On This Day in History: October 15

Me Too is popularized

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On October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano launched the Me Too movement via her Twitter. Except she didn’t really launch it. It had already been around for more than a decade, begun by Black activist Tarana Burke in 2006 on MySpace.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: October 15, 2017--

Milano shared a screen cap of text presenting the concept of me too as “Suggested by a friend.” Her added commentary read “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” Being that Milano is famous, it exploded and popularized the movement. But we can’t do an “on this day” for when Tarana Burke first wrote about it, because she doesn’t recall the exact date.

Burke was born in New York in 1973. Growing up she endured rape and sexual assault. Encouraged by her mother, Tarana became involved in her community as a way to help her recover from these acts of violence. After college she moved to Selma, Alabama—a location important in the history of the civil rights movement—to work helping girls who experience extreme hardship. In 1997, a 13-year-old girl named Heaven told Burke she was being sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Burke didn’t know what to say to her to show empathy. Later, she said she wished she had replied, “Me too.”

Burke founded Just Be Inc. in 2006 focused on helping women of color, and it was during that time she began using the phrase “me too” in order to convey to survivors: “You’re not alone. This happened to me too.” That same year she began posting about Me Too on MySpace to promote “empowerment through empathy.”

In 2017 allegations against rapist-piece-of-shit film producer Harvey Weinstein became public. A few days later, Milano tweeted about Me Too, and the movement was taken to new heights. Many informed Milano of the history of the movement and she was quick to give credit, tweeting a link to Burke’s Just Be website and the heartbreaking Me Too origin story of Burke’s regret that she could not find the words to help Heaven.

The phrase spread virally as the #metoo hashtag. Numerous celebrities such as Ashley Judd, Uma Thurman, and Jennifer Lawrence added their voices to it. Media coverage was ample, and the sense of solidary prompted many to come forward with allegations they’d previously been afraid to voice, leading to many high-profile terminations of employment by perpetrators of sexual violence.

It spread beyond allegations in Hollywood to other industries, including fashion, music, sciences, academia, sports, and politics, and Me Too became an international proclamation translated into numerous languages. Of course, there was no shortage of misogynistic whiners who saw this as a “war on men,” and that Me Too was full of false allegations and whatever happened to due process and blah blah shut the fuck up. Burke says the goals of Me Too are to provide better legal protections for girls and women against sexual harassment and assault, and to prioritize processing all untested rape kits in the U.S.

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