There was a seismic shift a few years ago beneath the feet of influential people that wielded their power in shameful ways. The rumbling began in 2006 when Tarana Burke founded, what she then called, the MeToo movement, which advocated for those suffering from the trauma of sexual violence and harassment, according to the New York Times.
A little over a decade later, actress Alyssa Milano took to Twitter. The tweet was purposefully succinct, no more than 90 characters of the 140 that, at the time, each user was given. She shared a screengrab of words in front of a plain, white background, stressing the gravity of an insidious societal problem.
Milano invited her millions of followers to reply to her message with the phrase “MeToo” if they had ever experienced sexual harassment or assault. Although no attribution was given at the time of the online boom, Burke’s original movement and purpose was reaching audiences all over the world.
According to the Pew Research Center, in the months that followed, an astounding 19 million tweets using the hashtag poured in.
“Especially, if we’re talking about anything that has to do with either sexual harassment or assault or anything like that, I think when that happens to people, they do very much feel like: ‘Oh, this is only happening to me,’” said Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Sabryna Cornish. “And all of a sudden, you have all of these people that are like, ‘Wait, this happened to me too.’”
Only days before Milano’s social media call to action in early October, Ashley Judd shared her own harrowing experience in a Beverly Hills hotel in 1997 with media giant Harvey Weinstein. A week later, Amazon producer Isa Hackett accused Roy Price, former president of Amazon Studios, of egregious and lewd comments and conduct, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Powerful men were suddenly and rapidly falling from grace, including actor Kevin Spacey and Republican senate hopeful Roy Moore. Shortly after Judd opened up about her experience in the New York Times, more women accused Weinstein and many others inside of the film industry of misconduct, pulling back the curtain on Hollywood’s sordid history.
Vox reported earlier this year that over 80 women shared their experiences of violence and harassment committed by Weinstein. The floodgates had been opened.
Along with celebrities and other Los Angeles bigwigs, the movement extended itself to every corner of the world where people voluntarily shared their own distinct stories. According to a Pew Research study, 14% of all of the tweets posted that included the hashtag MeToo recalled the user’s individual experiences.
“I think the fact that it got to be vague,” said Associate Professor of History Shereen Ilahi. “The fact that all you have to say is ‘MeToo;’ you don’t have to say what happened. That creates a sort of safety.”
MeToo shaped a moment in which there was undoubtedly strength in numbers, but on the world’s stage, there was still reasonable fear that even a million voices could be silenced by a dominant few.
“A lot of times, talking about (MeToo experiences), there are issues of shame,” said Ilahi. “You’re afraid that someone will attack you, especially a man, may attack you and say, ‘That’s not really harassment’ or ‘you’re misunderstanding’. Just not validating.”
In November 2017, according to the Chicago Tribune, actress Aurora Perrineau accused executive producer and writer Murray Miller, of the popular HBO show “Girls,” of raping her when she was a teenager back in 2012. Lena Dunham, the show’s star, immediately took to social media to defend Miller.
Dunham went on to say that Perrineau falsely reported the assault, emphasizing that cases like these were extremely rare.
The following year, Dunham wrote an article for the Hollywood Reporter, admitting to lying about her knowledge of the events of the night that Perrineau detailed, in order to protect Miller.
“There were some women who resisted,” said Ilahi. “And women have always sort of, historically, assisted the patriarchy or have been co-opted by the patriarchy.”
Of course, social change is complex, and progress is almost never linear, even when what is right and wrong is seemingly objectively defined. A study conducted by Pew Research in 2018 concluded that 47% of American women believed that the MeToo movement simply made it more difficult for men to navigate workplace relationships.
To people like Tiffany Talley, ‘20, president of the NCC feminist society, this way of thinking was unproductive, if not outright harmful.
“If men don’t even want to interact with women anymore, or whoever, just because they think they’re going to be accused of sexual harassment, then, to me, that means that they don’t have a good grasp on consent,” said Talley. “They don’t have a good grasp on boundaries.”
Talley saw this type of paranoia play out on her school’s campus, and she wondered how a movement with such a solid and pure purpose could be sorely misunderstood.
“Last term, I had a professor, like, put his hand on my shoulder, and he was like, ‘Oh! Can’t do that now,’” said Talley. “I feel like people have misconstrued (the movement), in a sense.”
Megan Kordik, ’23, also noticed the same behavior in her peers — all too cavalier and sometimes creepy.
“People thought they could do and say whatever they wanted,” said Kordik. “Saying: ‘Oh, it’s just a joke.’”
Kordik struggled to find the words to express how she felt when someone invaded her space — pushing her and poking her, like it was some sort of game. She realized that wasn’t something that she just had to accept or ignore, and she certainly didn’t have to be polite when someone was making her feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
“In high school, I had this one friend who was just super (handsy), and it was just weird,” said Kordik. “And it was everything that was happening online, I think, that allowed me to not be afraid and be like, ‘hey, stop it’ and stand up for myself.”
As MeToo unfolded, Ilahi noticed another stark difference in responses. The stories that made up the movement had been an unspoken secret among many women for years — an ancient and tiresome battle — but for some men who were reading women’s stories, this was new territory.
“I think it accomplished something really important in the beginning, which was to see just how pervasive it was,” said Ilahi. “Men were shocked, and women, generally speaking, were not.”
But there was also a generational gap in the way that people perceived the purpose of the movement. The same Pew study from 2018 found that women over the age of 65 were more likely to believe that communication in the workplace was made more complicated as a direct result of MeToo.
“There were women who were critical and skeptical,” said Ilahi. “I think it was older women that responded that way, and probably because they were further entrenched in a certain misogynistic way of thinking.”
Along with the dissonance among women of different ages, there was also a perceived lack of inclusivity within the movement. Milano’s initial tweet called on women specifically, but broader terminology needed to be used in order to reach all individuals that had experienced sexual harassment and abuse.
The Office for Victims of Crime estimate that 23% of men will endure some form of sexual violence in their lifetime. The Human Rights Campaign found that members of the LGBTQ community were more likely to be affected by violence, including sexual assault, than their non-LGBTQ-identifying peers.
“It was very she/her pronoun focused, first of all,” said Talley. “By not using the language that is inclusive, I think that made people that maybe don’t (identify) as female feel isolated or not part of the movement.”
Tarana Burke gave life to the MeToo movement 13 years ago to let the black and brown girls in the nonprofit she ran know that she heard them. In a story she penned for the Washington Post, Burke expressed her deep concern that those young girls, and others like them, may not know that the movement is for them, too.
In 2014, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that women of color are disproportionately affected by sexual violence. However, many of the voices at the center of the movement, like Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd, were white women.
“Real change happens when you are able to look someone in the eye and see that their experience is different from yours,” said Talley.
The point is that MeToo’s impact is powerful but probably incomplete. There’s more work to do, more stories to uncover and bring to the light — of marginalized folk whose voices were buried, as Burke openly feared.
There needs to be a more thorough understanding of what it means to build a safe space — in workplaces, in classrooms and on school campuses. Those safe spaces, when created, need to be totally inclusive for any progress to be made at all.
“I think it’s way too soon to really be able to think in terms of a legacy,” said Ilahi. “Because we don’t know what’s happened yet. But, of course, you’re talking to a historian, so, of course, I’m going to tell you it’s too soon.”
Ilahi’s knee-jerk reaction is to say that we have collectively not experienced the kind of growth that we should have two years beyond the MeToo moment.
“My first thought when I was thinking about legacy was, well, Brett Kavanaugh still got confirmed,” said Ilahi. “So, I don’t know — what did (MeToo) do?”
In 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee regarding her allegation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The hearing was exhaustive and emotional, and afterward, the country was split into two polarizing categories: those who believed Ford and those who did not.
A poll done in October 2018 by PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist found that 33% of American people believed Kavanaugh was innocent and should go on to be confirmed. Still, this was significantly lower than the 45% of Americans that trusted Ford’s testimony.
“So, my initial reaction is that it didn’t do nearly enough if it’s not making real change at that level,” said Ilahi. “Keep in mind, I’m coming off of the most recent season of ‘Handmaid’s Tale’, so it seems to me like this is a very real possibility if you stack the Supreme Court with people with certain ideologies.”
There was a big and important movement wherein people learned a lot about others and themselves and how we can all be a bit better, but the story doesn’t have to end there.
“What I’m saying on a very basic level is that real, social equality is still not there,” said Ilahi. “And I hope that this movement draws some attention to that and helps significantly move the needle on it.
