Abstract

At the helm of the re-election of a man whose first inauguration is often said to have ignited the Women’s March on D.C. in January 2017, it is all the more necessary to sustain Tarana Burke’s commitment to challenge the prevalence of workplace, gendered, and sexual violence. Women today still find it necessary to come forward and say, “Me Too”, though since TIME magazine’s 2017 Person of the Year article highlighting the Silence Breakers, the term is so often attached to the hashtag following Ashley Judd’s projection of the movement into the world of hashtag activism. 

My project looks specifically at the culmination of personal narratives of workplace sexual assault which led to a named, collective identity: The Silence Breakers. I also provide information on the foundation of the MeToo movement in 2006 and activist Tarana Burke’s lifelong work on behalf of girls and women of color affected by sexual violence. In doing so, I address modern contentions with the shift between Burke’s initial intention for the movement and its current conceptions as it has been made viral and taken on a new, virtual face.

Historiography Connections

Black Feminist Studies, Labor History, Sexual and Gendered Violence Studies, Digital Movements

Introduction

In the words of Tarana Burke, “How can we build a world where we don’t have to say ‘Me Too’?” The answer to her question seems, in both her mission statement for her “offline grassroots” movement [1] and its ongoing presence on social media: mobilization. In an attempt to summarize the function of hashtag #MeToo, which took the movement founded by Burke in 2006 to new heights, my research led me down a similar path no matter what emergence of activism or lashback I tracked. From Burke’s mission statement, to TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year article on The Silence Breakers [2], to critique–including a lashback from those who find themselves underrepresented by the movement–there is an overwhelming emphasis on community establishment, identity, and mobilization in an effort to combat sexual violence as well as the social and political parameters revolving the issue of gendered sexual violence and the treatment of its allegations.

The movement is notably reliant on narrative construction and the process of sharing those narratives. Following Judd’s tweet asking for other victims of sexual violence to come forward into the public, community environment of social media, the movement quickly garnered participation via those victims sharing their stories for others to read and likewise encourage an open conversation on sexual violence. There are a multitude of ways in which storytelling is used in a movement, but those most evident in the MeToo movement include: to recruit participants, sustain member commitment, and enlist support [3].

The #MeToo movement demonstrates the ways in which victims’ voices and lack of protections–whether it be in the social attitude around gendered violence and women’s identity, the male-centric, capitalist workplace and political structure, or social media’s lack of anonymity and privacy–in the shift into a digital world, shaping a collective narrative for those victims. Through the movement, victims of sexual violence have found new ways to think and invite discussion about not only how society heals from what has been done, but counteracts those systems which may allow for gender and sexual violence to necessitate a movement such as this one to begin with. Just as importantly, as it takes on new significance in its explicit presence in influential court cases, news articles, and even use by political figureheads, the shortcomings of the movement as it has changed to fit the political climate come to light in an effort to remain consistent in the intention to mobilize against structures which perpetuate the necessity of saying “Me Too”.

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1. NPR.org, “Tarana Burke: How Can We Build A World Where People Don’t Have To Say “Me Too”?” 12:27, February 1, 2019, Tarana Burke: How Can We Build A World Where People Don’t Have To Say “Me Too”? : NPR.

2. Zacharek, S., Dockterman, E., & Edwards, H. S. (2017). TIME Person of the Year 2017: The Silence Breakers. Time.com. https://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers

3. Polletta, Francesca, and Beth Gharrity Gardner, ‘Narrative and Social Movements’, in Donatella della Porta, and Mario Diani (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements (2015; online edn, Oxford Academic, 4 Aug. 2014), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199678402.013.32

Image 1. Lynn, D. (2018, January 24). The Historical Erasure of Violence Against Black Women. AAIHS. https://www.aaihs.org/the-historical-erasure-of-violence-against-black-women/