Year-End Special: #MeToo...a moment that became a movement

How Time magazine's 'person of the year' created a powerful dialogue on sexual harassment on a global scale

Silence is golden. Or so the moral science textbooks would have us believe. In 2017, this idea was dismembered by millions of women across the world who took to social media to narrate their experiences of sexual abuse - all under the umbrella of #MeToo.
The Pandora's box opened in October when the New York Times carried out a detailed investigation on nearly three decades of allegations of sexual harassment against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. The stories were gut-wrenching and held a mirror to an industry that is often vocal on conversations on human rights, but was notoriously silent about what was happening in its own backyard. In the wake of the allegations, on October 15, Alyssa Milano - whose Charmed colleague Rose McGowan had been a trenchant critic of the Hollywood producer - called for women across the world to share their stories of sexual abuse using the hashtag #MeToo. Within a day, there were about 12 million posts on Facebook hashtagged #MeToo, while the phrase was tweeted 500,000 times.
A moment had now become a movement.
They say the wound is the place where the light enters you. For millions of women, #MeToo had been that light. It became an assurance that they were not alone. That someone - a friend, acquaintance, colleague, sibling, neighbour - had gone through a similar experience. There was kinship in this collective pain. As deeply invested as I might have been in this idea, I also feared certain possibilities. Could this kinship also be limiting? Could naming and shaming the offenders on social media be mistaken for a redressal?
My fears took a more definitive form as 'The List' went viral on social media soon after. Created by law student Raya Sarkar, the open Google document sought to name sexual offenders in academia. Many of the names had been taken anonymously with the crimes not being substantiated and context not elaborated upon. While the legitimacy of 'The List' was hotly debated, some leading feminists issued a joint statement. "It worries us that anybody can be named anonymously with the lack of answerability. Where there are genuine complaints, there are institutions and procedures, which we should utilise," they unanimously opined.
The venue for the modern-day protest has shifted from the street to the virtual world. The latter has its own rules. Revisiting a story of abuse is a painful exercise, and in case of gender-based violence, it is often the victim who must revisit the story because it is his/her story. While a hashtag movement can seem empowering, it also compels the victim to revisit, and thereby relive, her pain while her offender has a more spectatorial role. That can do little to enable change.
Recently, instead of honouring the most powerful man in America, Time magazine awarded its much-anticipated Person of the Year to the women who broke the silence against their offenders with Ashley Judd, Taylor Swift, Susan Fowler, Adama Iwu and Isabel Pascual (pseudonym) on the cover of the magazine. These are women who have spoken truth to power, sometimes even risking careers and opportunities in the process. The translation of this idea cannot be a single post on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform. It has to enable change for women from across social, political and cultural contexts.
Today, it would be an understatement to say that #MeToo has challenged status quos. However, its biggest achievement is that it has re-started the dialogue on sexual harassment on a global scale. Perhaps the next best step would be to take #MeToo to the real world, to those who continue to live in silence.
anamika@khaleejtimes.com