A common expression from the mouths of babes—desperate not to miss out on any fun—is “Me too!” Tragically, these two words, which are associated with childhood innocence, were destined to undergo a dire metamorphosis.
For those perusing their Facebook posts in October 2017—amidst the pics of food, puppies, and travel shots—a hashtag proliferated. It consisted of two words, but they packed a powerful punch: #MeToo. They had been inspired by actress Alyssa Milano. The catalyst for her tweet was the scores of women who denounced powerful film director Harvey Weinstein as master manipulator of the casting couch. Milano wrote, “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” In a mere three days, the words became a battle-cry. The exposé moved beyond one man and the imbalance of power in the Hollywood hierarchy. Time Magazine featured a black-and-white photograph of Weinstein and to the left, in red, its “J’accuse!”: producer predator pariah. Its message was that the days of the Big Boy’s impunity was no more.
Caroline Crido-Perez wrote of the crime that had been forced from its closet, “It’s done by friends, colleagues, ‘good guys’ who care about the environment and children and even feminism.” Immediately those who had been victims of abuse took to social media; their clarion call was the desire to illustrate the preponderance of this societal ill. Facebook reported that within forty-eight hours, 4.7 million people around the world had engaged in the conversation in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. The French used #BalanceTonPorc; the Spanish, #YoTambien. The chilling hashtag had been retweeted forty-eight million times. However, the phrase well predated the fall of 2017 and had not begun with the actress.
In 1997, Harlem-born Tarana Burke was working at an Alabama organization that ran a camp for young people living in marginalized communities. A thirteen-year-old in attendance named Heaven trusted Tarana enough to let down her angry demeanor and confided that she had been the victim of sexual violence from her mother’s boyfriend. Tarana recalled of her response to being cast in the role of mother confessor, “I was horrified by her words, the emotions welling inside of me ran the gamut, and I listened until I literally could not take it anymore . . . which turned out to be less than five minutes.” In the middle of the pain-filled narrative, Burke cut her off and directed the youngster to another female counselor who could “help her better.” Burke rued the fact that she will never forget the look on Heaven’s face, an expression of pain that the person she had turned to had dismissed her. Tarana stated, “I think about her all the time. The shock of being rejected, the pain of opening a wound only to have it abruptly forced closed again—it was all on her face.” The youngster never returned to the camp, and Tarana has no idea whatever happened to Heaven. Burke closed her painful reminiscence by stating, “I watched her put her mask back on and go back into the world like she was all alone.”
The reason why Tarana refused to offer solace was not indifference; it was because she herself was too emotionally raw to offer succor—she had likewise been a victim of sexual abuse. A friend of her mother’s raped her when she was six, and a neighborhood teenager molested her on and off for three years. As an adult she was once more the victim of rape by an acquaintance while they were on their first date.
The painful episode when she let down the child left a lasting legacy and “sat in her spirit for a long time.” Her epiphany was that she could have provided a salve to the young girl’s soul, had she been able to offer empathy. Burke expressed her remorse: “I could not muster the energy to tell her that I understood, that I connected, that I could feel her pain.” If she could have turned back the hands of time, she would have whispered, “Me too.”
Determined to be the voice for those who had none, Tarana sought advice from a local rape crisis center. The response was they would only work with girls who had been referred by the local police after they had filed an official report. If Heaven had trouble confiding in her, how would the thirteen-year-old ever have the courage to trust someone in uniform to levy a complaint against an adult?
Ten years after the encounter, Ms. Burke created Just Be Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping victims of sexual assault. Its purpose is to teach survivors to speak out and dispel the shame and secrecy that surrounds sexual violence. Burke explained, “The work is really about survivors talking to each other and saying, ‘I see you. I support you. I get it.’ ” She sought out the resources that had not been available a decade earlier. Her creation’s mission statement is “Empowerment Through Empathy.” Tarana also gave her movement a name: “Me Too.”
Burke travelled the country from Philly to Atlanta, from Tuskegee University to Alabama State, presenting two-hour-long workshops to seventh- and eighth-grade students. Having learned the sad lesson from her failure with Heaven, Tarana was candid about her own experience with sexual assault. At the close of each session, she showed photographs of Black celebrities—Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah, Gabrielle Union, Fantasia, and Oprah—each of whom had endured abuse and surmounted their scars to soar. Her message was that the culture of capitulation—the “boys will be boys” mindset—had to go the way of the dodo.
When #MeToo ignited a media firestorm, some African American women were upset that the decade-long effort by Ms. Burke, who is Black, had not received such support over the years and had only gone viral when prominent white feminists championed the cause. In response to the misappropriation they, along with Latino and other women of color, started alternate campaigns such as #WhatWereYouWearing and #YouOKSis. April Reign, a digital media strategist and the lady behind #OscarSoWhite began to organize support around the hashtag #WOCAffirmation (Women of Color Affirmation). Its purpose was sisterly solidarity in what they viewed as the disparity in how women of color were treated when they reported their stories of abuse to police. Ms. Reign stated that Black females “are demanded to be silent and erased like with Tarana.”
Ms. Burke was also taken aback when she saw the name of her organization—and her brainchild—proliferate, and she remarked, “Initially I panicked. I felt a sense of dread, because something that was part of my life’s work was going to be co-opted and taken from me.” As it transpired, Ms. Milano, who had been unaware of its previous usage, quickly acted to rectify this and gave credit where credit was due. Two days after she had sent out the #MeToo tweet, she reached out to Tarana and expressed hope that they, united in purpose, could collaborate. The actress appeared on Good Morning America, where she credited Ms. Burke as the woman behind the famous phrase. In her interview, she stated, “What the #MeToo campaign really does, and what Tarana Burke has really enabled us to do, is put the focus back on the victims.” In response, Ms. Burke said that it would be selfish of her to lay claim to #MeToo as something that she owns. She expressed her view, “It is bigger than me and bigger than Alyssa Milano. Neither one of us should be centered in this work. This is about survivors.” The current online home for Burke’s organization is metoo.support, a new, sleek, black-and-fuchsia home page emblazoned with the words “Because you are not alone” splayed across the top.
After Milano’s public acknowledgment, Burke (now a resident of the Bronx) has expressed her gratitude for the watershed response to the tweet that galvanized survivors and garnered empathy. The yesteryear of blaming the survivor had reached a dead end. The current zeitgeist has been the Red Queen’s own “Off with their heads!” and this time it referred to both anatomical parts. Weinstein and Co. were found guilty by the jury of their peers.
However, Burke does not want the movement to end with a hashtag. That, she said, leaves too many survivors with nowhere to put the raw feelings unearthed by those two powerful words. She argues that after disclosure must come healing and that this is possible now that the public is not adopting the stance of the three proverbial monkeys: hearing, speaking, and seeing no evil does not make the evil go away.
Burke shared that when she was growing up in Queens, two weeks before her first Holy Communion, the neighborhood boys made her a part of their roughhousing. Her shirt ripped and it could have been much worse, but one of the boy’s mothers intervened. She warned Tarana that girls shouldn’t go looking for trouble. Tarana quit going out to play; she said she felt dirty. The episode was pushed to the back of her mind until the arrival of the viral hashtag, after which she stated, “Last week I was reminded why I feel skittish around groups of men—even ones I know. #MeToo.”