An Open Letter to Feminists: Know Your History
By: Alexandra Tsuneta
Tags: History, Metoo, Feminism, Women, Intersectionality

Hashtag Culture | The Me Too Movement

There’s a lot I have to say about hashtag culture, but I’ll keep it to a few quick bullet points. The first being that hashtag culture often creates a huge, followable, deal about some issue, somewhere. This gains major attention to said issue, however, that attention is extremely short lived because of the constant subdivision created by this culture. Everybody is trying to “outdo” the current hashtag, and within a few weeks you forget about what you were advocating for, and you move to the next, most popular, social justice issue. For example, #TakeAKnee, #SayHerName, and #FlintWaterCrisis; all three of these issues still exist (police brutality, the senseless killing of Sandra Bland, and the fact that Flint still does not have clean water), and we’ve moved past these issues and onto the currently trending hashtag-able social justice issues. Which brings me directly to the Me Too Movement, which, surprise, was founded by a woman of color in 1998. Even the founder, Tarana Burke, says that the movement has “lost its way”.

When was the first time you heard about the Me Too Movement?

Was it when Ashley Judd and over one hundred other women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment? The #MeToo hashtag was then born on Twitter on October 16th, 2017, some 19 years after Tarana Burke founded the movement. Again, don’t get me wrong, I am glad that the usage of those words sparked outrage and that there were many repercussions in many different industries. But, let us not forget, the Me Too movement was not born out of the abuse caused by Weinstein, it was born out of Tarana Burke’s goal to help victims of sexual violence — she ran community lead healing circles where she shared her own experience as a survivor of sexual violence and encouraged others to do the same. The movement has erupted into a “cyclical circle of accusations, culpability, and indiscretions” according to Liz Rowley of The Cut. The problem with the #MeToo movement is that it strays away from Burke’s original idea; community healing, sharing our stories, and moving forward. Instead the movement has become toxic and argumentative and it follows a narrative that it was never meant to follow. Burke’s movement has been overshadowed by white, cisgender, heterosexual, celebrity women, most of whom do not know where the movement even began.

Even Alyssa Milano, who started the Twitter hashtag for Me Too had no idea that the previous movement existed. She then apologized, and linked to Tarana Burke’s work:

Alyssa Milano on Twitter

There needs to be a different way to help share stories of sexual abuse and violence.

In order for that to happen, and in order for this next decade of feminism to work, we need to understand where all of these movements and buzzwords came from — we need to stop erasing the women of color and the trans-women of color (Marsha P. Johnson, thank you) who started the movements that we follow, that we march for, and that we use to define ourselves with. Let’s be better feminists, by doing a little bit of research you can honor the women who came before you, and you can honor the meaning(s) behind their legacies. There is so much power in words, do not waste that power.

“We are working diligently so that the popular narrative about #MeToo shifts from what it is, we have to shift the narrative that it’s a gender war, that it’s anti-male, that it’s men against women, that it’s only for a certain type of person — that it’s for white, cisgender, heterosexual, famous women. That has to shift. And I think that it is shifting, I really do. But that’s a part of our work, too.” — Tarana Burke, Founder of the Me Too Movement and Just Be Inc.