood to be a white, middleclass, heterosexual, cisgender wo man (Richie 2000). Nevertheless, this framing fails to address the gendered nature of sexual violence, as well as how vulnerability to violence and access to support are shaped by its intersections with systems of oppres sion (Harris and Linder 2017). By contrast, the other universities' policies include references to intersection ality and name those who experience heightened vul nerability, which is significant. However, my findings suggest that these references to intersectionality rarely translate into practice in a way that meaningfully ad dresses the experiences of marginalized survivors. As such, I conclude that these references must be under stood as a reflection of the institutional incorporation of intersectionality rather than a genuine commitment to addressing the underlying power relations that give rise to sexual violence. Importantly, none of the policies explicitly address the fact that cisgender men perpetrate the overwhelming majority of sexual viol ence (Conroy and Cotter 2017) or how normative masculinities contribute to violence.
My research participants suggested that this depoliti cized framing may be motivated, at least in part, by a desire to avoid backlash. As one participant explained, if university responses to sexual violence speak to these more political aspects, […] the administration feel[s] like they are going to get a lot of complaints. ey are going to be in the media. ere's going to be a whole uproar about it because there are people who are very committed to upholding a cis, heterosexual, patriarchal structure. (031) Similarly, another participant said that the recent free speech legislation "shifted the culture on our campus away from intersectionality in the sense that […] it became this space that was so heavily focused on free dom of speech and not saying things that could kind of spark this contentious debate" (028), such as the confrontations that occurred at the University of Toronto in response to Peterson (Pang 2017). Adopt ing depoliticized antiviolence efforts may allow uni versities to avoid these heated debates and preserve their public reputation and image.
Beyond the content of these policies, my research sug gests that the desire to avoid backlash also informs ap proaches to sexual violence prevention. As one participant explained, when prevention efforts are ex plicitly linked to feminism, they risk being perceived as inherently "manbashing" (019). Similarly, another participant argued that "because these issues are so visible and so contentious and so divisive, there's a lot of hostility at times to the idea that 'oh great, here comes a feminist' and […] the notion of [the] 'social justice warrior'" (023). Again, this contributes to the implementation of depoliticized approaches.
Consent campaigns illustrate this depoliticized fram ing by (mis)representing sexual violence as an inter personal issue resulting from miscommunication and a lack of knowledge about consent (Beres 2018), which fails to acknowledge the power relations inher ent in sexual violence and, in so doing, resembles the insidious neoliberal version of antifeminism that Messner (2016) describes. Representing consent as a negotiation between equal individuals who have the capacity to "just say no" (or yes) and have their "no" respected (Burkett and Hamilton 2012) leaves white masculine sexual entitlement unaddressed. It also fails to account for how certain populations are construc ted as sexually available and always already consenting (Crenshaw 1991) while others are constructed as in herently threatening (Davis 1981) based on the inter sections of privilege and oppression. As one participant explained, "it's not so much that this per son didn't say no or that you thought that they had said yes or whatever, it's that in many cases people feel entitled to sex" (031). As this example illustrates, while depoliticized approaches may be less likely to at tract backlash, their potential impact may be limited if they fail to address the underlying social and structur al causes of sexual violence.
Despite the gendered nature of sexual violence perpet ration, few Canadian universities have implemented prevention efforts focused specifically on masculinit ies. When male students are included in prevention efforts, there is a tendency to make them palatable by framing male participants as "real" men, "good" men, or as protectors while those who perpetrate sexual vi olence are othered (Masters 2010;Scheel et al. 2001). For example, as one participant explained, "some ver sions of the bystander […] [are] about encouraging men to stand in their hero space with their capes and these poor women who can't do anything for them selves and who need them" (025).While this framing is often deployed as a strategy to encourage male par ticipation, it falls short of addressing the ways in which normative constructions of masculinity con tribute to sexual violence (Katz 2018). As such, one of my participants said: I want to see more initiatives targeting men […] [that] talk about how they are a part of problem, whether they are perpetrators or not and how they have this opportunity, possibly the most opportunity, in different situations to prevent it from happening […] ere is a lot value in them being uncomfortable and ac knowledging their complicity. (015) is argument is supported by research that suggests that prevention efforts that target men and boys are most effective when they challenge normative con structions of masculinity (Jewkes, Flood, and Lang 2015).

e Impact of AntiFeminist Backlash
While the examples discussed above illustrate how antifeminist backlash shapes responses to campus sexual violence in policy and in practice, it is equally important to recognize its impact on individual anti violence activists and practitioners. As one of my re search participants explained, I've never had death threats, but I would be ly ing to say that I'm not sometimes fearful of ex treme rightwing men's groups.
[…] ere sometimes is a real fear of being branded or be ing the target of hate because it's real and the more I do this work, the more I see how vulner able we are to that.
[…] I probably don't dwell in that space for too long because it would be paralyzing. (023) e fear of harassment compounds the emotional la bour inherent in campus antiviolence work, which tends to be performed by those who are already mar ginalized within academic institutions (Ahmed 2017).
Moreover, a fear of harassment is wellfounded (Wunker 2017). After Gotell publicly responded to Men's Rights Edmonton's Don't Be at Girl cam paign, they circulated a poster featuring an illustration of her face that read: "just because you're paid to de monize men doesn't mean rape is gendered. Don't be that bigot!" (Gotell and Dutton 2016, 68). In fall 2019, an instructor at the University of British Columbia, Marina Adshade, reported receiving threats of sexual violence after she tweeted allegations that several female students were drugged at a fraternity party and questioned whether fraternities should be permitted on campus (Pathak 2019). In 2014, a stu dent who was involved in opposing an event held by the Men's Issues Awareness Society at Queen's Uni versity was threatened and violently attacked outside her home (Canadian Press 2014). After protesting against Peterson during a rally held by SSFS at the University of Toronto, trans students reported that their personal information was published online and that they were subsequently subjected to harassment (Pang 2017). At the University of Ottawa, a student journalist faced threats of violence after exposing the Science Students Association's pub crawl, which al legedly awarded participants points for performing or al sex and eating doughnuts off of a judge's penis (Schnurr 2016). In response, racist, sexist, and Islamo phobic threats were posted to her social media ac counts, including: "I will be laughing when your father murders you in an honor killing. You terrorist breeder" and "don't spoil it for everyone else, you filthy f***ing sand******. I hope your imam rapes you" (Schnurr 2016, para. 7). ese examples demon strate not only the real and present threat faced by those working to address violence on campus, but also the importance of analyzing these threats from an in tersectional perspective.
While these examples of harassment were targeted to ward specific individuals, the impact of such backlash must be understood as an attempt to silence activists and discourage others from becoming involved in antiviolence efforts. is silencing directly contradicts antifeminist groups' claims of being invested in free speech. By exacerbating the emotional labour required to address sexual violence within the neoliberal insti tution, this backlash may also contribute to the high levels of burnout and job turnover that I have ob served among those working to facilitate prevention and support survivors. Ultimately, this turnover may impact the consistency of these efforts to prevent and respond to violence. However, as one of my research participants pointed out, the existence of this backlash can also be reframed as a sign of progress. As she ex plained, I would say that what we're doing is radical be cause most people would prefer that we just shut up and go away. In fact, the more traction we make in challenging social norms and get ting institutional responses and getting people fired and showing them that this behaviour is unacceptable and won't be tolerated, the more backlash there is. (023) Although it is unlikely to be of any consolation to those who are experiencing threats and harassment, the idea that backlash is an indicator of progress may serve as motivation to continue pushing to make these changes.

Conclusion
While this is by no means an exhaustive account of antifeminist backlash at Canadian universities, this paper begins to unpack the dynamic relationship between backlash and efforts to address sexual viol ence on campus. I have argued that heightened public awareness of campus sexual violence and the resulting legislation has fuelled antifeminist backlash, which is often disguised in the depoliticized rhetoric of due process and free speech. My research findings demon strate that this backlash is impacting what can be said and done about campus sexual violence and, in partic ular, about the gendered nature of perpetration and how normative constructions of masculinity contrib ute to violence.
My research focused specifically on how Ontario uni versities are responding to sexual violence and, as such, my findings are not necessarily representative of universities in other provinces. Similarly, my research focused on universities and did not examine responses to violence or the presence of antifeminist backlash at Canadian colleges. I am currently working to expand on these findings by researching antiviolence efforts explicitly targeted toward male students at Canadian universities, which, as I mentioned above, are relat ively uncommon. By interviewing the facilitators of these programs, as well as male students who have participated in them, I am hoping to better under stand how they engage with constructions of mas culinity and how this work is impacted by antifeminist backlash. Because this backlash is diffuse (BanetWeiser 2018) and often masked using depoliti cized rhetoric (Messner 2016), it can be difficult to identify. As such, I am also planning to undertake re search to map the scale and scope of this backlash at Canadian postsecondary institutions.
Ultimately, while the present moment must be char acterized as one of significant momentum toward ad dressing campus sexual violence, it must also be characterized as one of substantial antifeminist and altright backlash at Canadian universities. e over arching impact of this backlash can make any gains toward preventing or addressing violence on campus feel like a fragile victory. However, at a time when university community members who are racialized, Muslim, feminist, queer, and/or trans are being sub jected to harassment and violence, this backlash only increases the urgency of ensuring that responses to sexual violence are intersectional and address the un derlying social and structural roots of violence.