With Harvey Weinstein’s list of accusers up to a staggering 43 women, people have taken to Twitter to share their own stories of sexual harassment and assault. Sparked by a tweet from actress Alyssa Milano, Twitter users are using the hashtag #MeToo to show just how prevalent this issue is. On October 15, Milano tweeted the following:
If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet. pic.twitter.com/k2oeCiUf9n
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) October 15, 2017
The response was overwhelming. There are almost half a million “me too” tweets, and that number is still growing. Some tweets simply stated “me too” while others shared specific stories of sexual harassment or assault along with the hashtag #MeToo. A number of #MeToo tweets have come from famous women, including Lady Gaga, Evan Rachel Wood, Anna Paquin, and Debra Messing. But the vast majority of tweets come from everyday women, proving that sexual harassment and assault isn’t just a Hollywood issue.
The Me Too hashtag has spread worldwide, with the hashtag #balancetonporc (meaning ‘squeal on your pig’) and #quellavoltache (meaning ‘that time when’) inviting women in France and Italy to share their stories of sexual assault and harassment. Asia Argento, an Italian actress who has accused Weinstein of rape, tweeted the following:
#quellavoltache Hollywood big shot director with Napoleon complex gave me GHB and raped me unconscious, I was 26 years old #BalancetonPorc
— Asia Argento (@AsiaArgento) October 15, 2017
Some men also joined in the conversation by using the hashtag #MeToo to share their own harrowing stories of sexual assault and rape. But a post by Charles Clymer, retweeted by Alyssa Milano, articulated why the #MeToo conversation should focus on the misogynistic component to rape culture.
Regarding boys and men as rape survivors:
I thought of turning this into a thread, but I think it's better read as a whole.#MeToo pic.twitter.com/wYcLbtukJZ
— Charles Clymer🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) October 15, 2017
More trending hashtags came about when actress Rose McGowan’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended after she began discussing her experiences with sexual assault in Hollywood. McGowan, one of the many accusers of Weinstein, also tweeted at Ben Affleck, claiming that he lied when he denied knowing about Weinstein’s history. Her account was later reinstated and Twitter clarified that McGowan’s account was temporarily suspended because she posted a tweet with a personal phone number. But the Twitter community had already spurred a trending hashtag: #WomenBoycottTwitter. This hashtag was meant to bring light to the criticism many users have regarding how Twitter handles harassment by creating a boycott of Twitter last Friday. Many women, including famous names such as Chrissy Teigen and Kathy Griffin, joined in on the boycott.
Ladies. Let's do this. #WomenBoycottTwitter. Not because of hate but because I love this platform and know it can be better.
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) October 13, 2017
But many women felt that using silence to protest McGowan being silenced was counterproductive. Some Twitter users even responded to Teigen’s tweet saying that silence isn’t the answer. But Teigen had a different perspective.
These sites only work and are only able to make money when we use it. I will never be silent. I'll be elsewhere. https://t.co/WM2koePnHJ
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) October 13, 2017
Despite celebrity endorsement, many women still felt that #WomenBoycottTwitter wasn’t the answer to the problem. Therefore, the hashtag #WomenWhoRoar started trending. This hashtag was created by Amy Siskind, the president of The New Agenda which is a women’s advocacy nonprofit. She stated that she “felt like we didn’t need another quiet day”, and therefore used the hashtag #WomenWhoRoar to show that women would no longer be silenced regarding the issues of sexual harassment and violence.
For many, however, #WomenWhoRoar was more than just a response to silence. It was a stand against white feminism. All over Twitter, it has been pointed out that it wasn’t until a wealthy white woman (McGowan) was affected that users were motivated to boycott. It seems that this call for solidarity didn’t necessarily extend to women of color– such as ESPN anchor Jemele Hill who was recently suspended from her job for her tweets about the NFL protests. As told to The Verge by Dorothy Charles, “As a black woman, the boycott reminded me a lot of the Women’s March, where nice, liberal white women are reacting to the sorts of misogyny that black, brown, and Native women have been protesting for years,” she said. “And they’re doing it because white women are now affected.” Writer Mikki Kendall told The Verge that “the goal of harassers is to make women shut up. I don’t see how giving them what they want is an effective protest. I think it is important for us to keep speaking up and to move the needle away from this idea that bad things only matter when white women are impacted.”
Despite the conflict in opinions regarding the efficacy of and the reasoning behind these Twitter movements, the hashtags #MeToo, #WomenBoycottTwitter, and #WomenWhoRoar are another step towards empowering women who, in the past, have stayed relatively silent about sexual harassment and assault. But with each hashtag seemingly promoting a different protest tactic, it begs the question of what kind of protest is most effective. This leads to the psychology and sociology behind protesting. In other words, what makes a person want to support a specific issue?
According to Robb Willer, a Stanford University sociologist, nonviolent protests are more persuasive than violent protests because people don’t like to see themselves as disruptors of the social order. The strong desire to conform surpasses one’s belief in a cause. “When the social order is being greatly disrupted, when property is being destroyed, when there’s some risk of harm to people, that leads to a dis-identification effect, where people say ‘I’m not like those people,’” Willer said. In other words, the more conservative the protest is, the more radical it is. When a protest is orderly and polite, more support is gained– even among people who wouldn’t normally agree with that cause. When a protest is violent and extreme, it can create a public opinion backlash where people turn away from a cause, sometimes even one they previously supported. So how does this relate to Twitter protests? In regards to the trending hashtags, people are more likely to support a boycott of Twitter or a simple sharing of stories on the platform than a loud or aggressive protest. But, as mentioned on Twitter in response to #WomenBoycottTwitter, is silence really the answer to an issue being silenced? According to German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, maybe not.
Noelle-Neumann coined the term the “spiral of silence” to describe how the desire for conformity leads to a misjudgment about the prevalence of one’s opinions. Those in the majority assume everyone thinks like them, while those in the minority think they are the only ones. Both ways of thinking lead to silence. While the “spiral of silence” can be a positive thing, like when it prevents hate speech and prejudiced views, it can often have negative outcomes. For example, sexual harassment and assault have often been very quiet topics, and therefore the spiral of silence has prevented a real conversation about this issue. The #MeToo hashtag was able to counteract the spiral of silence by allowing women to see that they are not alone. Previously, women might have felt that they were alone in this issue, and that there was no point speaking up about it. But with the outpour of women’s stories on Twitter, women are realizing that they are not alone and that their stories are not only valid, but also common. Along with this, men are realizing that sexual harassment and assault is a bigger issue than they may have realized.
hey dudes if you're surprised how many people posting to #metoo are women you know
think what that means about the men you know
— [moth dad] long names are not endorsements (@innesmck) October 16, 2017
In this way, speaking up and being loud about the issue of sexual harassment and assault through #MeToo and #WomenWhoRoar may be more beneficial than using silence as a weapon in #WomenBoycottTwitter. It is a complex issue. Women want to be heard and seen, but don’t want to be too loud or aggressive that they turn people away from their cause. Women want to respond to issues of sexual harassment and protest being silenced, but this is often viewed as a form of solidarity reserved for white women. In the end, the trending hashtags are all bringing awareness to an important issue in their own way. While some forms of protest may be more effective and beneficial than others, any form of protest is a welcome change from the silence that has surrounded the issue of sexual harassment and violence for so long.
By: Cianna Allen