OPINION
DOCTORS ' Lounge
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# US, Too
Mary G. Barry, MD Louisville Medicine Editor editor @ glms. org
Tarana Burke started the“ Me, Too” movement back in 2006. In 1996, she had been deeply mortified by her failure to properly help a schoolgirl who was being sexually abused at home. The child opened up to her, but Ms. Burke felt unprepared and emotionally overwhelmed, and suggested another counselor. The memory of that child’ s shattered face as she turned her back on Ms. Burke was burned into her soul. She felt desperate to help other girls in the most effective way. Eventually, in 2006, she founded“ Just Be, Inc.” She describes it as“ a youth organization focused on the health, wellbeing and wholeness of young women of color.” She envisioned this effort as a way for women and girls of color to find solace in the sorority of others who had been abused: the“ Me” and the“ Too” could talk in a way that only survivors of shared pain can.
Flash back a month to the accusations( ever-growing) against Hollywood’ s Harvey Weinstein. A sudden chorus of female voices joined in those accusations with extensive detail. Reporter Ronan Farrow wrote in the Nov. 6 th issue of The New Yorker about uncovering a network of ex-Mossad
30 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE spies whom Mr. Weinstein had allegedly employed to suppress and discredit his accusers. Almost daily since, another public figure has been accused. Women have never been silent about this, but we have been disbelieved if we speak up. We have been fired, demoted, insulted, and blamed in every possible way for the act of another, merely for standing up in our own defense. We have agreed to be taunted and belittled, just to get the part. We have agreed to do sexual acts, just to get the job. We have understood that to work in certain places, we have to use our looks to succeed – but then they use our looks against us, anyway.
What no one professed to“ know” until the actress Alyssa Milano’ s tweet set the net on fire with responses, was how many thousands upon thousands of us could, and would, say“ Me, Too.” Facebook reported that 4.7 million of us identified with“ Me, Too.” Thousands marched in LA on Sunday, November 12, led by organizer Ms. Burke and many others. Accusations against British men, against Swedes, against media types of every sort are swirling round the airwaves. Women who have lived with this all of their professional lives are astonished, yet gratified, that the dam has broken. Apparently, someone( meaning men) is now prepared to listen to us( so they say).
What“ Me, Too” really means is that nearly every woman has been felt up, or grabbed, or rubbed up against, or pushed against the elevator wall, or crowded into the window seat of the bus by a man who proceeds to touch himself. It is so utterly commonplace that when a woman tells a friend about this, the friend nods her head sagely. Women in health careers have the same experiences as women on the line, in the university, in the office, at the store. Women on the frontlines of the infantry and in the back rooms of politics are all unwillingly subjected to forced touching. Women in every part of the world, for all her many centuries, have been raped and killed for sexual reasons. Women and girls and boys and men have been sold into sexual slavery. Armies use rape as a weapon against civilians.
Survivors of rape are blamed for wearing certain things, for being certain places, for failing to kill their attackers even. Survivors of rape are especially blamed for the crimes of others, and even if one # MeToo