Meighan Stone - Awakening : #MeToo and the global fight for womens rights

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Copyright 2021 by Rachel B. Vogelstein and Meighan Stone

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933116

ISBNs: 978-1-5417-5862-9 (hardcover), 978-1-5417-5861-2 (ebook)

E3-20210528-JV-NF-ORI

To Sage and Parker,
my lifes greatest gifts,
and to the women who persist.

R.B.V.

To every activist who survives and speaks,
Maureen and Dan for your constant friendship,
and my beloved son Moses, as he becomes a new man.

M.S.

Stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TE D Talk: The Danger of a Single Story

She had resolved never to take another step backward.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening

me too. founder and activist Tarana Burke (second from right) helps lead a march for survivors of sexual assault in Los Angeles, California, in November 2017. Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

Tarana Burke

F IFTEEN YEARS AGO , I WAS A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER AND CULTURAL WORKER IN Selma, Alabama, running an organization for young girls. I was all too familiar with the messages they were hearing every day: youre not good enough, smart enough, important enough. So I made it my mission to change those messagesto help groups of Black and brown girls find their voices, celebrate their unique potential, and recognize their power as leaders.

It didnt take long to see the pattern that was taking shape. Every time we gathered together, stories would spill out. I sat in community centers, classrooms, and church basements, listening to thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds matter-of-factly describe their experiences with sexual violence, abuse, and assault. Because Im a survivor myself, my heart ached for them. I wanted to say something deep and profoundsomething that captured our shared pain and trauma. I wanted to tell them that this had happened to me, too.

Thats how me too. began: as shared language between survivors. It was a signal to these girls that they were in a space where they could focus on their healing without having to be performative or guarded. It was empowerment through empathy.

If you had asked me back then, I would have told you that I believed our survivor-led movement had the potential to move the world. But I never could have imagined that #MeToo would become a hashtag translated into dozens of languages, spark a global reckoning, and become a connective framework for movements across the globe. The spark ignited more than a decade ago has caught fire in ways beyond my wildest dreams.

For me, reading the stories of the women in Awakening is an inspiring experienceand a humbling one. Im stunned by the defiance of women like Mozn Hassan, a lawyer in Egypt who has been repeatedly targeted and surveilled by an authoritarian regime because of her outspoken feminist advocacy, including her support of #AnaKaman, or #MeToo. By the fortitude of survivors like Khadijah Adamu and Fakhrriyyah Hashim in Nigeria, who have broken with taboo and organized publicly with #ArewaMeToo, at enormous personal risk. Im awed by the determination of computer science graduate Luo Xixi, who was inspired by #MeToos viral moment in the United States to break her silence after thirteen years and name the professor who had harassed her. And the defiance of Swedish actress and writer Cissi Wallin, who decided to speak publicly and remains determined to help protect others, even after she was found guilty of defaming the man she accused. I admire the resilience of Pakistani singer and actress Meesha Shafi, who came forward about a colleague in the entertainment industry, proclaiming, It is not easy to speak out but it is harder to stay silent. In parts of the globe where #MeToo is seen as a form of treason, where legal systems fail women over and over again, where sex for grades is accepted as part of life, where standing up for womens rights is dangerous, where survivors face crushing stigma, and even in places the world views as feminist utopias, the activists in this book are expanding the definition of courage. I am honored to be in common cause with each of themand with so many others whose names we might never know.