jezebel.com: In a Senate floor speech announcing her support for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Maine Republican Susan Collins applauded the “#MeToo movement” as “needed” and “long overdue.” She then proceeded to hand a lifetime appointment to a man accused of sexual assault and harassment by multiple women. According to Page Six, Jodie Foster was saved from a “#MeToo moment” by child stardom and a supportive mother. USA Today recently ran a series of tips to help small businesses avoid “Me Too-type incidents” in the workplace, and also found that everyone was talking about the “#MeToo moment” in the movie Eighth Grade.
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I’m really glad to see this interview. Partially because it turns a lot of feelings I was having about what I was seeing in the news into actual concrete thoughts and social analysis, but also because it’s a somewhat of a relief to, in a sense, go home to the founder of the movement. Reading this article, I was reminded about the social media movement that happened a few years back--”Yes All Women.” The backlash to that movement was a pretty rough; many men and women rejected the notion entirely. The Me Too hashtag as a social media thing has, as this article points out, flattened out the real issues, but it also seems to have more staying power. In terms of what Burke says about waiting for people to catch up with and understand what she and others are getting at, I think #MeToo is a step forward, and I think we’ll see another social media movement in another few years that is even more successful.
This article brings up a phenomena that explains the evolution of the Me Too movement and the seeming lack of affect that some many people speaking out has had. After reading the article, I am disappointed in the way in which society and the media has shaped the Me Too movement and essentially caused the risk of it being ineffective. I understand that specific instances of sexual violence are hard to talk about, especially on such a public format like the media, but it is disappointing that a movement that got off the ground with the help of so many brave survivors talking about the specifics of what happened to them, has dwindled down to being "Me too-ed". I agree with the article in that any talk about sexual violence is an improvement in our society, but it means that we will have to keep working to 'unmask' the victims and make them feel comfortable talking about something that is so vulnerable in its details.
I appreciate that this article exists, and reached out to Tarana Burke. It really is wonderful to consider what has happened in a year--"there’s been a great shift in the way we talk about sexual violence. And the fact that we talk about it at all. The conversation about sexual violence, in general, is expanding. We have never really had a national conversation about this. I think that’s probably the biggest change." I have had conversation with people I never expected to about sexual violence. I have been able to admit and come to terms with things that have happened to me, and for that, I am very grateful to this movement. But as she states in the next section of the interview, "on the flip side, there hasn’t been enough of the right kind of conversation, if you will. There hasn’t been enough conversation about the needs of survivors, of what people actually need. Solutions. It’s been mostly about perpetrators. That has been really difficult, I think." I really am tired about hearing about the monsters and scumbags. I don't want to read another think piece about the marketability of the Matts/Charlies/Harveys and what comes next for them. I think that the focus needs to be shifted, and we need to let go of these men and leave them to be only examples of terrible human beings. I'm glad she is thinking about how to move forward, and I am hopeful that a redshift in focus and coverage is coming to continue this very important work.
I'm so glad to read Tarana Burke's perspective on the issues that have come in the wake of the #MeToo, which the article is right to point out, stemmed from Burke's original Me Too movement, but was nowhere near the beginning (nor I hope the end) of her work. Several male celebrities have made comments or jokes about being afraid to date or interact with women now that the conversation about sexual violence is gaining some public traction. I believe this does two things, one, it trivializes the experiences women are referencing when they say "Me too". I believe it is so hard to comprehend that so many women in their lives have experienced real and traumatic sexual violence, that man assumes women who say "Me too" are referencing minor, casual interactions with men that they are misconstruing. The other thing is that it highlights how when talking about rape culture, we as a society always focus on what women can do to avoid being harassed/assaulted and not on how to teach men not to engage in toxic/violent treatment of women, so what these men are saying is that violence towards women has become so normalized that they don't know how to judge if their behavior towards a women is harassment or not, and therefore they can't trust themselves around women. Recognizing that that is what they are really saying is the first step, the second would be for those men to talk to the women in their lives about this issue openly and honestly and learn how to behave in respectful and non-threatening ways around women.
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