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

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.

@PedestrianError
Like, I'm just not sure what the insight is you are offering here. Is it the term? Do you not think that was a significant moment of cultural change? I don't think I follow.

@artemis I'm saying that in a way the phrase "me too" has been captured in the backlash and used to trivialize the underlying conversation. Not sure how better to explain it other than when you hear certain men discuss "me too" in verbal conversation, there's quite a dismissive tone to their voice that makes clear the whole conversation is being trivialized as just a silly little women's trend. I don't know how to better describe it, but I think some defense/careful use of the phrase is needed.

@PedestrianError
Ok, I think that did help me understand. Thank you for the clarification! And that is a point worthy of consideration.

@artemis The issue of a powerful man allegedly having a me too problem instead of a sexual harassment problem, a misogyny problem, a workplace discrimination problem, etc really gets to me. It redirects the attention to the targets of the behavior for having dared speak about it and potentially harmed an otherwise promising man's career rather than him for having behaved badly or failed to control his male employees' bad behavior.

They would HATE to imagine that they were influenced by it. They would refuse to admit they've given any ground, of course, but...I just don't think without that earlier big explosion over the abuse of women & girls that any of this "release the Epstein files" shit would ever have happened. A lot of people see this shit differently than they used to, including quite a few people who would vehemently deny that they ever changed or budged an inch.

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?