If you’ve been on the internet recently, you’ve most likely noticed many women posting two simple words as their statuses: Me Too. In case you don’t know what they’re referring to, the “Me Too” movement was started by an activist by the name of Tarana Burke over 10 years ago. Her goal was to connect women who have experienced sexual assault and for the two simple words to act as a reminder that they are not alone. Recently, actress Alyssa Milano brought back the movement by tweeting the link to Burke’s organization, and ever since, the two words have spread across social media like wildfire, connecting millions of people and their stories.
But how does this movement relate to us, as college women? Data shows that about 1 out of 4 women will be sexually assaulted before the end of their four years, but it is easy to feel like since you can’t put a name or a face to the numbers, that it isn’t real and that it never actually happens . When I first got on Facebook Monday morning after Milano kick started the trend, my feed was flooded with “me too” statuses. Many were distant acquaintances from high school. However, there were countless posts that were actually from my closest friends. I began to question how many people had truly experienced such harassment, and how many were just afraid to open up about their experiences because they might feel ashamed or even guilty about what happened. On a campus where the percentage of women significantly outnumbers the percentage of men, how is it so easy for women to feel alone in their experiences with sexual assault?
Photo courtesy of glamour.com.
That Monday morning opening my Facebook, however, I began to notice a change. Women began to open up about their experiences, and rather than being shunned or ignored, they were flooded with support from friends and even people they might not have known that well but who sympathize nonetheless. It was shocking for me to see how two words could communicate so much and connect so many people who might previously have been suffering alone. Knowing that there are many other women out there who have lived through similar traumatic experiences as yourself not only allows people to see the magnitude of the issue, but it also allows people to feel a sense of a community that otherwise wasn’t clearly there.