OPINION: What Does It Mean When We Say #MeToo?

Race, class, gender intersect to make some people more vulnerable to sexual assault

By Catherine Connell | Boston University

If your social media feeds look anything like mine, you haven’t been able to escape a barrage of “Me too” posts, pictures, and hashtags in recent days. Me too is a social media phenomenon, commonly attributed to actress Alyssa Milano, that asks women who have experienced sexual harassment and assault to use the phrase or hashtag to show the magnitude of sexual violence. As of October 15, Twitter documented nearly a million uses of Me too, while Facebook reports more than 45 percent of its two billion users have a friend who has posted a Me too status message.

Such stunningly high numbers still seem inadequate to capturing its prevalence in my own social networks: I would estimate that at the height of the meme’s popularity, 9 out of 10 posts in my Facebook feed were Me too declarations and/or commentary on the phenomenon. As a demonstration of the ubiquity of sexual violence, Me too seems to have been extraordinarily successful. Still, for a more well-rounded measure of its success, it’s worth paying attention not just to its frequency, but also to the meaning of the phrase in the larger context of contemporary protest movements.

As is often the case with social-media based activism, the campaign has been decontextualized by its rapid diffusion.

Many of those posting aren’t aware that the origins of the phrase are more than a decade old. The Me Too Movement started as a project specifically for young women of color, who are especially vulnerable to sexual violence. In 2006, activist Tarana Burke created the movement to empower young black and brown women who have endured such violence by showing them that they aren’t alone in their experiences. More recently, Burke broadened her focus beyond young cisgender women to explicitly include transgender and nonbinary young people as well.

Burke says she realized that such young people “are often left out of the conversations about survival and healing [and need] a place to process and find an entry point in the healing trajectory.” This same insight needs to be applied to the Me too meme, which assumes women as its only participants and may therefore feel exclusionary to cisgender and transgender men and to nonbinary people.

Transgender and nonbinary people experience sexual assault at a much higher rate than cisgender counterparts. Bringing that awareness to bear on the Me too campaign would be helpful for both nuancing and reinforcing the point that sexual harassment and assault are widespread social problems we must bring attention to.

Women of color like Burke have been the force behind a number of incredibly successful social media campaigns, including #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, #YouOKSis, #WhatWereYouWearing, and others, yet these origins are often ignored or forgotten when such hashtags go high-profile. Honoring these and other women of color in the anti-violence movement is essential, and not just out of respect for the innovative, brilliant, and hard-won contributions they have made; it’s also important because their experiences as women of color inform their activism and improve our understanding of how such violence operates.

Although sexual assault and harassment can be experienced by anyone, it is crucial that we acknowledge how race and class intersect with gender to make some populations more vulnerable than others. Moreover, resources for those who experience sexual violence can be more difficult to access for young, economically disadvantaged women of color; it’s not just that race and class shape the likelihood of sexual harassment and assault, it’s that they also create barriers for survivors working to recover from the trauma of such experiences.

Additionally, some social critics worry that the current iteration of Me too puts the onus on survivors to put that trauma on display, where it will be subject to public scrutiny and possibly to further intensification. The success of the campaign is, in some ways, its downfall: the more popular it gets, the more survivors of harassment and assault feel pressured to participate.

And to what end? To quote a tweet from journalist and activist Lindy West: “I wish women didn’t have to rip our pasts open & show you everything & let you ogle our pain for you to believe us about predation & trauma.” (West left Twitter in January after years of abuse on the platform, which underscores my point regarding the vulnerability survivors may experience via the Me too campaign.) As a result, some have suggested we turn the tables and ask that those who have perpetrated, or been complicit in, acts of sexual violence be the ones to out their history to their social media followers, rather than the other way around.

Of course, getting people to participate in that kind of an exercise is complicated not only by their fears of stigma and reprisal, but also by the fact that many perpetrators of sexual violence do not understand their actions as such.

Thankfully, many are working tirelessly to change that, including BU’s Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Center, which helps students, faculty, and staff better understand the contours of sexual violence and teaches bystanders to safely Step Up, Step In when they witness it. Still, as BU’s 2015 safety climate survey and this month’s Rally Against Sexual Harassment in Higher Education, held on the Metcalf Science Center Plaza, remind us, there is much more work to be done to eradicate sexual violence at BU.

My hope is that despite its limitations, the Me too campaign inspires us to unite and fight the problem of sexual harassment and sexual assault on our campus and beyond.

Catherine Connell, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program, can be reached at cati@bu.edu.

Originally published at www.bu.edu.

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