“I Didn't Ask for It”

In this chapter, Ana Maskalan investigates the online initiative “I Didn’t Ask for It” (#nisamtrazila) that was started in 2021 by a Serbian actress, and which rocked the five former Yugoslavian countries as thousands of women reported the various forms of sexual abuse to which they had been exposed during their childhood, education, and employment, oftentimes by person(s) they knew and looked up to. Maskalan situates the initiative in its social and political context, namely: the complex permeation of socialist attitudes to women’s rights and sexual violence; the unresolved traumas of mass wartime rapes; and the resurgence of nationalism and the concomitant experience of Balkan masculinity as being under threat. Maskalan first shows how the sexual violence suffered by the women is part of processes of othering as described by Beauvoir. Furthermore, following Beauvoir’s argument that communist reform is insufficient to improve women’s situation, Maskalan argues how the proclaimed gender equality under Tito obscured the enduring oppression of women. After analyzing the women’s testimonies and their dismissal in terms of epistemic injustice, Maskalan concludes with the backlash against “I Didn’t Ask for It.” The ambivalence that is expressed towards women who are in the public eye—such as actresses—is, according to her, described by Beauvoir’s myth of the eternal feminine.