Professor Catherine Powell wrote an op-ed in Newsweek about the #MeToo campaign.
The digital campaign gained traction on October 15, 2017, when – in response to allegations of sexual harassment against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein – actress Alyssa Milano posted a tweet urging women who have been sexually assaulted or harassed to post a status on social media with the words “Me Too,” to “give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”
When she awoke the next morning, she found that over 30,000 people had used #MeToo.
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In fact, the MeToo campaign was created by a black woman, Tarana Burke, ten years ago, before hashtags even existed.
Milano eventually tweeted that she was “made aware of an earlier #MeToo movement” – linking to Burke’s story – and the two have reportedly developed a friendship via text messages.
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By early November, #MeToo had been tweeted 2.3 million times from eight-five different countries.
According to CNN, 35 percent of women around the world have experience physical or sexual violence, and “ 120 million girls have experienced forced sex or other sexual acts.”
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In India, Bani Rachel Bali, who works on gender issues with her organization, Krantikali, told CNN, “I haven’t seen a campaign that started in one corner of the world and replicated all across, so to see something like this really blow up and more than this being an online campaign … I felt the presence of a sisterhood.”
At the same time, as Zephyr Teachout notes, the hasty push to force U.S. Senator Al Franken to resign, while other lawmakers remain in power, highlights the need for both due process and proportionality.
Both at home and abroad, greater thought needs to go into developing procedures that are both responsive to survivors of sexual harassment and abuse, while protecting the rights of those accused.
While #MeToo has gone viral, the full legal, political, and cultural consequences have yet to be sorted. Plus, the recent Alabama special election to replace U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions highlighted the #MeToo campaign’s potency as well as its limits.