Feminism… Thoughts. 11
Hello, guys! How’s it hanging at your end? Let’s continue where we left off on feminism. If you haven’t read the prequels, please do. Let’s delve right into it.
We left off talking about Burke launching a women’s advocacy campaign known as the “Metoo”, which was also a popular hashtag.
Continuance of Feminist
For the next decade, Burke developed ‘me too’ while serving as the director of various art and cultural institutions across the country. However, in 2017, Burke’s hashtag #metoo went viral on social media. In October of that year, a controversial sex scandal made headlines. Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was exposed for using his power to sexually harass and exploit women in the entertainment industry for over thirty years. In addition to the over ninety women that came forward against Weinstein, women around the world publicly shared their own experiences with sexual assault.
Not long after the scandal, actress Alyssa Milano helped popularize the #metoo movement by tweeting: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too.’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude regarding the problem.” In less than a day, 4.7 million people engaged in the “Me too” conversation, with more than 12 million posts, comments or reactions on Facebook.
During the same year, TIME Magazine named Tarana Burke, Alyssa Milano, and many other Silence Breakers as their “Time Person of the Year.” The public outcry grew as women and men internationally translated ‘me too’ into their various languages and aligned with the movement. These allegations instigated a global “reckoning” against sexual assault and harassment that became known as the “Weinstein effect.”
A couple of weeks after the scandal broke, a group of 700,000 Latina farmworkers from across the country wrote an open letter of support to the Silence Breakers in Hollywood that came forward against Harvey Weinstein. These women shared similar experiences and signed their message with: “We believe and stand with you.” These women were all members of a coalition of women farmworkers called Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance).
Two days after the letter was released, hundreds of women in Los Angeles paraded to protest sexual harassment. The Me Too Survivors March took place on November 12th, 2017 in downtown Los Angeles to create a safe space for survivors and allies to rally against sexual misconduct. On that same day, the “Take Back the Workplace” march also met in downtown Los Angeles to take a stand against sexual harassment in the workplace. The two marches met at the same place and together advocated for social reform and legislation that would support survivors of these crimes.
Anyway, we’ll stop here for the now. If you are looking to get an excellent web design company, do click on here!
For more reads, click on here.
