Overview

Beginning in the fall of 2017, #MeToo evolved as a social media campaign focused primarily on women and their experiences with rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. The hashtag drew on the long history of the US women's movement in addressing sexual assault and sexual harassment and on previous work by anti-rape and anti-violence activists. Spurred on by the widespread connectivity of social media, #MeToo quickly spread around the world, bringing charges against prominent men in a variety of fields and renewing attention to issues of rape, assault, sexual harassment, and inappropriate behavior in the workplace.

History

In October of 2017, actor Alyssa Milano tweeted #MeToo, asking if others had experienced sexual harassment and sexual assault in their lives. Millions responded on Twitter and Facebook with their #MeToo stories of unwanted attention, touches, and harassment along with recounting incidences of sexual assault and rape. Milano's tweet was a reaction to media mogul Harvey Weinstein facing multiple accusations of rape and assault from female celebrities and employees. Much of the attention to the Weinstein case was due to New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey ( 2017 ), who spent months researching stories such as “Harvey Weinstein paid off sexual harassment accusers for decades.” This media attention built on previous stories in the Washington Post that kept a focus on the comedian and actor Bill Cosby who also faced accusations of sexual assault going back several decades. Adding to this public moment was then-presidential nominee Donald Trump's infamous statement about grabbing women by the “pussy.” His election in 2016 mobilized millions to protest (many wearing pink pussy hats) in January 2017 in global Women's Marches protesting sexual assault and sexual harassment, as well as a host of other issues.

As the #MeToo stories flooded into social media, so too did the accusations against several powerful men. Media personalities Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, along with US Senator Al Franken, comedian Louis C.K., and actor Kevin Spacey, among others, found themselves facing a variety of charges. While many of these men were removed from the positions of power they held, some such as Weinstein and Cosby were convicted and sentenced. Overall, #MeToo stories covered criminal acts such as sexual assault, forcible and statutory rape in the cases of Weinstein, media mogul Russell Simmons, and politician Roy Moore, along with charges of power exploitation through quid pro quo and creating a hostile environment levied against men such as Rose, Spacey, chef Mario Batali, and politician John Conyers Jr. Women also told #MeToo stories of ignorant and crude conduct in and out of the workplace by men such as Louis C.K. and Franken (Gibson et al. 2019 ).

The charges were so vast and sweeping that Time magazine's “Person” of the Year for 2017 were the “Silence Breakers,” a group of women ranging from celebrities to activists to farmworkers who, in the words of Time , “helped launch a movement.” While Hollywood was the initial focus of #MeToo, it quickly spread beyond, as evidenced when actors brought activists, such as Ai-Jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, to the 2018 Golden Globe awards. #MeToo led to the creation of Time's Up, a collaboration between Hollywood and the National Women's Law Center, which created a legal defense fund for working-class women. Women in all professions began conversations about #MeToo and the hashtag also went global when other nations launched similar campaigns, such as Brazil's “Deixa Ela Trabalhar” (Let her work) campaign, which was launched by female sports journalists (Funck and Wolff 2018 ).

Origins

While Milano might have started the social media campaign, activist Tarana Burke coined the phrase “MeToo” in 2006 as a part of an empowerment program to encourage empathy with rape, assault, and harassment survivors. Burke, the founder of the nonprofit JustBe, Inc., is a longtime activist working with African American girls and survivors of sexual assault. Burke's “MeToo,” along with a history of grassroots activism by feminists and the availability of social media, set the stage for the emergence #MeToo.

#MeToo builds on the work of earlier feminist activists who sought to label, identify, and enact laws around issues of sexual violence and harassment, as well as other forms of gender discrimination. At its core, #MeToo addresses what women's movement activists label a “rape culture” that allows powerful men's unfettered access to women's bodies throughout society, including in the workplace. As writer Sarah Jaffe notes, “Women's bodies – and women's work – are considered rewards for proper male behavior. The women themselves aren't supposed to find this unpleasant” ( 2018 , 82). Combined with this calling out of rape culture is a feminist history of identifying and making illegal sexual harassment, focused on the workplace. As such, #MeToo's roots are based in a long history of feminist activism which worked to identify, educate, and prevent sexual violence and harassment.

Nancy Whittier ( 2019 ) links the campus sexual assault movement to #MeToo, tracing its history from efforts in the 1970s by feminists that include the creation of Title IX to the surge in campus activism from 2011 to 2018. This surge in activism was fostered, in part, by President Barack Obama's enhancement of the enforcement of Title IX (Gibson et al. 2019 ; Whittier 2019 ). Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. Corresponding with the upswing in campus activism were the 2011 SlutWalks that spread across the United States and the world. Started in a campus environment, the SlutWalks were the result of a Toronto police officer in a safety information session to students reportedly saying, “I've been told I'm not supposed to say this; however, women should avoid dressing as sluts in order not to be victimized” (Millar 2011 ). The organizers of the SlutWalk Toronto march responded by critiquing the practices of sexual profiling and slut shaming as well as claiming the right to express their sexuality. The SlutWalks foreshadowed #MeToo in their focus on what it means to be a sexual woman in a society structured around a rape culture (Reger 2014 ). Whittier ( 2019 ) notes that after the SlutWalks, activism against sexual assault on campus increased, often focusing on bureaucratic responses by universities and using Title IX as a tool for change.

In addition to increased attention to sexual assault, issues of sexual harassment also fed into #MeToo. One historically defining event was Anita Hill's testimony at the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings in October 1991 (Gibson et al. 2019 ). Hill, who had been an aide for Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged him with sexual harassment in the workplace. In her testimony in front of Congress, Hill was the recipient of demeaning and sexist treatment that treated her as a “scorned woman” instead of a victim of workplace harassment. The televised hearings so shocked women viewers that feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) saw a rise in membership. After Thomas's confirmation, a group of Black feminists took out a full-page ad in the New York Times , condemning the hearings and berating Thomas for perpetuating sexual stereotypes about Black women (Elias 2019 ). While the Anita Hill testimony occurred decades before #MeToo, recent mass mobilizations focused on sexual harassment as well as other issues around gender discrimination. The global Women's Marches of 2017, 2018, and 2019, as well as other campaigns such as the Women's Global Strikes of 2017, helped fuel feminist activism of all sorts. Indeed, the timing of #MeToo is credited with coming at a societal moment when feminism experienced a surge in popularity, with celebrities identifying as feminist, TV programs like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and an uptick in the words “misogyny” and “rape culture” in media headlines (Boyle 2019 ). Along with this newfound popularity and the US women's movement's long history of addressing sexual assault, rape, and sexual harassment, also key to #MeToo's emergence is the role of social media.

The hashtag before MeToo indicates the online, digital nature of current feminist activism (Crossley 2019 ; Maule 2020 ) and signals the intense connectivity of activists. “[#MeToo] follows a growing trend of the public's willingness to engage with resistance and challenges to sexism, patriarchy and other forms of oppression via feminist uptake of digital communication” (Mendes, Ringrose, and Keller 2018 , 236–237). However, #MeToo was not the first – similar campaigns on sexual assault such as 2014's #BeenRapedNeverReported had also been launched but not to the same level of mobilization (Mendes, Ringrose, and Keller 2018 ). The widespread reach of Twitter also allowed for the hashtag to diversify and expand. In doing so, the Twitter campaign kept #MeToo from being whitewashed with Burke, a Black woman, being acknowledged as the creator, and bringing an intersectional perspective to #MeToo (Crossley 2019 ). Intersectionality, the acknowledgment of the interlocking nature of social identities, is an important component of twenty-first-century feminist activism (Reger 2019 ) and #MeToo became a form of intersectional activism, with survivors noting how their experiences varied by social class, race-ethnicity, religion, and sexual and gender identity, among other social identities. Despite the acknowledgment of Burke's work and the inclusion of some groups of working-class women, critics noted that queer, disabled, and Black women were still pushed to the margins when the media focused on white, economically privileged and “respectable” women's stories. This is similar to critiques made of earlier campaigns such as the SlutWalks (Boyle 2019 ).

Relevance

#MeToo continues to be relevant in four broad areas – individuals' coming out, cultural shifts around gender, an emphasized importance of intersectionality, and continuing organizational work. By drawing on a strategy of coming out, #MeToo positioned personal lives in the public sphere, introducing a politicized lens through which to view personal experiences. This strategy of the personal is political is common to feminist activism. For example, in the case of #BeenRapedNeverReported, Mendes and co-authors found “this solidarity often transforms into a feminist consciousness amongst hashtag participants, which allows them to understand sexual violence as a structural rather than personal problem” (Mendes, Ringrose, and Keller 2018 , 238). In doing so, #MeToo brought renewed attention and sparked new discussions on sexual harassment and sexual assault. While feminist activists have worked on these issues for decades, #MeToo documented their continued existence. And while feminists have worked to more clearly define what constitutes rape and sexual assault, sexual harassment continues to be a source of societal debates. This is evident in complaints that #MeToo would end dating and flirting, and stifle everyday interactions between women and men. Even with mandatory sexual harassment training put in place by many corporations and institutions, a significant number of the more than 19 million #MeToo posts were about workplace harassment. Overall, the strategy of #MeToo reoriented the topic of the conversation by challenging common misperceptions that: (i) sexual harassment isn't a real issue and women find all attention flattering, (ii) women (and others) lie about harassment, rape, and assault for attention, and (iii) therefore the courts, police, universities, and human resource departments don't need to take these claims seriously. Whittier argues that #MeToo “reflects the acknowledgement of widespread sexual assault, encourages visibility as women and people of other genders ‘come out’ about their experience, and frames sexual harassment and violence as the result of power” ( 2019 , 146).

Relatedly, the continued relevance of #MeToo is evident in cultural shifts around gender. In particular, masculinity is undergoing a cultural critique with hegemonic, or dominant, masculinity under scrutiny. Social observers talk of “toxic masculinity” as an issue in society that needs remedying as this 2018 headline in The Guardian indicates, “Men after #MeToo: ‘There's a narrative that masculinity is fundamentally toxic’” (Godwin 2018 ). Toxic masculinity emerged as a cultural trope that associated manhood with violence, harassment, and dominance, and positioned masculinity as needing to be reframed and reclaimed.

In addition, #MeToo confirms the role of social media in social movement protest and also reinforces the need for an intersectional perspective on activism. For instance, the widespread nature of Twitter played a role in crediting Burke with creating the hashtag. By noting that these issues were faced by more than white elite female actors, Burke confirmed the importance of taking an intersectional perspective to social issues. Early criticism of #MeToo noted that only white celebrities were coming forward and gaining media attention. Activists moved to correct this by emphasizing the ways in which low-income and working-class people have additional burdens in reporting abuse of all kinds. Despite this push, Burke continues to speak out against the silencing of marginalized populations. She has been quoted as saying, “Women of color, trans women, queer people – our stories get pushed aside and our pain is never prioritized. We don't talk about indigenous women. Their stories go untold” ( Time 2019 ).

Fourth and finally, the broader organizational work underlying #MeToo is ongoing. Burke's #MeToo movement continues her work with workshops for girls and college tours in an effort to educate children and young adults about consent, the right to bodily autonomy, and their legal rights. In 2019 , #MeToo movement, along with other organizations, won clemency for Cytoia Brown, a sex-trafficking victim who killed a man in self-defense at age 16 and was sentenced to life. The Time's Up Legal Fund continues to provide legal support to women experiencing harassment through the contributions of 700 lawyers in 48 states. In a variety of arenas, activists continue to focus on ending gender-based violence and harassment in their social justice work.

Backlash

While the widespread charges and the fall of prominent men signaled immediate success, #MeToo has also experienced a backlash. A 2019 survey by the Lean In foundation found that male managers and CEOs are less likely to spend time alone with women employees now than ever before, cutting into the one-on-one time women need to do their work (Lean In 2019 ). Men's rights advocates argue that men are increasingly nervous about approaching women and potentially facing harsh punishments for perceived inappropriate behavior. A survey by the Economist magazine found that harassment victims were less likely to be believed in 2018 than in 2017 ( Economist 2018 ). In addition, online activism, such as #MeToo, sets women up to be attacked and trolled. Mendes and co-authors in a survey of feminist activists found that “digital technologies make the distribution of online vitriol easy, persistent and vicious; and a range of feminist research has suggested that Twitter is overwhelmingly a negative and toxic space for women” ( 2018 , 244).

Is it a movement?

In sum, #MeToo emerged in stories of accusations of sexual assault and harassment by prominent men, drawing on a history of feminist activism intertwined with the availability of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Considering these origins, the question becomes – is this a movement or a campaign within a movement? To activist Tarana Burke, it is more than a hashtag and is a movement, as the name of her organization suggests. However, with its roots in feminist activism at the state level (e.g., Title IX and Anita Hill and the Supreme Court), embedded in grassroots campus activism against sexual assault, and viewed through the global lenses of the SlutWalks and Women's Marches, #MeToo is one aspect of feminist activism that emerged as a discourse in the space of social media. It has intertwining roots, firmly enmeshed in ongoing feminist campaigns around sexual identity, sexual assault, and harassment, and embedded in everyday lives at school, home, and work.

SEE ALSO: Campus Anti‐Sexual Assault Movement ; Electronic Protest ; Internet and Social Movements ; Intersectionality and Social Movements ; Media and Social Movements ; Men's Rights Activism ; Online Feminism ; Women's March ; Women's Movements .