Is #MeToo Too Big?
On October 15, 2017, shortly after The New York Times and the New Yorker published their initial investigations into the allegations of monstrous behavior by Harvey Weinstein, the actor Alyssa Milano sent out a tweet: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted,” she wrote, “write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” The suggestion, which currently has more than 67,000 replies and sparked many, many more, instantly expanded the movement that was founded by the activist and community organizer Tarana Burke more than a decade ago.
And the expansion, in turn, subjected #MeToo to the familiar physics of American political entropy. The movement, about the survivors of sexual violence, particularly girls and women of color from low-wealth communities—soon stretched, in its new purview, far beyond sexual harassment and assault. Under its broadened banner came conversations, and at once, about complicities, and celebrities, and pay disparities, and power structures, and whisper networks, and affirmative consent, and the myriad ways American culture has dreamed up to tell the marginalized that their rightful place remains, despite it all, in the margins.
