October 15 marks the two-year anniversary of the moment #MeToo went viral. In the days and months that followed, we saw more and more people coming forward with their stories of assault, abuse, harassment, and trauma. Founded and led by long-time activist and organizer, Tarana Burke, the #MeToo movement took hold of the public imagination. We started to have conversations about the ways women face harassment and trauma, often in the workplace. We looked at the intersectional nature of sexual abuse and whose stories get priority. Some men were held accountable, while some decried the movement had already gone too far. Now, those who came forward with stories of abuse continue to grapple with the consequences.
As we approached the anniversary of #MeToo, I just so happened to witness Tarana speak at the Omega Institute’s Women and Power conference with a focus on “Rethinking Power.” With her usual jovial and inviting attitude she led us through a discussion of what she’s learned in the last two years, her work before Alyssa Milano tweeted the hashtag making it go viral, and what’s happened since.
Since this story has been in the public eye, I’ve been interested in how we move forward: how does a movement grow, how does it prioritize what matters and ultimately, what does justice look like? So, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to sit down and talk to Tarana just a few days after Omega at the the New School’s Festival of New on October 1 about exactly that. The following is an edited and condensed version of our hour-long conversation.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay: So, when did [the phrase] "me too" come into the picture?
Tarana Burke: I ran an after school program and I noticed we would pay attention to the boys, even if we weren't trying to, and I noticed that the girls just sort of fell by the wayside. And I remember telling my girlfriend, “We have to do something different and specific for the girls,” and so that’s how it all started off. This wasn't around sexual violence, I literally ran from that for a while. It was about leadership development, but it was also about helping these groups of girls, these little black and brown girls, develop a sense of self-worth, which I consider radical organizing work as well.
In doing that work, and it was really rewarding and successful work, there were all of these ways that we were being inundated with information about how much sexual violence these children had experienced. And obviously, I was a survivor, and I was grappling with what that meant for me. I didn't have words like “healing” in my vocabulary, but I knew I wanted to feel different. I kept going out to the elders, to the people who raised me in this work, and saying, “You know, this is a problem?” And they would say, “Oh, well they need more counselors in the school,” or start talking about the parents and it just was the same thing we see around sexual violence now.
SM: Well, what you bring up is that sexual assault is often seen as an interpersonal issue, not as a movement issue. There are all these consequences when you don’t address social issues and incorporate the role that sexual violence plays.
TB: Yep.
SM: Then you coined the term “me too,” right?
TB: Yes!
SM: And in October of 2017 Alyssa Milano tweets it out, and it goes viral, and then some young people on Twitter rightfully called her in.
TB: Young black women and women of color definitely were the first line of defense, like, “Nope.”
SM: And so you were then rightfully dubbed “the founder,” and as we’ve talked about, now the leader of the #MeToo movement. Talk to us about what happened, I mean, I know there was Good Morning America segment, and then all of a sudden #MeToo and your name were everywhere.
TB: That week was crazy and we’re just coming up on two years now. So the first day, and I often try to tell this story chronologically so that people will stop calling Alyssa like, you know, they treat her so badly. She didn't try to steal anything, for real, and quite honestly, the day that #MeToo went viral, I was at home minding my business, and actually not answering the phone because it was a Sunday and I thought my mother was calling because I didn't come to church. I was like, ”I'm going to act like I'm asleep,” and then my phone kept going off. I had like, Facebook messages and text messages, and they were different. Some people were like, ”Oh my gosh, congratulations, I see #MeToo everywhere, whatever.” And I was like, “What are y'all talking about?” Because I didn't really tweet. I wasn't like, a tweeter.
I mean, of course, something like that goes viral, because there [are] so many people affected by sexual violence, and so the thing that was alarming to me when I got my bearings, which was a couple of hours later, is that I'm watching all of these tweets, but there's no containing the process.
SM: Meaning?
TB: There [are] just people like, cutting and bleeding all over the internet, and the news is like, ”Look at all the people that said ‘me too!’ Look at the celebrities!” And they were like, going through the tweets. I would not have done it, because I would want to have, prior to putting a hashtag out like that, put some things in place for people once you do that.
I really did feel protective at first. I also felt like, “Are people going to take my stuff and they are not going to give it back?” I thought, if this goes out into the world, nobody's going to believe a 44-year-old black woman from the Bronx started this or was using this language, or, you know, it’s just not going to happen. [But it was also one of] those moments where the rubber meets the road or whatever you want to call it, where I had to make a decision. Like I said, I knew from a very early age what my life was going to be about. And this was one of the biggest tests. Are you going to be who you said you were?
And then because I have a lot of friends in media and stuff like that, people started re-Tweeting it and whatever. Alyssa got word pretty quickly. She reached out to me the next day. She sent me a message, she’s like, you know, “What can I do to amplify your work?” She tweeted out the website, that's why everybody knows the story of Heaven because she tweeted out the story. People just forget that they're like, ”Alyssa Milano tried to steal your movement!” I'm like, “She didn't try to steal my movement.” How do you steal a movement?
SM: Yes, I mean, I think that there are drawbacks to celebrity activism, but then there are also these huge benefits of exposure and catapulting movements into the mainstream.
TB: Yeah. I mean, people want to talk about those women all the time, and I think it’s actually really disrespectful. If they came forward and said they had these experiences, we should respect that experience. And none of them came forward thinking they were going to propel a movement forward, right? None of them came forward to be the founders or leaders, as a matter of fact, most of them thought they might not work again.
And some of it is us because we can’t stop wanting to know about their lives. You can’t say we spend so many hours and days wanting to know who sleepin’ with who, or who wore what to where, who was on a trip in a bikini with cellulite showing, and all this nonsense that we obsess about celebrities, and then we mad because the media is focusing only on the celebrities? This is a celebrity-driven culture, so I'm not mad at those women. They're survivors, and it was just as hard, if not harder, the lift of coming forward and saying, “this is my experience with one of the most powerful men in their industry,” it’s just, we got to stop. We find new ways to blame women for anything. We got to stop having that conversation. There is a racial conversation to have, don’t get me wrong. That's not the one.
SM: As we reflect on the two years since #MeToo went viral, there's been a lot of ink spilled on how #MeToo has gone too far, and the consequences on men. A recent piece in New York Magazine tracked the stories of some of the women that have come forward and the consequences they faced. We haven't been tracking the stories of those that have come forward. Talk a little bit about that.
TB: Coming up on this anniversary, I've had so many invitations to come and speak, and the topic is, “Is there a way back for these men after the #MeToo movement? What's the road to redemption?” And I'm just like, you know what? Stop asking me these questions. It’s so offensive. Often when I talk I do a pop quiz for people and I say, “You know, we can right now popcorn at least 10 names of the most prominent men who've been accused or what have you, and you couldn't name 10 survivors from there.” And so it‘s such a problem, that we can have a movement that has really been built on the backs of survivors and not check in on those survivors. Yes, it would have been a celebrity story, because Weinstein was a huge story, and it would have continued to be a huge story. But this sustained conversation, this phenomenon came from 19 million individual people having the courage to say “me too.”
It’s inhumane. And so I feel like a broken record for the last two years, that's why I talk about survivors so much. Because who else will? You cannot forget these people. You cannot forget us. You cannot forget people who have the courage. I don’t care if you volunteered for an expose, or you literally just put #MeToo on your Facebook page. There is courage in that. There is also labor in that that we have to acknowledge. How do you keep moving beyond that?
SM: One thing that I have been thinking about a lot, outside of this idea of redemption, what does justice look like? I just saw you speak at the Omega Institute on rethinking power and I know you think about this a lot, too. As a survivor myself, I didn't want to involve the police. But if at any point I could tell the person, “You know what, this happened to me, and this is the consequence,” that would have potentially helped me in my healing. And I'm curious to know how you see this because it’s such a diverse and complex issue that impacts so many different types of people. When these guys go to jail, it’s hard not to cheer. It’s hard not to cheer when Bill Cosby’s going to jail, it’s hard not to cheer [if] Harvey Weinstein is going to jail, or R. Kelly, you know, it's like, “Finally.” And then there's the other side of me that's like, the police system, the police state, and the prison system perpetuates sexual assault.
TB: Exactly.
SM: So how do we use those types of tools and that type of system to heal and solve a crisis like this?
TB: I think there's no eloquent answer for this, and I have not heard, even amongst my peers and colleagues, the answer that makes me feel like that's it. The way that I think about this, and I‘ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, because I consider myself very much an abolitionist in a lot of ways around other issues. But because I am entrenched in this issue, and I deal with survivors across many different demographics, you know, all stripes, everybody's not in the same place. So I'm not going to try to impose my views and values on a survivor who is trying to just find a nugget. And if that nugget is, “I'm going to get this rape kit done, I'm going to prosecute, I'm going to whatever,” I can educate about alternatives and other things, but it is not my position to tell you that this is what justice should look like for you. That's just not my role, right? And I won’t take that role.
SM: Absolutely.
TB: And I won’t lie and be a hypocrite and say if something happened to my child, that I won’t, one, take it in my own hands, and two, if that's an option, if prison or whatever or arrest is an option, that I wouldn't have to contemplate that in a real way. I think in the ideal, there's this pragmatic part and then this way that we have to continue to dream. I think we have to dream about new paradigms for safety and we have to shift the narrative.
So many ways that people experience sexual violence don’t rise to the level of crime. And so then what? You're just out of options? This is part of the re-education and resocialization that has to happen. If you harm somebody, there has to be recourse. You have to be accountable for the harm you cause. That accountability does not have to look like jail all the time, but there has to be a system of accountability. We don’t have great examples of what that accountability can look like, and that's where the visioning and dreaming has to come in.
SM: Absolutely. And it sounds a lot like just having integrity in the way that you go about these things. I am really interested in these gray areas. I think that a lot of people are grappling with it because a lot of sexual abuse may not be appropriate to bring to the police, so then what. We’ve seen a few moments where people have tried to take things into their own hands: the sh*tty men in media list, the Aziz Ansari story.
TB: Can I say something about that in terms of accountability? I have been thinking a lot about Dave Chappelle and Aziz Ansari because they both have these comedy specials, right? And I know Dave Chappelle wasn't accused of anything, whatever, but he decided he was just going to go down this road….
But some people are not going to be comfortable with what I’m going to say. I've said this in places where people are like, “I don’t agree with you,” but I think Aziz Ansari’s response... has anybody seen his stand-up? He didn‘t act like it didn't happen. He talked very clearly about what his year’s been like, and not from a like, “Yo, this has been a really messed up year,” but like, ”what did I learn? What did I do? How did I try to make this situation, turn this situation around?” He was humble.
And I said, you know, “Why can’t these other folks at least have some lessons?” It’s not perfect, but at least he didn't...I'm just so angry at the folks who kind of hide for six months, and then peek their head, like Louis C.K. Louis C.K. is an assh*le.
SM: Right.
TB: Right? And I'm going to tell you, he was one of my favorite comedians, right? I loved his show, I love Louis C.K., but you going to come back and start talking about transphobes, and children getting shot, what are we supposed to do?
And this is the thing about accountability with these public figures that I think they don’t get. You want my support, right? I don’t tell anybody what it should look like, but for me, when I think about accountability, you start with the person you harmed first. So before you bring your face out into the public or whatever, did you go to the people who you caused harm to and ask them what they need? Did you try to have a process, any kind of process, restorative process, with them? And they may say, “I don’t want that. I don’t want anything to do with you,” which is their right. But you have to start there. The second layer of that is, you want me to laugh at your jokes, buy your tickets, watch your specials, and you think you're not accountable to me, and my values are not supposed to come into play on how I spend my money and my time? You are mistaken.
SM: And if anything, this focus and interest on these individual actors is once again, taking the spotlight away from survivors and the people that have come forward, and with their stories.
TB: Absolutely.
