When I was growing up, I enjoyed your typical
80’s sitcoms. Growing Pains, The Facts of
Life, Diff’rent Strokes, and my favorite, Who’s the
Boss?
Like so many of my contemporaries
(middle school American girls) I wanted to BE
Alyssa Milano.
Fast forward a few decades. The internet is invented. Phones relocate from homes, to cars, to pockets. Next they grow cameras and morph into miniature computers that we carry in our pockets wherever we go. The landscape of American television changes dramatically. The news, and how we receive it changes so much it becomes almost unrecognizable. And along came social media. It’s potential was limitless. But we didn’t know that yet. Then, in 2017, everything shifted.
According to Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens, in October of 2017, when Mayim Bialik wrote a “problematic sexual harassment op-ed”, tens of thousands of women and men responded with their own explosion, “...two simple, terrible words: Me too.” Stevens went on to say,
The one-two gut punch populated social media feeds for most of Sunday, inspired by a viral post (credited originally to a tweet from actress Alyssa Milano) that reads: “If all the women and men who have been sexually harassed, assaulted or abused wrote ‘me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. #metoo”
(Long before Milano’s tweet, a woman named Tarana Burke launched a nonprofit in 1997 to help victims of sexual harassment and assault and named her movement “Me too.” Milano has begun publicly crediting Burke as the founder of #Metoo.)
The morning after Milano’s tweet, close to 40,000 people — mostly, but not exclusively, women — had replied.
#metoo. Hashtag me too. Me too. Me.
The first time I remember feeling uncomfortable due to male attention I was ten years old. I was at the grocery store with some relatives that I was visiting, in a town I did not know, far from home. I was wearing a yellow sundress and my hair was in a ponytail. I don’t know if I remember what I was wearing because of emotional memory, because of my level of discomfort, or both. My relatives went to get the car and pull it up to the curb, leaving me in front of the store with the full grocery cart. Right after they walked away, a man approached me. He was wearing a leather jacket. He started to flirt with me, and ask me questions about myself. He could have been twenty or forty. To me he was a grown up and I did not like his line of questioning. Luckily it was only a moment before the car pulled up and we started to load up the groceries into the trunk. As soon as the car pulled up, he walked away. I tried to talk to my family about it but they were dismissive. Maybe they were trying not to scare me. Maybe they were hoping it was nothing. They told me “he was probably just being friendly”.
After #metoo blew up Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and probably every social media outlet, the conversations began. I shared the above story when asked, “how old were you when you first felt uncomfortable around a man”. But everyone is different. For some it was a relative, an older kid, a woman, a stranger. When I was ten I did not know exactly what flirting was. Or sex. Or sexuality. But I had heard of predators and I knew exactly what my gut was telling me. Get away.
As a young woman growing up in the 80’s, and I imagine most any decade, we were conditioned to be nice. Be kind. Polite. Friendly. Smile. Stand up straight. Don’t make others’ feel badly. Look pretty. And somewhere in all that confusion, the message of “stranger danger” got lost. We were accidentally deconditioned to ignore our instincts. That gut feeling felt impolite. We surely did not want to be rude.
Today, I am the mother of a thirteen year old girl. She is sweet and sassy. Kind and tough. I raised her that way. But I worry so much, it sometimes sickens me. I was thirteen the first time I was sexually assaulted. I can not bear to think of something like that happening to my children. As she approached thirteen I was literally sick with worry. I made myself crazy thinking of potential problems. As I was figuring out ways to talk myself off the ledge of worry, two good things happened.
The first was in my car. I was driving my daughter and her friend home from school. They were talking about boys. Her friend said, “my mom had a talk with me about boys. She said sometimes they get these crazy ideas in their heads. You have to protect yourself. You have to tell them they aren’t allowed to touch you”. My daughter replied, “Yes. That’s called CONSENT. If they don’t have your consent, they can not touch you.” She had a hint of “or else” in her voice. I was so proud I could have cried.
The second was after a church event. One of the reverends and my church said to me, “Brooke is kind, but she is going to be okay in the world”. I asked what he meant. He said, “I mean she is a sweetheart, but she can take care of herself. She’s tough.” My heart sang. I don’t know how I did it, but I created the exact combination of sugar and spice I had intended.
As a survivor of sexual assaults, in addition to a number of other negative female experiences, I was genuinely concerned when my midwife told me I was having a girl. I thought to myself, oh no. How on earth will I raise a girl? Periods, bras, boys. And all the bad experiences that I had, and women I knew had experienced. I shared these fears with a friend. She said, “who better to raise a girl?” Such kind words. I took them to heart. I made sure to teach her how to keep herself safe. I taught both my son and daughter that they own their bodies and no one is allowed to touch them, in any way, if they don’t want to be touched. I taught them both important words, that I learned from watching Oprah Winfrey interview Gavin deBecker, author of The Gift of Fear. “No is the end of a conversation, not the beginning of a negotiation.” I taught both about feminism and consent, manners and when to throw manners out the window. So far, so good.
Now, in 2020, my kids are coming of age. It is my hope that the voices of #metoo will become fewer. That women will take their rightful place in society, that we have been scrambling and fighting for since the beginning of time. Equality. Strength. Voices that are heard.
#metoo was certainly heard. After the 2017 disclosure by actress Ashley Judd that multi-millionaire, media mogul Harvey Weinstein was sabotaging her career because she would not accept his sexual advances, women spoke up in droves. Like never before. First against Weinstein. Next other Hollywood A-listers. Heads of Industry. Politicians. A Supreme Court Justice. Lewd behavior. Propositions. Sexual advances. Rape.
No longer was it acceptable to be “that guy”. Handsy. Touchy. An abuser of power. A rapist.
We have a long way to go. But the rising up of voices, together, to say NO. NO MORE. WE WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS. We WILL stop this. Together.
My hope is that this generation of young people, and all the generations that follow, won’t be afraid to speak up, be rude, forget their manners and take care of themselves. That people in power will no longer be able to abuse it. That most won’t want to. They’ll be better people. We all will.
I don’t know if my teen idol knew how loud her hashtag would be. How far it would travel. How deeply it would resonate. I don’t know if Tarana Burke, the woman who coined the phrase, could have ever imagined it would become a cultural phenomenon. As a survivor and a mom, as a middle school counselor, and as a woman, I am grateful. I am hopeful that future generations have learned, that often the biggest weapon we have, is our voice.
#metoo
