Tarana Burke - Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

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For Melinda, who never knew freedom.

For Kaia, so you always have freedom.

For Heaven, for helping me find freedom.

For Mommy, so that all you feel is freedom.

The vibration of my phone nudged me awake. It was Sunday morning, and I was sleeping in. Through half-shut eyes I watched my phone slide across the nightstand. Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Bzzzt! Bzzzt!

I thought about the halfhearted promise I had made to my mom that I would try to go to church that morning. It had to be her pinging me with a reminder, and a slight pang of guilt kept me from looking at my phone. I figured not seeing the message was basically the same as not getting it at all, so I closed my eyes tighter and rolled over in bed. I needed the extra rest.

The night before I had been out late with my girlfriends. It was unseasonably warm for New York in the fall, and we had decided to go to our favorite local spot, Sexy Taco/Dirty Cash. The bartender, Antonio, was a true mixologist, and ever since we came in one night and ordered what he deemed wack drinks, he made it his personal mission to broaden our horizons. We never ordered off the menu when he was on shift. We simply sat at the bar and got our lifejoyfully socializing the way Black women doas he made us new concoctions. Wed ohh and ahh and giggle and flirt until we were feeling good enough to float on home. With my low threshold for liquor, that was usually two drinks.

That Saturday was no different. We sat around the bar trying new things, eating, laughing, and cutting up before we took the party out onto the streets of Harlem. By the time I got home and crashed, I knew full well that it would be a late sleep the next day.

About an hour after the first buzz, my phone vibrated again. This time it was a Facebook notification from a friend, so I opened my phone to look and she had tagged me in a post that read

This one rocks. Tarana Burke look. Me too. Predators are everywhere. Work, home, houses of worship, you name it.

If all the women who I know who have been sexually assaulted or harassed wrote me too as a status and all the women they know we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.

I grabbed the phone off of its charger in a panic and read the message again more carefully, thinking that the friend who posted it had written the entire thing. I was so confused about why she would do so without consulting me first. Id been doing the work of bringing empathy into the fight against sexual violence for many years now using this language. I sent her a private message thanking her for tagging me and explaining that I had been working hard to relaunch my website and broaden the work around me too, and that I didnt want to diminish it by creating a simple hashtag in response to the recent news stories. I had, of course, seen the media coverage of the Hollywood mogul who had been exposedin not one but two bombshell storiesas a serial predator of women, confirming years of whispers and not-so-subtle innuendos from some of his famous collaborators. I had read the stories of the high-profile actresses who had courageously come forward to talk about the horrific things they suffered at this mans hands, and I had watched as the unfolding conversation reverberated across social media. Other than these women being survivors of sexual violence, none of what was happening in Hollywood felt related to the work I had been entrenched in within my own community for so many years. Seeing me too, the phrase I had built my work and purpose around, used by people outside of that community, was jarring.

My friend was confused too. She explained that she hadnt created the original post or the hashtag; she was simply reposting it and giving me credit because she knew I had long been doing this work using that phrase. I asked if she minded deleting the post to slow down whatever was being spread. My heart dropped at the thought of inviting people to open up and share their experience with sexual violence online without a way to help them process it. I knew it could lead to emotional crisis in the absence of caring, empathetic environments. There was a knot growing in my stomach. This would be a disaster if it went viral.

Maybe it wont catch on, I messaged as a rush of anxietyand a creeping hangovermade my body flush.

And then she said it. Its all over the internet.

My brain was scrambling. I went to my Facebook timeline and frantically scrolled up and down, but I didnt see a single post using #metoo except hers. I let my body relax a bit and then remembered to check my notification from earlier. It wasnt my mom guilting me about church; it was a text from another girlfriend with a screenshot of a series of tweets all using #metoo. Underneath, she wrote, Hey sis, this you?

The blood drained from my head.

I sat up in bed and pulled out my laptop. It took less than thirty seconds on my Twitter feed to see the first #metoo tweet. I was not a prolific tweeter at the time and wasnt very familiar with how to navigate it. I quickly FaceTimed my nineteen-year-old childmy big-hearted, caring, gender nonconforming, free-spirited child and activist in their own rightwho was deeply familiar with my work and had also set up permanent residence in the Twittersphere.

I didnt even wait for a hello. Baby, have you seen people using #metoo online? I asked, forgetting it was well before rise and shine for a Gen Y college student. They told me they hadnt, and I tried to explain that something was happening but that I couldnt quite find it.

Search the hashtag, Ma, they groaned.

Annoyed, I asked for explicit instructions. They walked me through it, and with just a few clicks, hundreds of thousands of tweets flooded my screen. My life flashed before my eyes: all the work Id done, all the things Id been through. In a daze, I managed to say Id call them back later before hanging up. I scrolled down and down and down, each hashtag feeling like a needle pricking my skin. Some of the tweets had pictures attached, some were full of emojis, and others used every last one of the allotted one hundred and eighty characters.

And they all said #metoo.

I slammed my laptop shut and tried to take deep breaths before the anxiety welling up in my chest took over. I got out of bed, walked into my living room, and opened a window. I let the cool breeze hit my skin, trying everything I could think of to calm down, but the quickening in my heart made it feel like I was doing a hundred-yard dash over hurdles. I picked up my cell and frantically dialed Vernetta, one of my best friends, numbers. She didnt answer, so I called another one, Yaba. She answered. It turned out the two of them were together.

Girl, I started, trying to steady my voice unsuccessfully before it all came spilling out, someone turned me too into a hashtag and its all over the internet. I dont know what to do!

Yaba is one of the most even-keeled and measured women I know. She doesnt excite easily and is not prone to histrionics. Hearing the distress in my voice, she knew exactly what to say.

Just take a step back and breathe.