Be suspicious of anyone who tells you that "Me Too failed."

Be suspicious of anyone who tells you that "Me Too failed."

Me Too did not bring down the systems of power that allow abuse, but that goes beyond the scope of what a social movement can usually accomplish. I really do not care at all for the assumption that the purpose of a social movement is to somehow transform systems built for oppression into systems that don't oppress.

What social movements can do is change *people*: how they think, react, & feel. What they do. What they believe is right.

I think "Me Too failed" is a convenient narrative for powerful people. It makes us feel like no matter how hard we rattle our chains, nothing changes.

But what we need to make change is people who are in solidarity with one another. If something increases our ability to stand together against oppression, that increases our odds.

Me Too didn't topple power structures. It couldn't have. That's not how that fucking works.

That doesn't make it a failure.

Be suspicious of anyone who tells you that "Me Too failed."

Me Too did not bring down the systems of power that allow abuse, but that goes beyond the scope of what a social movement can usually accomplish. I really do not care at all for the assumption that the purpose of a social movement is to somehow transform systems built for oppression into systems that don't oppress.

What social movements can do is change *people*: how they think, react, & feel. What they do. What they believe is right.

@artemis
i'm not sure a hashtag social movement could ever succeed except in very limited, specified terms

MeToo is part of a very old resistance against patriarchy, misogyny, and abuse

the movement for truth and accountability is eternal

I think "Me Too failed" is a convenient narrative for powerful people. It makes us feel like no matter how hard we rattle our chains, nothing changes.

But what we need to make change is people who are in solidarity with one another. If something increases our ability to stand together against oppression, that increases our odds.

Me Too didn't topple power structures. It couldn't have. That's not how that fucking works.

That doesn't make it a failure.

I think "Me Too failed" is a convenient narrative for powerful people. It makes us feel like no matter how hard we rattle our chains, nothing changes.

But what we need to make change is people who are in solidarity with one another. If something increases our ability to stand together against oppression, that increases our odds.

Me Too didn't topple power structures. It couldn't have. That's not how that fucking works.

That doesn't make it a failure.

@artemis I think we need to stop letting powerful men trivialize any and all pushback against their misogynistic abuses by pigeonholing it as "the #MeToo movement"... a hashtag, a trend, something for unserious aka young and female people. People have been fighting back against sexual abuse and other sexism forever with or without hashtags. Like with other social movements, social media had a moment of being democratizing & helping people find their voices, but that's wildly overemphasized.

I think "Me Too failed" is a convenient narrative for powerful people. It makes us feel like no matter how hard we rattle our chains, nothing changes.

But what we need to make change is people who are in solidarity with one another. If something increases our ability to stand together against oppression, that increases our odds.

Me Too didn't topple power structures. It couldn't have. That's not how that fucking works.

That doesn't make it a failure.

Occupy Wall Street didn't fail. BLM didn't fail. Me Too didn't fail.

We need to rethink how change happens. Movements that bring us into alignment & helps us question & challenge oppression will not themselves topple the structures they critique. But they can help prepare us. They can shift the cultural landscape. They can do a lot of things.

Some people would really like us to think that all of that accomplishes nothing. Now how might they benefit from us believing that?

Occupy Wall Street didn't fail. BLM didn't fail. Me Too didn't fail.

We need to rethink how change happens. Movements that bring us into alignment & helps us question & challenge oppression will not themselves topple the structures they critique. But they can help prepare us. They can shift the cultural landscape. They can do a lot of things.

Some people would really like us to think that all of that accomplishes nothing. Now how might they benefit from us believing that?

@johnbrowntypeface
It wasn't just a hashtag social movement though. At least it wasn't to me. It was a massive public conversation about the nature of sexual abuse, how it is perpetuated, & how abusers walk free.

@artemis

i guess that's kinda what i'm saying

the aims of MeToo associated with online activism and discourse exist far beyond the limits of attention to what happened in media and online spaces

the hashtag put a name to something that was already happening and continues on. it was named online and then had effects in real life

but the movement against abuse already was there. it's not limited to MeToo or whatever happens under that name

And as much as the MAGAs in the group would like to deny it, without Me Too, I don't think the backlash against Epstein we see now would be happening.

I may be working with a different definition of Me Too than some folks, so let me clarify.

We had a cultural moment where big public conversations were had around the nature of sexual abuse, victim blaming, abuse culture, & the ways people get away with it.

It wasn't just some people using a hashtag. It was this outpouring of people's rage at their own abuse, horror at the things they were learning, & developing new standards & expectations about people's behavior.

@PedestrianError
To me, it's a lot more than a hashtag or online phenomenon. It was a massive public conversation about sexual abuse & misogyny in a way we as a society had never had before.

@artemis
same as with BLM

Black people and others believed that Black Lives Matter before there was a hashtag. there were movements that were motivated by that belief that pre-date the hashtag, the official orgs, or the internet

the fight against white supremacy isn't limited to BLM and the online aspects or even those orgs don't determine whether the fight is won or lost

@artemis I'm not saying that's what it is, just that the phrase "#MeToo movement" has been used to trivialize what happened, erasing years of Tarana Burke's work before white women adopted the hashtag and minimizing the relevance of what was shared. I didn't experience the 2017 public discourse as different in content from conversations I knew had been going on since well before I was born, just different in scale because the dynamics of social media facilitated rapid spread.

@johnbrowntypeface
Sure, but I'm talking about cultural moments, & those are specific to time & place.

The fight against oppression has been going on since time immemorial, of course, & I don't think I've said anything which would contradict that. I'm interested here in one of the many mechanisms of social/cultural change.

@artemis I'm not saying that's what it is, just that the phrase "#MeToo movement" has been used to trivialize what happened, erasing years of Tarana Burke's work before white women adopted the hashtag and minimizing the relevance of what was shared. I didn't experience the 2017 public discourse as different in content from conversations I knew had been going on since well before I was born, just different in scale because the dynamics of social media facilitated rapid spread.

@PedestrianError
I guess I'm not really sure how this relates.

Are you saying we should use a different term than "Me Too" for that cultural moment? I'm trying to talk about the impact of those conversations happening with a broader audience.

I said they were conversations that we as a broader society hadn't had publicly, not that it was brand new or that the work wasn't already being done. I'm talking about the change of social/cultural attitudes, not new information being discovered.