Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email [email protected].

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/
Donate to our newsroom

Menu

Topics

  • Abortion
  • Politics
  • Education
  • LGBTQ+
  • Caregiving
  • Environment & Climate
  • Business & Economy
View all topics

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].

  • Latest Stories
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Ways to Give
  • Search
  • Contact
Donate
Home

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

Topics

  • Abortion
  • Politics
  • Education
  • LGBTQ+
  • Caregiving
  • Environment & Climate
  • Business & Economy
View all topics

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].

  • Latest Stories
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Ways to Give
  • Search
  • Contact

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].

Become a member

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Politics

Tarana Burke doesn’t define #MeToo’s success by society’s failure

Analysis | She started the movement to raise awareness of how common sexual violence is before the hashtag went viral. Here’s what Tarana Burke sees coming next.

A Portrait of Me Too Founder Tarana Burke.
(Richard Bord; Getty Images/The 19th)

Errin Haines

Editor-at-large

Published

2022-10-14 10:24
10:24
October 14, 2022
am

Republish this story

Share

  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Email

Republish this story

Five years ago this month, the #MeToo movement evolved into a global phenomenon after a bombshell New York Times story revealed sexual harassment allegations against powerful Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein. 

But a viral tweet from actor Alyssa Milano, who used the hashtag to raise awareness about the prevalence of sexual violence against women, was not the beginning of the movement. More than a decade earlier, activist Tarana Burke, herself a survivor of sexual assault, first used “Me Too” on social media.

I’ve covered Burke often over the past five years, and while she has weighed in on various interpretations of what progress can mean, she’s also looking to reframe how the country assesses the state of #MeToo.

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Anniversaries tend to be a time to reflect, to take stock of the work done and left undone. The #MeToo movement has seen victories and losses in the courtroom, boardrooms, and across institutions from government, to sports, business to media and entertainment.  Weinstein himself was convicted of assault and rape in 2020 and now is back in a courtroom facing his accusers. 

At this pivotal moment for our democracy and society, I wanted to talk to Burke as the founder of the movement about what she sees as its impact, how the country measures progress and justice around these issues, and the work ahead for her and for our society. (You can watch our full conversation below.)


Most Americans now believe the #MeToo era has made accountability more possible for workplace sexual harassment and assault. 

Reducing people’s lives to achievements like passing laws or winning in court misses the point, Burke said. Most surprising to her as a sign of progress? The shift in how survivors and their stories have been centered — and the impact that has made on people who may have never been victims of sexual violence but are now more able to empathize with those who have.

“The way I have been trying to help people frame this is to think about what #MeToo has made possible,” Burke said. “We could not have a sustained global conversation about the breadth and depth of sexual violence five years ago … We talk about things like healing. We have people who have survived sexual violence who have space to tell their stories, who have found safety in community they thought they would never experience.”

Some people want to judge the movement on specific outcomes, so when a case is overturned, Burke said, “people are like, ‘Oh the #MeToo movement has failed.’” Instead, she said, such outcomes are proof of the difficulty of the work.

“It’s not about the failure of the movement; it’s the failure of the systems,” Burke explained. “These systems are not designed to help survivors, they’re not designed to give us justice, they’re not designed to end sexual violence.” 

“When we bind ourselves to the outcomes of these cases, we are constantly up and down with our disappointment, our highs and lows,” Burke continued. “What they tell us is just how much work we need to change the laws and the policies but most importantly, to change the culture that creates the people who commit, who perpetrate acts of harm.”

  • More from Errin Haines
    Two friends lean on one another as they look into the distance amidst a demonstration outside the Supreme Court.
  • It’s been 100 days since Dobbs. What has changed?
  • Americans see the media as critical to democracy. Now what are we going to do with that?
  • Why women are setting the new midterms conversation

The #MeToo era has also intersected with other major cultural phenomena in our country — a racial reckoning, a pandemic that kept millions of Americans at home for school and work, and the Supreme Court’s decision to end federal protections for abortion.

Burke is a Black woman who started this movement largely to sound the alarm about the racially disparate impact of sexual violence, work she has been doing for decades. But the current era that has exposed long-standing racial inequities — in justice, in health care, in all facets of society — has also created an opportunity to highlight #MeToo as a social justice issue impacted by these factors that can never be about one case or verdict.

Burke said that while she is far less often overlooked as the founder of #MeToo than when the hashtag went viral five years ago,  it’s still difficult to get people to talk directly about the intersection of race and sexual violence.

“Literally, we’ll talk about me as if I’m translucent and abstract but won’t talk about Black women,” she said. “Everywhere I go, there’s no place I go, there’s no room I go into that I don’t bring myself as a Black woman and Black women with me. … I always mention Black women, I always mention Native women in particular because of just how expansive the problem is in our community.”


Headed into the 2020 presidential election, I spoke to Burke about her #MeTooVoter campaign to mobilize survivors at the ballot box. Questions of bodily autonomy are supercharged this year in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision ending a federal right to abortion. 

Ahead of next month’s midterms, she said she’s thinking more than ever about survivors as a key part of the electorate. They can be a powerful voting bloc that could help elect candidates focused on changing policy around sexual and gender-based violence, she said. 

“People deal with survivors from a place of pity all the time: ‘Oh, I’m so sorry that happened to you. Oh, you poor thing,’ as, opposed to from a place of power,” Burke said. “Once you organize people around the idea that they are powerful and they have strength, there’s no really turning back from that. People don’t respond to our trauma and they don’t respond to our tears — they’re going to respond to our strength.”

Centering survivors also means expanding understanding of the various forms of sexual violence. Burke shared that her organization is also focused on the issue of consent in the disability and neurodivergent communities. 

“It was really important for us to make sure we just did not leave folks out,” Burke said. “As we expand the conversation around consent in general, there’s this real big movement around codifying consent. Part of it is about codifying consent into law, but I think it’s about codifying consent culturally. If we have a universal understanding of what (consent) is, it can be communicated across college campuses and schools and as we talk about it when we do training and things like that.”


Burke now has a global platform that she is using to make space for new leadership with fresh perspectives on the work ahead. At 49, she’s also looking back at how the work and her approach have changed.

“Prior to #MeToo going viral, quite honestly, I would’ve been dreaming smaller,” Burke said. “I just didn’t understand where we could go. Now, I really feel like the sky’s the limit.

“My job is to move the needle as far as I can in my lifetime and pass the baton,” she said. “I don’t want to be the old head trying to get young people to do things my way. I think the future of this work is young people right now who are watching me make mistakes.”

The five-year mark is also an opportunity for the rest of society to consider where we go from here, and what the collective work of communities is around issues of sexual harassment and assault. At a time when survivors are finding strength in sharing their stories, what does it mean to translate that into power at the polls? With policy? What can accountability look like long before accusers take the witness stand?

How the rest of us talk about sexual violence and how it intersects with power and race and disability will be the work of the next five years and beyond. Movements have always had moments of setbacks and success. #MeToo is no different, but this time can inform the next era, new voices and future changemakers. Making our country safer requires more of us to also say #MeToo — that we are willing to push back against a society and systems that make anyone less free and less equal.

Republish this story

Share

  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Email

Recommended for you

Authors share stories of women rising up across the world to advocate for rights
R. Kelly survivor Faith Rodgers and attorney Gloria Allred speak during a press conference.
How podcasts about R. Kelly played a pivotal role in elevating Black survivors’ stories
Women will decide the 2020 election
Women protest and sing songs with their fists in the air as Harvey Weinstein attends a pretrial session in New York City.
Most Americans believe #MeToo has changed the climate around workplace sexual misconduct

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact [email protected] for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email [email protected] to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at [email protected].

Become a member

Explore more coverage from The 19th
Abortion Politics Education LGBTQ+ Caregiving
View all topics

Our newsroom's Spring Member Drive is here!

Learn more about membership.

  • Transparency
    • About
    • Team
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Community Guidelines
  • Newsroom
    • Latest Stories
    • 19th News Network
    • Podcast
    • Events
    • Careers
    • Fellowships
  • Newsletters
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • The Amendment
    • Event Invites
  • Support
    • Ways to Give
    • Sponsorship
    • Republishing
    • Volunteer

The 19th is a reader-supported nonprofit news organization. Our stories are free to republish with these guidelines.