University of Wyoming students have joined the awareness behind the #MeToo movement to help share their sexual assault stories. The movement has crossed seas from places as far as Australia to our very own community here at UW.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms were flooded with the tag ‘Me Too’ last month when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet,” on Oct. 15, 2017. Milano said the goal of #MeToo is to give sexual assault victims an amplified voice.
Kendal Binion, Graduate Assistant of the Stop Violence Program at UW, said a lot of people from the support group on campus felt that they need to share their story to others, but at the same time even if they wanted to share their stories, they were afraid of mean comments from the people who did not believe them.
“I have honestly mixed feeling about it. I think it’s wonderful that people were finding their voices to share their stories,” Binion said, “But I am the facilitator for the sexual assault group on the campus and a lot of the survivors tell that they feel pressured to share their story.”
A graduate student at UW, Manish Bengani, shared his #MeToo experience on social media. Bengani is also a survivor of harassment and assault, and with the help of #MeToo he shared his experience with others.
“From my previous experience, when people share their feelings then they get comfortable, with sharing the trauma you come out of it collectively,” Bengani said. “When I shared my experience one of the guys commented some mean stuff on my ‘Me Too’ post saying that men always enjoy it, men don’t get assaulted.”
His close friends and family became furious and told him to block the guy.
“I didn’t block him because I wanted to keep that as an example to people that this is what most men think about other men who [have been] sexually abused,” Bengani said.
Binion said, “I think there is a higher stigma with male sexual assault survivors, so for them to be able to break that, I think that’s wonderful. I am in the clinical psychology program. I am pretty familiar with the statistics like how often men are assaulted like that, so I think it is great to see them finding their voices.”
Kajol Rupakheti, survivor of sexual assault, undergrad at Central Queensland University, Australia said, “The whole idea of Me Too wasn’t to gain sympathy but to have a clear look at our lives, writing Me Too maybe, broke the silence for some girls.”
Victims of sexual assault share their stories online using the hashtag. They share their personal stories, some were assaulted by family friends and some by their own family members.
“Writing a ‘Me Too’ gave me a clear vision of how most of the girls or women were assaulted when they were, maybe kids or adults or in their 60s. It was sad to see every other girl physically assaulted by men, maybe their cousins, uncles or relatives. Some posted it as social harassment, their boss’s inappropriate comments and non-consensual touching,” Rupakheti said.
Two words, ‘Me too,’ sweeps across the internet and Milano’s tweet has received 69,000 replies from all over the world. All genders are the survivors of sexual harassment replying in response to her tweet.
The tag has been used more than 540,572 times on Instagram. Twitter confirmed to CBS News that 85 countries have used this tag, and each country has had at least 1,000 #MeToo tweets. While 1.7 million tweets included the hashtag, other social media sites are just as active as Twitter.
Facebook also released a statistic showing that in less than 24 hours there were more than 12 million posts, comments and reactions regarding #MeToo by 4.7 million users around the world. According to Facebook 45 percent of the users in the U.S. have friends who posted “Me Too”.
The ‘Me Too’ movement originally started 10 years ago by activist Tarana Burke. She is the founder of Just Be Inc., a non-profit youth organization that focuses on the health, well-being and wholeness of young women while guiding and empowering them, according to the Just Be Inc. website.
Lane Moore, American stand-up comedian, later posted on twitter that she hopes to see a change with the hashtag. “Writing #MeToo on social media to mean ‘I finally feel safe in the world.’”
