“If all the women (AND/OR men) who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too.” as a status, it might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”
Now that the #metoo campaign has lost its spot at the top of the trending Twitter topics, I decided to share my thoughts.
Let’s be blunt.
Have I been sexually harassed? Yes.
…by both men and women.
Have I been sexually assaulted? Yes.
Somehow I don’t feel outraged. I don’t know if it’s because living in anger is not the way I chose to cope with this reality of being a woman, or if it’s because I’ve grown numb to the perpetual / inundation of sexual slurs and looks from passersby that make your skin crawl. Either way, I too have been hiding behind a metaphorical hashtag for most of my life.
In what seems like a lifetime ago, I was in a relationship with a man who told me that “I was asking for it” because of the way I dressed when men looked at me a certain way while we were out in public. I didn’t realize that clothes could speak. Apparently I’ve been living in my own version of Beauty and the Beast where my clothes speak and beg men to look at me like I’m theirs for the taking. That relationship ended and it
We’ve spent way too long hiding behind hashtags. Now is the time to say no more. We will not hided in the shadows for fear of retribution.
What if we started approaching politicians and telling them that it will be their daughters #too. All of these women are finally standing up and acknowledging outloud what we’ve all been thinking for our entire lives – this is wrong.
A black woman named Tarana Burke is the original creator of the #MeToo campaign that has recently taken over social media.
Burke, founder of youth organization Just Be Inc., created the “Me Too” campaign in 2007 long before hashtags even existed. The 44-year-old told Ebony Magazine that she created the campaign as a grass-roots movement to reach sexual assault survivors in underprivileged communities.
“It wasn’t built to be a viral campaign or a hashtag that is here today and forgotten tomorrow,” Burke told Ebony on Monday. “It was a catchphrase to be used from survivor to survivor to let folks know that they were not alone and that a movement for radical healing was happening and possible.”
The campaign recently turned into a hashtag after actress Alyssa Milano wrote a call-out on Twitter asking followers to share their stories of sexual harassment and assault using the phrase “Me too.” While Milano did not state that she created the campaign, many media outlets credited the actress for originating the hashtag.
Burke told Ebony that it’s “powerful” to see the hashtag go viral. “What’s happening now is powerful,” she said. “And I salute it and the women who have disclosed but the power of using ‘me too’ has always been in the fact that it can be a conversation starter or the whole conversation ― but it was us talking to us.”
On Monday, Milano tweeted that she was “made aware of an earlier #MeToo movement” and linked to Burke’s story.
