The Me Too movement is a remarkable moment in history as survivors of sexual harassment and violence came forward to share their experiences waking up our collective conscience to the alarmingly normalized sexual exploitation of gender minorities. The movement empowered women to stand together in an effort to amplify the voices of those denied justice. The power of hashtag activism on digital media was channelized to send a strong message to not only sexual predators who committed outrageous acts with impunity but also to everyone with a sweep-under-the-rug attitude when it came to such offences.
The ‘Me Too’ hashtag came into being as Alyssa Milano, American actor-producer, called upon women in her tweet to write “me too” if they were ever subjected to sexual assault or harassment. Her tweet was inspired by the usage of the phrase by civil rights activist Tarana Burke in 2006 when she started survivor empowerment programs including awareness creation about the pandemic nature of sexual abuse. Hundreds of thousands of women posted on social media using #MeToo to tell stories of ill-treatment and injustice they had to endure in different stages of their lives. The hashtag came to be used in English, Spanish, Somali, Afrikaans (Anderson and Toor, 2018), Chinese, Japanese and so on. From teenagers to mature citizens, women from across the world irrespective of race or creed found the vent to their pent-up agony as the movement saw scores of women and gender minorities breaking the silence on their harrowing experiences.
The Me Too movement did not just show the magnitude of this problem crippling humanity like Milano’s tweet hoped for; it led survivors to speak out without being afraid to name their abusers in public posts. It signalled a progressive shift from sexualizing and blaming survivors to solidarity with gender and sexual minorities who suffered, and continues to, in a heteronormative patriarchal society. The movement also shed light on the prevalence of rape culture in our societies and its institutions. Rape culture or normalization of sexual violence against women and gender minorities is perpetuated through everyday speech and actions like sexist cussing, stereotyping, excusing misogyny, the glorification of sexual advances, objectification and policing of women’s bodies, eve-teasing, intimidation through sexual assault threats etc. One of the most crucial achievements of the movement was to stimulate conversation on the idea of consent. Sexual assault cases are often denied justice on the claim that the victim consented to what was happening. There was little discussion in the public sphere on what consensual sexual/intimate act would entail before the movement took its course. The advances of men on the premise of assumed consent finally came to be questioned at a global scale. The movement reinforced the importance of seeking consent for any intimate act and paved the way for the discussion on boundaries between what is deemed as appropriate and inappropriate.
The Me Too movement is more than just manifestation of digital feminism or assertions of the exploited through technological mediation. The movement spilled over from the digital to the physical spaces when it led to the dismissal of male employers and employees from jobs across different walks of life owing to their unjustifiable violence -sexual/physical and/or emotional, against their female co-workers. It thereby exemplifies the blurring boundaries between the digital and the real in networked societies. The movement did not represent the experiences of a substantial proportion of women who do not enjoy access to digital spaces. However, the movement showed that digital environments can be emancipatory even though they are far from perfect- perhaps a consequence of the fourth wave of feminism. Because the virtual spaces visibilized the narrative of the women, compared to conventional mass media often hegemonized by the men, it sent the larger message that an unjust status quo could be shaken and men in positions of power could be held accountable for their unscrupulous behaviour.
The Me Too movement urged social institutions complicit in gender exploitation and oppression to take up the responsibility of maintaining safe working environments to deter crimes against gender minorities. It also enabled us to reflect on why such assaults were widely prevalent. Workplaces with toxic work culture, sexist practices, unbalanced sex ratio, unequal pay, lack of maternity support, lack of accountability, lack of women and gender minorities in leadership positions all contribute in different ways to an unsafe workplace. But women do not just encounter sexual abuse in places of work and Me Too brought this harsh truth to people’s smartphones and computers to be acknowledged and pondered over. The harassment of women happening in their own supposedly safe homes are instances kept under wraps leading to years, or sometimes a lifetime, of abuse with no hope for justice. This is because such crimes are committed by family members and its reporting would jeopardize the institution of family considered sacrosanct in countries like India. The Me Too movement allowed women to speak up, engendering solidarity to not only bring attention to an abhorrent social evil, but also to overcome what they went through. As Tarana Burke rightly puts it, the movement is not about curating trauma but about “sharing peoples’ stories of healing” (Harris, 2018).
References
- Harris, A. (2018). She Founded Me Too. Now She Wants to Move Past the Trauma.. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/arts/tarana-burke-metoo-anniversary.html [Accessed 26 Jan. 2020].
- Anderson, M., and Toor, S. (2018). How social media users have discussed sexual harassment since #MeToo went viral. [online] Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/11/how-social-media-users-have-discussed-sexual-harassment-since-metoo-went-viral/ [Accessed 26 Jan. 2020].
