After three years of the Me Too movement, welcome Act Too – and turn words into action?

In 2006 Tarana Burke laid the groundwork for what would become one of the world’s biggest solidarity movements. She speaks to Chantal Da Silva about its progress and problems, and what lies ahead

Sexual assault survivor and activist Burke first used the phrase 'me too' in 2006 to raise awareness of sexual violence (Getty)

It was exactly three years ago that the simple words Me Too began to reverberate across social media, resonating with countless people all over the world. Film producer Harvey Weinstein, now a convicted rapist, had just been exposed by The New York Times and The New Yorker as the accused in multiple sexual harassment and assault allegations, sparking widespread outrage. Some questioned how Weinstein could have possibly flown under the radar for so long. 

Many, however, did not have to wonder, as a painful truth was quickly coming to light: the allegations against the film producer did not exist in a vacuum. They were part of a bigger problem not just in Hollywood, but across America and around the world.  

Recognising that reality, actor Alyssa Milano tweeted out the words that would kickstart a global movement. “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet,” Milano wrote. She responded to her own message with: “Me too.”

Within just 24 hours, that tweet was shared tens of thousands of times and #MeToo was posted across Twitter and Facebook, with millions of people coming forward to share their own stories of sexual harassment and assault.

At the time, Milano said she had not been aware of where the “me too” phrase originally came from. In fact, it had begun with Tarana Burke, a sexual assault survivor and activist who had launched the Me Too movement more than a decade earlier in 2006 in a bid to raise awareness around sexual violence.

When Burke noticed the #MeToo reverberating across Twitter after Milano’s tweet, she was stunned to see just how far and wide it had spread. For years, she had believed deeply in the power of those two words and now, thousands of people around the world were using them to share their stories and show solidarity with other survivors.

“It was overwhelming to see so many people engage in the hashtag and to see so many people willing to come forward and talk about their experiences with sexual violence,” Burke said in an interview with The Independent on Wednesday.

Before that point, she said, countless survivors had long felt that they had to “keep their experiences to themselves because of the way that society works or the way that shame works”. 

 As they found the courage to speak out, Burke sensed a seismic shift underway. Three years on, Burke believes that much has changed in the wake of this new Me Too movement.  Weinstein, for one, has been put behind bars after being sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. He is also facing an additional 11 sexual assault charges in Los Angeles County involving five women.  

But the film producer is not the only high-profile individual who has had to face the consequences of their actions in a post-Me Too world; others include comedian Bill Cosby, US Gymnastics national team doctor Larry Nassar, French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, Nxivm cult leader Keith Raniere and Smallville actor Allison Mack, who pleaded guilty to racketeering charges for recruiting women into Nxivm.  

Many were forced to resign or have been fired from their jobs over allegations levied against them. According to a New York Times analysis published around a year after their initial exposé on Weinstein – followed days later by a New Yorker investigation – at least 200 high-profile men had lost their jobs after public allegations were made, with nearly half of them being replaced by women.

Burke was ‘overwhelmed’ to see millions of people around the world using her hashtag (Me too)

Others accused of sexual harassment or assault have faced significant scrutiny, with President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden being among them.

In the midst of a wave of allegations brought forward under the Me Too movement, a number of initiatives have been launched to help address sexual violence and support survivors, including the Time’s Up Legal Defence Fund,  launched in January 2018 with widespread support from celebrities, who helped raise millions to fund legal support for those seeking justice in sexual harassment or assault cases.  

A spokesperson for Time’s Up told The Independent that since launching, the initiative has fielded at least 5,000 requests for support, with three-quarters of those requests coming from women with low incomes, 40 per cent from women of colour and over 10 per cent from people identifying as members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Meanwhile, longstanding organisations like the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (Rainn), the largest anti-sexual assault organisation in the US, have seen a major surge in the number of people accessing their programmes.

Speaking with The Independent, Rainn founder and president Scott Berkowitz says that before the Me Too movement began three years ago there were roughly 15,000 people a month accessing the organisation’s services. “Now, we’re consistently seeing around 30,000 a month,” Berkowitz says, with the programme helping more than 880,000 people in the past three years. 

The surge in the number of people accessing Rainn’s services, Berkowitz says, can largely be attributed to the impact the Me Too movement has had on encouraging survivors of sexual harassment and assault to speak out and seek support.  

Dr Tia CM Tyree, a professor at Howard University’s department of strategic, legal and management communications who specialises in female representations in the media, agrees, telling The Independent she believes the Me Too movement has brought major change “both culturally and structurally”.  

“From a cultural standpoint what it offered women was a chance to not be afraid to say they’ve been abused. It offered women a chance to not feel like they had to be in the shadows if they were abused. It offered women a chance to seek justice when they were abused and it really gave women a chance to see that they weren't alone in their abuse,” Tyree says, though she acknowledges that it is not only those who identify as women who are targeted in sexual violence.  

Structurally, Tyree, says, there have been immediate and more long-term changes. “Some of the immediate changes you saw were the resignations. You saw people being named, people immediately resigning or who were fired for their alleged or actual behaviour,” she says. “But, then you have also seen, over the last couple of years, laws being passed,” including efforts to clear a longstanding backlog in the processing of rape kits in the US.

Numerous states have also adopted new protections, with at least 19 introducing new rules aimed at addressing and preventing sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, according to a new report from the National Women’s Law Centre.  

At least 15 states have introduced protections barring or limiting employers from requiring workers to sign nondisclosure agreements as a condition of their employment or as part of a settlement agreement, while 11 states and New York City have implemented or strengthened anti-harassment training requirements for certain employers.

On the whole, Tyree says, governments and industries around the world have been forced to reckon with the realities of sexual violence in their countries and sectors. Some state and industry leaders have introduced sweeping changes to address and combat sexual harassment and assault, while others have been less proactive.  

Some countries have seen iterations of the Me Too movement start to unfold in recent years, such as in Egypt where this summer women started coming forward to share their experiences after allegations made on social media against a university student form a wealthy family led to his arrest. 

In a socially conservative country where making sexual misconduct allegations can not only be notoriously difficult, but also dangerous, Ahmed Bassam Zaki’s arrest represented a turning point. Still, there is a long way to go, with a 2013 United Nations survey finding that 99 per cent of Egyptian women had allegedly experienced some form of sexual harassment.  

The same survey estimated at the time that 35 per cent of women worldwide had experienced either physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives. Some national studies, however, placed that number significantly higher, at 70 per cent.  

Despite the progress that has been made to address those realities, Burke says the fight to address sexual violence is far from over.  

In the years since Me Too began,  the sense of urgency has diminished somewhat, as other pressing issues such as police brutality and racial injustice have taken centre stage.

However, it is important, Burke notes, to acknowledge how these issues intersect and to keep in mind that paying attention to one issue does not mean overlooking another. “At this point in time, people do tend to have shorter attention spans,” she says. “But on climate change, racial justice [and the Me Too movement] we have seen great strides happen in big and huge ways.

“The real world of social change is vast and movements are long and they take time, so what we have done in the past three years is actually phenomenal. We’ve seen the start of a culture shift. Not quite a full culture shift, but the start of one where people are now more conscious and more aware of how they move and how they might contribute to rape culture.”

Still, Burke adds: “This is such a huge issue that three years of progress is really a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed to move the needle.”

So, what would it take? For Burke, a full culture shift brought on by “multiple interventions over a period of time”. 

For the Me Too founder, a simplified version of that culture shift can be found in the transformation of societal views on cigarettes and smoking. “If you think about what it takes to shift culture, cigarettes and cigarette smoking were once ingrained into the fabric of what it was to be ‘American’,” Burke explains. “You had the ‘Marlboro man’ and the ‘Virginia Slims woman’. You saw everybody smoking in the movies and on the television.

Dani Ayers has been appointed as the first CEO of Me Too (Me Too)

“But, then, maybe 25 to 30 years ago, we started to see this incredible shift that came from multiple interventions.” Among them were “research and medical interventions”, which painted a clear picture of the potential health consequences for both smokers and those exposed to second-hand smoke.  

“Then, we saw further cultural intervention because we stopped seeing advertisements for cigarette smoking. Suddenly, the Marlboro man went away and the Virginia slims ads went away and you didn’t see smoking portrayed in movies or in shows unless it was a throwback to another time. They also did away with candy cigarettes,” Burke says.  

At the same time, legislative interventions were being made to change the way cigarette companies operated and engaged with the public, as well as how and where people could engage in smoking.

While people do continue to smoke, Burke says “it changed things dramatically”, marking a cultural shift in the way people perceived what was once considered a societal norm.  

A similar shift, Burke says, needs to happen with the way that societies view sexual harassment and assault: “We need to raise a generation of young people who will see sexual violence as an anomaly; who will think it is a rare and disgusting thing and not something to be celebrated.”

As part of that effort, Burke is launching a new chapter of the Me Too movement, starting with the formal introduction of the initiative’s first ever CEO, Dani Ayers, and the rollout of a digital online platform for civil engagement.  

Under Ayers’ leadership, Me Too is launching Act Too, an online platform that provides survivors, advocates and allies with the tools to turn their words and experiences into meaningful action to combat sexual violence.  

Act Too, Ayers tells The Independent, will help users take action by curating data on the locations of demonstrations and on the campaigns that people care about, with information on hundreds of campaigns and actions set to be published on the platform today.

Every action will be recorded to a permanent archive on a public blockchain in an effort to ensure their impact cannot be erased. The new platform will also provide a to-do list on the actions that people can take to help combat sexual violence around the world, Ayers says.  

“This is not a spectator sport,” she adds. “Movements work by people moving them forward and we need people to know that what happens depends on what they do.”