{"id":2537,"date":"2024-07-09T17:59:45","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T12:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/?page_id=2537"},"modified":"2024-07-09T18:16:34","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T12:46:34","slug":"me-too-by-nitya-pawar","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/me-too-by-nitya-pawar\/","title":{"rendered":"Me Too – By Nitya Pawar"},"content":{"rendered":"

In October 2017, a phrase called #MeToo buzzed around. Though the term was coined a\u00a0decade earlier by an activist Tarana Burke to sensitize the talks around sexual assault (1),\u00a0the term took over the internet recently in 2017. \u201c#MeToo posts blew up all over Twitter
\nas actor Alyssa Milano encouraged women to share their personal stories of sexual\u00a0harassment and more women accused US producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and\u00a0harassment (2).\u201d The hashtag got extremely viral this time, probably because many of the
\ncelebrities were endorsing it and posting stories with the hashtag. The campaign got a buzz\u00a0not only on twitter, but also on other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram\u00a0etc. The campaign was about women who have suffered sexual abuse would come out and
\npost on social media with this hashtag. The internet was flooded with posts like these. Not\u00a0only the celebrities, but normal people around you, were also found to be posting statuses\u00a0with this hashtag. \u201cTwitter reported that the hashtag was shared nearly a million times in\u00a048 hours. On Facebook, the comments and reactions totaled more than 12m in 24 hours\u00a0(2).\u201d<\/p>\n

While surfing the internet, I found two stories on a page called The Anonymous Writer on\u00a0Facebook which are mentioned as follows:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As I read these stories amongst other stories which were of the sexual abuse victims, I kept\u00a0wondering what about the voices that are left out of the larger narrative. This is what I plan\u00a0to look at in the article: The voices of the people who do not or can\u2019t be part of such hashtag
\nactivism. Is there a real connection to the mental health of the victims or the hashtag posts\u00a0are just for the sake of number display? One of the twitter uses also posted the following\u00a0in regard to the question:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How then do we understand the relation between the experience and the presence or\u00a0absence of a post about that experience? Those are few of the questions that I will be\u00a0dealing with in this article.<\/p>\n

There are varying opinions on the subject. One author mentions \u201cThe power of #MeToo,\u00a0though, is that it takes something that women had long kept quiet about and transforms it\u00a0into a movement. Unlike many kinds of social-media activism, it isn\u2019t a call to action or\u00a0the beginning of a campaign, culminating in a series of protests and speeches and events.\u00a0It\u2019s simply an attempt to get people to understand the prevalence of sexual harassment and\u00a0assault in society. To get women, and men, to raise their hands (4).\u201d Another thinker\u00a0mentions \u201cThe problem, really, with all of it is how violently present the victim is forced\u00a0to be in the narrative, and how utterly passive the perpetrator. The problem is not that\u00a0women have trouble considering themselves victims of sexual violence, but that men have\u00a0trouble considering themselves the aggressor (5).\u201d With these conflicting views, it becomes\u00a0even more important to study this process of hashtag activism.<\/p>\n

Hashtag activism does create a stir around things in digital media. It spreads awareness\u00a0about a cause. \u201cMichael Flood, in a particularly biting blog post titled \u201cIs Raising\u00a0Awareness Enough?\u201d, compares hashtag activism to taking part in a protest march. It\u2019s\u00a0an activity, organizations have been using for years to share with the world their\u00a0commitment to their cause \u2014 and make sure that governmental organizations know it, too\u00a0(6).\u201d \u201cCritics of digital activism refer to the trend as \u201cslacktivism\u201d or \u201cclicktivism\u201d arguing\u00a0that online support isn\u2019t backed by real-life actions. Howard refutes this claim, saying small\u00a0acts of support are just as important (7).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvgeny Morozov perfectly encapsulates the controversy in a Foreign Policy article:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Slacktivism\u2019 is the ideal type of activism for a lazy generation: why bother with sit-ins\u00a0and the risk of arrest, police brutality, or torture if one can be as loud campaigning in the\u00a0virtual space? Given the media\u2019s fixation on all things digital \u2014 from blogging to social\u00a0networking to Twitter \u2014 every click of your mouse is almost guaranteed to receive\u00a0immediate media attention, as long as it\u2019s geared towards the noble causes. That media\u00a0attention doesn\u2019t always translate into campaign effectiveness is only of secondary\u00a0importance (6).\u201d\u201d \u201cHoward says he believes that nothing will replace in-person protests or\u00a0demonstrations but digital activism is an effective way to get people engaged in a dialogue\u00a0about the issues. For many, hashtag activism is a good place to start (7).\u201d<\/p>\n

Hashtag activism, specially the #MeToo campaign comes up with its own complexities.\u00a0The campaign does spread an awareness about sexual abuse; it also makes the survivor feel\u00a0a certain kind of solidarity that there are people who share the similar kind of experience\u00a0and the survivor can maybe open up and talk to these other people. But as I have shown\u00a0earlier, what about the people who can\u2019t speak about it? Or the people who probably have\u00a0made peace with the incident? Do they need to necessarily be a part of the campaign? The\u00a0survivors don\u2019t owe their experience to a campaign. Simply asking women to write\u00a0#MeToo on social media removes the complexities from the problem. How is a person to\u00a0own their sexual abuse to so many people, if they have not even accepted it to themselves?\u00a0Thus, hashtag activism is very privileged way of protesting. It may provide people with\u00a0numbers, but it does not go into the details of the struggle or any way through which the
\npeople suffering from it can be helped.<\/p>\n

No everyone chooses to voice their opinion or share their experience with the world for\u00a0various reasons. There is a possibility that the people who do not speak online, are making\u00a0a difference in real life. \u201cWhat began, in that case, as a well-intentioned encouragement to\u00a0do away with personal shame around your diagnosis, transformed eventually into a slick\u00a0and meaningless catchphrase that puts the burden on the sufferers to heal themselves\u00a0without any resources (5).\u201d Hashtag activism does not take this into account.<\/p>\n

Thus, I would conclude by saying that, Hashtag activism is great to provide numbers and\u00a0support \u2018virtually\u2019, but it can\u2019t match up to the real protests and real warmth of listening to\u00a0the survivors\u2019 stories.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. https:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2017\/10\/17\/meet_tarana_burke_the_activist_who<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2017\/oct\/28\/metoo-hashtag-sexual-harassment-violence-challenge-campaign-women-men<\/p>\n

3. https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheAnonymousWriter\/<\/p>\n

4. https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/entertainment\/archive\/2017\/10\/the-movement-of-metoo\/542979\/<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/43akqp\/the-problem-with-the-metoo-campaign<\/p>\n

6. http:\/\/www.makeuseof.com\/tag\/hashtag-activism-powerful-pointless\/<\/p>\n

7. http:\/\/college.usatoday.com\/2015\/10\/26\/hashtag-activism\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In October 2017, a phrase called #MeToo buzzed around. Though the term was coined a\u00a0decade earlier by an activist Tarana Burke to sensitize the talks around sexual assault (1),\u00a0the term took over the internet recently in 2017. \u201c#MeToo posts blew up all over Twitter as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2537","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2537"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2537\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.iitgn.ac.in\/digitalstudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}